Finding Grace (5 page)

Chapter Fourteen

I've opened all the windows in the apartment and a fresh breeze is blowing in. Is it disloyal to want to blow all the stale cigarette smell out of the curtains and rugs? It's not like I'm trying to get rid of Granny. She's been gone for exactly forty-two days now and that's a fact, and even though I still miss her tons, it doesn't hurt quite as bad.

I'm by myself because Mom has gone to Queen Elizabeth Park. I refused to go (it's about time I took a stand). Music from the ice-cream man's truck drifts up from the street. I dig six cents out of the jug in the kitchen and run out of the apartment and down the two flights of stairs. The ice-cream man knows me and hands me a lime Popsicle without me saying a word.

I've had a lime Popsicle every day for three weeks now. I don't think I will ever get sick of lime Popsicles! I sit in the sun on the steps outside the apartment building and lick it slowly.

Summer is going by way too fast. One more week and July will be over. I get this knot in my stomach when I think about school starting again, so I think about the swim team instead. We practice every morning from six-thirty until nine o'clock. At first it was torture to get up so early, but now I kind of like it. I'm the only passenger on the bus at six o'clock and the driver and I have gotten quite friendly. When he sees me, he always says, “The early bird catches the worm,” which makes me think of Granny.

Green lime juice is running down my arm. My Popsicle is collapsing and I finish it off in a couple of bites. I watch the postman. He's swinging along the sidewalk toward me, whistling.

I wait outside while he fills the silver boxes in the downstairs hall in our building.

“See you, squirt,” he says, bounding past me down the steps.

Our old box belongs to someone else now and our mail is forwarded to Granny's box. We hardly ever get anything, but I go upstairs and get the key and then come back down to check.

Today there
is
something – a big square white envelope. It feels stiff, like there might be cardboard inside. It's addressed to Granny and there's no return address. I take it up to our apartment and put it on the kitchen table and stare at it. Up until now, when mail comes for Granny, Mom opens it. But I'm curious.

I tear back the flap at the top of the envelope and slide out a photograph. It's of a girl, about my age. It's not the kind of picture you take quickly. Instead, it looks like she was posing for it. The girl is sitting on a chair and there's a blue background, like a fake sky with painted clouds, behind her. She's all dressed up in a navy dress with a white collar and white buttons down the front and she has curly brown hair and blue eyes.

Who is she?

I turn the photograph over.

On the back someone has written in flowing handwriting

Grace

June 23, 1954

Grace!

June 23!
My birthday!

I feel like I have been punched in the stomach. I sink into a chair.

Who is she?

I turn the photograph over and study her face again. I have never seen her before in my life. Why did she have her picture taken on my birthday? And who sent it to Granny?

There's nothing on the outside or inside of the envelope to give me a clue.

I look at the back of the photograph again.

Grace
.

I notice some more writing in the bottom corner. It's in black ink and looks like it was done with a stamp. It says:
Hal Rhodes Photography Studio, Harrison Hot Springs, BC
.

I've never heard of Harrison Hot Springs.

And there's only one Grace that I know. She's mine and she's private and I don't understand why her name is on the back of this photograph.

I'm still sitting at the kitchen table when I hear Mom's key in the door. She's carrying a paper bag of groceries; she comes into the kitchen and dumps it on the kitchen counter. “How was swim – ”

Her voice breaks off. She stares at me and then at the photograph on the kitchen table. Her face goes dead white.

I swallow.

“Who is Grace?” I manage to ask.

Chapter Fifteen

“I can't talk about this right now,” Mom says.

“You
have
to!”

Mom and I stare at each other.

“Who is Grace?” My voice is shaking.

Mom leans against the counter. She suddenly looks old and very tired, and I feel a tiny pang of pity. But I need to know.

“
Mom!
”

She pushes back a strand of her hair. Her eyes swim with tears. “I don't know where to begin,” she says.

I harden my heart. I'm fed up with Mom's crying. “You could start with the truth.” I pick up the photograph. “Her name is on the back. Grace. So is my birthday. Who is she?”

At first I don't think Mom is going to answer me. She takes a tissue out of the box on the counter and wipes her eyes. She sits down beside me at the table. She reaches out her hand as if she is going to touch the photograph, but then she pulls back.

