A ware again of how quickly it could end, how quickly she could lose something precious, Plum said, “I want to show you something.”
Opal was lying on the floor like a dog in the sun, fingers clasped beneath her head, staring at nothing.
“You asked if what I want to talk to your father about was worth getting arrested over.” That Plum wasn’t ready now to call him by name said plenty. He. Your father. Father. The priest. Reverend. Any one of those monikers would do. Just not his name, which she had not uttered in eight years, not since the day she left Anchovy heavy with disappointment that all she found of her daughter was a naked, dirty doll. No identifiable trace of him. That she would call him Father and Reverend, despite knowing what kind of a man he had been before he entered the seminary, made her chuckle. But there was no joy in the sound. She wanted to cry, wanted to let out all the emotions that had built up. And she cried, fumbling in her bag as the tears clouded her vision, reaching down, wading through a package of chewing gum and keys, a notebook and a novel, a book of puzzles, more fruit and nut bars, until at last she found the pouch with the palm-sized mirror inside. “Come over here.” She held the mirror up at arm’s length, watched her daughter watching her, watched herself watching her daughter, two pairs of topaz eyes, unusual in their dark skin.
“Look at me.”
And Opal did. Plum looked back at the face she hadn’t been able to see in the dark, back at the eyes, so like her own, eyes that stood out against such dark skin, the eyes that at one time or another prompted a stranger to ask if she wore colored contact lens. The high cheekbones. The dimples. Down at the slight build, a dancer’s or runner’s body, without the defined or bulging muscles. Down even further to Opal’s long toes splayed in her sandals. Looking and waiting for Opal to fit the pieces together. Looking and seeing a gradual awakening, the glimmer of tears. Looking and seeing what she hadn’t expected—something a bit like disappointment or disbelief. Opal blinked and looked away instead of embracing Plum.
“I am your mother.” Plum waited a moment.
“You’re dead. He said you died in childbirth.”
“I wanted to name you Marissa. It’s Spanish, means ‘of the sea.’ Your birth wasn’t easy. I slept after you were born and when I woke up he was gone. And you were gone. Without a word. Without even leaving a note. I couldn’t even remember your face. Didn’t know where he took you.”
“He told us you were dead.”
“What else could he say?”
“I don’t believe you. He wouldn’t just leave like that. That’s not the kind of man he is. And if that is true, then how did you find me?”
“I didn’t know it was you. I saw his picture in the paper. I wanted him to tell me, on your birthday, why he left, why he took you.”
“Kidnapped? You’re saying he kidnapped me? He wouldn’t do such a thing. My father wouldn’t do such a thing. He’s a priest.” Opal dropped her body back into the space beneath the robes, hiding but not quite hidden.
“He wasn’t always a priest. He was a different man then.”
Opal didn’t leave, didn’t reject outright the possibility that Plum was right. Yet, Plum couldn’t haul her catch in, couldn’t own her, couldn’t take Opal’s hand. Not yet. Opal, so like a clam, washed ashore and exposed, then burrowing back into wet sand for protection against the pounding wave. Plum could lose her forever. Plum couldn’t lose her forever. Not again.
She didn’t beg. The girl and the moment were hers.