11

Lilla

I didn’t think I’d sleep in the bed with the ugly pink sheets. After my bathroom chat with my little sister, whose middle name might be BITCH, I seriously considered climbing out the window of the second-story bedroom. The bedroom they say I slept in when I was a baby.

I thought maybe I could swing from the window ledge onto the parents’ balcony and use the vines to climb down. But it’s a jump from my window to the balcony. And even if I make it, I don’t know if the vines would hold me. I don’t know what they are; I’m not much of a gardener. Then there’s the issue of where I would go. And the fact that I’m a coward and am afraid I’d break my neck going from the window to the balcony or the balcony to the ground. And it would be my luck I wouldn’t die. That would be too easy. Instead, I’d damage my spine and end up in one of those wheelchairs like Stephen Hawking. And the mother would feed me Jell-O through a straw and call me Georgina a hundred times a day. And cry a lot.

But after I gave up on the idea of running away, at least for the moment, and got in bed, I fell asleep almost immediately. I had crazy dreams. I dreamed Mom came to the Broussards’ pretty front porch off St. Charles and knocked on the pretty front door. The mother answered and Mom said she was here to pick me up. The mother handed me my backpack and waved and told me to have a good day at school. Then, all of a sudden, the way nonsensical things happen in dreams, we were in jail. It was like the kind of jail in Orange Is the New Black, where inmates were wandering around and guards were standing around chatting. Mom and I were both wearing orange jumpsuits and I was doing my homework on this cafeteria table while she mopped the floor. My backpack was there and I was doing my statistics homework. I was doing this crazy stem and leaf chart that had something to do with Mom’s signature Southern dishes. She and I were laughing about something and she started making coffee for us. Grinding coffee beans. I could smell the coffee.

I woke up sad because I don’t know if Mom and I will ever laugh together again. I don’t even know if I’ll ever see her again. I don’t know how long you have to stay in prison when you kidnap somebody’s baby and ruin a whole bunch of people’s lives.

It’s barely light out, but I get up. With everyone still asleep, I’m hoping I can sneak downstairs and make myself a cup of coffee. The parents have one of those fancy coffee machines that grinds the beans, boils the water, and it even has a little hose to suck up milk, heat it, and spew it into your cup. I saw it on the counter yesterday. It will make a macchiato, a cappuccino, or an espresso just by pushing a button.

Last week, when the police arrested Mom and my life imploded, I called the coffee shop where I’d just started working and told them I couldn’t come in because I was having a family emergency. I told the manager I’d call back. But I didn’t. My story would have been too crazy. She would never have believed me. So much for my first job.

I put on clean underwear and yesterday’s jeans. I don’t bother with a bra. I don’t really need one. I leave on the green Tulane T-shirt I slept in. The dad gave it to me last night. I wanted to say, No thank you, but that seemed rude. Since he works there and all. And it was nice of him. I wonder if someone told him I want to go to Tulane. Who would know that, though?

There’s an alarm clock on the nightstand. It’s seven twenty. The house is quiet.

I think about checking my phone, just in case Mom tried to call, but I don’t because I want to save the battery and I already checked last night. I don’t have the charger to charge it. I used some girl’s at the foster home, but I haven’t been anywhere where I could buy one for myself. I wonder how long it will work anyway. When Mom doesn’t pay the bill, the phone company will turn it off.

I called her cell phone a couple of times over the last few days. She didn’t answer, of course. I listened to her voice, to her say, Leave a message. It was stupid and it made me cry. I bet her phone is still plugged in, charging next to her bed. I’m sure the cops didn’t let her take it with her. I don’t know if they even let her get dressed before they took her to jail. I wonder if when I lose service, my photos will all be gone. I need to send them all to my laptop. I don’t want to lose my photos, especially not the ones of Mom. Girls my age say their whole life is in their phone. Mine really is now.

I try to walk quietly down the hall, but my leather flip-flops make that slap, slap sound that sort of echoes. The house is kind of cool . . . in a creepy way. It reminds me of a museum or an old house you pay to tour, like one Mom and I went to see in Atlanta once. We lived in Atlanta before we moved to Baton Rouge. Everything is so big here. The ceilings are high and the doors are ginormous. There’s dark woodwork everywhere that has a beautiful patina. I took a summer art appreciation class at my school in Atlanta and we talked about patinas on metal, but also on wood. There are old-fashioned lights with colored glass hanging in the hallway. I think they might be real stained glass.

