“Oh, that’s the names of all my relatives. I try to pray for them. I usually forget—until mass.” Her lips stretched wide as if she’d just confessed to a horrible deed. “Our priest would call that a ‘sin of omission.’ ”
“What’s that mean?” Cleo asked.
“It’s like when the wrong that you do is what you didn’t do.”
“Hmm.” Just keeping track of the wrong things she did do was enough for Cleo. Mom and Dad would most likely agree. “Can I see it?” she asked.
“Sure.” Caylee tapped on the title.
Cleo read down the list, a lump forming in her throat.
Everything dropped away except that long list of names. These were Caylee’s family members. Blood relatives. Caylee could look at them and see bits of herself. She could find herself in stories she heard about Abuelita Cuca or Aunt Luisa. This was not something Cleo could do. Her parents didn’t look anything like her. But Mom and Dad were her mom and dad. She had no others.
She didn’t really want any others. Her parents loved her. A lot. And yet lately she’d felt a growing desire to know more about her birth parents. To have a relatives list of her own. To see herself in her family. To have some clues about what she might look like all grown-up.
“Can I tell you something?” she said. “But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
Caylee’s perfectly arched eyebrows pulled together, making her already-intense eyes look even more so. “Okay.” She sounded serious.
Cleo bit on her bottom lip. Was she really going to say this out loud? “Sometimes I wonder if Fortune could be my birth mom.”
Caylee pulled her chin into her neck. “Fortune? Really?” Her eyes grew wide. “Do you really think she could be?”
Cleo shook her head. “No.” A sharp pain tweaked her heart. “But … I like to pretend. And she always talks about how she has this fascination with pharaohs, which made me think, maybe …”
“Right.” Caylee opened a drawer on one of her crafting towers and pulled out baggies holding felt pieces she’d already cut.
“Don’t tell anyone. Remember, you promised.”
Caylee looked at her solemnly. “I won’t. I promise.” She closed the drawer. “So … do you ever wonder where your mom and dad are?”
Caylee undoubtedly meant her birth parents. Cleo would turn Caylee’s little mistake into a joke. “Are you kidding?” She gave a little laugh. “My mom doesn’t go to the bathroom without letting us know where she is.”
Caylee’s face turned pink. “I meant … your real mom and dad.”
Something snapped inside Cleo. “My parents are my real mom and dad.” She felt like Barkley when a stranger came too near to JayJay.
“Oh, sorry. That was dumb.” Caylee rushed to her crafting table. She plugged in Gloopy. It was quiet. Caylee rubbed a piece of felt between her fingers. “I’m sorry, Cleo. I wasn’t sure how to ask.” She faced Cleo again. “It’s just that, after Fortune’s show yesterday … I was just wondering. If you ever think about where your, where your …”
“Where my birth parents are?” Cleo helped her. Caylee didn’t know any better. Still, it had touched a nerve.
“Right. Your birth parents.”
How would she answer? Would she tell Caylee the truth? That she had memorized every last non-identifying detail from the agency’s paperwork, which wasn’t much, but still, was all she had? Or that she had spent hours gazing at the one and only photograph of her as a baby in her birth mom’s arms, her birth mom’s head chopped off to keep her face from being seen?
“It’s okay,” Cleo said finally. “I know we never really talk about it.”
Caylee exhaled, nodding. “Thanks.” She glued a mane onto a horse body. That would be Tessa’s.
“But since we are talking about it,” Cleo began, “I actually had an idea … after seeing that girl and her birth mom on Fortune yesterday.”
“What is it?” Caylee put the glue gun in its stand and gave Cleo her full attention.
“I want to make Fortune a personalized pair of Passion Clips. I’m going to get on her show, Jelly. Not later. Now.”
Caylee’s eyes got big again. “Wow. That’s …”
“Awesome. I know!” Cleo gripped Caylee’s arm. “But they have to be perfect!”
“Of course. Do you know what you want them to look like?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. A dollar sign would be too obvious. And I don’t think her passion is money, anyway. But she is powerful. And there’s her interest in pharaohs. She’s always talking about her pharaoh hound, Omar.”
