Read Online Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) by Barbara Stuber - Free Book Online

person— mother —would save these crazy things for her daughter? Nothing goes together except the stationery and my old name. But the box didn’t float to the attic by itself. Maybe my parents knew she was loony and weird and were protecting me from knowing it too. Or maybe they hid it because they knew it was a case of clues. Why didn’t they just throw it out?
    I wake up early Saturday with Gone Mom on my mind—her straight black eyelashes, her long hair gathered in a gold barrette, her smile. I pull up the covers. Which of the Sisters of Mercy nuns would have met her the day she left me at the orphanage? Either Sister Immaculata, who was ancient and decrepit even back then, or Sister Evangeline, who was tall and kind and watched over me.
    I picture the staircase there, with its wide strip of worn brown carpet, and remember stepping on the wooden part by the wall so I could hold on, except once when I was crying and Sister Evangeline pulled a huge white hankie, a “dove,” out of her sleeve, lifted me, and wiped my nose—stopping all the dinner traffic just for me. The hankie was soft and smelled like bleach.
    That staircase spilled into a big entry room that echoed, with rows of hooks for our coats and hats and scarves—pine green, red, navy. Walking by, I swept them like fringe.
    I grip the wrist rest and I sit back on my heels, my facewet. The Sisters of Mercy Children’s Home feels so real, as if we are all still eating peanut butter and begging the nuns to hug us. Still desperate to be chosen .
    *  *  *
    Right after breakfast I am on the bus headed for the Mercy Home even though I know it’s become a retirement place for old nuns now. There’s just one in-between stop, so I will only have to fight chickening out once. All I will do is sit in the shelter across the street, the way I did at the House of Chow.
    I step off the bus, check the return schedule.
    The orphanage is a block of red brick, smaller than I remember, with a bulky front porch, lace curtains, a rusty fire escape, and a heavy front door with sidelights. I sink back on the bench, having awakened this place that’s been hibernating inside me.
    The front door swings open. Oh, God. Oh, God. Sister Evangeline! Her long black coat is wrapped over her habit. She carries a sack. After brushing snow off the little roof, she shakes seed into a hanging bird feeder. She checks the mailbox fastened to a fat brick pillar, checks the sky, and heads inside, leaving a solitary trail of footprints in the snow-dusted walk.
    I imagine Gone Mom walking down that front walk thirteen years ago, the wind blowing her hair and the leaves in the gutter. Or was it calm that day? Or maybe summer? Was she wearing gloves and a scarf? Was she crying?
    I look down knowing that this is the same spot, next to the same rusty manhole, where she stood waiting for the bus the day she disappeared. After you give your baby away, I guess it would come down to this—just you, all by yourself, on a square of cement.
    Were you sick or in trouble? Was it just a choice you made? How long did you wait for the bus? Long enough to change your mind? Long enough to run back and pick me up and never let go? You could have . . . in the time it took the bus to come.
    My heart shrinks small as an empty locket.
    The traffic heaves past me. I rest my face in my hands and have the wild notion that Gone Mom and I are still hooked by animal instinct and if I just keep sitting here she’ll show up. Since I’ve come back, she will too.
    There are no orphans here now, just Sister Evangeline, whose “family” has rippled away from the rock she was for us. But it is still her home. The limbs of my family tree should include her and my orphan sisters and the nuns. Weren’t we a family? Didn’t this count? Should a waif’s reverse vanish when she gets chosen? That’s what Mother tried to do—make my birth