I couldn’t help it. Tears began running down my face.
Grandma dabbed at hers, then handed me her handkerchief. I didn’t want to blow my snot into something with a monogram on it, so I just kept balling it up in my hand and sniffling. Happy went on to say that if I ever needed something, I was to call on her. Did I promise that I would?
I nodded, just so she’d know I’d forgiven her.
“Now go ahead and use that hanky, dear. You can’t go out and face the world with a runny nose. Remember you’re a Kaufman. No matter what comes our way, we meet it with style.”
As we were leaving the room, Grandma pointed to the shelves. “Daddy patented those, you know. Book panels. So much easier to keep clean.”
The drive home late Sunday seemed twice as long as the drive down. None of us had gotten much sleep the night before. Kate and Nate dozed on and off. But I couldn’t seem to nap. I kept thinking about Happy. Could it be that she really felt a lot like me?
I was also thinking about election day tomorrow at Ralston. All candidates had to give a speech at a class assembly first thing. Just a few words summing up why everyone should vote for us. Not only did I hate public speaking, but the only thing I could think of to say was Pleasepleaseplease, don’t vote for me.
Not that anyone was going to vote for me. Despite what Jake had said, I couldn’t believe that all those years of special tutoring wouldn’t work against me. And though I really didn’t want to win and be in student government— a whole year of public speaking, ugh!—still, the thought of losing in front of the whole school was too awful to think about.
Up front, Mom and Dad were reminiscing about the weekend. Could you believe Aunt Joan going on and on about Uncle Stanley’s vasectomy? What about Happy giving Eli those cuff links with happy faces! Hmm. Maybe old Eli’s been softening up Happy’s hard edges! Back and forth, Mom and Dad sifted the visit, looking for I don’t know what.
Every once in a while, Mom would turn around and, seeing me awake, reach her hand out for me to take. Dad kept looking in the rearview mirror. His way of making sure I was okay, I guess.
The truth was, I was feeling better. About Grandma, anyhow. And Kate and I had sort of made up with a sleepy bear hug this morning. But it’s funny how a heavy mood will lift, but because of it, you know something you didn’t know before, like something the tide left behind. I really did want to go back to the country where I was born. To see if it would feel like the place where I belonged.
Mom switched on NPR for the evening news. A report on the elections was in progress. “We’ve won!” Mom cried out, turning up the volume. Kate stirred awake. Nate yelped that she had kicked him.
“Another big step for democracy,” the newscaster was concluding. The dictator had left the country with his generals. The people were all out on the streets, celebrating. We could hear shouts and music in the background.
Mom, Dad, Kate, even grumpy Nate broke out cheering.
I slumped in the backseat, feeling a welter of relief and, surprisingly, sadness. Would they be celebrating—my birth parents? Now that they were free, would they be sorry that they had given up their baby? Or did being free include being free of me?
Black Monday. I couldn’t remember what Mr. Barstow had said about it—some Monday in history when someone had gotten beheaded or an important battle had been lost. All I knew was that it was my Black Monday: voting day at Ralston High.
“You each get five minutes,” Mr. Arnold, our principal, coached us. He held up five fingers like we were kindergarteners.
The ninth graders began filing into the auditorium. Our class seemed smaller today. I’d heard Mr. Arnold say something about an unprecedented number of absences. Maybe some kids had gotten caught bashing in mailboxes or tipping over cows this weekend.
When everyone was seated, Mr. Arnold gave a brief welcome, which lasted more than five minutes, then the candidates marched on stage to wait for our turn to talk.
I wish I could repeat what everyone said, but I was truly in a state of terror. I do remember Taylor and his pals looking a little hungover. Probably they’d gotten wasted at his party this past weekend. Maybe that’s why there were so many empty seats out there. I remember Jake sounding like if you voted for him, he was going to save the planet, not just Ralston. A little while later, I remember Em going on and on and on, Mr. Arnold stage-whispering that her time was up, Em finally hearing him, getting all flustered, then spending another minute apologizing to our class before sitting back down.
