“Walk through el cementerio?” Pablo seemed hesitant.
I was about to tease Pablo about believing in ghosts when, again, I remembered Mr. Barstow’s lectures—the murders, the cemeteries filling up. “Oh, forget it, let’s just go through town.”
“No, no, Milly,” Pablo insisted. “I want to go with you.”
“Are you sure?” I looked into his eyes, the way you do to see if someone’s telling the truth. His eyes seemed to soften, meeting mine. A quiver of excitement went through me. I felt that pang again and looked away.
We entered through the little gate and walked down the central path, stopping now and then to read the names on interesting-looking stones.
“¡Qué curiosa!” Pablo noted, crouching by a tombstone.
I had seen it before and gone quickly by it. Now I knelt beside Pablo and let him guide my hand over the letters as if I were a blind person, trying to read Braille.
“It gives no name, only MOTHER,” Pablo noted. “Was la familia afraid to put the name on the stone?”
“It’s not that,” I explained. “In fact, all the names are listed over on that central stone. I guess it’s just that when someone you love dies, you don’t lose a name, you lose a relationship.”
Pablo nodded absently. I could feel him slipping away into his bad memories. “Every victim in my country is a father, a mother, a brother, an uncle. . . .” His voice faltered. Pablo had told me about his uncle, Tío Daniel, a radical journalist, who was murdered a month or so after the Bolívars had escaped to the States.
Again, I wondered about my birth parents. Had they been victims as well? I had lost them before I even had a relationship with them. No name, no stories. A blank stone.
We were quiet as we made our way down the path. It was dark by the time I got home.
The phone was ringing on the other side of the door. I said a quick goodbye to Pablo and raced to get it before the machine kicked in.
“Good evening. Kaufman residence.” I was hamming it up, thinking my parents were calling, worried that I wasn’t yet back from the mall.
There was a pause. Oh no, I thought. A pervert’s on the other end and my parents are gone! There was still time to race to the door and call out for Pablo to come back.
“Who is this?” It was a woman’s voice, commanding, familiar. “Hello? Sylvia, is that you?”
Happy?! Happy was calling us?! “Oh, hi, Grandma—” Or was I supposed to call her that anymore? “It’s just me, Milly.” I meant to make my voice go flat and uninterested, but I couldn’t. Something in me still wanted this old woman to love me.
“Milly, dear. I didn’t recognize your voice. You sounded so grown up. How are you, sweetie?”
Was this the Academy Awards for Hypocrisy or what? “Nate’s not here,” I told her right off. Just so she’d know and wouldn’t waste her long-distance money talking to me. “And Mom and Kate and Dad are gone for the weekend.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
I shrugged. Like she was going to see me shrugging! “I just wanted to stay, I guess.”
“You sound a little lonely, honey. Maybe I can send Roger up for you.”
I could not believe this. My grandmother who had disinherited me was going to send her driver six hours to pick me up in Vermont?! “No, no, Grandma. Really, don’t worry. Mom and Dad’ll be back tomorrow. And my friend Em is coming over tonight.”
“If you’re sure...” Happy didn’t sound totally convinced. She went on to ask how I was doing in school and how my classes were going. They were the same old questions she always used to ask me. But now she actually sounded interested. I mean, there were pauses between each question, like she was expecting an answer back from me.
It seemed Happy wanted to know about everyone in the family tonight, not just Nate, though we did spend a couple of minutes on this really cute card Nate had sent her, thanking her for her Passover card. (Kate and I had also signed it.) Nate had gotten the picture off the Internet. A huge gorilla holding a tiny gorilla in its hairy arms. Inside the folded paper, Nate had written “LOVE YOU, GRANDMA!!!” I remembered thinking it was perfect that this ugly, tarantula-looking gorilla was supposed to be my awful grandmother.
The doorbell started ringing spastically, no time between rings. Em was here. But I wasn’t on the cordless to just walk over and open the door. And never in my life had I cut off Grandma.
“What’s that sound?” Happy finally asked.
