The year She Fell

by Rasley, Alicia

  “I did have a lot, and a lot of clothes for them too. Remember, Ellen, we used to sew them up on the sewing machine.”

  Ellen nodded, her gaze still on me. “The stitches were always set too large. Theresa probably remembers how clumsy the dresses looked.” She added, tentatively, “Your mother. Mrs. Price. She once crocheted a tiny little bed jacket for Sports Barbie. Do you remember?”

  I felt Laura’s glance flick over me, and knew she was remembering too. Cathy had broken her leg skiing that winter, and so Sports Barbie had to be injured too. Laura always liked to draw on real life for her Barbie psychodramas. And my mother—Mrs. Price—spent part of an evening after work making that jacket. I could see her hands, veiny and chapped, with the crochet hook and the yellow and pink yarn. I could remember that now, but I couldn’t remember her ever making me doll clothes, or noticing my toys. But Laura was her employer’s daughter, a Wakefield, and—

  Probably she would have treated me with the same deference, if she’d stayed around after I became a Wakefield myself.

  I must have gotten drunk— so weird! I don’t think I’d ever been drunk before. And I don’t think I handled it well, because the next morning, all I could remember was Mother coming home late that night and Laura looking like she’d been caught having illicit relations with the handyman on the porch swing. I didn’t know if this was evidence of an overactive conscience, or a long list of sins.

  The next morning Ellen drove me and Mother to the Buckhannon hospital for more tests. As we passed through town, I saw Brian walking along Main Street, looking lost, his hands in his pockets. My heart went out to him. He was so young to confront the questions he was confronting. And from what he told me, his adoptive parents were resistant, and that made it even harder to look for answers. I wondered if he’d found any more information. I raised my hand to wave at him, and he looked up, as if I’d summoned him. He broke into a grin, and I found myself smiling back.

  I wanted to tell Ellen to stop the car. I wanted to get out and go over to him and talk some more about our common connection—both of us adopted, both feeling alienated. I was so much older than he was, but he was so much further along in understanding. He dared to ask those questions, at least, the ones I never asked—who are those people who created me? And why did they give me up? And where are they now? And why does everyone think it’s so dangerous to want to know?

  But I couldn’t just do what I wanted. So the day was spent ferrying Mother around to the CAT lab and then to each of the three computer stores along the highway. My concentration wasn’t really necessary, so I spent the time thinking about the past, that lost six years before I came to live with Mother.

  At the last store, I told Ellen that I’d wait in the car. Once the door closed behind them, I reached into my pocket and drew out the copy of my birth certificate. My original birth certificate. I’d found it in the attic, in the photo album of my first year with the Wakefields. I studied it once again, puzzling over my parents’ names, wondering if that would be enough to find them. Wondering if I had reason to search. Wondering what they’d say if I showed up at their door.

  The birthdate was the one I still used— that was a relief. I touched it with my finger— September 3. Right around Labor Day, my mother would have borne me, and a few days later brought me home from the hospital, to that little house on the other side of the river.

  There was another date in the corner, the “issue date.” That one was November 13. Brian would probably frown at that, try to find some evidence there. But he’d grown up in a high-tech time, when you’d never wait such a long time to get an official paper filed. Now it was all probably done by computer, hospital to county clerk in one simple step. But thirty years ago, they probably held the forms for weeks, until there was enough to justify a trip to the clerk’s office.

  I heard Mother’s voice through the open car window and guiltily shoved the page back into my pocket. She and Ellen were approaching, trailed by a teenage boy carrying a big cardboard box. As she got in the car, Mother exclaimed, “We found the perfect laptop! It has a built-in modem! So I can surf the web, just as Ellen does.”

  Ellen gave me a glance of incomprehension. Mother and computers. But at least it had taken her mind off all those tests they’d run at the hospital this morning.