Then it was my turn. I was in such a sweat that the backs of my legs were stuck to the seat of my chair. Great, I thought. Now I’ll make a fart sound when I get up.
But there was no sound. In fact, I made it to the podium without fainting or tripping. I even managed to unfold my short speech, which was not much longer than two sentences if I took out all the thank-yous. But when I looked down, the words began swimming around that piece of paper. In a panic, I glanced up and my eyes found Pablo. He was beaming me his intense look as if he was drawing out some native courage I didn’t quite believe I had. The NPR bulletin flashed in my head. His country was free! I had not had a chance yet to congratulate him.
“This is a special day for a member of our class,” I began, my voice all trembly but audible. I told about the victory of democracy that very weekend in Pablo’s country. The assembly broke out in cheers.
“It’s also a very special day for my family,” I continued when the clapping had died down. “You see, we have a close connection to Pablo’s country. My parents met there in the Peace Corps. My sister Kate, who some of you know, was born there. And I . . . I was . . . adopted there.”
Em later told me that looking out at the audience was like seeing a choir singing on TV with the sound on mute. A sea of mouths dropped opened in an oh! of surprise. I wouldn’t know. All I could see was Pablo looking back at me. I plowed on, my burning hands clutching the podium.
“I’m not telling you guys this to get your sympathy vote. I’m saying it because I feel lucky. Real lucky. It’s no joke. A lot of people in the world don’t ever get the chance to vote. I know, it’s just a high school election. I’ve told myself that, too. But really we’re practicing being free. So vote—even if it’s not for me. We all win when we have a democracy.”
Finally, my courage gave out. I felt like one of those cartoon characters running out past the cliff, looking down, and yikes, there’s no ground beneath her! I turned, wondering how I’d ever navigate my way back to my seat. I remember finding my chair, Em putting her arm around me, Jake giving me his solidarity hand clasp. I remember the audience clapping. A while later, we came off stage and filed down the aisles as kids called out the names of their favorite candidates. Maybe my name was among them, I couldn’t say. I was feeling numb, like I was tumbling down some rapids, carried by the current of whatever was going to happen next. It was an effort to keep my head above water.
Until I heard Pablo’s voice. He was standing up in his row, waving and calling, “Milly, Milly.” All around him my friends were taking up the chant. And suddenly, my Black Monday turned—like that song Alfie always sang to us— “a brighter shade of pale.”
A kind of nervous excitement carried me through the rest of that day. But the following morning, I hid my head under my pillow. Oh my God! What had I done? Today I’d have to face the consequences of my big mouth.
One good thing about having blabbed my secret was that I was no longer worried about the elections. I’d been dreading the announcement of the winners over the public address system this morning. But now I had something else to worry about. Was I really ready to have everyone know I was adopted?
I was wondering which excuse might work for not going to school today—PMS or instant flu?—when I heard the phone ringing downstairs. Moments later, Mom brought up the cordless. “It’s for you.”
“Hola, Milly.” It was Pablo. Could I meet him at the entrance before school today?
I sat up in bed.
“Something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, no, Milly,” Pablo reassured me. “For me, it is very good. I hope for you, too.”
“Give me a hint, please, Pablo,” I pleaded. Take pity on me today, I thought.
“My parents are here with me, Milly. They say hello.”
I caught on. Pablo couldn’t talk freely. But what on earth did he have to say to me that was so urgent and couldn’t be mentioned in front of the Bolívars? He had assured me it was good. And it was his promise and my curiosity that finally propelled me out of bed and into my Banana Republic top and best faded jeans. I put on a little lipstick, a little mascara, all the time pep-talking myself, Go, Milly, go! Win or lose, you do it with style, girl!
Pablo was waiting at the front door of the school, pacing back and forth, just like his father had the night of their national election. His face brightened when he saw me. He nodded toward the picnic table directly in sight of the front office. It was almost always unoccupied.
“I never congratulate you properly,” Pablo began. It was true. Yesterday, I’d been swamped with well-wishers. Em kept saying, “You should have run for VP, Mil. You would have won.”
