Quicker than quick, I slide out the Connor pages and cram them under my smock, into the grip of my skirt band, making the stupid sponge bulge in my pocket. But she hears the rustling, and her head whips up. As noisily as I can, I jam what’s in my hand between the files in the open 1947 box.
“I’m sorry.” My voice is stronger now. “Just curious.”
“Out!” Mrs. Kowalski holds open the door. I shuffle past her, arms pressing my stomach to keep my stash from slipping. She marches me to the staff locker room.
“I’ll just get my clothes.” I pull the hairnet off my head. “And leave my smock.”
“You will indeed,” she says. And follows me inside.
She’s going to watch me take off my smock. She’ll see that I’ve still got papers. Every inch of my skin is dribbling sweat.
“I’m waiting.” Her arms are folded across her hefty chest.
“You going to watch?” I think of something I know she’ll hate hearing. I beg Abby’s forgiveness in my head. “Are you a lezzie?” I say.
She slaps me across the face before I see her hand moving. Tears sting my eyes, and the slap stings my cheek and nose.
But she turns around.
At once I turn my back on her too. I open my locker. I unbutton my smock. I jam the Connor papers more securely in the waistband of my skirt. I pull on my blouse and do it up. It’s not as good as the smock at hiding the bump, but I add my sweater over top.
When I’m done, I realize she’s watching me again. She yanks me over to stand right next to her and rams her hand under my blouse, popping off a button and groping around.
“Let me go!”
But she is clamped on my arm like an owl on the neck of a mouse. She yanks out the papers, and they fly across the floor. If she wants to pick them up, she’ll have to let go of me.
Instead, she keeps her grip tight and tugs me toward the door. I stumble on purpose, trying to get one little look at the nearest page. If I can spot an address…I reach out, catch a few words, but Mrs. Kowalski hauls me to my feet.
“Not a chance!” she barks. She shoves me in front of her down the stairs, too steamed up to wait for the elevator. She flings open the staff door and pushes me outside.
Frankie’s buddy, Kevin, is lying on top of the picnic table, face tipped toward the sun.
“What the hell?” he says.
And that’s that. My final glimpse of St. Joe’s Hospital and the embarrassing end of my career as a cleaner.
But I’m still thinking about the two bold words typed neatly on that piece of paper from the Connor file: Infant deceased.
WHAT NOW?
I want to cry, but I’m too mad to cry. I want to kick something, but really it’s me I’m mad at, and I’m not going to start kicking myself. Grrr. Dumbest thief ever! Steal the wrong thing and get caught doing it!
I’m stamping along streets I don’t know, avoiding the busy blocks where the stores and people are. If I go back to the hostel, there might be a new stranger in Dorm B. I might have to be nice to someone. Not a chance. No nice girl here. No way, Jose. Here is a thief.
I wonder why Mrs. Kowalski didn’t call the police. Maybe old files aren’t worth anything, and she knows it. The police would probably laugh their heads off if she asked them to arrest me. My hand bumps against the folded-up wad of Mrs. Munro’s papers in my sweater pocket. I look around. Anyone watching? Better find somewhere completely private, just in case. I wish I could talk to Jimmy.
But Jimmy’s not talking to me. So…how about Abby?
I GET INVITED TO STAY OVER
First one night, and then another.
“But I’ve paid for my bed at the hostel,” I explain on the second night. “I should go back.”
“That’s just silly,” says Judy. “Hop in the car, and we’ll go collect your stuff. Why would you pay rent someplace if you don’t have a job? Abby has an extra bed in her room! It’s perfect.”
ABBY’S SCRAPBOOK
“I couldn’t show you before,” she says. “I never take it out unless I’m alone in the cottage. Judy and Pree might be…well, weirded out.”
She pulls a box from under her bed, a cardboard box that once held a pair of ice skates, according to the pictures on the sides.
