Pete plays a position called catcher. That means he stands behind the guy on the other team who is at bat and waits to catch the balls that the batter misses. It doesn’t look too hard. He doesn’t have to run anywhere.
“Pete’s favorite game is hockey,” says Jimmy. “He’s just waiting for winter. There’s a kid from our school named Bobby Orr, a year older than us, except he’s so good he got picked when he was fourteen to play for the Oshawa Generals. That’s what Pete wants—to go professional. Too bad there’s never been a Negro player in the NHL. He’d be better off trying for baseball.”
Lucy and her dad are watching the game too, sitting about as close as they can get to Pete’s spot without being on the field. I have to admit, I’m glad we got here late. I’ve never seen a baseball game before, and I can’t figure out all the rules, even if Jimmy is pretty patient trying to explain.
All I know is that when it’s his turn to be the batter, Pete scores a point, or gets a run, or whatever it’s called. We cheer like crazy and ask him afterward if we can have his autograph, as if he’s Paul McCartney. Mr. Munro pays for us all to have hot dogs, and then he limps off to the parking lot, proud of his boy.
Jimmy and I nudge each other, neither of us wanting to start. Finally, when we’re sitting in the stands, looking down at the ballfield, I say, “So, guys, actually…” I clear my throat and try again. “I’ve been investigating, and I’ve found out a few things about that list. You might not like it, but…”
And then we tell them.
PETE’S THE ONE WHO GOES CRAZY
I would have guessed that Lucy would be the one most likely to turn incredulous and mad, but I’m hardly past using the phrase artificial insemination and Pete jumps to his feet to protest.
“Where did you get this shit?” he says. “Are you trying to tell me that my dad’s dick doesn’t work?”
“Pete! Chill out!” says Lucy. “She didn’t say that. His dick works fine.”
There she goes again, using nasty words in front of boys like it’s normal vocabulary.
“Just that he shoots blanks,” she adds. “Calm down!” Because Pete has kicked the riser so hard it sends a shudder through the whole set of bleachers. “Don’t you see how this explains so much?” Lucy’s voice is excited. “Think about it! Dad got messed up by the factory chemicals, Mom wanted a baby so bad she went nuts, and then they were offered the chance at this miracle and—”
“Maybe she didn’t even know,” I say. “Maybe she thinks her prayers were actually answered.”
“Oh my god,” Lucy says. “Do you think? Could they have done that without her knowing?”
“Okay, now you’re insane,” says Pete.
“Judy and Preesha said that usually this procedure requires a husband’s permission,” I tell them. “The husband’s approval is almost more important than the wife’s. That’s why the two women were such a special case. So maybe—”
“Yeah, and that’s sick too,” says Pete. “Dykes having babies? What’s wrong with them? They’re good-looking enough to get husbands—or were when they were younger anyway. So why are they…you know, like that?”
I feel like I’m going to throw up the hot dog. Not only have I broken my solemn promise and spilled Abby’s secret, but Pete is making it sound ugly.
“You guys,” I say. “You can’t tell anyone. You have to swear.”
Pete laughs, scornful and harsh.
“If what you’re saying is true, the last thing I’m gonna tell anyone is that I’ve got a baby dyke for a sister.”
“Oh Pete, shut up,” says Lucy. “You’re being ignorant. I don’t think it’s catching. And it’s not like anyone knows unless you tell them. Not like being colored.”
He looks at her, considering. I notice that Jimmy’s holding my arm, like we’re linked and waiting for some kind of verdict.
“It’s still sick,” says Pete.
Lucy looks as if she wants to kick him, but I shake my head at her. We all sit in silence, waiting to see what happens next.
Which is nothing.
Pete finally says, “I said I won’t tell, and I won’t. But this whole thing is nuts. I don’t see Malou getting a mother out of the deal. And meanwhile, the rest of us are losing our dads.”
“You’ve got a dad,” says Jimmy quietly. “And now maybe two.”
WE WALK TO THE TRAILER
“I’m glad that’s over with,” says Jimmy.
