Early the next morning, Annie waited in a long line at the post office to mail the brown envelope addressed to Rose. In it, the letter she and Will had promised to send to the social worker.
Dear Birth Mother,
We wanted to share these three photos with you and to let you know how blessed we feel because of you. Our son is healthy, smart, beautiful, happy. There is no greater gift of life and love than what you have given us, no words to express the depth of gratitude in our hearts.
Leo sat in the jogger, flipping pages of his book on shapes and colors. Will stayed home to review Bernardo’s contract. He told Bernardo he’d let him know either way at the end of ten days.
She was nervous but determined about visiting Edward one more time this afternoon, once Leo was asleep. Again, she found herself resorting to secrecy. She didn’t mention her intention to Will.
Sleep-deprived, she wished she could push the hours ahead, see Edward now, but it was only nine o’clock, too early.
Annie and Will had written the letter for Leo’s birth mother days ago, rearranging the words again and again. It wasn’t possible to get them right. Giving up a child, handing him over to a strange couple as some kind of gift? The enormity of that act of courage was too large for words. But that was what it was: an act of courage, and faith.
Rose would forward the envelope to Calloway, who would send it on to the agency in North Carolina, which would pass it on to Leo’s birth mother. Annie didn’t know where his birth mother lived. Had she moved? What was her life like this whole last year? She would be twenty-one now.
Calloway didn’t have the authority to do this, but she felt sure he would open the envelope before sending it on, his long, thin fingers unable to resist stroking the edges of Leo’s photos.
At the post office, the line ahead of her did not move. The concept of service was a joke in this Eastern European country. None of the postal workers made eye contact with customers, or hurried or made an extra effort. The old communist posturing still ruled in a faded glory kind of way. Hilarious to watch when she didn’t need to be anywhere, infuriating when she did. Today she had no place to go, only time to kill until evening when Agnes, the sex escort or companion—my God, was she living a crazy dream?—would pick them up at seven o’clock to go to Stephen’s flat. Will said to think of Agnes as their chauffeur.
Leo kicked the metal footplate on the jogger. The narrow, windowless lobby with dusty floors smelled of human sweat and ink. Two weak fans barely stirred the air. At this rate, it would take an hour to mail one letter.
Leo kicked again. “Up, Momma,” he said, stretching his arms toward her. An elderly woman near the front of the line motioned for Annie to come forward.
“Kicsi baba,” the woman said. She pointed to Leo. A few others in line nodded in agreement.
“Köszönöm,” she said. “Thank you.” Annie moved to the front of the line, just as she had at the airport when she first arrived.
She gave her envelope to the postal worker, paid for the stamps, and smiled to the nice people in line on her way to the exit door. Outside, an explosion of sunshine disoriented her. She raised her arm to block the light—like that day, like her dream last night that was oh, so unbearably familiar to her: Tracy zigzagging on her bike, Greg aiming the ball, an aluminum flash like sunlight off the car, metal clanging, and Tracy tipping, sliding. Their mother’s summer robe fluttering across the driveway. Tracy on the ground, quiet and still. The vision would never go away.
Leo put his hands over his eyes and started crying.
“Sorry, hon,” she said, turning the jogger so that the sun was at his back.
She headed to the Parliament. Leo could play in the garden there and she had a hunch that the Roma sisters might be there, suspecting it was their regular turf. She had a peculiar curiosity to know where these children lived, as if knowing where they slept at night might convince her they would be okay.
At the Parliament, she sat on a bench watching Leo as he crisscrossed the narrow walkways between hedges of roses.
“Ower,” Leo said.
Her hunch was soon realized: a thin-limbed girl jumped out from behind a hedge and handed her son a flower. A second girl appeared. Thrilled, Annie immediately recognized the two sisters and walked over to them.
“Do you speak English?” Annie spoke slowly.
Leo giggled.
The taller one shook her head and held out her hand for money. The younger girl copied her sister, shaking her open palm. They both had beautiful teeth, broad and white, the younger one with a small gap where a tooth was coming in on the side.
“Ow-er,” Leo said, showing Annie the rose.
The older sister giggled and pushed her hand toward Annie again.
Annie took Leo’s hand instead and said, “Name? What is your name?” She repeated the question in Hungarian, and waited for the Roma girls to decide whether to tell her. If she did, Annie would reward them with a dollar.
“Sigh-ra.”
“Sigh-ra,” Annie repeated.
The girl nodded, her long skirt sweeping her ankles. The younger one smiled.
“Sigh-ra. This is Leo. I’m Annie.”
Sigh-ra opened her palm and shook it.
“Sit here. Itt.” Annie pointed to the bench and moved toward it, but Sigh-ra wasn’t interested. She shook her palm again, her fawn-colored skin smooth and weathered. Annie gave both girls a dollar, wanting them to stay. Instead, Sigh-ra grabbed her sister’s hand and began to skip away as if she knew she had won over Annie. Leo was smitten and started after them, shrieking, so Annie scooped him up into the jogger, snapped the safety belt in place, and followed them.
Sigh-ra turned it into a game of twirling, then stopping, the younger one in sync with her sister. Annie couldn’t resist keeping pace, gently pursuing them, as if she were chasing an alternate reality of Tracy and herself in another life, another dream.
Leo laughed at every silly gesture that Sigh-ra made with her mouth and hands. Equally charmed by him, the sisters slowed and walked alongside him, just beyond his reach, enthralled by Leo’s giggling and unfiltered delight. Listening to the children’s laughter, Annie felt happy, too. Happier than she’d felt in months.
They turned down a boulevard, past a marketplace and narrower streets that look unkempt, with cracked sidewalks and buildings black with soot. Annie couldn’t wait to see where the Roma girls lived, even as another part of her felt cautious, possibly rash for wandering into this unfamiliar section of town. So many people had warned her about Gypsies. Sigh-ra and her sister were children. Where was the harm? It was the middle of the day. People were out.
She followed the sisters to a grid of streets with few trees. Finally, the girls turned into an old building with a courtyard filled with a dozen dark-skinned children playing a game with stones. Barefoot toddlers. Children with dirt-dusted limbs. Mothers in skirts, like the woman who sold Annie a flower at Luigi’s. Maybe this was where Sandor lived. Odd to think, after all these months Annie still didn’t know.
A strange feeling of disquietude filled the courtyard. Unsure what to do, Annie quickly handed Sigh-ra an American twenty-dollar bill, the equivalent of a whole week’s worth of groceries. A windfall of money. Was it wrong? She didn’t know. Leo reached out his arms to get out of the jogger, wanting Annie to unbuckle him so he could follow the girls who had run into the middle of the large group of Roma children, all of whom had stopped what they were doing to stare. Now all the mothers and children in the courtyard—there were no men—had stopped to face her, lined up in a wall of defense.
“Nem,” a woman called to Sigh-ra, shaking her finger at Annie, speaking in a rapid sing song chain of sentences Annie couldn’t understand.
“We have to go, hon.” She waved to the two sisters and guided the jogger back to the street, away from the women and children. Annie didn’t need to understand their words. It was obvious that she and her son were not welcome there.