“Even though they seem all cool and open,” Abby is saying, “I know they’d be hurt if they knew about this—about how much more I know.” She lifts the lid of the box to reveal a big book with a red cover that looks as if it’s made of leather—probably, pretend leather. She puts the book on the bed between us and nudges me to open the cover.
“That’s him,” she whispers. “Andy Bannerman. That’s our dad.”
EVERYTHING IS OUT OF FOCUS
For a second I think my eyes are filling with tears, but it’s the photograph that’s blurry, making the subject more of a smudge than a face.
“I can’t really—”
“I know, that one’s bad. Turn the page.”
On the next page is a picture of about twenty men and two women, all white except for one. I lean in to examine the half-inch face.
“See how handsome?” says Abby. “Judy and Preesha say he was a total hunk. That’s the photo of his graduating class. I looked it up at the library.”
Honestly, it’s hard to see anything except a smiling brown face with bright dots for eyes. I doubt I would recognize him if I saw him on the streets of Parry Sound. Except that he’d be only the second brown man after Mr. Munro that I’d ever met. I peer again at the photograph.
“He kind of looks like Pete,” I say.
“And you,” says Abby. “And me.”
“Where do you think he is now?” I say.
“I know he’s in Baltimore,” she says. “I bugged Judy and Preesha so much that they tracked him down. He works at Mercy Hospital, delivering babies. How’s that for weird?”
“Have you—did you try to meet him? Or write him a letter or anything?”
Abby shakes her head. “My moms say I have to wait until I’m eighteen. That’s why they didn’t tell you that part. Now I’m thinking you can come with me!”
That idea is waaay too big to think about, and she doesn’t give me time to try.
“Don’t you think it was a little freaky that six or eight women suddenly had brown babies all in one year? Didn’t anybody notice?”
“But they were brown women,” I say. “Except Judy.”
“We don’t know about Connor or Thomas,” says Abby. “Anyway, I’m guessing that a tall handsome Jamaican doctor would have attracted some attention.”
“Yeah, maybe getting the job in Baltimore was a relief,” I say. “Up here he’d have been the only one providing certain, uh, services.”
“And what about…” Abby starts to giggle. “What about all the white interns? They must have been doing it too, don’t you think? Is this whole town populated with babies who don’t really belong to their parents?”
“Every town!” I say. “Wherever there’s a hospital! And no one knows whose baby is whose!”
Abby gapes at me, open-mouthed. “That really could be true,” she says. “What if you had a boyfriend and he turned out to be your half brother?”
I squirm, Jimmy’s face popping into my head.
“It’s mind-exploding,” I say.
All I did was look at a picture, and the world is spinning as if I’m doing cartwheels on the deck of a ship in the middle of a storm. I am not who I am. I am not an orphan of unknown parentage. I am the daughter of a doctor.
But everything I’ve been up until now—is that gone? And what happens next? Does turning the page in a scrapbook change my future as well as my past?
Malou Bannerman, I think. Who are you?
WOLVES
My birthday present last year from Mrs. Hazelton was a book called The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken. It’s about two cousins, Bonnie and Sylvia, whose wicked governess tries to steal Bonnie’s inheritance after her parents’ ship sinks at sea.
&nbs
p; But in the end, after weeks of terrible frights and sorrow, including a stint in an orphanage that makes the Benevolent Home look like a holiday in Paris, after the girls have escaped from wolves and overcome illness, poverty and abject misery…that’s when Bonnie’s parents come back! They aren’t dead after all. She has her own real life returned to her. The orphan part was horrible but temporary. At the end she goes back to being who she always expected to be.
In a book, you expect a happy ending, and a book has to end somewhere. In my case, in the story of Malou Gillis, the existence of an actual parent…well, it’s a shock.
But if you are holding the book of my life in your hands, I hope there are a whole lot of pages left to go. I’m only sixteen. So this isn’t the ending—and maybe not so happy either?
