Girlhearts

by Norma Fox Mazer

  Asa nodded. “That could be so depressing for you. You’re just getting to feel better—”

  “Hold it,” Jennifer said. “I don’t agree. I can see Sarabeth going there. It would be cool.” She bounced in her seat. “She could find out who she came from, her heritage, all that genealogy and roots stuff.”

  “I’m not going to do it, Jennifer,” I said. Even if Mom’s people were still there and even if I could find them, what would be the point? What would I say to them? ‘Hi, I’m Sarabeth. You slammed the door on my mom, you ignored me my whole life, and you’re a bunch of creeps. Good-bye’?”

  Patty hadn’t said a word yet. “Sarabeth,” she said. “Just go back to what James said, okay? When he was making his point about—”

  “And speaking of who, or is it whom,” Jennifer broke in, “there is the darling boy, himself.”

  She pointed. Grant pushed her hand down, but we all turned and looked. James had just gotten up from a table at the other end of the cafeteria and was walking toward the door.

  “He really is adorable,” Grant said, which was so unlike her that we all burst out laughing.

  Jennifer nudged my leg under the table. “Okay if we drool over your friend, Sarabeth?” She found it hard to believe that what James and I had was a friendship and not romance. “If he was my friend, I’d be all over him,” she said. “Gaawd!” She stood up, as if she was going to take off after him.

  “Jennifer!” I yanked her down.

  “As I was saying,” Patty said. “James’s point was that you should know your family, good or bad. Good and bad, actually. Am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I agree with James. It doesn’t do any good to bury your head in the sand and pretend people don’t exist, just because in the past they—”

  “Is that what you think my mom was doing?” I said. “Burying her head in the sand?”

  “No, that’s not what I said. Sarabeth! Don’t give me that terrible look. You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “My mom did what she thought was right.” I gripped the table. “Those people hurt her. They hurt her as bad as you can hurt someone. She wasn’t burying her head in the sand all these years, Patty—”

  “I know, Sarabeth. It’s okay. Slow down. I’m not—”

  “You think I’m proud of them, proud of being related? I don’t want them as my relatives; I don’t claim them. Maybe for about five seconds, my brain got twisted and I thought James was right, and maybe for about another five seconds I thought about going there, and maybe—”

  “Shh, shhh, shhh.” Patty put her hand on my arm. “I would never say a word against your mom, Sarabeth. When I said ‘bury your head in the sand,’ I wasn’t even thinking about your mom. I was thinking about, you know, about my uncle,” she said tightly. “Thinking how right James is, even though it’s such a hard thing. Because you know it’s no use for me to deny he’s my uncle. He is, and he did what he did, and …” She crumpled her lunch bag and shoved it to one side.

  “I’m sorry, Patty,” I said.

  After a moment, she said, “He did bad things, and it’s okay for me to acknowledge that. I mean, it’s part of my life, and I have to deal with it.”

  A silence fell. We were all remembering what had happened to Patty last year. At that time, I was sure I would never forget anything about it, that it would be burned into my mind forever, and that not a day would pass without my remembering. But now, sometimes, weeks passed without Patty’s uncle even appearing on my mental radar. Was that the way it was going to be with other people and Mom? After a while, nobody would remember her, except me?

  THIRTY-ONE

  “Your social worker called me,” Cynthia said a few days later. “I always forget his name. He called this morning, when you were at school.”

  “Travisino.” I opened the refrigerator and took out the carton of OJ.

  “Mr. Travisino, right.” Cynthia took a pack of cigarettes off the top of the refrigerator. “Well …” She lit up. “He said a caseworker was coming to look us over. Look at the living situation.”

  “Okay.” I drank down the juice in one long, thirsty gulp.

  “Sarabeth, I don’t think you heard me. I’m worried. This is serious stuff. This person coming here will be reassessing everything. That’s what your guy, Mr. Travisino, said. She will be reassessing everything.”

  “My guy, Mr. Travisino?” I laughed. “He’s not my guy. He’s not my anything.”

  “God, Sarabeth, that laugh of yours. You sound so cynical. It hurts me to see you this way, so hard.”

