25

Lilla

“How was your day?”

“It was okay.” I stare out the window, watching the buildings we pass. Harper Mom picked me up after school. Jojo had to stay for basketball. It’s raining today. Who knew it rained so much here? And cold. Cold for Louisiana. I can’t wait to get out of my uniform and put on my new sweatpants. I got some cool stuff at a resale store I went to with Dad. The sweatpants look like no one ever wore them and they were six bucks.

“You talk to Em about walking home with you tomorrow after school?”

I can feel her looking at me. I wish she’d watch the road. You have to pay attention every second. Especially in city traffic. I learned that when I took driver’s ed. And Sharon talked about it when she let me drive a little. We had a car when we moved here, an old Jeep. One of the big ones, not the little ones. It was in a shop getting the transmission fixed when this all went down. I wonder what happened to it.

“Your dad or I will be home by six. We can give her a ride home, if she wants.”

We stop at a light and I watch a girl my age carrying a bag of groceries. She must go to a school around here. She’s wearing a uniform, but she doesn’t go to Ursuline. No dorky skirt. I wonder if she’s going home to make dinner for her family. I wonder what she’s going to make. I think if I was making dinner tonight, I’d make pho, which is a Vietnamese noodle bowl thing. Sharon made great pho.

“I’ll ask her tomorrow.”

“I can call her mom if you like.” The light turns green and Harper Mom eases off the brake.

I made the mistake of telling Dad at dinner last night that there was a girl in my English class who was being super nice to me. She asked me if I wanted to maybe go see a movie Friday or Saturday. Her best friend just moved away at Christmas. Which I know makes me her second string, but I don’t mind. She’s nice and she likes The Great Gatsby. We’re reading it in English class. I read it freshman year, on my own, but that’s okay.

“You can’t call her mom,” I say before I catch myself. At that point, I figure I might as well go on. Dad says I need to tell them what I think. What I want. He says that doesn’t mean they’ll agree with me, or let me do what I want, but I have to learn to speak up. Sharon and I always had the same kind of deal. “You can’t set up play dates for me.” I sneak a peek at her. I feel like we’ve both been walking on eggshells. Since we hollered at each other last week. But it’s weird . . . a part of me almost feels better since then. Like . . . a little more normal. Like I’m not just standing off to the side, watching myself, hearing what I say.

“You’re right,” she says, which surprises me. “You’re right. I know you are. And . . . if it doesn’t work out, you can walk home and . . . text me when you’re safely in the house with the door locked. And the alarm’s set,” she adds.

I smile to myself. Sharon always said that people can’t change; they are what they are. But I don’t know if I believe that. Harper Mom seems to be trying. I feel like I have to give her credit for that.

“I’ll text her later,” I say.

“Good.” She’s quiet for half a block. “Georgina . . .”

When she doesn’t say anything, I look at her. “Mmhmm?”

She waits until I make eye contact, then looks at the road again. There’s construction on St. Charles, so she’s going the long way around to get home. “We haven’t talked about Sunday night.”

I stare straight ahead. “I know I apologized the other day, but I am sorry I yelled.” And I am sorry. I don’t like yelling. It doesn’t seem like a good way to resolve things.

“I’m sorry, too. I should have handled the conversation better. I’m trying to see things from your perspective.” She’s quiet for a second. “Georgina, you need to try to see mine, too.” She lets that sink in and then goes on. “Your dad thinks we should stay home this year. Skip the vacation.”

I look at her. “Stay for Mardi Gras?” I know I sound cheesy getting all excited, but I don’t care.

“Jojo wants to stay, too. And the Parkers can’t go anyway.”

I nod. Look at her hopefully. “So are we staying?”

“I don’t know.”

We’re stopped in traffic for no reason at all that I can see.

“But . . .” Harper Mom looks at me. “I understand why you girls want to stay and . . . I know I need to get past my anxiety over your safety. Yours and Jojo’s. Because you’re home now—” Her voice gets full of emotion like she’s about to cry. But she doesn’t. “We just . . . Georgina, we need to find a way to . . . we need to talk more. You need to talk to me so I can get to know you better. And you can get to know me. You’re . . . almost grown. You’re going to college in two years. We have a lot of years to make up for.” She takes a breath. “I want you to ask me things. About me. And I need to be able to ask you questions.” She gives a little laugh. “I don’t even know what your favorite ice cream is.”

“Mint chocolate chip.”

She smiles and, weirdly enough, she makes me smile. “Mine too. And coffee,” she adds.

I nod, looking ahead. We inch forward the length of one car and stop. “I like coffee ice cream, too,” I say. “Have you been to that gelato place where you get a little paper cup of espresso and pour it on top of the gelato?”

She shakes her head as we move forward again. “No. Sounds glorious. Where is it?”

“I don’t remember exactly. In the Central Business District. Julia Street, maybe? I could Google it.” I hesitate. “Maybe we could go sometime?”

“I’d like that. I—”

She slams on her brakes. The lady in front of us in an orange VW bug slammed on her brakes and Harper Mom had to do the same to keep from hitting her. Her bag on the backseat flies off and dumps on the floor.

