Brooke (16 page)

“No, they're not,” I said. “There's nothing to be jealous about. They have real families.”

“You're twice the person any of them are, honey. Real families or not. People are going to judge you for yourself and not because of your family name. You'll see,” she promised. “If you don't feel like dressing for class today, you can skip it,” she said. “Just rest up.”

“No,” I said, brushing the tears from my cheeks and taking a deep breath. “I'll be all right.”

She smiled. “All-star. Wow!” she said.

It did buoy me, and I felt much stronger when I left the building than when I had entered. The word hadn't gotten out about me yet, but I didn't think my new so-called friends would be as happy about it as they would have been a few days ago. I tried not to think about it.

Pamela wasn't home when I returned. I went to my room and started on my homework, but my excitement was so great I couldn't concentrate very well. Finally, I heard footsteps on the stairway and stepped out to see Joline coming up, her arms loaded with packages. Pamela followed soon after.

“I had to get myself some new things to wear to the pageant,” she told me when she paused in the hallway. “It's important that I stay in fashion, too. They take pictures of the mothers and daughters.”

“I have something to tell you,” I said. I knew how important it had been to her that no one knew the truth about me. “The girls have found out about me. They know I'm a foster child in the process of being adopted.”

“What? How could that happen?”

“Heather Harper overheard her aunt talking to someone and told everyone,” I said. “They're a bunch of snobs. I hate them. I hate that school, except for Coach Grossbard. Even the teachers are looking at me differently,” I wailed.

She stared, furious. “Wait until I tell Peter. We'll sue her for being a gossip,” she declared.

“What good will that do me?” I asked, but she didn't reply. She turned and charged back down the stairway. A little over an hour later, Peter came home. I heard their raised voices below and went down to find them in the den. Peter looked overwrought, his face flushed, his hair disheveled.

“There's no ground on which to sue anyone,” he told me as soon as I entered.

“I don't want you to do that, Peter. It wouldn't help,” I said.

“She's right, Pamela. Let's forget about it.”

“I won't forget about it. That woman is going to get a piece of my mind. I'll speak to the trustees. She should be fired for doing this.”

“It's over and done with,” Peter said.

“I don't want to go there next year,” I said.

Pamela looked up sharply. “What do you mean? Where would you go, a public school?” she asked, her lips twisted.

“I don't care. I hate those girls. And soon they're going to be even more jealous of me,” I added.

Peter raised his eyebrows. “And why is that?”

“I've been selected to be on the county's all-star team. I'm going to be the starting pitcher in the game,” I told him.

He beamed a wide grin. “Brooke, that's fantastic! I'm so proud of you!” He stood up and hugged me.

“What kind of an accomplishment is that?” Pamela muttered.

“It's the biggest, most important thing that's ever happened to me,” I said.

She smirked and shook her head. “I can't take all this tension. It's bad for my complexion,” she complained. She stood. “I need to sit in my electric massage chair before dinner.”

“Well, I'm thrilled for you, honey. When is the game?” Peter asked.

I told him, and Pamela stopped walking out. She turned and looked at me. “What did you say? When is that silly event?”

I repeated the date.

“You can't go to that,” she said. “Don't you realize what that date is? Have I been talking to myself for weeks and weeks? That's the date of your audition for the pageant. It's all arranged.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. I looked at Peter, but he looked worried. Surely, he would come up with one of his ingenious compromises, I thought. “I've been selected from all the girls in all the schools. It's a great honor.”

“That's no honor,” Pamela declared. “How can
you compare throwing a softball to winning a pageant?”

“I don't care. I'm playing. I've been chosen. I'm not going to the pageant.”

“You absolutely are,” she said. “I'm going to the phone immediately and call that big-mouth principal. I'll tell her that I absolutely forbid your participation, and if she doesn't obey me, I'll warn her that I'm going to the trustees about her gossiping.”

“Pamela,” Peter said softly.

“What? You're not thinking of permitting her to go to the ball game instead of the pageant, are you? Look at all I've been doing, what we've spent, the piano lessons, the work, the pictures!”

“Maybe we can get her a different audition,” he said, still speaking softly.

“You know we can't do that. You know how hard it was to arrange for this.” She turned to me. “You're going to the pageant. Forget about that ball game. You're a girl. You're a beautiful young woman. You're not some . . . some Amazon. I won't have it!” she screamed. “I'm Pamela Thompson. My daughter is going to be a pageant winner.”

“No, I'm not. I'm not,” I yelled back at her, and ran out of the den.

“I'm calling Mrs. Harper right now,” she screamed at me as I charged up the stairway. “I'm calling her! You can put that game out of your mind, Brooke. Do you hear me?”

I slammed my door closed and locked it. Then I threw myself on my bed and buried my face in my pillow until I couldn't breathe.

Why did this have to happen to me?

I sat up and stared at my image in the vanity table mirror. Why was I born if I was to suffer like this? Why did people have children they didn't want?

When Pamela came to the orphanage and saw me, she didn't see me. She saw herself. She saw what she wanted me to be, and then she brought me here and tried to make me into the girl she had seen. I'm not that girl. I'll never be that girl, I told my image in the mirror.

The makeup I had been wearing had streaked under my tears. I wiped the lipstick off and then, in a rage, went into the bathroom and washed my face until my skin burned. Afterward, I came out and looked at myself again. I practically ripped off my blouse and tore away the padded bra. I rifled through my drawers until I found the faded pink ribbon my mother had left with me, and I tied up my hair. Then I put on my blouse again and sat fuming.

