Out of the Box (8 page)
“It's not black and white, Ellie,” Jeanette says. “Yes, she gets up and goes to work, and she has good days and bad days, but that doesn't mean she's okay. I'm worried about her, Ellie, and I'm worried about you too.”
I sigh. Jeanette is paranoid, and maybe a bit jealous of how close my parents and I are. When Mom was growing up, she and Jeanette were super close, but they must have grown apart when Mom married Dad, and Jeanette and Alison got together. Now Alison's gone, and Jeanette's alone. I take a deep breath and try to be understanding.
“I'm not telling you this so you do anything,” Jeanette goes on. “Your job is to be thirteen years old and do what thirteen-year-olds do. I only wanted you to know how things look from an outside perspective. I'm encouraging both of your parents to get some help.”
She's not asking my opinion. She's telling me what she thinks of my family. What am I supposed to say to that?
I shrug, and we keep walking.
“T
a da!” Sarah runs out of her house as soon as Jeanette and I turn onto our street.
My aunt and I haven't said much to each other the rest of the way home. She's probably giving me time to let what she said sink in. I'm keeping my mouth shut, because anything I say might be held against my parents and me. I'm grateful for Sarah's sudden appearance.
She pounds down the stairs and twirls before us in a skirt I haven't seen before, a rainbow of neckties sewn together, and I know right away where she must have got the idea. My mother would be pleased.
Sarah's feet are bare, her blouse is long and flowing, and her hair is tied back in a bandanna. I tell her she looks great, and I mean it. She could wear a potato sack and still look good.
“Thanks,” she says. “Wait until you see the sock bowties!”
I laugh, and she asks if I want to go thrift-store shopping with her right now.
“Yes,” I say without thinking. Thrift stores have book sections for me to explore while she's trolling the clothing racks, and I couldn't stand another second with Jeanette anyway.
“Here.” Jeanette digs in the pocket of her jeans and pulls out a ragged ten-dollar bill. “Go to the gelato place afterward and try out some wacky flavor.”
I can't tell if it's an apology or a pledge of ongoing support, but whatever it is, the end result will be gelato, my very favorite dessert. I pocket the cash, leave my bandoneón in my room and take off with Sarah.
Downtown is crawling with tourists. On the way back from the thrift store, we dodge between shoppers and buskers on the wide sidewalk.
Ned is sitting with his hat out on the pavement. I stop to rummage around in my backpack and pull out a somewhat squashed peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich. I used to think Jeanette was crazy for always having one with her, but after our morning at the soup kitchen, I started doing it too, and now I see why she does it. The grin on Ned's face is totally worth it. “Say hi to your aunt for me!” he says as I go back to where Sarah stands waiting for me.
“You and your aunt are two peas in a pod,” she says when I stoop to pick up one of our bags. We've each got a large yellow bag full of colorful dresses, blouses, leggings and skirts, none of which I even noticed until Sarah pulled them off the racks. I did find some great books though. Nestled deep in one of the bags are three books: an old South American guidebook with a big map of Buenos Aires, a novel I've been meaning to read, and another book that I waffled about and finally grabbed at the last minute,
Mental Health and
You.
I'm going to need backup to prove to Jeanette how ridiculous she's being.
The gelato shop is only a door that opens onto the sidewalk with a lineup half a block long snaking out in front of it. Behind the door, two teenagers stand between long rows of ice-cream freezers. I order chocolate-chip mint.
“One broccoli with fly specks!” shouts the pimply teenager behind the counter. He rings up the sale while his coworker scoops the gelato.
“Broccoli with fly specks!” the scooper calls back, and I laugh. Alison would have loved that one. She was never much of a gelato fan, but she loved coming here just to hear the crazy names the staff made up.
Sarah orders caramel apple, and the cashier yells, “One mashed potatoes and mud!”
Customers laugh, and someone wonders aloud if they come up with new names for the flavors every day. I'm about to answer that yes, they doâI always order chocolate-chip mint and have never heard it called the same thing twiceâwhen I spot the older boy we saw at Victoria Middle School. This time he's with a kid our age, sitting on the sidewalk, eating a hot dog. They look up and smile.
Guys don't usually pay attention to me, and if they do, I get all tongue-tied and say dumb things. Sarah doesn't seem to worry about stuff like that though. As soon as we've got our cones in hand, she marches up to them. “Hi. Are you going to Vic Middle in the fall?”
“Yeah,” says the guy I recognize. “You too?”
“Yup,” Sarah says, sticking out her hand to introduce herself. Even
I
know that normal kids don't shake hands, but for some reason, the guys don't even blink. The one I recognize introduces himself as Michael; the other is Steve.
“Ellie here is visiting from Vancouver,” Sarah adds, and I smile, like I'm an interesting kid from the big city, not someone who lives in a boring suburb and hardly ever goes downtown.
Sarah sits on the sidewalk, legs folded up beneath her in Lotus position. I plunk down on her other side.
“So what's Vic Middle like?” she asks.
They shrug. “It's okay.”
“Good basketball team,” adds Steve, adjusting his ballcap.
