Girlhearts

by Norma Fox Mazer

  She hugged me tightly. “I’ll count on that.” She took me by the shoulders and kissed each of my cheeks. “Good-bye for now,” she said. “Good-bye, my darling Sarabeth.”

  All the way home on the bus, all through those long hours, I thought of nothing but Hinchville and what I had found there.

  Great-aunt Netta. Jeannie. My great-grandmother, and Traci, my half sister.

  And more.

  Aunt Netta had invited a slew of people to supper on my second night there, and all of them were relatives. One was a cousin named Ted Halley. He was a dentist, and his wife, who was now also my cousin, by marriage, was an accountant. They had three kids. More cousins, although I didn’t meet them that night. When Aunt Netta brought up Mom’s name, Ted shrugged and said, “Why bring up all that mess from the past?”

  And from the glances around the table, I could tell he wasn’t the only person who thought that way.

  But there were also people like Richie Barnes, who fixed whatever needed to be fixed around Aunt Netta’s house, and who called himself a kissing cousin. “Third or fourth or some damn thing,” he said. “Jane Halley, sure, I knew her, went to school with her from first grade on. She always had the best handwriting of anyone. I remember in second grade, the rest of us would be goofing off, and she’d be sitting there, practicing her cursive.”

  And more.

  Dozens of other people who were related to me, some living in Hinchville, like Richie Barnes and Ted Halley, but more of them in all sorts of places—Hawaii, Illinois, Florida, North Carolina, Minnesota, even Paris and London.

  And more: the possibility of living with Aunt Netta in Hinchville. I was tempted. A new place. A new start. But I knew I wasn’t ready to leave my school and all my friends, and Leo and Cynthia, and everything I knew. And even though Mom had grown up in Hinchville, it seemed to me that if I left the city and the state where we had lived together, I would be leaving her behind.

  And more.

  My Silver grandparents. Aunt Netta said that a few years ago they had moved to Asheville, North Carolina, for their health. “Judith was diagnosed with MS and Martin, I understand, has his own problems with blood pressure. Their other son, your uncle Steven, has a medical practice down there, so he looks after them.”

  Aunt Netta had their number and, on my last day, she called them. “Judith,” she said, “this is Netta Bishop. How are you and Martin doing?… Oh, that’s good, I’m glad to hear it. Well, we haven’t talked for a while now and—yes, I’m fine; thank you for asking. Judith, I called because I have a little surprise for you. Well, not so little. I have someone here who wants to talk to you. Her name is Sarabeth.… Now just wait; I’m not going to answer those questions. I’ll let her speak for herself.”

  She handed me the phone and, for the first time, I heard the voice of my father’s mother. When she understood who I was, she burst into tears. “You’re my granddaughter?” she said, and she repeated my name, saying “Sarabeth” as if she was tasting it, and the taste was delicious to her.

  But when she asked about my father and I had to say that he was dead, that he had been dead for almost eleven years, she went silent. “Oh, my Benjie,” she said, at last.

  My grandfather got on the phone. “You’re Benjamin’s girl?” he said. “His daughter?”

  “Yes, I am.…”

  “And when are we going to see you, Sarabeth?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  I had never in my life called anyone sir. It popped out of my mouth, partly because that was how people talked in Jane Eyre and partly because I didn’t know what to call my grandfather. Grandpa? Mr. Silver? Gramps?

  “You’ll just have to come down here,” he said. “Wait a second—let me get a pad and take down your address.” After he did this, he said, “Now I want to hear about my son.”

  “I can’t tell you too much, sir—”

  “Grandpa will do,” he said.

  “Grandpa. I was just a little girl when—”

  “Whatever you can tell me, I’ll listen.”

  I had never thought about all the years that he and my grandmother had waited to hear from my father. But hearing the pain in his voice as he spoke, not about my father but about his son, I was spun around hard. Very hard.

  This was Mom’s doing. I didn’t want to believe it, but I had to, because the fact was, she had never let them know about my father’s death. She had never written or called. Maybe it had been too much for her when it happened. Maybe she blamed them. There were lots of maybes, but there were also all the years since then when she hadn’t done anything, either.

  For the first time, I realized that none of the Hinchville people had known where Mom was, but she’d always known where they were. How easy it would have been for her to get in touch, but because of her stubborn pride, she hadn’t done it. Just as she had never let her parents know where she was or tried to make up with them.

  So that was also what I found in Hinchville.

  But more than anything, I found a family—hearts open to me and arms that took me into their embrace.

  THIRTY-NINE

  When I got off the bus late that evening, Pepper was waiting for me. She hurried toward me, holding out her hands, her bracelets jingling down her long, thin arms.

  “Where’s Cynthia?” I said.

  “The baby’s running a temperature; she had to take him to the doctor. It’s okay, so don’t worry.… Come on, my car’s over there in the lot.”

  I looked around, as if I expected some great change in the trees or the buildings, as if weeks or months, whole seasons, had passed since three days ago when I had climbed the steps into the bus that would take me to Hinchville.

  “I have news for you,” Pepper said, backing out. “Leo and I are getting married.”

  My knee-jerk reaction was, No, you can’t. It’s Leo and Mom. But there was no Leo and Mom. Even if Mom had lived, there wouldn’t have been Leo and Mom. “Congratulations,” I said.