“It’s just my friend Em at the door.”
“I’m going to hold on while you go check, okay? Come back and tell me if it’s her before I hang up.” City people, I swear.
I wasn’t about to tell Happy that we didn’t have a surveillance camera like she did at her mansion or she’d start in on the latest crime statistics. I raced to the door, flung it open, and Em barely got out, “Where have you been—” when I cut her off.
“Talking to Happy. She’s still on the phone.” I didn’t want my big-mouth friend shouting something like YOU MEAN YOUR GRANDMOTHER, THE BITCH?
“Grandma, it’s my friend like I said.”
“Good, good. I’m glad. You won’t be alone, then. Anyhow, you tell your parents I called, okay? Go take care of your friend.” But she didn’t hang up. Instead, there was a little pause. “You know Grandma loves you, Milly.”
“Love you, too, Grandma,” I replied automatically, but saying it, I realized I really did mean it. I set the receiver down gently in its cradle.
“Happy?!” Em looked incredulous. When I nodded, she went on, “So was Happy happy?”
I knew Em was trying to make a joke about my mean grandmother. But I felt suddenly sad for Happy always being unhappy. It struck me that Happy had called because she was feeling lonely and needed to talk to someone who wasn’t paid to listen to her talk. Poor Happy. Maybe she was realizing she might lose more than the past if she kept taking out her sadness on the rest of us.
What a night it was turning out to be. The walk home with Pablo. Happy’s phone call. Then Em with the latest “news.” Em made quote marks in the air with her fingers. Her parents had decided they were going to stay together after all.
“They’re such babies.” Em sighed. “They’re really not fit to be parents. I think people who want to be parents should really, like, take a test. I mean, you need a license to drive, right?”
We looked at each other in that way you can look at a close friend and not have to look away. We knew how deep down this truth went in both our lives.
“Do we even have the energy to do this?” I said, leading Em upstairs.
“It’s up to you,” Em said. Though I could tell she’d be disappointed if we just went over to Jake’s instead.
We sat across from each other on my bed, holding hands, The Box between us. Weirdly, the moment reminded me of that day in the kitchen when my parents had told me about my adoption.
“Your hands are really broken out,” Em said, turning them over. “Have you been putting Mr. Burt on?”
For Christmas, Em had given me a bag full of little tins, Burt’s Bees salves, that hadn’t done much of anything but make me smell like cough drops. “Nothing helps,” I told her. “The doctor now says its neuro . . . something—it means it’s all in my head.”
Em shook hers. “That rash looks pretty real to me. Anyhow,” she added, eyeing The Box as if to remind me of our task.
“I feel like I should make a wish or something,” I said, trying to lighten my nervousness. Really, I felt ready to cry. I took a deep breath. “Okay, here it goes.” I lifted the lid, then made myself look down.
I don’t know what I was expecting. A teensy baby? Body parts? Or what? The stuff inside looked boringly normal: a bunch of envelopes, folded-up newspaper clippings. I started taking stuff out, then just dumped the contents on my bedspread.
We pored over each little thing.
“Look at this,” we kept saying to each other.
Em held out a coin with a star on one side and a pictur
e of what must be some famous person from the country’s history on the other. “He looks like Pablo,” she noted. Usually I don’t agree with Em about who people look like, but this time she was right. This famous person had Pablo’s same strong jaw and intense eyes.
Inside an envelope, we found a locket of wheat-colored hair braided together with dark black hair. My birth mother’s and father’s? Another envelope was full of old photos, which I hoped/dreaded would be of my birth parents or the place I’d been born. But most of them turned out to be shots of a little baby being held by a short, fat nun in a white habit with what looked like a seagull sitting on her head. There were some later shots of a young-looking Mom, holding Kate and me on her lap. Kate looked humongous compared to me. Then another of me in Dad’s arms, arriving in the United States with a little American flag in my hand.
“Oh my God, you were like this gorgeous Benetton baby!” Em gushed. “You were so cute!”
“Hmm.” I studied the photo. I hate it when people talk about how cute you used to be.