  Sunday I walked down the hill and across to the old church I secretly attended in childhood. Ellen and Mother offered me a ride—the Catholic Church was only a few blocks from First Presbyterian—but I preferred to walk, just as I used to as a child. And I sat in the shadows behind a pillar, just as I used to as a child. And I found myself watching for my first mother, just as I used to.

  On the way home, I stopped at the pay phone outside of Millard’s Pharmacy and called Brian. Before I could change my mind, I promised to meet him later that afternoon.

  Information is power. That’s what Brian said as we sat in the old country diner out on the highway. Not that he had information himself, just techniques for acquiring them.

  He waited until the waitress had brought my coffee and his soda, and then, conspiratorially, he dug into the cargo pocket of his pants and brought out a little binder. The sun coming through the diner window glanced off the shiny vinyl cover. “I downloaded this form from the adoption-search website for adoptees whose families aren’t being helpful. It’s a list of questions that give you more of an overview of the past, what was happening around the time of the adoption, who in the adoptive family might know more than they’re telling.”

  I watched with some anxiety as he opened the little notebook. “Really, I don’t want to ask my family. My mother isn’t well, and I don’t want to worry her with questions. And I’ve sort of talked to my sisters, and they didn’t remember much more than I did.”

  “That’s okay,” Brian said, pulling a pen out of another pocket. “It’s just an overview, you know?” He consulted the list and asked the first question. “Okay, what was your adoption date, and what was your birthdate as far as you know?”

  I didn’t know why I answered. I didn’t know why I was even sitting here, glancing around nervously whenever the door opened, sure I’d see a neighbor or classmate. But there I was, dutifully reciting the answers to Brian’s questions. I suppose I just couldn’t ignore it any longer. My birth-family had given me up when I was six years old and then disappeared. My adoptive mother had taken me in and treated me as her own daughter. My adoptive sisters— well, maybe it was the age difference with Ellen and Cathy, and just downright resentment from Laura. But I couldn’t say I’d ever felt like I was one of them. So why was I there in that family? Was it really only that Mother wanted me that badly?

  Silently I retrieved my real birth certificate, the one I’d found in the attic trunk, and handed it to him. He studied it thoroughly, for longer than it merited. And then he said, “Took them long enough to register the birth, huh?”

  I grabbed it back. “They aren’t educated people. They probably didn’t think to do it until they took me to the doctor or needed to apply for food stamps.”

  “Okay. And you were adopted when? And how old were each of your sisters then?”

  I resented the questions, but I answered. He was only trying to help. I was the one who needed to know, and he just wanted to help me find the truth.

  “Cathy, deceased what year?” Brian noted down 1992, and added, “And how did she die?”

  “She was a mountain climber, and she died in a climbing accident. On a cliff outside of town.”

  He duly took that down, and went on to Ellen— birthdate, college attended, marriage. “Tom O’Connor? Isn’t that the guy on CNN?”

  In the cloister, no one watched TV. So no one ever asked me about my famous journalist brother-in-law or my famous actress sister. “He used to be. Now he’s teaching journalism.”

  “Do they live here?”

  “They live in Virginia. But Ellen’s here now, staying at the house. And Tom—well, he’s here too.”

  Brian
looked up. “At the house too?”

  “No.” I remembered Laura’s teasing during that pizza party. “He’s staying out at the motel on 21, I think.”

  Brian looked up from his notebook. “I’ve been kind of sleeping in my car near there. Probably ought to spring for a night’s room myself, just so I can get a shower. Which motel is it?”

  “The Super-8, probably. The others are kind of sleazy. Anyway.”

  “Right. Onto the last sister. Laura?”

  I managed to keep most of my Laura thoughts to myself, and just told him when she was born and when she left town and when she got her Emmy nomination. I was kind of surprised to realize that’s really all I knew about her life out in California. She was on a weekly TV show that got good ratings. She had lots of money and a couple houses. She wanted to get married and have a baby, and I only knew that because she’d gotten drunk and confessed that the other night.