“Oh, it’s not over with,” I say.
Jimmy laughs. “You’re probably right about that,” he says. “Pete’s not going to sit quiet on the topic of his father’s manliness.”
“And now it’s your mom’s turn to maybe drop a bombshell,” I say. “Do you already know what she’s going to tell me, and you’re just not saying?”
“Nope,” says Jimmy. “She’s saving it for you.”
We get there and say hi, and Jimmy pours lemonade. Sherry nods and waits to speak till we’re all sitting cozy at the table.
AND THEN SHE SAYS A LOT
“I expected to have the baby at home in my mother’s house, but there was trouble. My mother knew he wasn’t coming right, so Burr drove me into the hospital, even though he’d had enough of St. Joe’s by then, hating it more every time I went in for treatment, as we called it. He kept thinking it was all his fault.”
Sherry glances over at Jimmy, and Jimmy stares at his hands on the table.
“Funny thing,” she goes on. “Back of the truck was loaded with trash from a work site—torn-up drywall, rotten lumber, a set of stairs even. Burr meant to go to the dump that morning, clear the rubble in case the baby came. But we ended up taking the garbage with us, the weight making the pickup bounce on the dirt road. Every bump felt like a dagger in my spine.
“We had Dr. MacIntyre, an older fella, white like most of them. He said, sure enough, the baby was upside down, feet first instead of his head. They put their hands all over me, inside and out, pain burning my back like I was shitting a melon. Luckily, I fainted dead away. No offense, Jimmy, but it hurt like hell.
“In the end I got a needle, and that was that. Curtains. Next thing I know, it was all over, and there’s Jimmy in a cot at the end of my bed. Burr was gone, and I dozed off and on, waking up in jolts but settling back when I saw the little brown face or the arm waving out of the blanket.
“Middle of the night, another girl is wheeled in, whimpering, a nurse and the girl’s mother huddled around her.”
Sherry has been looking out the window this whole time, but now she turns her eyes on me.
“I’ve been thinking about her,” she says. “That sad, sad girl.”
I wait, not breathing.
“Her baby…” Sherry swallows, starts again. “Her baby was the tiniest thing you’ll ever see, and as brown as a nut. Two brown babies in one room in the whitest town in Ontario.”
Jimmy and I are thirsty, drinking in every word.
“The grandmother, she’s got a bee in her backside, can’t sit still. The nurse swaddles the baby and sets it next to the girl, who is practically passed out. But granny is hovering, whispering, being a pest. I can see the nurse is wishing the granny was up a tree, but she was a stubborn biddy, planting herself right there.
“Me, I’m tired and sore. I need to sleep too. I close my eyes for hardly a minute before this one”—she tips a thumb at Jimmy—“starts fussing and griping, and my rest is over for the next five years.”
“The baby was Malou?” says Jimmy in a whisper.
“That’s what I’m guessing,” Sherry says. “When I woke up…your bracelet was gone, though I didn’t notice till later. I never thought about it again until you brung it over, Malou. Because also, when I woke up the old lady was gone, and the baby was gone too. That girl was weeping like she invented tears, saying how her mother had stolen her little baby.”
“Stolen?” The word catches in my throat, so unexpected and terrible.
“It—she—was a preemie, very small, like I said.” Sherry shakes h
er head. “I wondered then if maybe it died, and the mum was a bit crazy with grief. The nurses were acting funny, and I had a feeling it wasn’t just the color of the baby.”
“Was she Anishinaabe?” Jimmy asks. “The baby’s mother?”
“I thought I said.” Sherry shakes her head. “The mother and the grandmother were white.”
STRANGERS HOLD KEYS TO YOUR OWN LOCKED DOORS
Fragments of your life are carried like lost buttons in other people’s pockets. Bits of plastic to strangers, retrieved from the sidewalk or the bus seat, but to you they may hold whole chapters missing from your story.
I’m about to ask Sherry if she knows how my mother died when she speaks again.