I go down the fancy, wide staircase. More dark, stained wood. There are big portraits of men with white hair looking down on me. Watching me. I wonder who they are and why they’re here. Then I see a little brass nameplate. It’s the last name that gets my attention. Broussard. They’re all Broussards. My name. My family.

The idea is so crazy that I still can’t wrap my head around it. If I wrote a short story for English class about a girl who thinks she’s one person, but she’s really another, I’d probably get a bad grade. No one would think that was conceivable.

But here I am.

At the bottom of the stairs, I peek into the room the mom calls the parlor. It sounds kind of snotty to me. Who has a parlor? People who have more than one living room, I guess. The living room here is off the main hall toward the back of the house where the TV is. But the parlor is kind of pretty. I like the marble fireplace. There are fireplaces in all the main rooms downstairs.

I get all the way to the kitchen doorway before I realize there’s a light on. Someone else is already up. I stop where I am and contemplate going back upstairs. Back to the room where the baby named Georgina slept. I could go out the window. In the daylight, I might have a chance.

I listen. Someone is making something. I hear what sounds like a whisk hitting a glass bowl. Someone who knows how to use a whisk. My mother taught me how to use one. I can make whipped cream from heavy cream with a whisk. A lot of people use an electric mixer.

I’m still standing there in the hall with all the white-haired guys watching me from the staircase, debating what to do, when I hear the dad’s voice.

“Morning.”

He must have heard me on the staircase.

I consider running. But then I think about my mom and about a conversation we had a few weeks ago about bravery. About what it means. She said that when people think of the word, they think about superheroes, or American soldiers in Afghanistan, but when she thought about bravery, she thought about the everyday bravery she saw in people. The ex-con dishwasher who has the guts to apply eight times to be a prep cook before he finally gets hired. The mom who walks out on her boyfriend and goes to a shelter to protect her kids. The new kid in the class who raises her hand. Mom says bravery shows its face a hundred times a day in front of us. We just have to see it. And sometimes we have to be it.

I walk into the kitchen and just stand there. He glances at me, then back at the bowl in his hand. He goes back to whisking.

“Sleep okay?” he asks.

He’s not looking at me so I can’t just nod. “Fine.” My voice sounds weird. I don’t sound brave. I don’t feel brave.

“Good. Harper wanted to go out and buy a bedspread and stuff like that, but Jojo and I thought maybe you’d like to pick things out for yourself. Make your room your own.”

I realize he didn’t say “your mother” and I’m so appreciative of that that I almost smile. Almost.

I smell coffee. See he’s made himself a cup. I glance at the coffeemaker on the black-and-gray granite counter. The whole kitchen is white cabinets floor to ceiling with gray and black floor tiles and the swirly granite. Whoever picked out the cabinets and flooring and stuff has good taste. I wonder which one of the parents it was, her or him.

The smell of the coffee makes me think of Mom and, all of a sudden, I’m afraid I’m going to cry. But I don’t. Instead, I find my voice that hasn’t seemed like my own since the cops showed up at the house a week ago. “Okay if I make myself a cup?”

He looks up again. “Coffee? Sure.” He points to the coffeemaker and goes back to whisking. I can’t see what’s in the bowl. “Mugs are in the cabinet over the coffeemaker.”

I notice that he doesn’t give me direction. He assumes either I know how to use the coffeemaker, that I’ll figure it out, or that I’ll ask. Yesterday, the mom kept telling me things like she thought I was stupid. She told me how to get ice out of the icemaker on the door of the refrigerator.

I walk across the kitchen, which is big and fancy and very modern compared to the rest of the house. I wonder how they get stuff on the top shelves of the huge glass-front cabinets. A stool, I guess.

I open the cabinet and look at the mugs. They’re all different: different colors, different styles, different sizes. But they’re not the kind like you see in stores. None of them say, “I ♥ NOLA” or “My Norwegian Elkhound is my best friend.” They all look handmade. I choose one of medium size that’s all white with little raised dots.

I study the coffeemaker. I like flat whites, but I don’t know how to make one with the machine. I choose a cappuccino. While the coffee machine makes noises, I look over at the dad. I see he’s got an electric Belgian waffle maker on the counter. He’s making waffles. He must be putting egg whites in them.

“Like waffles?” he asks me.

I turn back to watch the hot milk spurt into my cup. Then the coffee. “Sometimes.” There’s a little bowl of brownish sugar cubes on the counter. Raw sugar. And a cup of little spoons. I put one sugar cube in and get a spoon. I turn around and try to decide where to go. Do I take my coffee up to baby Georgina’s bedroom?

“I’ll make you one if you like,” he says.