“We could send her dog clips that look like her dog.”
“Maybe …”
“Ooo, I know! How about those death masks that they put on mummies? Like King Tut!”
“I was thinking pyramids —”
“Which are also pictured on a dollar bill!” Caylee exclaimed.
“And, more important, will remind her of a girl named after a pharaoh.” She poked her thumbs into her chest. “Me!”
Caylee grabbed Gloopy. She snapped a clear glue stick into place. “Ahhh … such a satisfying click. Let’s get to work.”
“Yes! We’ve got twenty orders to fill, and a super-duper special pair for Fortune. Not to mention all the orders I’m going to get tomorrow.”
Caylee looked at her quizzically.
“Pastor is letting me announce our business at church!”
“Woo-hoo!”
They spent the next few hours gluing and decorating clips. For a break, they put Tye-Dye in his hamster ball, walked him to the first floor (so he wouldn’t accidentally hurtle down the stairs to an untimely death), and chased him around the house. Cleo left Caylee’s flying high, trying hard not to notice the missing pictures as she went.
“Mom!” Cleo called from her closet. The clothes on the floor surrounded her like quicksand. With every shirt she pulled from a hanger, she sank deeper and deeper.
Mom was in her own bedroom down the hall. They were all getting ready for church. “Please don’t yell at me from across the house!”
“Where’s my purple sweater shirt?” Cleo dug through the pile of clothes on the floor.
Mom didn’t answer.
Cleo tromped down the hall. Dad was in their bathroom, shaving. Mom stood in the middle of the room getting dressed. “Do you know where my purple sweater shirt is?”
“Which purple sweater shirt, honey?”
“My only purple sweater shirt. With the plaid cuffs and collar that looks like two shirts in one. And the matching skirt. I need it for my presentation. It’s my most professional outfit.”
“If that’s the case, it should be hanging on a hanger in your closet.” Mom raised an eyebrow.
Cleo spun and huffed back to her room. Couldn’t her mom be a little more helpful? She picked up her container of mealworms and peered in through the side. “Did you see where I put that shirt?” Chunks of bran-covered Kit Kat sat untouched. She couldn’t believe these worms. Passing up perfectly good chocolate. She’d have to put a carrot stick in before they left for church. She didn’t want to be the cause of Ronald Vanderpump’s—or any of the others’—demise!
What had she been doing? Oh yes. Her purple sweater shirt. She couldn’t give up. She opened her dresser and plucked things out one by one, adding them to the stew of magazines, half-finished drawings and doodles, dolls with tangled hair and pen tattoos, and food wrappers.
By the time Mom appeared at the door, Cleo stood ankle-deep in pants, leggings, shirts, and sweaters. Clothes covered every square inch from the closet to her dresser. “Cleo! What are you doing?”
The last thing she found in her drawer was her skirt. “Here’s one thing I’m looking for!” She went back to the clothes on hangers to paw through them again. She plucked another shirt off its hanger and added it to the swamp.
“Cleo, no!”
“Oh.” A plaid cuff stuck out from between two dresses that h
ad been clinging to each other. “Found it!”
Mom groaned. “Well, I suppose this will give you a chance to reorganize your wardrobe.”
Cleo put on the skirt and zipped it up. “Sure. Every company needs a good reorg now and then, and so does every room! Maybe Caylee can come over later and help.”
“Why would she do that? She just helped you clean it up the other day!”
“It’s just what she does, Mom. Fish swim. Hamsters run around in those little wheelie things. And Caylee organizes. That’s why she’s my Chief Operating Officer. We all have our ‘thing.’ ”
Mom walked away, shaking her head.
“I start businesses!” Cleo called after her. Could she really be expected to keep her room spotless when she had an empire to build? And why did Mom even care? It was her room. She was the one who had to live in it. She looked at the huge mess she’d made and then at Fortune, who smiled warmly, her arms always open wide. “Did you have to keep your room clean when you were a kid?” she asked the poster.
Fortune wasn’t going to answer, and even if she could, she couldn’t help Cleo clean up the catastrophe around her. Her persistence had paid off; she’d found what she was after. But what a mess she’d made in the process.
