Year of the Monsoon (7 page)

“Oh, yes I have,” Nan admitted. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to her next question. “Did it stop with a kiss?”

“Yes.”

Nan’s initial relief was followed by confusion. “Then why were you crying when you got here? What is it you want?” she asked a little defensively.

Leisa turned to face Nan for the first time. “I want you,” she said simply. “I’ve never been able to tell her no, and I don’t know if I could have this time, except, I love you so much. I just had to be honest with you, even if it means you wouldn’t want to be with me anymore after hearing what happened.”

Nan stood at last and came to her. Leisa’s eyes, as she drew near, reminded Nan of the turbulent gray-green surf off the stormy Oregon coast. “You haven’t pushed me away,” she said softly. “I love you, too.”

“Even after this?” Leisa asked, her eyes reflecting her doubt.

Nan’s answer was in her kiss, a kiss that was passionately returned by Leisa as they pulled each other close.

Leisa pulled away, breathing hard. “Please don’t ever lie to me. I can handle anything you’ll ever tell me, but don’t lie.”

Nan tenderly held Leisa’s face between her hands. “I promise.”

Nan wasn’t sure how long she sat at her desk, staring at nothing. For ten years, she had kept that promise. Well, almost. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against her hands. “What have you done?” she groaned.

Chapter 6

IN LATER YEARS, WHEN
Mariela Gonzalez was grown, only a few recollections from her time at St. Joseph’s stood out in her memory. The most vivid, of course, was the paint can. When her mother was alive, Mariela learned very early on how to read her mother’s behavior. Sometimes it was safe to be around her; sometimes Mariela knew she had to stay hidden, unseen, especially when her mother had men with her. That was when she went to her secret place, the place no one else knew about, where she could hide or get out of the building without anyone seeing. Once her mother was in the paint can, it wasn’t like that. Of course, the grown up Mariela realized how childish the memories were, but for six-year-old Mariela, the paint can came with a warm, soft bed, clean clothes and plenty of food, and no shouting or lying on the floor not answering when Mariela called to her.

In her six-year-old mind, all of these good things were tied to Leisa. Things got better after Leisa came for her. Mariela remembered other people as well – Miss Maddie with the wild hair who looked scary but was very nice, and the fat Latina lady who read her stories and put her to bed at night. There were others, but it was Leisa she watched for, waited for.

She remembered one day very clearly. Because she had never attended school, had never been taught numbers or letters, Mariela was being taught at St. Joseph’s the first year to try and get her up to grade level so she could go to school next year. Her teachers, dubious at first that she could make up so much ground in one year, were delighted with her progress. She was proving to be extremely bright, and was absorbing all she was being taught with an insatiable capacity for learning. She was in one of the classrooms after her school day was done, practicing her writing as she copied from a storybook, reading aloud to herself. Leisa walked by and saw her.

“Hello, Mariela,” Leisa said, coming into the classroom and sitting at the next desk.

“Hello,” said Mariela shyly.

“How is school going?”

Mariela beamed. “I can read now.”

“Can you? Read me story,” Leisa said.

Mariela pulled her book closer and read a few pages about a lost puppy. She stumbled over a word she didn’t know, and stopped reading, her head lowered, her hair hiding her face.

“It’s okay,” Leisa reassured her. “That was really good. Let’s sound this word out. I want to find out what happens.”

She helped Mariela sound out the letters in the unknown word and Mariela continued to the end of the story.

“Wow,” said Leisa, giving Mariela’s back a pat. “I had no idea you could read now. That was really good. And you’re learning to write, too.” Leisa scooted closer to see Mariela’s paper. “That’s very good.” Her foot bumped something and she looked down. There sat the paint can on the floor at Mariela’s feet, still decorated with the bits of colored construction paper. Before she could stop herself, Leisa was weeping.

Mariela put her book down and turned to Leisa. “What’s wrong?” she asked worriedly.

Leisa struggled to control her voice. “My mother died a little while ago, too.”

Mariela reached out and laid her small hand on Leisa’s knee. “Do you miss her?”

Leisa gave a watery smile and covered Mariela’s hand with her own. “Yes, I do.”

Mariela frowned. “Don’t you have a can?”

It took Leisa a moment to realize what Mariela was asking. “No,” she said, wiping her eyes. “We had a funeral for my mother… so we could say good-bye to her. She’s buried at the cemetery.”

Mariela thought about this. “But then, she’s not with you.”

