Tuesday afternoon and still no delivery from FedEx. It’s almost five o’clock and Ruby debates the wisdom of calling Sister Beatrice and simply asking if she’s sent the file. She’d promised herself not to get concerned until Wednesday, but it’s a promise she can’t seem to keep. Instead she calls the FedEx depot nearest Harmony Farms. Just in case it got misdirected. Alas, she is told, without a tracking number, yada, yada.
Ruby sits outside on one of Bull’s lawn chairs to make the call to the convent. The dogs are playing behind her, some kind of rough and tumble “I’ll chase you if you chase me” game of their own design. Abruptly, the Hitchhiker ends the game and joins Ruby in the side yard. Boy wanders over to his water bowl and laps noisily. Flops onto his left side in the overgrown yellow grass, instantly asleep. His yellow coat blends in so well with the grass that Ruby, seated across the yard, can hardly make him out.
Hundreds of miles away, the convent office phone rings and rings. Each buzzy repetition sounding increasingly like someone giving Ruby the Bronx cheer. “Come on, Karen, Sister, whoever you are. Answer the phone.”
If the nun cum office manager has sent the file, Ruby wants the tracking number. If she hasn’t, well, Ruby will handle that politely but firmly.
Finally, just before the answering machine clicks into action, someone picks up the phone. “Sacred Heart Convent and School for Girls.” The voice is different, older sounding.
“Bea?” Ruby quickly corrects herself. “Is this Sister Beatrice Johnson?”
“No. This is Mother Superior. How may I help you?”
It must be hardcoded, this instant sense of fear. The thought of speaking to a Mother Superior again, despite all the time that has passed, gives Ruby a chill. Of course, the woman who sent her to Monsignor LaPierre, the woman who accepted his cruel order of isolation to punish her without protest, is long gone. Ruby recalls the far more benign face of the current Mother Superior on the convent’s website. Finding her voice, Ruby politely asks for Sister Beatrice. “She’s sending me something and I haven’t yet received it.”
“What is it?”
The Hitchhiker noses Ruby’s elbow, almost shakes the phone right out of her hand. Behind her, Boy jumps up and barks at something she cannot see.
“Some information about the school.”
“Well, I’m sure she has. She’s very responsible. Patience is a virtue.” The head nun chuckles as if she’s coined a new joke. “What did you say your name was?”
“My name is Ruby Heartwood.”
“Were you a student here?”
The sound of an engine, slightly squeaky brakes. A transmission thrown into park.
Ruby pushes herself out of the lawn chair. “Maybe.” She thumbs off the phone. With the Hitchhiker by her side, she meets the FedEx man halfway.
It’s a most curious thing. My companion is as excited as if she was about to give me a special treat, but she is also afraid, as if she is expecting pain. I can’t quite suss out what’s going on except that I maybe should have kept that strange man away, not let him give her that flat object smelling of many hands. But she seems to like this thing, holds it up against her as if it was as precious as I know I am to her. She is talking, but none of her words are part of my collection of human utterings. First we go back to sitting outside, and then we go into our little mobile house. She closes the door, then opens it. Stares out at the big house where Boy’s man lives. Boy has followed us to our mobile house and is waiting patiently outside for me to rejoin him. He’s napped and now he’s interested in playing. Still she holds the flat object in her hands, not doing anything with it. This is not a book. I know what a book is, and yet she seems to be staring at it like she does those. Finally, she sets the thing down and picks up her phone. Taps it. With my excellent hearing, I can discern the little whoosh sound she causes it to make, almost immediately followed by a ding sound.
“For God’s sake, Ruby, open it.” Sabine doesn’t bother texting back. She calls her mother.
“Will you stay on the line?”
“I will.”
The Hitchhiker watches as Ruby pulls the cardboard tab to open the mailer. Her little nose is wriggling, taking in the history of its journey from a convent to a VW bus. Ruby slides a manila folder out. It is crisply new, no doubt a replacement for the one the good sister had taken out of the box of files. She’s attached a bright pink sticky note: Hope you find what you’re looking for. Blessings, Sr. Bea.
“Me too.” Ruby pulls the note off, sticks it to the table. She lays the folder on the table beside it and places her hands on it. It is fuller than she’d imagined. Almost like there is something other than paper in there.
“Mom, hey, you there?”
