If Mom notices something different about me when I come home from the academy, she doesn’t say anything about it. She generally doesn’t grill me about things unless she thinks we need to shore ourselves up for the third degree from Dad.
I help Andy with his science and administer the test so Mom can do laundry. That only occupies an hour, so I head to my room to do some practice SAT reading.
But the lines blur on the page. I’m so full of Blitz, and so upset at Danika’s interference. I know she’s right. I know it. But I don’t want to give Blitz up. It’s the first time I’ve felt alive in four years, other than the moment when Gabriella arrived at Dreamcatcher Dance Academy.
And when I discovered where she was.
For a long time after the adoption, I had no idea what happened to her. I just knew one of the Catholic ministries had handled everything.
When I started volunteering at the church three years ago, I only got to do small tasks, such as resetting the hymnals and putting out the missalettes. I graduated to helping Irma open the offering envelopes and organizing the checks and cash. Then stuffing the mail-outs.
About two years ago, she let me into the locked cabinet where the church records were stored. There were many private files in there. Employment records for the priests and staff. Bundles of prayer requests. Tax documents.
I stumbled upon an adoption certificate. Then another. The file was small. Apparently the church had not been involved in many over the years. Until Gabriella, no baby born of a church member had been adopted through the larger umbrella organization since 1998.
But a copy of her birth certificate was there. And the contract sent by the agency, signed by me, my parents since I was a minor, and the new parents.
I had their names.
It took me months to find them. I didn’t know Mindy yet, had no Internet access, and only vague awareness of social media like Facebook and LinkedIn. I did things the old-fashioned way, digging old phone books out of recycling bins and calling “information” from the church phone.
I got their address and phone number through that, but I didn’t know what to do with it. They lived too far away to walk, and I couldn’t just show up at their house anyway. I did call the number a few times from church and pretend to have dialed the wrong one when someone answered. Once, I heard a child singing in the background and my heart almost exploded. Was that my baby?
Then came Mindy. She was fourteen to my seventeen back then, but already more worldly and wise. And she had a cell phone. She showed me Facebook and how to use it, and then the laptop, which was newer then and often left out while Irma was in meetings.
Only once I was alone with the computer did I dare create a fake account on Facebook and start searching for Gwen. This was before the accident, when she and her husband were happily raising Gabriella as a three-year-old.
I won’t forget the day I saw the status update about the crash. I didn’t know until weeks after it happened, as I didn’t get many chances to turn on the laptop with Irma in the office.
The pictures sent shock waves through me. Gabriella lay in a special bed, bandaged and immobilized. She missed her father’s funeral. I so longed to have been there, holding her hand while everyone was at the service. Was she alone during those hours, with all the family gone? Surely someone stayed with her.
Those were dark days. I considered running away from home, or at least hitching a ride with a stranger to go to the hospital.
I fought with my father, resisted their rules. I stayed out late a few times, sitting in a local park. I really had no idea what to do to rebel. I had very few friends, and Mindy’s family was as strict as mine on going places.
I hated my life, but I hated most of all what my letting Gabriella go had cost her. She was in that car because of me.
Stop.
I have to stop.
Once the blaming begins, there is no end to it.
I close the SAT prep book and go to my bedroom door. Generally, we are not allowed to close our doors except at night, but I angle it as far as I can get away with, only an inch gap, and sit on the floor by my bed. When I’m sure no one is in the hall, I bend down and push aside a plastic bin of old clothes. Behind it is another box.
I pull it out, then pause to listen again. All quiet.
The box is just a cardboard one that once held packages of ramen noodles. When I open it, the top is covered with old T-shirts from my former life. My elementary school logo, one from middle school, and a couple with irreverent expressions like “Don’t blame me, I’m the cute one.” Dad doesn’t allow sass like that now. I set them aside.
Beneath them are the meager things I saved from my pregnancy and the hospital. One oversized shirt my mother gave me to wear, stretched to fit over my belly.
I hadn’t had any actual pregnancy clothes, just a few Goodwill items in larger sizes. My family seemed to feel that if they weren’t labeled maternity, I wasn’t actually pregnant.
It didn’t matter that I dressed like a bag lady. When I started showing, we moved from Houston to San Antonio. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere. Not school. Not the new church. Not even grocery stores. No movies or time at the park or even walking anywhere but our enclosed backyard.
They were so embarrassed. So shocked.
I accepted it. I had done this terrible thing. I deserved punishment.
In the box beneath the shirt is my hospital wristband. It has my name, Livia Mason. And the date I entered the hospital, Gabriella’s birthday. May 12, 2012.
There is a hat with pink stripes. They put it on her head, but it must have fallen off when they took her, because I found it on the floor beneath my hospital bed as we were leaving. I stuffed it in my pants. I knew it was hers because it had a small pull near the crown, a quarter-inch of string that was loose. I noticed it the one and only time I held her.
A volunteer who hadn’t realized the baby was leaving for adoption had given me a little card with her footprints. I stashed it as well, hidden from my parents, and it now lives in the box. The pink card with its smudged ink is easily my most prized possession.
That’s it. A hat. A shirt. An ID band. And footprints.
If I could hook the laptop up to a printer, I would have made pictures of Gabriella to put in my box. I did learn to save them. If anyone dug around really hard on the old Dell, they’d find my secret folder of images, all named boring things like “Incomplete data save 1” or “Backup of system file.” One of my goals has been to find a way to buy a thumb drive to save them on, in case the laptop ever dies or goes away.
But even small tasks like that are impossible when you never go anywhere other than church or dance. And you have no money. If I were a thief, I would sneak out at night and steal one, but I can’t make myself do it.
I’m just grateful to have seen her grow up in the few pictures Gwen allows the public to see. I haven’t dared try to friend her to get access to more, not even as the alias I am online.
Footsteps approach and I rapidly shove everything back in the box and push it under the bed. When Andy sticks his head in, I’m on the floor with the SAT book in my lap. “Dad incoming in five,” he says.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
He takes off, and my heart squeezes. He doesn’t go to public school because of me. Mom came close to leaving Dad. And the boy. He had to go. I have no idea where he is now. He never even knew about Gabriella. No one could. Our lives became about the four of us, solitary and confined as my belly swelled.
So many lives changed in the wake of my actions. Sometimes it’s more than I can bear.
I deserve to be kept away. I’ve earned my banishment. My judgment is poor. And Blitz is probably just one more thing I should be kept from.