  When he was done with Laura’s information, he jotted down a list of resources, commenting, “The state doesn’t want to tell you much. But you can find out certain things that can lead to other things. That’s how I ended up here in West Virginia. No one wants me to know much, but I just keep finding a trail.” He capped his pen and put it back in his pocket. Then he ripped out the sheet of paper and handed it to me. “At least it’s a start.”

  “But—” I’d been expecting him to interview me about my birth family, but he was moving restlessly, pushing away his glass, putting down a few dollars, ready to stand up. “I guess you have to go?”

  “Yeah, I wanted to check the baptism records of this church in Buckhannon. They’ll be open for an hour before their Sunday evening service begins . . . I mean, maybe there’ll be some record of a boy baptized that week. You know?”

  “Yes, well, good luck.”

  He rose and stood there by the table’s edge, his hands back in his pockets. “I’m probably heading onward soon, but really, it isn’t hard once you get the knack of regarding everything, everyone, as a potential information source.”

  What he didn’t bother to tell me was why it was so important to know. He just accepted that as a given—we needed to know, had the right to know.

  I thought perhaps I had more need than he did. Somewhere out there was an answer to the question the prioress had suggested—What are you hiding from?

  In Brian’s list were too many state agencies in Charleston accessible only by mail or the Internet. I didn’t have time for the one or expertise for the other. But there was a couple local resources, and the next morning, I walked downtown to check them out.

  The police chief was just putting away his cell phone when he came into the new police building. “Miss Wakefield. I mean—” He was trying to remember if he was supposed to call me “Sister.”

  I didn’t bother to explain that. I wasn’t even Sister Marie John, was I? I sure didn’t feel like her anymore. “I have some questions that I thought you might answer. I’ve already been to the courthouse, and the library. And someone suggested I check here too.”

  He looked at me oddly. “I’m sort of busy now, been out of town.”

  I cut him off. “This will just take a minute. Really. All you need to do is show me any police records that have to do with my birth family.” I had to admit a certain dread— what if they left because my father, or one of my brothers, had committed a crime?

  “You know some of that is confidential.”

  “I just want to know. About my parents. My brothers. The Prices— Mitch was the older one.”

  Light dawned in his dark blue eyes. “I remember him.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Not really. He was older. A couple years. It was the younger boy—Ronnie?—I ran with.”

  From what I recalled of Ronnie, I assumed “running with” didn’t mean they were together on the middle school track team. “Tell me what you remember.”

  He hesitated, and then took my arm and led me back to his office. When I was settled in the leather chair, he sat down behind the desk. “Your brothers. Well, Mitch was a couple grades ahead. Ronnie was my age. They were big kids, both of them. Husky. Muscular even then.” He looked at me assessingly, and I felt smaller, more insubstantial than ever. “You must take after the other side of the family. Anyway, I was pretty scrawny, so Ronnie sort of looked out for me that one year. Mitch was around part of the time. He scared me some. He always had a knife. Didn’t use it, but he made sure everyone knew he had it. He bought us cigarettes if we paid him double.” He grinned. “The habit got too expensive, so I quit. Went back to buying baseball cards with my quarters. Ronnie kept smoking though.”

  “Were they bad kids?”

  He shrugged. “I was a bad kid. We all were, over there across the bridge.” He meant in Gemtown, the low area across the river from downtown and the college. “The boys all smoked and shoplifted, and the girls wore too much makeup and French-kissed the boys.” He stopped, as if he were wondering whether he needed to define French kiss. Then he added, “Ronnie was a nice enough kid, but he was like me, pretty much, a real no-count. Lousy grades, lousy attitude, even at ten and eleven. Sorry.”

  “So did Ronnie get in trouble?”

  “Yeah. Then and later.” He looked at me speculatively, like he wasn’t sure he should tell me. “They moved away. Seventh grade, maybe?”

  That was the year I was adopted. “Then how do you know he got in trouble?”

  “We met up in reform school a couple years later. When we were fourteen. We kind of hung out together, because we could trust each other. The school was up at Pruntytown, just before they closed it.”