  “Sorry.” I went to the sink and started washing the dishes that had piled up. Hard? Was that me, now? Could be. Cynthia probably knew me as well as anyone. “Don’t worry, anyway,” I said. “What can she do?”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” Cynthia said. “It’s you.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me.” I put a dish in the drainer. “I’m okay.”

  “I know, I know. You’re okay. You’re fine. Iron woman.” She sighed and stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer. “Let me just get Darren, and we’ll talk about Mr. Travisino’s call.”

  When she came back, she was carrying Darren in her arms, a posture that always reminded me hurtfully of the day I’d gone over the edge. It still scared me to think of what might have happened. I’d never told a soul about it, not Patty or Grant or James. No one.

  “Hello, little man.” I leaned over and kissed the top of Darren’s head. He was still sleepy, rubbing his eyes. “You want me to hold him, Cynthia?”

  “Sure. Go to Sarabeth, sweetie.”

  I held out my arms, but Darren shook his head, smiling slyly. “Come on, Darren,” I coaxed. “Come to Sarabeth.” But he shook his head and buried his face against his mother’s shoulder.

  I turned back to the dishes, suddenly almost in tears. Was it possible that he knew somewhere in his baby mind how close I’d come to letting something bad happen to him? Could a little kid remember an event like that and hold it against you?

  Cynthia sat down with him on her lap. “Sarabeth, what you have to know is that Mr. Whatshisname said we should be prepared for the caseworker to decide that your not having a separate room is an unsafe environment.”

  “Unsafe? That’s silly,” I said.

  “I agree with you! But we’re dealing with a bureaucracy, and they have their rules, and they are ruled by their rules. He said if she makes that decision, they—” She stopped and gestured to the refrigerator. “Give me my cigarettes, will you?”

  “No. I don’t want you to smoke when you’re holding the baby.”

  “Sarabeth …”

  “No, Cynthia. You know you shouldn’t.” This was one thing, at least, that I could take a firm stand on, one way of making up to Darren for that awful, crazed day.

  “Remember that they bent the rules for you? Well, things have changed in that department; there’s a new supervisor. Darren, ouch! That hurts Mommy.”

  He was standing upright in Cynthia’s lap, grabbing at her face and hair with his powerful little fingers.

  “I always promised Jane that if anything happened to her, I would be the one. I’d be there. I’d take care of you. I promised her, and now it’s all—it’s all so messed up,” she said, peeling Darren’s hands off her cheeks.

  I went to the sink and turned on the cold water. “Don’t worry about it,” I said automatically. I let the water run, then filled a glass and drank.

  “I am worrying about it! Maybe it’s stupid of us to keep trying to save for a house and meanwhile living like this. If only we could buy a house for the three of us, even a small house, it would be so much better. You and Darren could have a room together and—”

  My stomach lurched, as if I was going to be sick. “Me and Darren? I don’t think so. You just said ‘the three of us.’ I don’t see me in that picture.”

  “I didn’t say three.”

  “You did.”

  “I didn’t
say that!”

  I ran water, filled another glass. “You just said it, Cynthia.”

  She made an impatient movement. “Well, even if I did, it was a slip of the tongue. Don’t make a federal case out of it. I meant all of us, you and the three of us. If that caseworker says it’s no good the way we’ve got things now, and she—”

  “It isn’t,” I said. “It isn’t good.”

  “What do you mean? What’s wrong? You have that room to yourself almost all the time. We’ve turned it over to you. I’ll point that out to the caseworker. I’ll tell her that when you need it, you always have it. You want to take Darren, so I can have a smoke?”

  “Cynthia, you shouldn’t smoke at all with him in the room.”

  “I know! But I need a cigarette right now. Do you know what I’m going to say? Do you know what your guy said to me? He said you might have to be placed.”

  “Placed?” Placed was what you did with a thing. You placed it on a shelf or in a box or under the bed, or if the thing was junk, you placed it in a garbage bag.

  “Placed means—you know what it means. It means being put in a foster home,” she said flatly. “Which we are, supposedly! Sarabeth, I can’t bear the thought that they’ll send you to live with strangers.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said again. “Whatever happens will happen.”

