Perhaps to cheer me up further, Mrs. March delivered on her promise to get me whatever I needed to do calligraphy. She even bought me a beautifully illustrated book about it, and I saw some of the words Mama had copied. I had told her exactly what I needed, and it was all set up in the sitting room. I began to work almost immediately. I wanted to do a copy of Mama’s “heaven.”
“Don’t make me sorry I got you all this,” Mrs. March told me two days after I began work. I had done little of anything else. “You can’t shut yourself away all day, you know.”
She was right, of course. Now that I was free of my cast and did not have to depend on a crutch, Dr. Milan wanted me to take daily exercise. Mrs. March had a physical therapist come to the house to work with me every other day. “We’ve got to get your muscles strong again so you won’t have any problem getting around in school,” she said. The therapist, Sheila Toby, was very impressed with the Marches’ indoor pool and, after some initial days of stretching exercises, decided we would do all of our work in the water.
One afternoon, Mr. March suddenly appeared to watch us. He was there for quite a while but said nothing. Later, when I was going up to my suite, he appeared in the hallway. I realized that this was the first time since I had come to his house that he and I were alone.
“You seem to be doing very well,” he began. “I’m sure you feel stronger every day.”
“Yes, I do.”
I waited, expecting him to say, Okay, since you’re better and stronger, you don’t have to live here anymore, and this idea of your going to Kiera’s school is not really a good one, but he didn’t say that.
“I happened to glance in at the calligraphy you’re doing,” he continued, walking along with me toward my suite. “It’s pretty impressive.”
“Thank you.”
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“What do you want to know?”
“I’m not that familiar with it. Jordan bought something once, as I said, but I must admit, I didn’t pay much attention to the explanation the salesman gave us at the gallery. I gather you told her exactly what you needed. What is needed?”
“I work with an ink brush, ink, a special type of paper, and an inkstone. Together, they are known as the Four Treasures of the Study.”
“Really?” He smiled. “Go on. Tell me more.”
We reached my doorway.
“The paper is weighed down with paperweights. Anything can be a paperweight, but my mother used to have wooden blocks that had pictorial designs on them, too. They had been her mother’s.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. One day, they were gone and she used rocks we found on the beach instead. I think she might have sold them.”
He nodded. “Go on in,” he told me, and then he followed me in and went to my desk. “So, what is this ink-stone?” he asked.
“You have to rub the ink stick on it with water to make the paint.”
“Your mother did all this while you were homeless?”
“Yes. For her, it was more like … more like …”
“Therapy, relaxation?”
“No, I think something religious,” I said, and his eyes widened and brightened.
“And for you?”
“The same,” I said.
He smiled. He picked up the brush and studied it a moment.
“It has to be held a special way,” I said.
“Show me.”
I did.
“See, it’s held vertically with the thumb and the middle finger. My mother told me you should be able to put an egg in your palm if you’re holding it correctly.”
He laughed and then tried it. I adjusted his fingers so that his ring finger and pinkie touched the bottom of the brush handle.
“This is hard,” he said. “Must take a lot of practice.”
“Yes. You start by practicing the Chinese character yong to master the eight basic strokes.”
“And what does yong mean?”
“Forever,” I said.
“Now, what does the one you’re working on represent?”
“It means mother,” I said.
“I know you must really miss her.”
“Yes.”
He nodded, keeping his eyes on my calligraphy. “Well,” he said, “your art teacher should be happily surprised once he learns what you can do. He’ll probably have you teach the class.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” I said.
“Sure you could. Let me see this when it’s finished,” he told me, and started to turn to leave. He stopped, and I looked at the doorway.
Kiera was standing there. From the look on her face, I knew she must have been there for a while and heard what we had been saying.
“What’s up?” he asked her.
“Nothing,” she said sharply, and hurried away.
He hesitated, and then he walked out.
Not long before our accident, after Mama and I had spent most of our day on Venice Beach’s boardwalk selling her calligraphy and my lanyards, she had paused while we were getting our things together and just sat there staring at people.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” I had asked. “Are you feeling sick again?”
“No, no,” she had said. She’d smiled at me, and for a moment, I saw through her bloated face and tired eyes and saw the smile on her face years ago when she was beautiful and energetic. Nothing made me happier. I could go all the rest of the day without food and still feel content because I saw this smile.
“Then what, Mama?”
“I was just thinking how when they look at the calligraphy, they change.”
“Who changes?”
“The people, the ones who pass by. It isn’t until they’re looking at the calligraphy that they suddenly see us as people. They look at both of us then, Sasha. Did you notice that?”
Now that she had said it, I realized it was true, and I nodded.
“Why is that, Mama?”
“The calligraphy, like anything beautiful, reminds us all about what we share as people. That’s what your grandmother once told me,” she had said. “But it wasn’t until just now, today, that I realized what she meant.”
She had smiled again and then continued gathering her things.