*
Driving to church, Cleo thought about the Passion Clips for Fortune and the letter she would write … Would she ask Fortune to help her find her birth parents like that girl Breanna and her parents had? She glanced at Mom and Dad in the front seats. A twinge in her heart told her she shouldn’t, she didn’t need to. She had her parents. But something else—a gnawing, like hunger, except it wasn’t in her stomach—told her that something was missing. She just wanted to know: Did they remember her, think about her, wonder about her too?
Dad parked the minivan in the church lot and they all clambered out. New Beginnings Baptist Church was an oldish building with smooth, white outside walls that made it look like a giant marzipan cake. It was in Altadena Heights, about a mile from where Cleo’s family lived, which meant they could walk, but only if they left a half hour before church started, which hardly ever happened, and Cleo was just fine with that. Anyway, it was usually too hot to walk, especially in church clothes. If it wasn’t too hot, it might be raining. And sitting for two hours in a church pew damp—whether from perspiration or rain—was no good. Surely, God would agree with Cleo on that.
She grabbed the case of barrettes Caylee had brought by earlier that morning and scanned the lot for Auntie Sabina, her godmother and basketball coach. Auntie Sabina, who became Coach Glover during basketball season, had coached Cleo’s team for the last few years through Altadena Heights Park and Rec. Cleo had hoped to make Auntie Sabina her first church customer, but her Toyota Prius wasn’t in the parking lot.
In the lobby, Mother Williams welcomed people and handed out bulletins. Mr. and Mrs. Williams lived just a couple of houses up from Cleo’s family. Their granddaughter, Tasha, braided Cleo’s hair.
“There are my babies!” Mother Williams crowed when she saw Cleo and her brothers. Mrs. Williams’s bottom half might have moved slowly but her arms and hands could snatch a person as quick as a mousetrap.
Cleo and Josh let her wrap them in her fleshy arms, but JayJay flitted about trying to avoid getting kissed. Silly kid. It was no use. Mother Williams’s arm shot out. She reeled Jay in and planted a giant smooch on his cheek. He grimaced and wiped his face. She laughed, her belly shaking like a bouncy house full of kids. “Oh, I just love me some JayJay. And Jesus loves you too. All of you.” She eyed Mom and Dad. “Even if you don’t get here early for Sunday school.”
Mom’s cheeks got a little pinker than usual. “I’m sure you remember the days of little kids and getting everyone out the door.”
“Mm-hmm, baby. I sure do. And we were in Sunday school every week. No exceptions. We need to train our children up in the way they should go. Amen?”
Mom got as stiff as the clothes that hung on Mrs. Williams’s backyard line. “And aren’t we glad that God’s way is to show mercy and grace?” Mom was edging dangerously close to contradicting the older woman.
Dad cleared his throat and nudged Mom forward, but Mother Williams stepped in front of her. “Ain’t that the truth!” She wrapped her arms around Mom, whose eyes opened wide in surprise. Finally, with everyone hugged, they were free to go to their seats.
Mom and Dad moved on with the boys, but Cleo had a potential customer standing right in front of her. “Your hair looks very nice today, Mother Williams,” she said, putting to work Fortune Principle Number Seven: Compliments win customers.
“Well, that’s kind of you to say, Cleo.”
Cleo pulled one of her new business cards from her sweater pocket. She had made it on the computer the day before. Dad had taken her to OfficeMax to get them copied onto cardstock.
“I think a Passion Clip would be the perfect final touch.”
Mother Williams peered at the card. She took it in her hand.
“Maybe crosses,” Cleo suggested. “Or musical notes! I know you love to sing.”
“Passion Clips. Doesn’t that sound exciting? Okay, baby. Maybe after church.” She was moving Cleo on with her flyswatter hands, looking past her to the people lining up for their bulletins.
Cleo knew not to push in a situation like this. To make a sale, you needed to have a person’s undivided attention, and as long as Mother Williams was welcoming saints into the house of God, she was not going to focus anywhere else.