  “Easy for you to say not to worry! It’s not your conscience keeping you up at night. What do you think, I don’t care what happens to you?”

  I turned around. “What difference does it make if I sleep on your couch or someone else’s?”

  “Please don’t talk like that. I hate hearing you talk that way.” She put Darren down, and he scooted off into the living room. “Maybe we just have to do it,” she said. “Bite the bullet. Find another apartment, bigger place, forget buying a house.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “Oh, stop saying that! It doesn’t help anything.” Her face looked puffy and fierce, her chin a sweaty, porous red, like a swollen heart that would burst at a touch.

  The phone rang. “Don’t answer,” she said as I reached for it. “I know it’s Billy.”

  “How can you tell?” I said. “Maybe it’s for me.”

  “No, he’s got a sixth sense about me. I bet anything he knows I’m upset. I don’t want to talk to him now.”

  We sat and listened to the phone ring. It rang six times before it stopped. Then Cynthia started talking again about money and moving, about rent and rooms and savings, and I don’t know what else. I stopped listening. It didn’t matter what I said, or what I thought, or what I wanted. No one had asked me if I wanted another home, another bed, another “mother.” They hadn’t asked me the first time and they wouldn’t ask me this time.

  THIRTY-TWO

  “Where to?” the man behind the wire cage said.

  “Hinchville,” I said. “How much is it?”

  He whirled in his seat, punched buttons on a machine, and a ticket burped out. “Eight dollars.”

  I pushed the fifty-dollar bill I’d taken from Cynthia’s purse under the grille. The man looked at me as if he knew what I’d done. He held the bill up to the light and inspected it, front and back. He put the fifty in a drawer and pushed the ticket through the grille along with the change. Two fives and two ones. Twelve dollars.

  My heart charged around in my chest. I was supposed to get forty-two dollars change. “I gave you a fifty,” I said.

  “Count your change,” he barked at me.

  “I gave you fifty dollars,” I repeated.

  “Count your change,” he shouted.

  “But I gave you fifty—”

  Behind me, a man said, “You heard him. Count your change! There’re other people waiting here.”

  Away from the ticket window, I put my backpack on the floor, sat down on it, and looked at the ticket. “One Way—Hinchville. Good for Six Months from Date. Thirty-eight Dollars.” But I was sure I had heard him say eight dollars. I was positive that was what I had heard! Or maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I’d heard what I’d wanted to hear.

  I hadn’t wanted to hear that the fare would take almost all the money I had, the same way that I didn’t really want to know that my plan wasn’t well thought out. Plan? What a dignified expression for impulsively going to a place I’d never been, carrying nothing except a sandwich, a ten-dollar phone card, and Mom’s address book.

  This might be the stupidest thing I’d ever done, though Patty and James wouldn’t think so. With that thought, I went to a phone booth and called Patty. “I’m going, Patty,” I said, not even bothering with a hello. “I’m going to Hinchville. I don’t have anything to lose by going there, so I might as well. I’m in the bus station right now. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Oh, Sarabeth, yes! You’re going, really? That’s good. When did you decide to do it?”

  “Maybe it’s good,” I said. “I don’t know, Patty …”

  “Sarabeth, I have a feeling about this. You’re not going to be sorry.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I won’t be sorry.”

  “Sarabeth! You’ve made a decision, and it’s okay, so go with it. Take care of your decision. Do you know what I mean? My therapist says, ‘Own your decisions. They’re yours! Don’t be doing something and tearing it down at the same time.’”

  “Okay,” I said after a moment. “I’ll try not to.”

  “Will you call me as soon as you get back? Or call me from Hinchville. Please! Have you got my phone number?”

  “Patty,” I said, “I know your number by heart.”

  “I know you do. I guess I just want to give you something, even if it’s only a number, something to help you along. If I were with you, I’d give you a hug, a big hug for good luck.”

  After we hung up, I checked the schedule board again. Now that I had made this decision, I was impatient to get on the bus, but I still had almost an hour to wait.

