July 2003

Caitlin

THE NEWS WAS STILL SINKING in two hours later when the phone rang. I picked it up and said hello, but there was a funny echo, like the person on the other end was calling from the moon.

“Caitlin?” I heard a few seconds later. “It’s Martin.”

I started to shake.

“You got the scholarship!” I shouted.

My mother came running, so I put him on speakerphone and kept shouting, not because I thought he couldn’t hear me, but because I was too excited to speak otherwise.

“You need to be here by August twenty-fourth!” My mom was now shouting, too. “I just spoke to Candice. We know everything.”

“Mom?” Martin said. “Is that you?”

“Yes, it is me,” my mom said. “We are finally going to meet you!”

“My brother from another mother!” I chimed in. That’s what we had started calling Martin in my household.

“I look forward to that day,” Martin said.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Here in your embassy, with Rebecca,” he said.

“Well, tell her that I will arrange for the airline tickets immediately,” Mom said. “In fact, may I speak with her?”

My mom got out her notepad and started making a list of things we needed to do as Martin’s sponsors once he was here in the United States.

“You did it, Mom!” I said after we hung up.

“Honey, none of this would have happened without you,” she said. “Don’t ever forget that.”

We called my dad and Richie to tell them the good news. Wallace was in Colorado working for a friend his parents had met in Victoria Falls. I called Damon last.

“That is amazing news, Caitlin,” he said. “I’m so proud of you.”

“You’re finally going to meet him,” I said.

“It will be like meeting a celebrity at this point,” Damon said. “I can’t wait.”

“I can’t, either,” I said.

The very same day my mom booked a one-way ticket for Martin. He would leave Zimbabwe on August 15 and arrive in Philadelphia the next day. After waiting nearly six years for this moment, a month felt like forever.