Mama’s pocketbook.
My mama’s pocketbook.
I opened it carefully, like maybe the air trapped inside was still breathing with a whisper of her love for me. But it smelled stale. Inside was a wallet. Gas credit card. A couple of receipts. And an old driver’s license. I looked at the picture of Mama on that license, which gave me more information about her than I’d ever had in my whole life.
She smiled too big in photos.
Her hair had once been dyed red.
Her birthday was April 25.
Such a pretty date. Nothing like the cold, wintry November dates of DiDi’s and my birthdays. I liked the sound of it. April 25. I wondered if she had birthday parties in the spring when she was little. Something else was rolling and rattling around the bottom of the pocketbook. I reached in and pulled out an old envelope. Underneath it was a faded gold tube. As I slowly twisted it open, a whole dried-out pinky-red lipstick rose up.
Now the tears came. A lifetime of wishing for Cherries in the Snow, and here DiDi had a tube all along. And was probably trying to forget about it.
I pulled a piece of paper from the envelope. DiDi’s birth certificate.
And that was it.
All that she took to start our new lives together. Stolen money, now long gone, an old lipstick, and proof from the Verity Hospital of the day she was born.
The top of the closet was empty. There was nothing left of Mama for me to find.
I sat there, exhausted and numb.
I touched the star on my forehead.
But it wasn’t a star anymore. It was just a scar.
I put the lipstick back and picked up DiDi’s birth certificate.
Delta Dawn.
I tried to imagine DiDi as a baby. Had Mama ever loved her, either? Or had we both been born into a sad, sad life? Not wanted by anyone?
Typed on the form, all crooked and careless. Names and dates not even lined up in their proper places. I pictured a pretty nurse on some old-fashioned typewriter, rolling her eyes and just trying to get the job done as quickly as possible. I touched each crooked word with the tip of my finger.
Father’s name: [Unknown]
I made a face.
Mother’s name: Delta Dawn Barnes
Child’s name: Delta Dawn Barnes
I leaned in closer. The ink was all smudgy and under MOTHER’S NAME, it kind of looked like it said Delta Dawn Barnes II. And under CHILD’S NAME, it looked like Delta Dawn Barnes III.
Which didn’t make any sense, because Mama was the first Delta Dawn.
And DiDi was the second.
I shook my head. That snotty nurse in her fancy white uniform—being all careless and not giving a darn about other people’s important life documents. Why, she had even typed the wrong day for baby DiDi’s birthday. She had typed… mine.
I blinked and looked again.
Some kind of voice in my head was warning me to stop.
But I didn’t listen.
I looked at that birth certificate and I read it.
And again.
But no matter how many times I read, it didn’t change the fact that the baby named Delta Dawn III was born on my birthday, in my birth year.
And the mother named Delta Dawn II was born on DiDi’s birthday—but with a year that was not nine years away from mine. It was a good six years older than DiDi was supposed to be.
And then I couldn’t think and I couldn’t breathe, and the pressure in my ears began building and building till my head filled with the roar of a train heading into a tunnel where there was no coming back—a tunnel of screaming voices going faster and faster—until I realized the screaming was not in my head anymore. It was filling the room and it was coming from me. But I couldn’t stop.
Not when DiDi came crashing in, tousled and wild-eyed.
Not when I pushed her away, kicking and hitting.
And not when I threw that crumpled piece of paper from the Verity Hospital at her, knowing that what I was really throwing at her was the truth.
It was not DiDi’s birth certificate.
It was mine.