Blessings (18 page)

“I won’t. Hey, I’m sneezing my head off. I’m going to hang up.”

Actually she had not been putting everything together but had been postponing her lists and errands. These last weeks, during which she ought to have been making ready, had been too stressful to think of lists and errands. But time was growing short and tonight would be a good night to start.

With pencil and paper she began to check off. Bathing suits. Three, the good blue from last year, plus two new ones. Beach robes—to wear at lunch, Jay said. A beach bag, that flowered one she’d seen in a window; it would go with everything. A white cardigan in case of a cool night. A new folding umbrella. The old one was a wreck. Shoes for the traveling suit, navy-blue. Shoes for—

The doorbell rang. That was strange. She never had unexpected visitors. People always called first.

Cautiously she approached the door and looked through the peephole. The hall was very dim, so that she could barely distinguish the figure that stood, miniaturized and distorted, in the tiny, round glass: a woman with full, shoulder-length hair. Jennie strained and blinked. “Yes? Who is it?”

There was a second’s pause before the voice, nervous and young, replied.

“Jill. It’s Jill. Will you let me in?”

“Oh, no,” Jennie whispered. Her spine froze.

Yet, like those helpless people on the mountain train, she had known what was to come.

H
ome was more than two thousand miles away from the astonishing city that rumbled beyond the dormitory. Gladly and bravely, Jill had left it for this place; yet there were unexpected moments when, coming upon her own face in the mirror beside the bed, the memory of home flared so vividly that she could hear again the voices calling in the yard behind the house, or smell the dinner’s meat broiling on the kitchen grill, or feel on her bare feet the slippery coolness of the floor in the upstairs hall. Curiously the room that Jill remembered best was not so much her own small, rose-colored bedroom—in which stuffed animals and, later, books stood on the shelves, where at bedtime the single window framed the rising stars—but rather the large room at the end of the hall where her parents slept. There in a top drawer was kept the bedtime box of chocolates from which, after her bath and before her teeth were brushed, the treat was given. There before the bay window stood two soft, wide chairs. The one on the left was Dad’s; on Sundays, if he didn’t have to see any patients in the hospital, he sat and read, scattering the paper around his feet. The opposite chair was the “story chair,” wide enough for Jill and Mom to sit together while Mom read aloud.

At the foot of the enormous bed, whenever there was a new baby in the family, stood the bassinet. Refurbished each time with fresh ribbons and netting, it remained until the baby was old enough to be comfortable in a regular crib in a room of its own.

“Very tiny babies like tiny spaces,” Mom explained, “because they’ve just come out of a tiny, warm place, you see.”

That must have been the second time, when Lucille was born. Jill was four, and she remembered how her mother had grown fat and suddenly been thin again as soon as Lucille came out of her tummy. When Jerry had been born, Jill had been a baby herself, not even two years old, so she didn’t remember him. But Lucille’s arrival was clear in her mind.

A tiny, warm place. That was puzzling because the baby looked too big to have been inside anybody.

“Was I inside of you too?” Jill asked.

“No,” her mother said. “You were inside another lady’s tummy.”

Well, that was all right. It wasn’t important. For a long time she thought no more about it, although it was odd that later, when she did begin to think about it, that scene could revive itself and be so sharply drawn: Lucille wrapped tight in a flannel cocoon, Jill at the head of the bassinet, and her mother dressed in something long, with black shapes on white.

Years later she asked, “Mom, did you ever have a bath—

robe or a housecoat that was black-and-white, plaid or flowered, maybe?”

“Why, yes. I had a Japanese kimono that Dad bought on our trip to Japan before we had you. It was beautiful, black peonies on white silk. I wore it till it fell apart. What makes you ask?”

“I don’t know. It just suddenly came into my mind.”

But that was much later. Her childhood was crowded, the days were full, and the neighborhood was filled with children. Relatives came and went in the afternoons. She supposed, when she was older and learned about sibling rivalry and jealousy, that the reason she hadn’t suffered them as much as she might have was that there were so many laps for a little girl to sit on, so many arms to hug her. If her parents were momentarily too busy with a younger child to play a game with Jill or take her somewhere, there were always Aunt Fay, two sets of grandparents, and three sets of cousins.