Outside the kitchen window, a lawn mower rumbles. Some kids shout. It's a normal day. But it's not normal in here. My heart is thumping in my ears.

“Grace is your sister,” Mom says finally.

Her voice is so soft and I think I must have heard her wrong.

“
What?
”

“Your sister.” Mom twists her hands together in a knot. “You want the truth, Hope, so here it is. Grace is your twin sister.”

Is this some kind of joke? Is she serious?

“What are you saying?” I whisper.

Mom bites her lip so hard I think she is going to make it bleed.

“
Mom
. You have to tell me.”

“You have a twin sister. Her name is Grace. I gave her up for adoption when you were both two and a half years old.”

Mom covers her face with her hands. “This is hard for me to talk about.”

“Hard for you? What about me?” My voice is getting louder and louder, but I don't care. “I don't get it. Grace is real? All this time I thought she was someone I made up; and now you're telling me she's real?”

“Yes.”

“And you just gave her away?”

“Yes.” Mom looks at me now. “No, not like that. I didn't just give her away. I couldn't look after her.”

“Why not? You looked after me. Why couldn't you look after her?”

Mom is silent.

“Well, why couldn't you look after her?”

“She had polio,” Mom says.

Polio
.

The word sends a shiver through me. I've only known one kid with polio. Her name was Patty and she was in my grade two class. She had metal braces on both her legs. I remember feeling so sorry for her.

“It was hard enough having twins.” Tears slide down Mom's cheeks. “I was only nineteen when you were born. I was exhausted all the time. And then Grace got polio. She was in this iron lung in the hospital and the doctor said that when she finally came home she would need all kinds of special care – hot compresses every two hours and exercises. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it.”

“So you gave her away.”

“There was a nurse at the hospital. Her name was Sharon Donnely. She fell in love with Grace. She worked in the polio ward. She knew how to do all the things for Grace. And she and her husband, Bill, couldn't have children of their own, and they desperately wanted a child. We talked, and then…”

Mom's voice trails off.

I can't believe what I'm hearing. “What about me? Didn't I wonder where Grace had gone?”

“You did at first. But you were little and I think after awhile you forgot you had a sister.”

“Because you lied to me. You told me Grace was imaginary. That I had made her up. You and Granny. You both
lied
to me.”

Mom puts her hand on mine, but I jerk away.

I'm crying now too. “How can she be my twin?” I gulp through my sobs. “She doesn't look at all like me.”

A sudden thought hits me. I stare at the photograph again. Curly brown hair. Blue eyes. A perfect nose. “She looks like you.”

“You're fraternal twins,” Mom says, “not identical twins. You were totally different, right from the day you were born.”

She hesitates. “There are more pictures. Granny hid them in her cupboard. I didn't know. I found them when we were looking for the life insurance. Sharon and I had agreed that we wouldn't have any contact, but Granny must have talked to her. Granny was so upset when Grace went. She must have made Sharon agree to send a picture every year on your birthday.”

The big brown envelope. I feel sick. I hate Mom – I really hate her.

I stand up. “I don't want to see any more pictures. And I don't want to talk about this anymore.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispers. “I'm so sorry.”

I swipe at my wet cheeks. “No you're not.”

I take a big shuddery breath. “If I had gotten sick would you have given me away too?”

Mom looks like I have slapped her.

“How can you call yourself a mother?” I shout.

I run out of the kitchen.

• • • • •

I think I've only been asleep for a hundred seconds, but when I turn on the light beside the couch and look at my watch it's two o'clock, the middle of the night. Mom had made me a grilled cheese sandwich for my supper but I refused to eat it. So the last thing I ate was the lime Popsicle, but I don't feel hungry.

I have a sister.
It's like a voice keeps saying that over and over in my head, but I still don't believe it.

I get out of bed and peer out the living-room window. It's raining lightly and the street is slick and black in the yellowish light from the street lamp.

Grace isn't my imaginary friend. She's my
sister.
How could Mom have kept that a secret?

When I turn back to bed, I notice a big brown envelope on the table beside the couch. My heart jumps. Mom must have sneaked in while I was sleeping.