At the bottom of The Box, I discovered a tiny florist-type envelope. I pulled out a piece of paper that looked like it’d been folded and refolded often. MILAGROS, it read, written in big block letters.
Em was craning her neck, trying to make out what was written on the paper. “What does that mean?” Em’s mother insisted she take French, on account of her ancestors had once been royalty over in France before they became poor French Canadians living in Vermont.
“Miracles,” I said. “Milagros means miracles.”
“Mi-la-gros,” Em sounded it out. “That’s so neat. It’s like it’s a miracle you survived.”
What Em didn’t know was that Milagros had been my name at the orphanage. But when my parents adopted me, they decided to make Milagros my middle name and give me Mom’s mother’s name, Mildred, instead. Not only would it be an easier name for my American life, but Mom wanted one of her daughters to carry my grandma-I-nevermet’s name. I can’t say I loved Mildred—Milly’s okay—but I definitely hated Milagros, and so I never used my middle name. The last thing I wanted was someone asking me, “Where did you get a name like Milagros?”
Before Em and I put everything back, I skimmed over all the official documents from the orphanage. Mother was listed as unknown, so was Father. Place of birth was also blank. I had hoped that maybe somewhere in all the documents I would find the name Los Luceros.
We carried the box—no longer the scary Box of capital letters—back to my parents’ dresser. “Thank you, Em,” I said as we turned to each other. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” And then, I don’t know why exactly, but we both burst into tears. It felt so good to stand there, sobbing and hugging each other. Whatever distance we had felt between us had evaporated. Close and best friends. We could handle anything.
5
elections
GIVE JAKE A BREAK. JAKE & SHAKE. Walking into Ralston High, I felt like I was in a bad rap video. Jake’s posters were everywhere!
One poster showed a picture of Jake looking off into the Green Mountains: JAKE FOR THE EARTH’S SAKE. (This to win the “green” granola vote.)
Pablo made one showing Jake wearing a sombrero with a bandanna tied around his neck: JAKE: UN HOMBRE SIN-CERO. (Everyone kept asking him what it meant, so Pablo wrote the translation in tiny print below the caption: Jake: an honest man.)
Em and I did one together. We took a photo of Jake surrounded by some posters and bumper stickers of his favorite causes: SAVE THE WHALES. DON’T LAUGH AT FARMERS WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL. PEACE IS NOT SOMETHING TO DIE FOR. LOVE MAKES A FAMILY. TAKE VERMONT FORWARD. Our caption read: VOTE FOR JAKE, A LOT’S AT STAKE.
Every time I glanced at one of Jake’s posters, then looked over at Taylor’s—Taylor in his nifty Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt with this attitude written all over his face, like Hey, dude, vote for me if you feel like it, no big deal—I thought, poor Jake, trying so hard.
Actually, we were all trying too hard. The borderliners, I mean. Jake managed to talk most of his friends into running with him. Start a movement, why not? Alfie even came up with a campaign song, “You say you wanna start a Ralstonlution.”
The deal at Ralston was that anyone running for an office had to get twenty-five names on a petition. Then you could register to be a candidate and put up posters and stuff. There was a three-week period to get your name in. Besides president, every class voted for a vice president, treasurer, and secretary, as well as two senators, who basically did most of the work of student government and got a trickle of the credit.
Jake got his signatures and registered right off. Then the other borderliners started jumping on his bandwagon. Dylan, a math geek, was the natural for treasurer. Plus, his dad owns the car dealership in town, and being rich can’t hurt if you’re running for taking care of the money. Em kind of fell into the secretary spot, because, to be honest, none of the guys wanted to run for a position that sounded like it was for a girl. Will was going to go for VP, but then he messed up, smoking in the bathroom during one of the school dances (that’s all he got caught for), and so he couldn’t run.
Suddenly, everyone was looking at me.
“Don’t even think about it,” I kept saying. My friends knew I hated getting up in front of people.