People smiled at her and praised her red hair. When she started school, every morning Mom tied it back with ribbons to match her sweaters and skirts. Once, as she left the living room where Mom was having coffee with a friend, she heard the friend say, “Such a lovely child, Irene. And what luck she brought you! To think you had three of your own after you adopted her!”

“Yes,” Mom said, “she brought us luck.”

But weren’t there “four of your own”? If you were adopted, were you not really Dad’s and Mom’s “own”? By then, of course, Jill knew the meaning of the word adopted. And that night when Mom came to tuck her into bed, Jill drew her down on the bed.

“Stay here,” she said.

Mom took her hand. “Is it a story you want, Jill? A short one then, a chapter in Winnie-the-Pooh, because this is a school night.”

“No.” The question she wanted to ask seemed babyish for a girl in third grade, a girl in the advanced reading group.

“What, then?”

Jill, clinging to the hand, shook her head.

“Please. If anything’s troubling you, you’ll feel better if you tell me.”

The question burst out of her mouth. “Do I belong to you? Like Jerry and Lucille and the baby?”

“Oh,” Mom said. “Oh.” She pulled Jill from under the blanket and rocked her. “What makes you ask that? Did anybody say … ?” And without waiting for an answer, she rushed on. “Belong to us! You are our dearest, beautiful, big girl, our very own… . Why, everybody loves you, Grandma and Grandpa, and Aunt Fay … and Dad and I most of all. Why, of course you belong to us. Why, whom else would you belong to?”

She pressed her cheek into Mom’s neck and whispered, “I thought maybe to the lady who grew me.”

“Oh,” Mom said very softly. And she waited such a long time before answering that Jill drew back to look into her face. It was very serious, the way it had been when they had that talk about taking things out of the medicine chest.

“No, darling. You don’t belong to her anymore.”

“What was her name?”

“I don’t know, Jill.”

“Was she nice?”

“She was very nice, I’m sure, because she had you.”

“But why did she give me to you?”

“Well … well, it’s a little hard to explain. You see, sometimes things happen to people, like not having any money, for instance, not having a nice house with room for a little girl. So you see, since she loved you and wanted you to have all that, and since we wanted a little girl very, very much, so … well, that’s how it happened. Do you understand?”

Jill supposed it made sense enough. “But is there any more?”

“Any more to tell? Oh, yes! We were so happy, Dad and I. We ran out right away and bought the bassinet. You were the first baby to sleep in it. You were one day old when we brought you home, younger than Jerry or Lucille or Sharon. Remember how small Sharon was a year ago? Well, you were even smaller.”

“And I had red hair.”

Mom laughed. “Not right away. You were bald, like all my babies.”

All my babies. Mom’s voice had a warm, good feeling, a sleepy feeling. After a while Mom laid her back down in the bed and drew the blanket up. She pulled the blinds down, kissed Jill’s cheek, came back to kiss her again, and closed the door.

My babies. We wanted a little girl so much. Then it was a good thing to be adopted. It meant that you were really wanted. People wouldn’t go to such trouble to get you, buying houses and high chairs and carriages and all that stuff, if they didn’t want you.

No one in the neighborhood ever asked Jill about being adopted, because most people knew it, anyway; but she wouldn’t have minded if they had asked. It could, in a way, be a distinction, like bringing home an excellent report card, or knowing how to get the dinners ready that whole week after Mom had broken a bone in her foot. Being adopted was only another aspect of her self, like having freckles on her arm or being sure on skis—all things taken for granted and therefore seldom thought about.

One day the sixth-grade teacher gave an assignment. They had been talking in class about how America was made up of people who had come from many different places, bringing their differing customs and experiences.

Now they were to find out all they could about their own ancestors and draw a family tree.

“See how far back you can go,” the teacher said.

One boy in the class had an Indian great-grandfather and was very proud of being a “Native American.” Another boy knew his great-great-grandmother, who was ninety-seven and could tell about coming to New Mexico when it was still a wilderness.

“It’s really fun,” the teacher said. “In learning about your ancestors, you’ll be surprised what you learn about yourselves. So ask plenty of questions!”

