Mimi
1997, Fort Lauderdale
Mimi sat back on her bed, the plump pillows cushioning her against the sturdy headboard.
“Done!” she exclaimed out loud to herself.
She had just put the finishing touches on a poem she had written for her parents. They had an anniversary coming up, and she wanted to surprise them. She had recently discovered she had a knack for writing, which she loved. Her teacher had encouraged her after she wrote an essay that focused on a poor migrant family who’d overcome insurmountable odds and found a new life in the U.S. Mrs. Horan had been impressed when she’d read the level of detail Mimi delivered in the essay, and she questioned her about her research. Talking with Mrs. Horan, Mimi had realized she not only loved writing about the family, but she thrived on the research, on digging in to find details someone else might’ve missed. Her teacher suggested she think about going into journalism. “You’re still young and can change your mind, but when you have a passion for something, it shows in your work,” her teacher had told her. “I see that passion in you, Mimi.”
Mimi tucked the poem for her parents into her nightstand drawer, slipped off her bed, and bent down to pull something from under her mattress. It was her secret journal, another something she could credit to Mrs. Horan. Earlier in the school year, Mimi had taken Mrs. Horan’s advice and started writing down her thoughts and dreams. She even had some short stories in her journal. She was still too shy to share her words with her family. Her newfound love of writing was her secret. She was going to present the poem to her parents for their anniversary and gauge their reaction. She loved and trusted her parents, and even though they encouraged her in every way possible, she was still not confident enough to share something she considered so intimate.
Absently, she tugged at her earring and smiled as she tried to envision their response. “Mimi, we didn’t know you had this talent in you! Why have you been hiding this for so long?”
She daydreamed about what she wanted her parents’ reaction to be, but because she couldn’t be certain, she decided to keep her journal and her dreams of writing to herself. At least for now.
She took a few minutes to write some thoughts down about how excited she was to present the poem, but she had something else to do. And since she only had the house to herself for another hour, she had to work fast and make the time count.
She closed her book and slipped it back between her mattress and box spring, tidied her bedspread, and walked to her bedroom door. Before opening it, she kissed the Titanic poster that was hanging on the back.
“When I’m a famous journalist, Leonardo DiCaprio, you’ll be begging me to interview you!”
And with the innocence and excitement of a twelve-year-old on the brink of a future with endless possibilities, she headed for her parents’ bedroom. She had some research to do.
**********
Inside their darkened bedroom, she hunted. Where would it be? They had to keep it somewhere, and she’d had no luck at all going through her father’s office.
She stood in the center of her parents’ walk-in closet and surveyed the shelves. There were boxes on each one, but they were labeled neatly with their contents. Not a single box referred to personal papers or anything similar. Think, Mimi. You want to be an investigative journalist. Investigate. A marriage certificate is personal and something to treasure. Where would you keep something you treasured? Maybe with something else you treasured? She allowed her mind to wander while she imagined presenting her parents with this special gift and her poem.
When she’d noticed a silver-plated teaching certificate on Mrs. Horan’s wall, she’d gotten the idea to have something made for her parents. Her teacher was only too happy to help her. She’d saved her allowance and babysitting money for years with the plan to spend it on something special. Now she knew what it would be. Mrs. Horan told her the personalized plaque would be expensive, and Mimi was thrilled to know she had enough to cover it. But she had a hurdle. She had to bring her parents’ Marriage Certificate to Mrs. Horan so she could have the plaque made.
Where, where, where? She came out of the closet and slowly scanned the master bedroom. Her eyes landed on her mother’s nightstand. A lamp, alarm clock, hand lotion, and a book. The Bible. Her mother’s most cherished possession. Maybe it was folded up in the Bible.
She sat on the edge of the bed as she lovingly ran her hand over the front of the holy book. She smiled when she saw the initials that had been embossed on the bottom right-hand corner. G.L.D. They were so small they were barely noticeable and hard to see against the deep brown leather unless you were looking for them. She knew the history behind this Bible. Her father had told Mimi how he had presented it to her mother for her sixteenth birthday and how the printer had made a mistake. It should have read G.L.L., but Ginny wouldn’t let Tommy have it replaced back then. Maybe she knew she was going to marry him one day. Mimi hugged herself. It was fate.
Mimi smiled as she brought herself back from the romantic memory and softly fanned through the pages of the Bible. Two cards fell out, each containing Scriptures in Ginny’s handwriting. She hoped they weren’t marking anyplace special and returned them to where she guessed they went. She noticed her mother’s neat handwriting in some of the margins on the pages she was flipping through. Almost every single page had a notation. She turned back to the beginning and noticed the first few pages. It was where you could fill in your personal information. Marriages, births, deaths. She smiled as she saw where her and Jason’s names had been recorded, along with the day they were born. Her mother also had notations of when they made First Holy Communion and other important dates.
Her parents’ names were written in with their wedding date, and beneath it was a verse from Scripture. It was Matthew 11:25. Maybe it was a Scripture someone had read at their wedding. Mimi had been to weddings and knew people did that all the time. A backup plan began to form in her mind in case she wasn’t able to find their marriage certificate. Maybe she could do something with this Scripture. Surely they would remember a Scripture that had been read at their wedding. She quickly flipped to the New Testament and, finding the page she’d been looking for, read the words out loud: “At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.’”
She looked up from the Bible and was puzzled. What in the world could her parents’ marriage have to do with Jesus telling God about things He’d kept hidden? What could this Scripture have to do with anything? There was no reference to marriage that she understood, unless she just wasn’t getting it. She reread the Scripture slowly and this time noticed some numbers in the margin next to it. 23-07-15. Her eyes darted back and forth from the Scripture to the numbers. The numbers, the Scripture. The words. One word.
Hidden.
She broke into a wide grin when she realized what she’d discovered. She couldn’t be positive until she tried it out, but she was pretty sure she knew what she was looking at. A lock combination. Or in this case, she hoped, a safe combination. Was this her mother’s way of remembering the combination to the safe in her father’s office downstairs? She’d heard her mother claim many times she could be forgetful. Mimi heard her father telling her mother one time she purposely forgot about his business dinner because she subconsciously didn’t want to go. He said something about how she had a mental block about things she didn’t want to deal with.
Yes, her mother admittedly had a bad memory, and this was her way of making sure she didn’t forget the safe combination. Writing the Scripture reference in an important place in her Bible was her mother’s attempt to not make it obvious, but Mimi knew. She had a locker at school. She could only hope her father’s safe worked the same way.
Mimi laid the cherished book back on the nightstand and made sure everything looked like she’d found it. Yes, Mimi decided. She would make an excellent investigator. Maybe I shouldn’t be a journalist. I could probably be a detective or a secret FBI agent or something.
She strode to the bedroom door. She still had some time to see if she could get the safe open. She was certain she would find her parents’ marriage certificate in it.
And because it probably wasn’t something they looked at often, maybe even never, she could safely return it without anybody even knowing it was gone.