But Jake was not one to give up—obviously, or he wouldn’t be running against Taylor Ward. One morning, he cornered me by my locker. “Here’s the deal, Mil. We really, really need you.” Jake put a hand on each of my shoulders—like a handler getting a boxer revved up to go into the ring and get beat up. His blue eyes were full of conviction. I couldn’t help remembering the crush I’d had on him in seventh grade. Back then, I probably would have done anything Jake Cohen asked me to do.
“You’d be super! Everyone really respects you.”
This was news to me. “Why’s that?”
“Oh, you know, the way you had all that tutoring, and you never complained or told us why so we wouldn’t feel sorry for you.”
I was trying to hear the reason for all the supposed respect people had for me in this depressing picture. Finally, I caught on. “Jake, do you mean because I’m . . . adopted?”
Jake sighed with relief. “I didn’t know if you knew I knew. Em told—”
I nodded. “I know. I’m just sorry I didn’t tell you myself.”
“I understand,” Jake reassured me. “This place is so white bread.” He held his arms out, meaning Ralston High, our town, Vermont—it wasn’t clear. “But that’s what I’m saying, Mil. You never used your adoption as an excuse for anything. I really admire that.”
This was a different spin on my secrecy—bravery instead of plain and simple shame and insecurity.
“And so, my friend.” Jake’s voice suddenly turned parental. Oh no, I thought. Here comes the pitch after the spin. “I’m making a personal plea that you join us. Mil, we are going to change this place! More and more people are saying they’re going to vote for us. We stand a real chance, we really do! But we need the best people in our class. And I know, I know—” Jake held up both hands. “VP’s a lot more than you bargained for. So, how about you run for one of the senators?” The way he proposed this option, it was like Jake was giving me a real break.
“Let me think about it, Jake, okay?” I was already feeling that familiar tingling in my hands.
“Sure,” Jake said, waving a hand in a no-problem gesture. But as he turned to go, he added, “I’ve already got your twenty-five signatures. Deadline’s tomorrow. Let me know.”
“I can’t do it,” I told Pablo that afternoon. Now that the weather was nice, we often walked home from school. Sometimes Alfie would pass us by on the bus and toot-toot some tune we’d try to make out.
Pablo had been talking about the elections coming up in his country . . . how his parents hoped the Liberation Party would win . . . how his brothers were running for local offices. I had stopped listening. Our Ralston election was all I could think of.
“Jake re
ally doesn’t get it,” I told Pablo. “I just don’t have it in me to get up in front of people and make speeches.”
“Yes, you do,” Pablo said quietly, like he knew.
“No way, José!” Only after I said it did I wonder if Pablo would think I didn’t remember his name. But he seemed to know the expression and just kept smiling at me in an encouraging way.
I felt annoyed. I needed Pablo’s support to stand up to all our friends. “How do you know what’s in me or not?” I folded my arms, tucking in my hands to hide the irritated skin.
Pablo shrugged and held my gaze. He was probably one of the signatures on my list of twenty-five supporters.
“I mean, this is just a stupid high school election. I know Jake makes it sound like it’s the beginning of changing the world...”
Pablo had this look in his eye like he agreed with Jake. “You are so fortunate in this country, Milly. You have always had freedom. You take it for granted.”
I sighed at the lecture. “So why don’t you run?” I confronted him.
“I am not sure I will be here next year, Milly.”
I took that in. The sadness of Pablo leaving before I even knew what he meant to me—brother, friend . . . something else?
“Milly?” Pablo was trying to catch my eye. Something tender in his voice drew my gaze to him. It was the same look I’d seen in the graveyard. This time, when I tried to look away, I couldn’t. “You have my vote,” he said. Then, giving me a little bow, he added, “And I would like to offer my services as your guardbody.”
“Bodyguard,” I corrected. I could feel myself caving in.
“Bodyguard at your service.” He spread his arms as if to shield me from adoring crowds.
I couldn’t help but smile. “Okay, okay.” I sighed. “I give up. I’ll run. I’ll change the world. I’ll save the whales. I won’t laugh at farmers with my mouth full.”