  I had awakened very early this morning, early and abruptly, as if someone had slapped my face. No, actually, it had been more like a hand reaching into my sleep, grabbing me and yanking me out, like pulling a fish out of water. I’d come awake sputtering, floundering. Then, in the same abrupt fashion, I knew that I’d been dreaming or dream-thinking about going to Hinchville.

  Everyone was asleep. Quietly, I pulled on jeans, a shirt, my high-tops. I tied my fish scarf to a loop in my jeans. I made a cheese sandwich, wrapped it and put it in my backpack, and then added my toothbrush, a change of underwear, a bottle of water, and the book Mrs. Hilbert had given me. I drank a glass of OJ and wrote a note, which I left on the table under the fruit bowl.

  Cynthia, I’m going to Hinchville, to see what I can find out about those people. Don’t worry about me. I know you hate me to say that, but I mean it.

  Love, Sarabeth.

  I was ready to leave, when I saw Cynthia’s purse on the counter, and I opened it. There was a fifty-dollar bill in her wallet. I took it out, replaced it with a ten and a five, which was all the money I had, and added a P.S. to my note: “I borrowed $35 from you. Don’t worry about that, either. I’ll pay it back.”

  Now I found a seat, took out my book, and opened it. This was my third time around with Jane Eyre. I loved the story, but I also loved that Jane and Mom shared the same name.

  I read for a while, but I couldn’t concentrate. I was thinking about Patty and James, that they were the ones who’d encouraged me to do this, and I’d called her, but not him. So I went back to the phone booth and dialed his number.

  A woman answered. “Who is this?”

  “Sarabeth Silver.”

  “James,” she called, “some girl wants you.”

  It’s his mother, I thought, and she doesn’t like me. She doesn’t even know me and she doesn’t like me. Then James came on. “Hey,” he said. “James Robertson here.”

  “Hey, James Robertson here. This is Sarabeth Silver here.”

  “How you doing!” He sounded happy
to hear from me.

  “I’m in the bus station. I’m going there. Remember, you said I should, and now I am.”

  “Am what? Going where?” Then he got it. “Hinchville! Wow. You’re really doing it! I convinced you.”

  “No, you didn’t, not really. You gave me the idea and you gave me reasons for doing it. And I kicked and fought—”

  “You sure did.”

  “—but there must have been something deep in what you said. Or maybe you just gave me the way to convince myself.”

  We talked for a while. He got worried when he heard how little money I had. He was ready to ask his mother to drive him down to the bus station. “You should have, like, fifty or a hundred bucks with you. I can give it to you.”

  “No, James. No.”

  “Sarabeth, don’t get all stiff-necked on me. It’ll be a loan.”

  “Thank you, I really—” My voice thickened. I couldn’t even tell him how much I appreciated it, how touched I was by the offer.

  “Hey, it’s just money,” he said.

  “I know. Anyway, there’s no time. I have to hang up now. They’re calling my bus.”

  “Sarabeth, wait. Are you going to be okay?”

  My automatic response mechanism booted right up. “I’m fine,” I began, but I stopped myself. I didn’t know if I was fine. I didn’t know if I was going to be okay. All I knew was that I was going to Hinchville.

  THIRTY-THREE

  On the bus, I sat next to a window. The world moved by, pale, only the trees dark and budding green. In a week, it would be daylight saving time. Mom used to chant, “Spring forward, fall backward.” That was how she remembered which way to turn the clock.

  I read and dozed. The bus was full and, as it sped along the highway, creaked everywhere in a comforting sort of way. People were talking in low voices, and they lulled me to sleep. I heard someone saying, You’ll find out. Oooo-kay, to be continued. And I woke up and knew I’d been dreaming about Hinchville.

  I started reading again, but I didn’t get far. The only story that truly interested me right now was the story of what I would find in Hinchville. Who would be there and where I would find them. What I would say and what they would say to me, and how they would explain themselves. I told myself different versions of the story. In one version, voices shouted, doors were slammed in my face. In another, all was quiet—no words were exchanged, no explanations given or apologies offered. They simply turned their backs on me. And in still another version, the one I liked best, people cried and begged me to tell them about Mom and said how much they had loved her and how much they regretted what they had done.