Cleo entered the sanctuary, headed for the Oliver family pew. It didn’t have their name on it, but it might as well have. They sat there every week—two rows from the back on the right-hand side. Dad always said he wanted to be closer to the action, but Mom said that with three kids, being near an exit was imperative, which Cleo figured must mean something like “nonnegotiable,” because Mom had never budged, and they had never sat anywhere except that row for as long as Cleo could remember. And that was a long time. Her parents had been coming to this church since she was a baby.
Cleo’s two best church friends walked in behind their parents. Faith Sullivan was ten like Cleo; Hope was eight. Their little sister Charity was four, same as Jay. “Can I sit with Faith and Hope’s family?”
Mom waved at Mrs. Sullivan. “Will it keep you from paying attention?”
“Probably.”
Mom laughed. “Well, I must be doing something right. My daughter’s honest, at least.”
“Please, Mom? I won’t be disrespectful.” If she had a hundred dollars for every time Mom lectured her and her brothers about the importance of showing respect at New Beginnings Baptist Church, she’d be as rich as Fortune. “Promise.”
“All right. I know you’ll do a wonderful job telling everyone about your business.”
Cleo stood and looked around the filling sanctuary. For the first time that morning, her stomach felt fluttery. She was excited to tell everyone about her and Caylee’s great product, but it was a big audience. At least a hundred people. Maybe a hundred and fifty. She would imagine she was Fortune with her studio audience. The thought gave her a burst of confidence.
“Yeah, go get ’em, champ,” Dad added, grasping the back of her neck as she squeezed by.
She approached the Sullivans’ pew. “Hi, Faith. Hi, Hope. Can I sit with you?”
“Hi, Cleo!” they said.
Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan greeted her and they all shifted over a space to make room. She was just about to open her case to show them the clips when the music started and Brother Gerald, the music leader, got on the microphone. “Good morning, New Beginnings family!”
“Good morning,” the crowd echoed.
“This is the day the Lord has made! Turn to your neighbor and say, ‘This is the day.’ ”
Cleo snuck a look at Faith. They giggled.
“This is the day!” everyone else shouted.
“I will rejoice and be glad in him!” Brother Gerald exclaimed.
Around the church came shouts of “Amen!” and “Yes, sir!” and “Hallelujah!” Now the piano, drum, and bass players played in full force, and everyone was standing, and Brother Gerald and the other singers up front began to sing, “ ‘This is the day … this is the day! That the Lord has made … that the Lord has made. I will rejoice … I will rejoice. And be glad in it … and be glad in it!’ ”
A few ladies around the church played tambourines. They hit the rims and faces of those round circles and filled the air with jingles and pops that punctuated the songs with exclamation marks. They whacked the heck out of those things and never seemed to tire of it. Cleo had asked Miss Gaye-Lynn for tambourine lessons and she was making progress, but her arm wore out long before a song ever ended. Of course, they sang songs for a very long time at New Beginnings Baptist Church.
Cleo didn’t mind. When they sang, they stood. And clapped. And swayed. And raised their arms. And wiggled around. They even sometimes stomped. In other words, Cleo wasn’t having to hold her body still or be quiet, as long as they were singing.
Another song began: “ ‘Victory is mine, victory is mine, victory today is mine!’ ” Cleo thought of herself standing there with the Sullivan family and, as she sometimes did, allowed herself to imagine what it would be like to be in their family—with two black parents. And black aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. And the thought pinched her heart just hard enough that she didn’t want to think about it anymore, but for the rest of the singing time she pretended that they were her family. Of course, she would never tell her parents that she did this. It was her own little secret.
Eventually, the singing came to an end. This was when the torturous sitting began. But it would not be as bad today because soon she would get to stand and tell everyone about her business. She would leave this morning with more orders, more customers!
Two deacons came forward to make announcements. This and that meeting was mentioned, and Bible study on Wednesday nights, and they exhorted everyone not to forget about daily prayer at 6:00 a.m.—6:00 a.m.!—because all great saints started the day on their knees. Fortune probably would be impressed with such discipline, but Cleo didn’t have the will to get up that early. She doubted she ever would.
Cleo Edison Oliver in Persuasion Power Page 5