“I know who she is.” Sherry brushes a strand of hair from her eyes, tucks it into her ponytail, where it slides right out again. “After you were here before, and then when Jimmy asked about his dad, I started to remember more about that night.”
I’m half standing. “Did you say what I think you said?”
“I know exactly who she is,” says Sherry. “That’s why I wanted you to come, so I could talk to you. I see that wretched grandmother nearly every week, even if she doesn’t know me from an apple core. I won’t forget her face until I meet my end. Or the daughter’s. She still lives here, right in town.”
JIMMY KNOWS HER TOO
As soon as Sherry says the name, Jimmy knows exactly who she is. She shops at the Dominion every Thursday, and he delivers the groceries to her house. He has been to my mother’s house, he says, more times than he can count.
IF IT’S MY MOTHER
Her name is Eve Beckwith.
But Sherry says that when they shared a hospital room, her name was Eve Delaney.
Malou Beckwith? Malou Delaney?
Why isn’t there an Eve on the list? And why is she alive?
WHAT SHOULD I BE FEELING?
I almost can’t hear them talking, because my head is buzzing like wasps around a jam sandwich. My mother is alive??? But I’m an orphan, remember? That’s who I am! How can my mother be alive???
My rib cage is sawed in half, with one side holding the heart that is jumping for joy. MY-MOTHER-IS-ALIVE!!!!
The other side is holding the wilted membranes of a heart pulverized by one simple question: If she is alive, why am I not with her?
FIFTEEN
I THANK SHERRY FOX ABOUT FIFTY TIMES
She puts an arm around my shoulder, gives me a half hug.
“I’ll walk with you,” says Jimmy.
“You know where I’m going, right?”
“I think I can guess,” he says. “You’ll need your trusty Native guide.”
“Ha.” I punch him on the arm, like we’re friends again enough for me to whack him.
SHE LIVES ON A STREET CALLED BEACONVIEW HEIGHTS
Jimmy unlatches the delivery wagon from his bicycle, and I sit on the handlebars. Much quicker than walking, but I might’ve died nineteen times. Any other time I’d be shrieking and laughing, but this day I need to be alive at the other end. I just hang on tight as heck and help steer in my head.
Jimmy parks the bike against a wooden telephone pole and points along the block.
“Third house, the gray one, behind the hedge.”
I can see green shingles on the roof, and the windows of the upper floor. Most of them have lacy curtains, but on one there’s a bamboo shade.
“Are you sure?” I say.
“Sure, I’m sure.”
A lady comes along with a dog on a leash. The dog sniffs at the tires of the bike and keeps going.
“I can’t just go knock on the door.”
“That might be okay,” says Jimmy. “She’s real nice.”
I gape at him. It hasn’t sunk in till now. He knows who she is and where she lives, but he also knows her! He has spoken to her and carried brown bags full of groceries right into her kitchen. He has seen her teapot, maybe, and her purse, and her—
“Does she have children?” I ask him.
He nods, and his eyes dart across the street. “Two, I think. Plus you makes three.”
Now I whisper. “What color are they?”
“White,” he says, real soft.
“I think we should go,” I say. “I have to think about this. How to…you know, approach.”
Jimmy shrugs. “Up to you.” He rolls the bike as we walk a little closer to the gray house, like it’s the usual way home.
The hedge isn’t high, only up to my shoulder. From over here on the opposite sidewalk, I can see the front steps with a big pot of pink flowers and the porch with two red chairs.
But suddenly a car turns into the driveway, right where we’re staring.
“Let’s go!” I duck behind him.
“I’m not exactly a brick wall.” Jimmy’s laughing at me. And then we’re both just watching. Two kids climb out of the backseat, a boy and a girl the size of the Littles, both sunny-haired and pale-skinned. The driver is a man wearing a baseball cap and a windbreaker. He’s white too, and he has a mustache. My mother’s husband has a mustache. She kisses a mouth with a mustache.