  My heart sank. I remembered Ronnie as a good brother. Good to me, anyway. Mitch was so much older, and he started working after school when I was still little. So I never had much to do with him. But Ronnie was the one who had to watch me when our mother was working. He mostly just ignored me, but he could be kind. I recalled he shared his Halloween candy with me the year I was too sick to go out trick-or-treating. “What was it he did?”

  Chief McCain shrugged. “Don’t know. The usual, I suppose—vandalism or theft or drugs. Or all three. I haven’t thought of him in years. Don’t remember much.”

  “But my parents must still have been in the state then.”

  “I guess. It was ‘87 or ‘88.” He regarded me again, and then said, “I’m thinking he was pretty bad off. Angry. I kind of remember that he’d been, you know. Turned over to the state.”

  That chilled me, even though the term was unknown to me. “What does that mean?”

  “He was a ward of the state. It means that he was either taken away from the parents by the state to protect him, or his parents gave him up as incorrigible. It’s like . . . surrendering parental control.”

  “Isn’t that pretty drastic?”

  He nodded. “I guess so. I mean, my parents had four rotten boys, and they never gave any of us up. Might have been better if they did.” Awkwardly he added, “But Ronnie wasn’t bad. Well, he was bad, sure. But he wasn’t mean.”

  “Do you remember anything else about him?”

  “Nothing you want to hear.”

  “I do want to hear it. I need to hear it.”

  He shook his head, but he finally replied, “Like I said, he was angry. He got stuck in solitary a lot. He wasn’t one to fight, but he didn’t take orders well.”

  “Did he ever talk about . . . about the family? About me?”

  Chief McCain looked out the window at the courtyard square, his eyes distant and unfocused. “He said something once. About hating his parents. Said they gave you away, and threw him away.” Then he looked back at me. “But we were all like that. Blaming someone else, you know? Parents were easy targets. I think because we were homesick, and we couldn’t stand it that they couldn’t take us back.”

  I found I was gripping the leather chair arm and forced myself to relax. “But it doesn’t mean—I mean, you turned around.”

  “Yeah. Your sister—” He bro
ke that off.

  I wasn’t supposed to know about his romance with my sister. So I said nothing, and eventually he resumed his narration.

  “Your other brother Mitch, he was tougher, I think. A survivor. I remember that much. My dad ran a gym there for awhile. Had a boxing ring set up, and he’d coach me and the other kids sometimes. Sometimes he’d even have illegal matches there at night. Mitch, he used to box there. He was pretty good. Dad said he could end up boxing light-heavyweight if he kept growing like he was.”

  I remembered none of this. I remembered so little of my oldest brother, just the odd moments, a hulking presence in the kitchen, a hard voice. But I suspect my parents had long since lost control of the boys, and were trying to shelter me from them.

  Maybe that was why they gave me up.

  It wasn’t enough. “Do you recall anything else?”

  He thought about this for a minute. “I remember Mitch and some uncle or cousin came to visit Ronnie at Pruntytown. Smuggled him in some cigarettes. Mitch was living with the cousin then. So Ronnie might have gone there after he was released. The cousin was a nice guy, you could tell he felt bad for Ronnie. But he was, well, the holler type.” He said this with the usual delicacy of those of us who grew up in town and didn’t have much in common with the secretive, suspicious people who lived in the mountain hollows. “I think he was from Rankin. Rankin’s down beyond the end of the valley—Canaan, I mean. Way down in Webster County. Pretty far backwoods.”

  He meant the other West Virginia, the primitive part, away from the ski resorts and whitewater-rafting facilities and our prim little college town. The poorest parts of the poorest state. From my bag, I pulled out the birth certificate I’d found in the trunk. There, in the space for “mother’s place of birth,” was written Webster County, WV. “You think they might have gone there? My parents?”

  “I don’t know. I just have it in my mind that might be where Ronnie went, because Mitch must have been there.” His gaze was sympathetic. “You really don’t know where they went?”