I looked down at my unfinished work and nodded, thinking about Mr. March, his softer tone of voice, his curiosity, and his smile.
“Now I understand, too, Mama,” I whispered.
It was truly as if she had reached from beyond the grave to speak to me through my own calligraphy. It filled my heart with warmth and gave me the strength even to face the jealous face of Kiera March.
Someday, I thought—no, vowed—I wouldn’t hate her as much as I pitied her.
But I knew that the journey to that place would be a long one and over a road full of many traps and dangers. I just didn’t know how soon it would all really begin.
15
Judgment
A few days later, I learned that despite how powerful and influential Mr. March was and despite how good his attorney was, they couldn’t put off Kiera’s court hearing again. With only a week left before school began, she would have to go to court. No one discussed it in front of me, but I overheard enough to know the details, and by now, I understood that both Mrs. Caro and Mrs. Duval knew everything. In fact, Mrs. Duval apologized to me one day when I was sitting out on the patio that faced the pool, reading. Without my asking, she brought me a glass of Mrs. Caro’s famous lemonade.
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Duval,” I said, surprised. I started to drink, expecting her to leave, but she stood there looking out at the cabana. I could tell that she wanted to say something, and I waited.
“When you were first brought here,” she began, “we all thought some organization had chosen you or singled you out for a special opportunity because of your accident and terrible loss and that Mrs. March had volunteered to take you in. She and Mr. March have done many wonderful charitable things. No one told us w
hat or who caused the accident you and your mother suffered. We had some suspicions, but no one thought it was necessary for us to know the truth, so no one asked any questions.”
I didn’t say anything.
She shook her head. “If we had known the truth, we would have treated you better when you first arrived.”
“You treated me just fine, Mrs. Duval. Everyone has.”
“Not as fine as we would have if we had known how you lost your mother and who was responsible,” she declared, and left.
I appreciated what she had told me, but I was worried that it would now cause even more friction between Kiera and me, especially now that her court hearing was scheduled. I felt the way Mama had always felt when she told me she was waiting for the second shoe to drop.
“What does that mean?” I had asked her.
“It means that when the second shoe drops, the whole ceiling comes down on you,” she had told me. “The problem is, it doesn’t happen right away, so you’re always waiting for it, and that’s nerve-wracking. That’s the way my life has been with your miserable father. Every time the phone rings or someone comes to the door, I expect trouble.”
Maybe that was why she had hated answering the phone and always made me look out the window to see who it was when someone came to the door before she would open it. I wished I had someone to do all that for me now, run interference. I had no doubt that the second shoe was about to drop.
Two days later, the Marches went to court. I practically locked myself away in my suite, reading, working on calligraphy, and watching television. The minutes went by like hours and the hours like days. Finally, a little before six o’clock, I heard footsteps in the hallway. I heard Kiera’s door slam closed, and then I heard the recognizable click-clack of Mrs. March’s stiletto heels on the tile floor as she headed in my direction.
“Well, that’s over for now,” Mrs. March said as she entered. I shut off the television. She came all the way into the sitting room and stood there looking at me. “The judge put her on probation, but only if she goes to serious therapy. If she doesn’t go, she loses her driver’s license indefinitely, so you know she’ll go. What she’ll get out of it is anyone’s guess.
“I just don’t want to think about it anymore,” she continued. “Donald will handle the arrangements with the therapist. This is what we’ve come to in this country. A child will listen to a therapist but not her own parents. At least, that is what the judge believes. I can’t say he’s wrong.”
I could see that she was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Good? That’s all the punishment she gets? What?
“I’m telling you all this so she doesn’t tell you that the judge decided she was not at fault or something,” Mrs. March continued. “She will probably tell her friends that, the ones who know the truth, but you should know different. I don’t imagine any of this makes you feel any better, Sasha.”
I realized that she thought I wanted to see Kiera get a far more severe punishment. It certainly wouldn’t have bothered me if she had, but on the other hand, it wouldn’t have brought back my mother. At this point, I really didn’t care. I didn’t like her, and I didn’t expect that any therapist would, either. He or she would have to have a magic wand to turn Kiera into a different person, turn her into someone who wasn’t selfish and spoiled.
“Let’s just concentrate on happy new things, okay, Sasha?” Mrs. March said. She smiled, looked around the sitting room as if she was worried that something had been changed, and then left.
Kiera said nothing to me about the judge’s orders. In fact, she made more effort to avoid me, often finding excuses not to be at the table for dinner and then getting herself away from the house as much as possible so that we wouldn’t even cross each other’s path. I did learn that Mr. March had forbidden her to have any friends over to party. However, I wasn’t sure whether he did that as a punishment or out of concern for me. Ever since Kiera had given me her logic for defending herself, a logic that essentially blamed me and Mama for being there in the rain, I imagined that she used the same argument with her father and maybe even with the judge. At least I was sure the judge hadn’t accepted her excuse.