BOY AFTER BOY
The beds in Abby’s room have flannelette sheets and red wool blankets folded across the bottom ends. Hudson’s Bay blankets, Judy calls them.
“Like what the soldiers supposedly used to infect the Indians with smallpox.”
“That’s creepy,” I say.
“We’ve been renting this same cottage every summer,” Abby says, “since I was, you know…conceived. No one seems to live here during the winter. It belongs to ancient brothers who don’t get along but won’t sell the property, just to spite each other.”
Abby had made a plate full of something called Pigs in Blankets, little sausages wrapped in dough. So we’re being pigs in blankets while we eat them, lying on the beds in Abby’s room, reading from her stack of True Romance comic books. They tell really good stories, even if all the characters are white with blond hair. Unless they’re the jealous girls who try to steal the other girls’ boyfriends. Then their hair is black.
“Was that a knock?” says Abby.
“Maybe.”
I’m wrapped up in how Marcy has been dumped by her boyfriend, Richie, and is now plotting revenge.
“Malou?” Preesha’s slippers scuff along the hallway. “You have a visitor,” she says from the doorway.
“For me?” I’m on my feet, patting my hair. “Who is it?”
“A young man.” She’s smiling. “A very eager young man.”
“Whoa,” says Abby. “Malou!”
I quickly straighten my blouse and pull off my socks—faster than putting on shoes.
Abby follows right behind me. “Who is it?”
Frankie.
He’s waiting with Preesha but stops his polite chatter when he sees me.
“Oh,” I say. “Hi! How did you…?”
How did he know where to find me?
“Why don’t you two go for a walk?” says Preesha. “I need Abby to help sort through the beach towels.”
“Talk about a lame excuse,” Abby mutters, “since there are four towels.” She crosses her eyes at me and, luckily for me, does not start laughing.
“Abby,” I say, “this is Frankie. From the hospital. Frankie, this is Abby. And Preesha, her mom.”
Frankie makes a little bow, like he’s living in Jane Eyre times instead of now. I nudge him out the front door and close it, click, behind us while my stomach turns upside down.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper. I’m not afraid of getting lost in a kiss because it is the middle of the afternoon.
“Nice welcome,” he says. “I heard about what happened at the hospital. I was…I don’t know, worried. Word went around that you stole something. Didn’t sound like you, so I was kind of confused. I wanted to see you.”
“How did you know where I was?”
“I went to the hostel. The girl who works there described who helped you move. She said to say hi, by the way. I asked around town and figured it out, like a detective!” His sassy grin shows that he’s pleased as heck with himself. “You a criminal now, running from the law?”
So I explain—some but not all. I tell him yes, I took a file (I don’t say whose), because I’m searching for my mother. I say I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want him to get into trouble, since he’s the one who showed me the records room.
He listens, eyes bright. He puts his hands on my shoulders, and for a second I’m nervous that he’s going to kiss me right there on the doorstep. But he just talks to me while I feel his palms, warm and holding me steady.
“You do what you have to do,” he says. “Finding who your mama is, that’s the biggest thing any person wants to know. But I’m around, okay? If you need a friend to tell all about it.”
He’s so nice! Now I want him to kiss me, but he rests his chin on my head for a second and backs away with a little wave, like, See you later!
I’m back on the bed in Abby’s room, having answered her 189 questions about Frankie, and there’s another knock on the door.
“Oooh! He came back to tell you that he loves you,” says Abby.
“Shh,” I say.
We listen to Preesha opening the door, and then a murmur, and then, “Malou?”
Abby hoots and pulls the comic book out of my hand. “Come on, come on,” she says.
Preesha is in the bedroom doorway, this time with a tipped-up eyebrow and a smile. “I didn’t realize we were hosting some kind of exotic flower,” she says, “attracting all the honeybees in Parry Sound.”
“It’s a different boy?” Abby goes out to see for herself.
“Hi,” I hear her say.
“Hi.” It’s Jimmy.