But he doesn’t seem to really care if I eat one or not. Last night at dinner, I wasn’t very hungry. The lasagna the mom made was fine, but when I said I didn’t want any, she kept offering different things she could make me. Like she thought I was going to starve if I didn’t eat the lasagna. I’m not fat, but I’m not super skinny, either. Clearly, I’m not going to starve if I skip a plate of lasagna. I had some salad and a piece of bread.

Instead of making a run for the bedroom that seems more foreign than this kitchen, I walk around the island and try to be brave. I climb up onto one of the stools on the far side of the island where he’s now mixing dry ingredients in a separate bowl.

“Harper has big plans for you all today. Shopping. To get you some things. Then lunch in the Quarter.”

I blow on the coffee, my head down. He goes on with his waffle making. I search for my voice. “Not you?” That sounds stupid. “Shopping. I mean . . . you’re not going?” I peek up at him over the rim of the mug.

He makes a face. He’s a nice-looking guy. I mean for a dad. He doesn’t have a beer gut like a lot of dads his age. Whatever age he is. Old enough to have me, I guess. I do the math. Undergrad degree by twenty-two. Two years of graduate school, probably. Then marriage. A year or two of goofing around, then a baby. I bet he’s forty-four, maybe forty-five.

“I’m not much of a shopper,” he says. He’s mixing the wet and the dry together now.

I sip my coffee. It’s good. French roast, which I like. Some people think it’s bitter. “Me either.”

He doesn’t say anything so I don’t know if he heard me. Or maybe he gets it. It’s not that I don’t like clothes. I’m just not into random wandering through stores. I like to buy clothes on-line. I’d rather wander randomly through an antiques flea market, or a park, or a museum, or even a library.

“I have to go to work for a while. I like to go on Saturday mornings when things are quiet. Weekdays, it seems like my office has a revolving door.”

I nod like I understand. But I don’t really. Mom never had an office. “What . . . what do you do?” I ask. “At Tulane.”

“I’m the assistant comptroller.”

“A numbers guy.”

“Yup.”

I blow on my coffee. “I like numbers,” I say softly.

We’re both quiet for a minute. I watch him fold the egg whites into the batter. He does it right. You have to have a gentle touch, otherwise the whites will collapse. The batter won’t be as fluffy and the end product can seem tough. He pours batter into the heated waffle iron before he speaks again.

“Listen, Georg—” He looks at me and I realize he’s as uncomfortable as I am. We’re both just pretending we’re not.

“I don’t know what to call you. All these years, you’ve been our Georgina,” he says, “but . . .”

“Lilla,” I murmur, looking down at my coffee. Tears well in my eyes and I’m embarrassed. “I like . . . Lilla.”

Again, he’s quiet. And I like that. I like that he thinks about what to say before he says it. And this crazy thought goes through my head. My mom would like him.

“I don’t know if Harper’s going to go for that. Calling you Lilla. But . . .” He exhales and runs his hand across his mouth. He’s got a nice beard; it’s short, but it doesn’t look like he forgot to shave. “She’s been a wreck all these years. Since you were taken. She loved you so much and now that you’re home . . .” He exhales again and reaches for his cup of coffee. “I think we just need to agree now, Lilla, that this is hard. Hard for you and for us. So . . . maybe you could help us out and we can help you? Maybe we can figure this out together?”

He’s not telling me. He’s asking me.

“I really miss my mom,” I whisper. I don’t even try not to cry. I just stare into my coffee cup as the tears run down my cheeks.

“Oh, Lilla,” he sighs. “I can’t say that I understand what you’re feeling, because there’s no way I can.” He hands me a paper towel.

I sniff. I like that he doesn’t try to hug me or anything creepy like that. I don’t like it when strangers try to hug me. Not even ones with my DNA.

“But I do love you,” he says. “I love the little girl you were and even though I don’t know you yet, I love the young woman you’ve become. Because of how strong you obviously are. And smart.”

I wipe my eyes and then my nose with the paper towel. “How do you know I’m smart?”

The waffle iron beeps and he opens it. The waffle smells good. “School records. We had them transferred to Ursuline, but we took a peek. That’s where you’ll be going to school. It’s just a few blocks from here.”

“I know where it is.” My tone is a little snarky. “What if I don’t want to go to school there?”

“It’s where your sister goes.” He sets the round waffle on a white plate.

“It’s a Catholic school,” I say. “Just girls.”

“It is.”

“That’s going to be a problem.” I take a big sip of coffee, turning up the snark. “Because, Remy . . . I’m Jewish.”