“Your speech was beautiful, Milly,” Pablo went on. “I told Mamá and Papá. They are so proud that you are from our country.” He said loads of people had come up to him afterward. Mr. Arnold had even mentioned organizing a group from Ralston to go down next year on a service trip. “This is all because of you, Milly,” Pablo added.
It wasn’t that I minded hearing praise, but the national anthem was going to play soon. “Did you have something urgent to talk to me about, Pablo?”
Pablo nodded. “Your mother, she called my mother last night about the invitation.”
“Invitation?”
“To accompany us this summer for our trip home.”
I had totally forgotten that I’d invited myself on their trip! I hid my face in my hands, too mortified to worry about the ugly rash spreading on my skin.
“No, no, Milly, don’t be that way,” Pablo protested, pulling my hands away. “I told you it is good. My mother, she asked me if I asked you. I told my mother, yes, of course, I invited you.”
I looked up at Pablo’s face in shock. He was grinning, but when I kept standing there with my mouth open, his smile faded. “I hope you accept my invitation? You will come, no? Mamá and Papá say you are very welcome.”
“Hey, Pablo, Milly, get in here, you two!” It was Mr. Arnold hollering out the window. “The anthem played five minutes ago. You don’t want a late pass your first day as class senator, do you?”
I felt like those newborns on TV when they get slapped on the butt. Right before they burst out bawling, they always look so shocked, kind of surprised at the air rushing into their lungs. Well, I was shocked by all this unexpected news. I was truly surprised my legs could carry me across the lawn to the front doors. And sure, I wanted to bawl. But I didn’t have a tissue, and I was wearing mascara, and I didn’t want to end up with raccoon eyes and a snotty nose in front of my class. I kept remembering what Grandma had said about the Kaufmans, “Whatever comes our way, we meet it with style.” Especially winning, I thought.
part two
6
el paisito
“THERE IT IS!” Pablo was pointing down.
I leaned over to look out his window. The clouds had parted. Below lay mountains upon mountains of green jungle—just like Mom and Dad had described. But I kept searching for something more. I don’t know what I was expecting—a tiny mom and dad outside a little casita waving up at me?
You’d think the Bolívars had just sighted Treasure Island. “¡El paisito, el paisito!” they started crying.
Mr. Bolívar motioned toward the ground. “¿Qué piensas, Milly?” What did I think? “Beautiful country, no?”
I nodded and smiled.
I was already feeling homesick.
Not that the home I had left behind that morning was a warm, inviting nest to think about. Everyone had been so upset with me—except Mom. She had wanted to come to the airport, but the car was going to be too crowded with Dad, me, the Bolívars, and all the luggage. Mom offered to drive on her own if I wanted her along, but I knew it’d just make it harder when the time came to say goodbye in front of everybody.
After her initial shock, Mom had been super supportive. “I think you should go,” she kept encouraging me. “It’s obviously the right time. I just thought it would happen when you were a little older. And that maybe I could hold your hand through it.”
“Oh, Mom!” I wailed. “It’s not like I’m going to get tortured!” It did cross my mind that not too long ago, people were getting tortured there.
“I know, I know,” Mom said, hugging me. It seemed like every chance she got these days, Mom was throwing her arms around me. “However you have to do it, honey. I trust your judgment.” The one thing she insisted on was that we tell the Bolívars about my adoption. It was too big a secret to keep from them.
“Mom, they already know.” I explained about my speech at school, how Pablo had reported it to his parents. How just this last Saturday when I’d gone to the mall with Mrs. Bolívar to help her buy gifts to take to her family back home, she had said how proud she was that I was from her country. What I didn’t tell Mom was what Mrs. Bolívar had said about my eyes. How they were like the eyes of her sister-in-law, whose name I’d heard before, Dulce, the widow of Mr. Bolívar’s murdered brother, Daniel. Dulce came from Los Luceros, the place Pablo had also mentioned. Hearing all this, Mom might think that I was trying to track down my birth family. And really and truly, I thought of this trip as a chance to get acquainted with the country where I accidentally happened to be born. That was all. Anything more than that would have been scary to think about.