FOURTEEN
HE DOESN’T EXACTLY APOLOGIZE
But I guess I don’t either.
First I introduce him to Abby and Preesha.
“OH!” says Abby. “You’re Jimmy!” So he gets it that I’ve told her about him. He flushes and looks at me, and I can see he’s squirming, but Abby doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. She’s examining him, like he’s a new species of frog she just found under the dock.
“Preesha!” she says. “This is Jimmy!”
Preesha has been hovering by the entrance to the kitchen, looking him over.
Abby’s brother!
I can see from the way Jimmy’s mouth is hanging open and his cheeks are going from pink to scarlet that Sherry must have told him the truth, and here he is, figuring out that he’s got two half sisters standing right in front of him.
“Hi,” says Abby. “I’m Abby. Do you know about me?”
“Well, yeah, Malou said—”
“I mean, do you know about me?”
“Abby, honey,” says Preesha. “Perhaps Malou and her…Jimmy would like a little time alone before you—”
Jimmy leans against the wall for a second.
“He’s going to faint!” says Abby.
“I am not!” He’s insulted. “But—” He looks at me. “Can I just say what I came to say?”
Abby says yes, not caring it was me he asked.
“We’re going out to the backyard,” I say. “Just Jimmy and me. For, like, ten minutes. And then you’re allowed to come.”
We ignore her sigh and go around the back. Jimmy sinks into one of the wooden chairs, and I take the other.
“I guess you talked to your mom.”
He nods. “I can sort of see why you didn’t want to tell me yourself.”
Is that an apology? Maybe.
“Weird, eh?”
“Weird doesn’t begin to cover it.” Jimmy starts to laugh, and I do too. Phew.
“She said she was going to tell me when I turned eighteen. But then you came along and wrecked everything.”
“Hey.”
“I went home that day, after you…after we…you know. And I just said to her, Malou has a list, and your name is on it. I told her you said it was signed by—”
“I couldn’t wait!” Abby is coming across the lawn, her fingers laced around three bottles of 7-Up. “This is so awesome and amazing, don’t you think?” She hands us each a bottle and pulls the opener out of her shorts pocket.
“If you’re going to be here, you have to remember that all this is new to us,” I tell her. “To us, it’s
…monumental.”
Abby is quiet while Jimmy finishes telling us the story his mom told him. How Jimmy’s dad, Burr, had measles when he was a teenager and couldn’t have babies and how Sherry wanted a baby more than anything. How the nice Dr. MacIntyre and then Dr. Bannerman provided the missing links. How Burr tried and failed to feel okay about Sherry having a child this way. How he never got over thinking that he wasn’t really Jimmy’s dad.
“That’s why he left,” says Jimmy. “That’s why he never visits or calls or anything. He doesn’t think of me as being his.”
We sit there for a while, drinking 7-Up, feeling bad for Jimmy.
“What about Pete and Lucy?” says Abby. “Shouldn’t they know they have at least three other siblings right here, and maybe a few more?”
Jimmy drops his head to his hands, like he doesn’t want to face that fact. “I told Pete we’d meet him after his game tonight,” he says. “I was hoping Malou would come with me.”
Jimmy says we should tell the twins, and I say, “Why should it be us? You just said it was good that I let your mother tell you.”
“That was different. This is the laaast conversation either of those parents want to have. Mrs. Munro might even believe for real that God is their daddy.”
“You want me to be the one to do it?” Abby twists a piece of her hair into a knot. “If they’re going to get all mad, like some people”—she pauses to pretend-glare at Jimmy—“it might as well be me they get mad at, right? I’m not their friend yet.”
“No,” Jimmy says. “They know me the best. It better be me.”
“We’ll do it together,” I say. “All of this is only happening because I showed up.”
“But also.” Jimmy’s looking at me.
“What?”
“My mom wants you to come see her tomorrow. She says she might remember something. About the bracelet.”
FINAL SCORE
A Big Dose of Lucky Page 14