Michael leans out from behind Steve and looks straight at me. “You look familiar.”
I feel my face go hot. Any minute I'll get tongue-tied, and he'll either think I'm mute or a babbling idiot. “A few days ago,” I say carefully, “Sarah and I went up to the school to look around. You were there with a little boy.”
“Oh, right. My nephew, Jake.”
Sarah is still deep in conversation with Steve. Michael's obviously trying to be friendly, and it would look dumb for me to just sit here silently, licking my gelato. “What were you looking for that day?” I ask. “In the dirt, I mean.”
“Bugs,” Michael says.
“Bugs?”
“Yup,” he says. “For my collection. Not that the schoolyard's the best spot for capture, but my sister would only let me take Jake across the street. She's a bit overprotective.”
“Oh.” I want to ask him how he got interested in collecting bugs, and how he can do it without everyone thinking he's weird, but I'm afraid he'll think I'm nosy. He looks at me for a second, but when I say nothing, he leans back against the wall to finish his hot dog.
Sarah has no trouble keeping her own conversation going. She asks a million questions about Vic Middle and life in Victoria, and within minutes she's writing down Steve's phone number. I raise my eyebrows at her, and she turns a bit pink. “He wants a tour of the petting zoo at the park,” she says. “He's thinking of volunteering there.”
“Uh-huh,” Michael says. “I'll bet he is.” He winks at me.
I smile back, for real this time, and hope he doesn't notice my cheeks burning.
T
o: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
      Â
Subject: I love you
Dear Ellie Belly
,
I've started this email five times, and I keep
erasing it because it comes out all wrong. Mostly, I
want to tell you that I miss you and I love you, even
if you're mad at me right now. Whatever I've done
to offend you, I wish we could just talk it out. I hear
your voice, and I know there's something wrong. I'm
disappointed in Jeanette for not encouraging you to
tell me what's on your mind, but ultimately, you're
old enough to make your own decisions about that
kind of thing.
I can understand that teenagers get mad at their
parents
â
that's part of being a teen after all
â
but
I've always taught you to talk things out. Punishing
me with your silence is not going to solve anything
between us.
Please do what you know is right and tell me
what's going on.
I love you anyway,
Mom XOXO
I stare at the library computer's screen. How can she accuse me of giving her the silent treatment when I've talked to her every night, except when she didn't call? She must know it's not my fault that Jeanette ends our conversations almost as soon as they've begun. (My aunt still insists she's trying to give me breathing space, but how does she imagine causing problems between my mom and me is helping?)
The woman next to me glances in my direction, and I realize I'm glaring at the computer, jaw clenched and hands balled into fists, my short nails digging into my palms. I close my eyes, breathe deep and try to relax. Above all, I have to remain calm.
I can't do anything right away anyway. Firing back an email is out of the question. When Mom's this upset, all interactions have to be in real time. I need to be able to gauge her mood and adjust my every comment accordingly.
I glance at the clock on the computer screen. I'm supposed to meet Jeanette at the check-out counter of the library in twenty minutes. I sigh, open a new Internet window, and try to immerse myself in what I came here to do. At first I'm too mad to concentrate properly, but I force myself to focus. I don't want to think about my family anymore.
Andrés Moreno desaparecido
, I type. This time, I find a few sites that are more than lists of dead people. One site in particular is a whole newspaper article from 1998 with the name included in one of the paragraphs. I click
Translate this page
, and after a few minutes of deciphering badly translated English, I figure this is what it says:
After a lifetime of believing he'd been born to a
marine officer and his wife, Facundo GarcÃa now
knows he was born on July 7, 1976, in an illegal
prison in Banfield in the province of Buenos Aires,
where his mother, Caterina Rizzi, was being held. His father, Andrés Moreno, was seized on a crowded
city bus on June 17, 1976. Rizzi, who was eight
months pregnant at the time, was taken from their
house two days later in the middle of the night. The young woman gave birth to her child with the assistance of doctor Jorge Bergés. The baby was delivered,
still bloody and wrapped in newspaper, to
marine officer AnÃbal GarcÃa and his wife Esmerelda
Perez. The doctor then signed a false birth certificate
claiming that the child was born in his private
clinic in Quilmes and that Perez was the biological
mother.
My heart is pounding, and I feel sick to my stomach. I scan the rest of the article and find the word
Canada
, followed by a few quotes:
Today, the young man's biological parents remain
“missing.” However, more than two decades after
their disappearance, Facundo GarcÃa has discovered
other relatives and has been welcomed into a
large extended family with members as far away
as Canada.
“I can't express what it was like to meet my
biological grandparents, aunts and uncles for the
first time,” says the young man. “They've been
actively looking for me for years, and when I see my
smile on their faces, or my habitual gestures made
by their hands, I realize I've been hoping to find
them too. I just never knew it would be possible.”
As for the couple who raised him, he says, “I
don't hate them. It's the deception that hurts. I've always been honest with them, and all my life
they've been lying to me.”
I slump back in my chair and blink at the screen. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be Facundo GarcÃa. No matter how bad my life gets, it could never compare to his.