I heard footsteps outside my door.

“Why is this door locked?” Pamela cried.

“I don't want to talk to anyone,” I said.

“I just got off the phone with Mrs. Harper. You can forget that game. It's all taken care of. Now, stop this nonsense immediately. I want to talk to you about the audition. I have other things to explain.”

The tears streaked down my cheeks again. My shoulders felt so heavy.

Everyone looked down on me at the school, and
now I was losing the one big accomplishment I had achieved. Coach Grossbard would be so disappointed, too.

“Brooke! Do you hear me?”

I felt something shatter inside me. It was as if my body was made of glass and the glass had cracked. Soon, I would just crumble to the floor, and when she did come in, she would only find a pile of broken pieces.

“Brooke!”

The more she yelled, the more I felt as if I was coming apart. I reached out and seized the scissors in front of me, and then, taking fistfuls of my hair into my hand, I began to hack away at the strands, dropping clumps of it on the table, cutting and snipping away above the old, faded ribbon, slicing my hair without design until I could even see my scalp showing in places.

Pamela was pounding on the door, screaming my name, threatening, lecturing. I could hear Peter behind her, pleading, asking her to calm down.

When I was finished, I laid the scissors down softly on the table, rose, and quietly, like a shadow, floated across the room to the door. I unlocked it and then opened it.

When she saw me, her eyes nearly exploded. Her mouth opened and closed without a sound at first, and then she put her hands against her own temples and screamed louder than I could ever imagine myself screaming. Her effort turned her face blood red, and her body shook violently, denying what she saw, refusing to believe.

Peter stepped around her to look at me and fell into shock himself.

Pamela's eyes went into the top of her head. She threw her hands toward the ceiling and collapsed into his arms.

I closed the door softly.

“I
t's better for you,” Peter said.

The grandfather clock's ticking seemed so much louder.

Peter sat across from me in the plush living room, his hands clasped as he leaned toward me. He looked very tired, his perennial tan had faded, and his hair was slightly messed up. He wore no tie. His collar was open and his brown sports jacket undone. I almost felt sorrier for him than I did for myself. I knew how bad a time he was having with Pamela. A parade of doctors and health-related people had come through the house, marching up the stairs to her room to give her massages, skin and hair treatments, nutritional guidance. There was even a meditation specialist who spent hours with her. She claimed I had aged her years in minutes and it would take months to cure the
degeneration. She even complained of heart trouble.

I had yet to say another word to her or she to me.

“No one wants to make you live where you're uncomfortable,” Peter continued. “Or go to school where you're unhappy,” he added.

I looked at him, and he had to look away.

People who lie to themselves have a hard time looking at other people directly. They are afraid that their eyes will reveal the self-deceptions.

After my tantrum, Peter wanted to take me to a doctor, too. I refused. Actually, I felt fine, even somewhat stronger. It was as if I had thrown a weight off my shoulders. I had been trying to fit myself into a mold that simply did not fit. What I wished at this moment was that I had my old clothes back. I still wore my old ribbon around my head. I wouldn't take it off.

Peter sat back thoughtfully. The clock ticked.

Sacket appeared in the doorway. “The car has arrived for Miss Brooke, Mr. Thompson. Should I begin to load the trunk?”

“Yes, please, Sacket,” Peter said.

I had told him that I didn't want my new things, but Peter insisted I take them. “What you do with them afterward is your business, Brooke, but they are yours.”

I was adamant about not taking a single tube of lipstick. The way I felt, I didn't know whether I would ever put on any makeup again.

“Are you all right to travel?” Peter asked me.

I nearly laughed. I looked away and then stood up. He had hired a limousine to take me to the foster home. All I knew was it was a group foster home run by a couple who used to run it as a tourist house. Supposedly, there were at least a dozen children of various ages already there. Peter was told, and he tried to convince me, that it was only a temporary situation. Other, more personalized homes were being sought, and I would soon have another set of foster parents, maybe even adoptive parents.

I couldn't help thinking about my mother and dreaming that she was the one waiting for me outside. She had heard about my situation, and she had come from wherever she lived to claim me. Now she was waiting outside in her car, and in a moment I would set eyes on her for the first time.

It was a wonderful fantasy, one that helped me walk with determination and confidence, something Pamela would be proud to see, I thought. That brought a smile to my face and confused Peter, who watched me with a strange half-smile of his own.

“I've arranged for you to have some money,” he told me at the door. “It's been deposited in the bank.”

I almost said, “I earned it,” but instead held my tongue and stepped outside. It was a gray, overcast day with a stiff breeze that lifted the remaining strands of my hair from my forehead. It
had been Peter's idea to buy me a baseball cap. I put it on.

He had spared no expense on the limousine, I thought. It was a long, sleek black car with a driver in uniform. He stepped out and waited.

“You're an exceptional young lady, Brooke,” Peter said. “Don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise. Whatever you set your mind on doing, I'm sure you'll do. Maybe you'll become a lawyer someday and come to my firm.”

“I don't think so,” I said.

It wiped the smile from his face. He looked sad enough to cry. “I wanted better things for you,” he said. “I hope you believe that.”

I nodded. Then I looked back toward the stairway. Pamela wouldn't even know I'd left, I thought. What did it matter? We had never really become mother and daughter, not in the way I had dreamed we would.