I tip the envelope onto my bed and a stack of photographs slides out. The one on top is the one I've already seen. The others are in order and I lay each one on my rumpled sheets. I study Grace's face as she gets younger and younger. She is smiling in all the pictures and she seems to always be changing her hair: short, long, braids, high pigtails. Even in the braids, you can see the curls escaping around her face.

When I get to the last picture, I feel like I've been hit in the stomach. There are braces on Grace's legs. Like Patty in my second grade class.

“
Polio
.”

I whisper the word, but it sounds as loud as a drum in my ears. I turn the photograph over. The same flowing letters.

Grace. June 23, 1947

1947 was seven years ago. She was four. I don't know what she looked like before that. I don't know what she looked like the last time I saw her. I close my eyes. I try to force my brain to remember, but I can't.

A lump presses in my throat. I
can't
remember.

What would it be like to have braces on your legs? Heavy. Clumsy. Ugly. I remember Patty crying once at recess because her legs hurt.

Grace looks normal in the other photographs, but she's sitting down and you can't really tell if there is anything wrong with her legs. I look on the backs of all the photographs. Starting from 1949, they all have the same stamp in the bottom corner.

Hal Rhodes Photography Studio, Harrison Hot Springs, BC.

Tears sting my eyes and my nose starts to run.

I have a sister. And I can't even remember one tiny thing about her
.
This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Suddenly I want Mom.

She's not in her bedroom or in the kitchen. The apartment is so quiet it's eerie. I can hear the fridge humming.

Just like that, I know where Mom is. My hands fumbling, I take off my pajamas and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I throw on a jacket and dash out of the apartment. I should be scared stiff to be outside in the middle of the night, but I'm not. I race down the street, the rain like mist on my face. I run all the way to the park.

Mom is sitting on her bench. She's in her nightie and her hair is in wet, stringy ringlets around her shoulders. I can't tell if it's rain or tears on her face.

I sit down beside her.

She's shivering so hard it frightens me.

It's weird. I was so mad at Mom, but my anger has disappeared. And even though right now she looks crazier than ever, I know that my mom is not crazy. All these years, she's been missing Grace.

I hold Mom's hand. It feels like ice.

“I saw her at Stanley Park once,” Mom says. “You and Granny had gone to get an ice-cream cone and I saw her coming out of the washroom with Sharon. She was little. Four years old. I saw the braces first and I thought,
That little girl has polio
, and then I saw that it was Grace.”

“Did she see you?” I say.

“No. I turned around until they were gone. But I went to their house a few months later. I knew where they lived. I was going to tell Sharon I couldn't do it like this anymore. I needed to see Grace.”

Mom is quiet then. Shivering even harder.

“What happened?” I ask.

“There were different people living there,” Mom whispers. “They told me an awful thing. Sharon and Bill had been killed in a car accident. It must have happened soon after I saw Grace.”

“Killed?” My stomach flips over. “What did you do?”

“I couldn't do anything. They said they had heard that a great-aunt had taken Grace. But they didn't know the aunt's name or where she lived.” Mom's voice wobbles. “A great-aunt. She might be really old. I don't want someone really old raising Grace.”

“Granny was sort of old,” I say. I don't add that a lot of the time Granny looked after me more than Mom did.

Mom pulls her hand away from mine. She twists her fingers together. “Losing her parents like that. I can't bear to think of Grace going through that.”

Her parents. For a second, I don't know who she means. Then I realize that she's talking about the people who adopted Grace, the people called Sharon and Bill.

People that Mom hardly knew. I push that thought away. I don't want to blame Mom for any of this. She sounds so sad, and I don't know what to do.

“I really thought I would find Grace again one day,” Mom says. “I thought that maybe she liked parks and I would find her in a park. Stupid idea, right?”

“Not really,” I say.

“I don't know if she's okay, Hope. I don't know if she's happy.”

“I don't think the great-aunt lives in Vancouver,” I say slowly. “I think she lives in a place called Harrison Hot Springs. It's on the back of the photographs.”

Mom stares at me. Her blue eyes look dark, like the ocean on a cloudy day.

“We could go there, Mom. To Harrison Hot Springs. Wherever that is.”

I take a big breath. It's the only thing that will make Mom better.

“We could find Grace.”