Perhaps Mr. March had ordered Kiera to avoid me so as to avoid any more conflict. After all, not only was I still there, but I had been enrolled in her school. She could no longer barge in to tell me her father was going to throw me out. I was sure that she was upset about that, as well as what happened the day after I completed my calligraphy of mother.
I brought it down to dinner the following evening, an evening when I was sure that Mr. March was going to be there. Kiera was there, too, this time. She looked as if she was going to burst out laughing when I arrived carrying the framed calligraphy, but Mr. March’s exclamation of “Wow!” stopped her dead in her tracks. He rose and came to me to take it and hold it up.
“Isn’t this something?” he asked Mrs. March.
She smiled. “Amazing.”
“You know,” he said, still holding my calligraphy and looking at it, “this gives me an idea for something. I’m doing this co-development deal with some South Koreans. We should do a logo in calligraphy.” He smiled at me. “Maybe we’ll hire you to do it, Sasha.”
I didn’t know what to say. He laughed and handed the calligraphy back to me.
“No,” I said, handing it back. “I brought this as a gift for you and Mrs. March.”
“Oh, how sweet,” Mrs. March said.
“It’ll look good in the entertainment center,” Mr. March said. “Thank you.”
He took it back with him to his seat and set it aside.
“How can you hang that up in the house? I don’t know what it’s even supposed to be,” Kiera said. “No one will.”
“We’ve got a number of works of art that few can figure out in this house that your mother bought,” Mr. March said, laughing. “But at least we do know what this means,” he said, lifting the calligraphy.
“What?” Kiera demanded.
“Sasha?” Mr. March said, looking at me.
“It means mother,” I said. “Love.”
Kiera looked as if she had swallowed an apple whole for a moment and then began to stab at her salad. I took my seat and, during most of our dinner, answered questions that Mr. and Mrs. March asked about calligraphy. It was actually the happiest and most pleasant dinner I had had at the March house. Afterward, Mr. March asked me to follow him to the entertainment center to help choose the wall space for my art. Kiera went directly up to her room.
The day before school was to begin was the last day that Sheila Toby, my physical therapist, came to the house. By now, I was doing twenty laps in the indoor pool. Toward the end of the session, Mrs. March came in to watch, and when I got out of the pool, she handed me my towel and said, “That was terrific, Sasha. I bet you can do ten laps in our outdoor Olympicsize pool now, just like Alena could do before she got sick.”
Before I could say anything, she turned to Sheila Toby to compliment her on the job she had done with me.
“It wasn’t hard working with a young girl who is so cooperative and determined,” Sheila said.
“Exactly. She starts the ninth grade tomorrow,” Mrs. March said. “Come, let me give you your check,” she told Sheila, and they left together.
I dried myself and dressed and then went outside to walk over to the lake. I was still limping, but I had no pain and did feel much stronger. I probably could swim those ten laps Mrs. March wanted me to swim one day, I thought, but I felt conflicted about it. Almost everything she had done for me and wished for me were things she had done and wished for Alena.
I imagined that was only normal for a mother who had lost her daughter and had someone else wearing her things and staying in her room. There was no way for her to look at me and not think of Alena, but that also told me that as long as I lived there, I wouldn’t be Sasha. I wouldn’t be my mother’s daughter. No matter what Mr. and Mrs. March did for
me, I thought, the moment I could leave and be on my own, I would.
Did that make me ungrateful? Did it make me as self-centered as Kiera? Whenever I thought that, I had to remind myself of what my private nurse in the hospital, Jackie Knee, had told me. I could never be ungrateful, because they could never do enough for me.
I sat on the dock and dangled my feet over the water. The breeze drew ripples in the surface of the lake. I saw water bugs navigating through some floating leaves and blades of grass. The rowboats tied to the dock bobbed and swayed gently, and on the far end of the lake, those terns I had seen sailed what seemed to be inches above the water before lifting toward the tops of the trees.
Tomorrow, I would return to school. I’d be back in a classroom but sitting among boys and girls who came from wealthy families. When they looked at me, would they immediately see how poor and lost I had been, despite my living now in the March house? Not my tutor, my physical therapist, my clothes and shoes, my manicured fingernails and styled hair—none of it could disguise the pain of the past and the loss I had suffered. If anything, I’d be more of a curiosity than any other new student would be. How did this one get here? they would surely wonder. She doesn’t belong here. She belongs out there.
Despite what Mrs. Kepler said, would I look inadequate? Would my voice falter and crack when I was called upon to answer questions aloud? Would I do so badly on tests that I would quickly become the class dunce? And when they all talked about their possessions, their family travels, their rich parents, and brothers and sisters who might be in expensive colleges, fashions and styles, famous people they had met and seen, shows they had gone to and were going to go to, what would I do? What would I say?
My silence would reveal everything. No matter how well Mrs. March dressed me, despite my being brought to the school in a limousine every day and living in a bigger house than any of them, they would recoil and whisper, “She’s an imposter. She doesn’t belong here. She’s not really one of us.”