  Pepper glanced at me. “I hope it’s not too hard for you. My mother remarried when I was twelve, and I remember, it was awful; it was so difficult.” She slowed at the entrance to the highway, then sped into the moving stream of cars. “I wanted my own dad, but in the end, it was good. My stepfather was a good guy. He’s still around,” she added. “I still have a dad when I need one.”

  “I’ve never really had a dad,” I said, wondering why she was telling me this. “Only for two years.”

  “Isn’t Leo like your dad?”

  “More like a brother.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Fun big brother, right?”

  “Sometimes … actually, sometimes he is like a dad.” I thought of how protective he’d been of me with Dolly Krall. And how he’d always pick me up and take me anyplace I wanted to go. That was dad stuff.

  “I was wondering if my marrying Leo would be kind of the same thing for you as I experienced,” she said. “Only the mother thing, not the dad thing. I mean, you might feel that I’m trying to replace your mother.”

  I looked at her. In a way, I was still back in Hinchville, and the whole conversation seemed extremely bizarre to me.

  Pepper turned off the highway and slowed down for a light. “Sarabeth, Leo and I are getting married, probably next week. I hope you come to the wedding. And, right now, we’re looking for a decent-sized place to live, not like the little make-do place we have. We want two bedrooms, minimum, one for us and one for you.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Oh, God, I’m not doing this very well. Sarabeth, we want you to come live with us. I mean, we really want you to do that. I mean, if you’d like that. If you’d like that, we’d like it. We’d really like it!”

  She shifted gears. “Leo loves you like a father, or like a brother, whatever. He cares about you; he wants you to have a home. And I want it, too.”

  I looked out the window, registered the banks of muddy gravel heaped on the shoulder of the road, leftovers from the winter’s plowing
. Live with Leo and Pepper?

  “This isn’t some spur-of-the-moment rescue thing, Sarabeth, though we speeded up talking about it after Cynthia told us where you’d gone.”

  “She told you?”

  Pepper nodded. “She called and read us your note. Leo, he got so worried, you wouldn’t believe it. Then she told us about the social worker coming to evaluate.… So Leo and I sat down, and we talked really seriously. Sarabeth—” She glanced over at me. “We want to be your family. Both of us want it.… This is something we both want. I know I’m repeating myself. I’m not a nervous type, but I guess I’m a little nervous right now.”

  She paused, as if waiting for an answer from me.

  I licked my lips. “Oh, I …” I began, but then I stopped.

  I was trying to absorb what she’d said and think what it would mean.

  “I know you and I can be all right together,” Pepper said. “I know we’re not real close, and I can’t be your mother. I wouldn’t even presume to think of it, but I think I can be a friend, someone you can trust.”

  Another red light. “Where are we going now?” I said.

  “To Cynthia and Billy’s. Isn’t that where you want to go?”

  “Yes, it is. Thank you for the ride, for everything,” I added belatedly.

  A few minutes later, she pulled up in front of Cynthia’s building. “What do you think? Will you come and live with us, Sarabeth? Will you help Leo and me make a home?”

  I shuddered in a breath. A home was what I wanted, but was this the way? “Pepper,” I said. “I need time.”

  “Of course you do,” she said. “Just remember one thing, please. I’m not doing this for you. It’s for all of us. I want it as much as Leo does.”

  “Okay,” I said. And then, without knowing I was going to do it and taking us both by surprise, I reached out and hugged her.

  FORTY

  Weeks after I moved in with Leo and Pepper, I had a dream about Mom. I dreamed about her a lot, but this dream was different. I saw her across the street, her hands thrust into the pockets of a jacket that I recognized was mine. She was quite far away, yet I could see the exact texture of her skin and each little fine line around her eyes. There was a tiny snake of worry between her eyebrows, and her hair hung forward on her face.

  Why doesn’t she comb it? I thought. I was annoyed. I wanted her to be better, to be perfect. I called out to her. “Mom.” But she walked on briskly. I ran after her, anxious that she would get away. We were going past our house in Roadview, and suddenly she leaped up, leaped straight up into the air like a dancer or a skater.

  At my cry of surprise, she said, “You didn’t know I could do that?” She laughed at me. “Don’t you trust me?” Before I could answer the question, she drew a strand of hair through her fingers and, holding it out, said, “Hon, look at this. Gray hair! Your mom’s getting to be an old lady.”

  “Oh, you nut,” I said.

  At this, we both fell into a fit of helpless laughter, the kind we’d shared over things no one else would ever think were funny. We were walking arm in arm then, and she looked at me strongly, with a kind of deep recognition. She knows me, I thought; she will never forget me. And the happiness I felt was extraordinary.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Dr. James Greenwald and to

  Barbara Wright, both of whom generously gave

  me their time and helped me with information.

  About the Author

  Norma Fox Mazer (1931–2009) was an acclaimed author best known for her children’s and young adult literature. She earned numerous awards, including the Newbery Honor for After the Rain, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award for Dear Bill, Remember Me?, and the Edgar Award for Taking Terri Mueller. Mazer was also honored with a National Book Award nomination for A Figure of Speech and inclusion in the notable-book lists of the American Library Association and the New York Times, among others.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For permission to reprint a portion of the poem “On Second Thought” by Meg Kearney on page xi, we gratefully acknowledge the author. From An Unkindness of Raisins, BOA Editions, 2001.

  Copyright © 2001 by Norma Fox Mazer

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-1127-3

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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