After supper that evening, Jill walked over to her grandparents’ house. Mom’s parents had both died a few years before, but Dad’s were healthy and lively; they were immediately interested in Jill’s project.

“You would have enjoyed my father,” Grandpa said. “He was a great dancer. When he was an old man, he could still do the peasant dances he’d learned when he grew up in Hungary. You should have seen him! He had a strong heart and a lot of good humor.”

Gran wrote down the names of her parents and even remembered the maiden names of her grandmothers. She added anecdotes. Jill saw that Grandpa and Gran were both enjoying themselves. Reluctant to let her go, they made her sit down at the table for lemonade and cake. A sudden stream of sea-green light from the spring evening outside fell on the table across from Jill, lay on the man’s graying head, touched the woman’s manicured nails, and traveled up to her tanned, plump, animated face. It was at this moment that Jill had a profound sensation of separateness.

All of this has nothing to do with me, she thought. It is not my history.

At the proper time, careful not to hurt their feelings by making an abrupt departure, she thanked them and walked home. Boys from the high school were playing baseball in the field. At the corner house, the father was tending his carefully irrigated lawn; it would be dead and brown by June, no matter what he did. From the house opposite Jill’s, piano music tinkled. Everything was cheerfully familiar, yet she felt distant from it, faintly sad.

At home they were all on the back patio. From the front hall she could see their dark heads clustered, bent over something on a table—a newspaper or a map. She went quickly upstairs to her room and stood before the full-length mirror to study herself. Her face was long and narrow, not like any of theirs. Already she was taller than Mom. Jerry and Sharon looked like Mom, while Lucille looked like Dad’s father. She brought her hair forward over her shoulders. Bronze glinted in the copper ends; the sun had laid gold streaks from temple to crown. Who had given her this hair? Or these teeth that were being straightened, when everyone else in the house had even teeth?

On her desk lay a sample family tree. She sat down and began to draw a copy, filling in the spaces: Mother, Irene Miller; Father, Jonas Miller. She put the pen aside, and sat gazing out at the blank sky. Night fell abruptly, as if a shade had been lowered. There were noises downstairs as the cat was called in and doors were shut. The brother and the sisters came up arguing over first use of the shower. Because Jill’s room was dark, no one came looking for her, and she sat alone, not exactly close to tears but very still inside, troubled by the strange new sadness.

Her light flashed on. “Jill!” Mom cried. “We wondered what took you so long. Dad called Gran just now and she said you’d left an hour ago. You scared us.” From over Jill’s shoulder she looked at the blank paper. “Tell me, what’s wrong?”

Jill swiveled on the chair. “This. I can’t do it.” And now her eyes grew wet. “If I put down all I know, it’ll be a lie.”

“I don’t think that’s the kind of lie, if you want to call it one, that matters. Just write down everything you know about our family. You’re part of it.” Staunchly Mom added, “Write it as if you were Jerry or Lucille or Sharon. Or the baby.”

Jill whispered. “But I’m not any of them. I’m me.”

Mom closed the door. “Sit in a comfortable chair,” she commanded. “We need to talk, you and I.”

Now that the moment for some sort of revelation was apparently here, Jill was afraid. It was like opening a box received from strange hands; you didn’t know what might jump out, a bomb or snakes.

Trembling, she asked, “What about?”

“About what’s obviously on your mind. I promise I’ll tell you as much as I know.”

“What did she look like?” Jill whispered.

“I was told,” Mom said evenly, “that she had dark, curly hair like mine. They try to make a close match. So maybe she was much like me.”

“I see. And my father?”

“They never told us.”

“I wish I knew their names.”

“That can’t be, darling.”

“I suppose they weren’t married.”

“No.”

“It’s all right, Mom. I’m twelve. I know about things like that. She got pregnant and he wouldn’t marry her.”

“I don’t know whether it happened as you’re putting it, that he wouldn’t. Maybe he couldn’t. They were both so young, not halfway through college. It must have been very perplexing, very hard for each of them.”

“They should have thought of that before they … did things,” Jill said, feeling unexpected anger.