By the time I had finished telling Mom about my speech, she was shaking her head. “The truth is, you’ve been doing a lot of growing up, Milly. I’m really proud of you.” She hugged me then, too.
Not everyone in the family was so understanding. At first, Dad wouldn’t even hear about my going on this trip. He was worried about my safety, he said. Every few weeks, he’d call the State Department to find out if it was okay to travel to a country that had only recently been liberated. They kept reassuring him that the U.S. embassy was open for business, that the new government had won in a clean sweep, that its human rights record in the last three months was impeccable. In fact, the new administration’s Truth Commission was holding trials to investigate and punish all past abuses.
Once he had to admit safety would not be a problem, Dad started in on the cost of the ticket. We couldn’t afford it, he argued. We had to be saving for college tuitions.
“What if I pay for the ticket myself?” I challenged, folding my arms in front of me.
“Where are you going to get seven hundred dollars?” Dad challenged back, folding his arms. Sometimes, at least with our gestures, we did all act like family.
“I have people I can ask,” I said vaguely. “So will you let me go if I pay for it?”
Dad was in a bind. “I guess . . . well . . . your mother might not...” He glanced over at Mom, a desperate look in his eyes.
Mom stood by me, arms folded, waiting for Dad to complete his sentence.
Dad threw his hands in the air. He turned and headed down to his basement workroom, too upset to think up another pretext. I almost ran after him, ready to give up on my trip. It wasn’t worth this much grief. But Mom held me back. “Dad’ll be all right,” she reassured me. “Remember, he had to disappoint Happy in order to grow up, too. He’ll understand.”
Days went by and Dad did not seem any closer to understanding my choice. Finally, Mom had a talk with him— one of those talks where they shut the bedroom door—and first it’s like an overloaded washing machine in there, thundery, off-balance sounds. Then soft, persuasive sounds (rinse cycle), and finally, kissing sounds like a light breeze blowing on the laundry!
Not that Dad came right out and
said yes, Milly, you can go on this trip with my blessing. He just suddenly shifted into talking about the best kind of backpacks for traveling. How I needed a money belt for walking around in the capital. What medicines I should take in case I got dysentery, malaria, typhoid fever . . . What about AIDS, Dad? I almost asked. But I knew that would totally freak him out.
Then there was Nate. For weeks, my little brother followed me around the house, pulling at me to please stay, not to go away. Kate, meanwhile, just would not talk about my trip. The morning of my departure, she refused to come out of her room to say goodbye. Okay, it was six in the morning, but still. Later, I did find a note tucked inside my bag: “YOU BETTER COME BACK OR I’LL KILL YOU!!!” Kate signed off with a smiley face—well, the smile was more like a straight line, and instead of her name, she’d written “YOUR BIG SISTER FOR LIFE.”
At the airport, Dad chatted with the Bolívars, but when it came time for us to say goodbye, he clammed up. Great, I thought, a parent with stage fright during a major scene in my life.
As I went through security beyond the point where Dad could go, I felt a pang. Maybe my family would never take me back again? I turned, ready to run and ask to return home, but when I looked to see where he was, Dad was gone.
We had about two and a half hours in the waiting area. Mrs. Bolívar had insisted on being at the airport way ahead of time. Like we were going on a safari to hunt an airplane, not just board it. “It is the custom in our country,” she explained.
“The custom of nervous people in our country,” Pablo teased.
We sat around, Mrs. Bolívar digging stuff out of her purse, worried that I had not eaten breakfast. “¿Un chocolatico? ¿Una mentica?” A little chocolate? A little mint?
“No gracias,” I kept refusing. My stomach was having a nervous breakdown. I hadn’t skipped breakfast for nothing.
“Ya, ya, Mamá.” Pablo came to my rescue. “Milly is going to change her mind about coming with us.” Pablo knew how exasperating his mother could be. But I had to admire how patient he always seemed to be with her.