“She’s with me here,” Leisa said as she laid her hand over her heart.

Mariela thought some more. “Could I bury my mama?”

Leisa looked into her earnest face. “Are you ready to do that?”

Mariela looked down at the can. “Yes.”

Leisa brushed Mariela’s hair back. “I’ll look into getting a nice place for your mother,” she said.

“Thank you,” Mariela said. She looked up at Leisa again. “Are you an orphan like me now?”

Leisa’s eyes filled again as she nodded. “I’m an orphan again.”

“It was years and years before I understood what she meant by that,” the grown Mariela would recall when she told Maddie about that day.

Leisa paced back and forth in her cubicle, the papers from her adoption folder spread about upon her desk. Lying on top was the handwritten note. It still floored her that she’d had a different name, a different identity. It seems that for six weeks, her birth mother – she couldn’t think of her as the incubator anymore – had kept her, held her, fed her. Maybe cared for her. Love seemed too strong a word. Leisa had always imagined that the delivery room nurses had taken her away immediately, that her birth mother had never even wanted to see her. But that obviously wasn’t what happened. What else didn’t she know?

“If you ever want to search for her, you can tell me,” Rose had said when Leisa was sixteen. They were on their way to Deep Creek Lake for the weekend, “just mother-daughter time,” Rose said.

“I don’t want to look for her,” Leisa said, looking over at her mother from her new position in the driver’s seat.

“Watch the road,” Rose cautioned.

“There’s no connection with her. She didn’t love me. Why would I want to go looking for her?” Leisa asked matter-of-factly.

Rose was quiet for a few seconds. “It might not have been that simple. I know you feel that way now, but you may change your mind,” Rose continued. “It’s natural to be curious.”

Leisa concentrated on a twisty section of road. “What about Dad?”

“Well,” Rose sighed, “he feels a little more protective of you – I think it’s a father thing. He wants to keep you safe from anything that might hurt you. After all,” she laughed, “he did pick you out at the baby store.”

“She was practically begging me to ask questions,” Leisa realized now. “Why didn’t I? Why did I just assume everything had been like some kind of fairy tale?”

It felt now as if her unquestioning belief that she had belonged solely and completely to her parents was as naïve as her one-time belief in the story about the baby store. She knew her parents had loved her; no part of her questioned that. But she had to admit that the discovery of these papers had changed her perception of her relationship with them –
it just feels different now
– and she felt guilty even thinking it.

It was like the summer between seventh and eighth grades. She and her best friend, Julie, had always been able to play make-believe, immersing themselves totally in the characters they made up. Their imaginations had seemed boundless. Then, that summer, Leisa could remember the very day they tried to play and couldn’t. Leisa also remembered that that was the day she became aware of wanting to kiss Julie, and not in play. She could still feel the sadness, the awareness that something beautiful and innocent had gone forever.

She stopped pacing.

That was how this felt, she realized. The innocence with which she had always viewed her family, the simplicity of “we chose you” was gone forever. There had been hard choices and hurt and sacrifice. Only now there was no one to ask.

Almost no one.

She gathered up the folder and grabbed her jacket. She ran up the steps two at a time to Sadie’s office.

“Sadie, I’m leaving for the day,” she said.

Just then Maddie came in. “Everything okay?” she asked as she handed Sadie a file.

“Fine.” Leisa pulled her jacket on. “Just something I have to take care of,” she said vaguely.

It was almost four. She hoped Bruce would still be at the office. She needed to talk to her aunt alone. Pulling her cell phone out as she walked to her car, she called Jo’s number.

“Please be there,” she whispered. When her aunt picked up, she said, “Jo? I need to talk to you. Are you going to be home for a while? I’m on my way now.”

She got there as quickly as traffic would allow. Remembering to bring the folder, she ran up the steps to her aunt and uncle’s front porch. Jo Ann was waiting for her.

“Leisa, what’s wrong, honey?” Jo asked as she closed the door. Leisa hung her jacket on the hall tree, not answering immediately.

“I need to ask you about these,” she said, holding out the folder.

Jo led the way to the dining room where she sat down and opened the folder. Her face blanched as she leafed through the papers. She stopped when she got to the handwritten note.

“Your mother and father planned to talk to you about this,” she said, looking over at Leisa. “Rose kept waiting for you to ask about her, but you never did.”

“Can you tell me about this?” Leisa asked, tapping the note in her aunt’s hand.