Ruby had forgotten that Sabine was listening in.
“Just looking for a vibe.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, open it.”
Ruby can hear the sound of Beenie’s refrigerator door, the click click click of the ignition of the gas range. She’s getting dinner started. The kids are probably on their way back from some activity. Her life is busy.
“Okay. Here goes.” Ruby flips the cover, and the first thing revealed is a stack of report cards in kraft envelopes. Kindergarten through eighth grade, in order. Ruby randomly selects one, third grade. She wasn’t a bad student. Remarks are generally favorable. She pulls the report card out of the last one, her eighth-grade year. She was still a solid B student, but the remarks are less favorable. The last quarter of that year is blank. A note at the bottom in black ink: Left without permission. Fail for the year. Ruby looks at the signatures of the various teachers and is surprised that she can call most of them to mind, that their faces framed by their wimples are vivid. “Report cards.”
“That’s all?”
“No. That’s what’s on top.”
“Keep going.”
Health records come next. Inoculations, colds, a bout with chicken pox. Nothing extraordinary, nothing that would distinguish her from any of the other children there. Ruby remembers having the chicken pox. The itching. The warnings by the exasperated caretakers to not scratch if she didn’t want scarring. The way Sister Clothilde fed her chicken broth and laughed when Ruby asked if that’s how she got the chicken pox in the first place.
“Maybe you should flip to the back of the file,” Sabine says.
Ruby doesn’t want to. Doing it this way, piece by piece feels more correct, as if she’s peeling the layers away and at the end she will find the heart of the matter.
Beneath the medical records Ruby is surprised to find drawings that she had made in the early grades. Imagine the nuns keeping those, keeping them in a file. Crayon drawings illustrating the life she was leading—a big building, a group of small people, a couple of stick figures wearing something that must represent a habit. Scrawled black crayon a little beyond the edges of the garment. Behind that picture, another of the life she had wished to have. A house, two big stick people and two small ones. A towering tree with bright red apples dotting the green. No Westfalia, no carnival rides, no conical tent with a banner. Ruby is unaccountably saddened by the hopefulness of her child self. When did she stop wanting a normal family? When did a Volkswagen become her home?
“Ruby? You okay?”
“Fine.” She sets the drawings aside. “Fine.”
She lays her hands flat on the next of the documents within the folder. She can feel the raised texture of an imprint. She waits, knowing that if she is patient, she might see something, as if this last piece of her history was a tarot card or a palm open to interpretation. Some truth. Some explanation.
“Open your eyes, Mom. Get the truth the easy way. Read the last document.” Leave it to Sabine to know what Ruby was doing.
Three sheets of legal paper stapled together are next. There is rust bleeding from the staple, like dried blood. The heading on the first sheet is in both English and French. It is a pro forma intake form. This is the legal document that put her in the care of the Sacred Heart orphanage, giving them custody of a female infant, surrendered on May 3, 1964, date of birth, May 1, 1964. Surrendered by …
A shaky signature, almost illegible. Ruby stares at it. In the same way her clearest psychic visions reveal a plain fact, a name appears. Estelle Williamson. Surrendered by.
Can you die of finding out the basic fact of your life? Ruby sits back, pulls the dog into her arms and rocks. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or weep. Breathless is how she feels, nearly out of body. Could this Estelle Williamson be her mother? Is it remotely possible that it would be this simple? She looks closer at the signature line, reaches for her reading glasses. No. Faded but distinct is a printed word beneath the signature: agent. Not parent. Not mother. Surrendering agent.
The out of body sensation quickly descends into a common garden variety disappointment.
There is one last piece of documentation in the file. A Baptismal certificate dated May 10, 1964, presumably a week after her surrender.
Name of Child: Mary.
Two nuns stood as godmothers and the custodian as godfather. She remembers him. He was always kind to the girls and now she knows why; he was probably godfather to half of them.
The dog licks her nose, presses her head beneath Ruby’s chin. “I love you,” she thinks. Ruby cuddles the dog, then remembers her daughter still listening in. “Well, it’s a start.”
“Start to what?”
“Finding my mother.” Ruby closes the file folder. “I’ve got a name. If I can find this Estelle person, I know that I’m that much closer to finding my mother.”
“And at least we can now celebrate your real birthday,” Sabine says, and signs off.