Nobody else gets out of the car. She isn’t with them. The kids run toward the porch, but the man calls the boy to come back.
“Mike!” he says. “Don’t forget your bat.” The boy leans over to take a bat and a glove from the backseat. The girl is smaller. She has already gone inside the house, letting the screen door slam behind her.
Mike, I think. My brother, Mike.
Jimmy nudges me. “We should move,” he says. “We’re being creepy.”
I pull my eyes away from the boy clunking his bat up the porch steps. I glance back just as the dad goes through the door.
I take a breath, the first in about ten minutes, it seems like.
“What do you think?” I say. “Do they look like me?”
Jimmy starts to laugh so hard that the bike shakes. Me too, laughing at how crazy it all is and how, impossibly, all I have to do now is figure out what to say to my mother.
I PUMMEL JIMMY WITH QUESTIONS
Is she pretty?
Does she talk fast or slow?
What kind of food does she buy?
Is she nice to her children?
Did you ever meet the man?
What’s the little girl’s name?
Do you think it’s really her?
If it’s her, why did I grow up in the Benevolent Home?
AND HE ANSWERS AS BEST HE CAN
Yes.
In between.
Chicken, macaroni, chocolate chips, bananas, tomato juice…
Yes, of course.
One time. The husband helped carry in the groceries, and he dropped the eggs.
Alicia? Alex? Allison? Something like that.
Seems pretty likely.
He truly does not know.
Maybe she didn’t like my hair.
That’s when I punch Jimmy’s arm again and wonder what to do next.
DO I WRITE HER A LETTER?
Or call her on the telephone? Knock on her door? Walk up to her at the Dominion grocery store and say hello?
“You might give her a heart attack if you just appear,” says Jimmy. “I vote for letter.”
I think about all the letters Dot wrote to celebrities. Made-up, wished-for parents.
Eve Delaney could pretend she never got it. She could read it and tear it up. Or maybe her husband opens her mail? He could throw it away without her ever knowing.
But if I phone and she hangs up before I’ve finished my first sentence…I might die.
DEAR MAMA
Dear Mrs. Beckwith…
Dear Miss Delaney…
Hello, Mom…
Dear Eve…
Hello…
I hope you are sitting down…
This letter might come as a surprise…
You won’t be expecting to hear from me…
I am not exactly a stranger, but you don’t know me either…
I have a mil
lion questions, but the main one is: Why did I grow up in an orphanage while your two white children have a loving family and a cozy house?
How many pieces of paper do I rip into tiny pieces during this exercise? I collect all the scraps so that not one shred is left in the wastebasket, and I throw them away in a garbage container on the street.
I ask Abby for help. “What should I say? And how do I say it? Like, what method of communication do I use?”
“What do you want her to know?” says Abby.
“Umm…that I’m alive?”
“And what else? Like, what are you asking her for? Why do you want to meet her? Maybe that would help you choose the right words.”
“How’d you get so smart?” I pat her head like she’s a prize puppy.
“I have an impeccable pedigree,” she says. “The jury is still out on you.”
I BUY A POSTCARD OF THE SUN SETTING OVER THE BAY
Hello, I write on the back.
You think I am lost, but I have found you and hope that is okay. I was born in May 1948, and now I’m sixteen. I do not want to upset you or ask for anything except to meet. You can tell a day and a time to the Dominion boy. Sincerely, M.G.
I FOLLOW JIMMY TO WORK
He’s got the postcard in the pocket of his uniform shirt, which is just as ugly as an orphan smock and nearly the same shape but, as Lucy said, is the color of mustard on a hot dog.
Mrs. Beckwith comes in on Thursdays, according to Jimmy, and buys almost the same things every week. She doesn’t take her own groceries home in the car because she doesn’t like the food to sit in the trunk—especially the frozen peas and the ice cream—while she takes a class in flower arranging.
“Flower arranging? What kind of useless activity is that? And why doesn’t she shop after the class instead?” I ask. “And go straight home with the groceries?”
A Big Dose of Lucky Page 15