“Some people,” Harper Mom says through gritted teeth.

I turn around in my seat and lean down to pick up her stuff.

“You can leave it. I’ll get it when I get home.”

“I don’t mind.” I pick up her purse and put the matching suede wallet back in, then her case with her reading glasses and two lipsticks. I have to feel around on the floor because I can’t turn all the way around while in my seat belt and there’s no way I’m taking it off with Miss Happy Brakes ahead of us.

I find a pen and a tin of mini mints and add them to her bag. Then my fingertips touch something little on the floor of the car, something cool and smooth. Metal. I pick it up and sit up in my seat. It’s a little baby, like a charm, maybe two inches long. “What’s this?” I ask, turning it in my hands. It looks old. The creases are tarnished, but the belly and cheeks are shiny silver.

She looks down. “That’s a cake baby.”

I stare at it. Something feels weird about this little thing. I just can’t figure out what. “A cake baby?”

“It gets baked into a Mardi Gras king cake. Usually they’re plastic, now. Whoever gets the baby is the king for the day, and then has to host the next party. And buy the next cake.”

I stare at the little silver charm in my hand and get the strangest feeling. As if I’ve seen it before. “It’s old, isn’t it?” I ask.

“It is. From France, I think. My grandmother gave it to me. I grew up in the Philadelphia area because that’s where my dad’s family was from, but my mother was from Louisiana and so was her mother. My grandmother gave me this crucifix I always wear, too.” She pulls the little cross she wears around her neck out to show me. “Someday it will be for—” She lets go of the necklace and puts both hands on the steering wheel again. “Looks like we’re moving.”

“Is it just supposed to be loose in here?” I hold up the baby charm.

“Goes in the zipper compartment with my lipstick. I guess it wasn’t zipped. I don’t know how I’ve held on to that thing all these years.”

I put the weird little baby charm into the compartment and zip it up.

We’re on St. Charles now. We hit another light.

“Okay, so you like mint chocolate chip ice cream,” Harper Mom says. “You answered my question, now you ask me something.”

I chew on my lower lip. I have no idea what to ask her. It seems dorky to ask what her favorite color is. And I don’t want to turn up the dork any further. I already admitted I’d read American literature when I didn’t have to. Maybe her favorite food? I can tell she’s waiting. I turn to her, realizing there is a question I want to ask her. “Are you named after Harper Lee? Who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird?”

“You’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird?”

I wrinkle my nose. “Of course. It’s an American treasure.”

She laughs and I like the sound of it. “You sound like your father,” she tells me.

“I read Go Set a Watchman, too. It was released, like, fifty years later,” I point out. “Which I liked better than the first book. Which my friend Ruby said was crazy.”

“Ruby. Was she a friend from school where you went in Bayou St. John?”

I shake my head, looking forward. “Atlanta,” I say softly. “We were there almost two years before we moved to Baton Rouge. This last time.” Thinking about Ruby makes me sad for a minute. But Ruby was an old friend from an old life and now I have to make friends in this new life. “Of course you know Harper Lee wrote Watchman first.”

“Right. I haven’t read it.”

“You should,” I tell her. “I’m surprised you haven’t. It’s big with women’s book clubs.”

“Maybe I should bring it up at book club.”

“I didn’t know you belonged to a book club.”

“Well, I . . . I’ve been busy at home so I didn’t go this month, but . . . I’ll suggest it.”

I think she means she skipped book club because of me, which sounds silly, but I don’t say so. “Ruby and I had our own book club. We made lists of books to read and then we asked each other questions we found on the Internet that were meant for book clubs. Sometimes there are questions in the back you can use for discussion.”

She smiles at me as she flips on the signal to turn onto the street that runs behind our house. “So . . . to answer your question, I was not named after Harper Lee. People ask me that all the time. I was named after my maternal grandmother. The same one who gave me the cake baby. Harper is a Southern name.”

“It’s a good name. I like it. Why didn’t you name me Harper?” I ask. “Like maybe my middle name?”

She thinks about it for a minute. “Actually your father wanted to, but I don’t know.” She pulls into the driveway and parks. As she shuts off the engine, she drops her hands to her lap and looks at me. “I suppose I wanted you to be your own person, separate from me.”

I hand her her bag that’s still on my lap, thinking that’s pretty cool that she wanted me to be myself and not like a carbon copy of her. Which is a good thing probably, because I’m not much like her. Except that we both like mint chocolate chip ice cream. And coffee.

We make a run for the house because it’s starting to rain harder. We leave our wet coats in the laundry room. And our shoes. In the kitchen, she drops her bag on the counter. “I’m going to run upstairs and take a shower,” she says, looking down at her scrub bottoms. “I feel gross. I saw this big mastiff this afternoon. He was sweet, but he drooled all over me.”

She worked again today. She dropped Jojo, Makayla, and me off at school and then went to work. But she only worked until school was over. She still doesn’t want me walking the twelve blocks or so home, I guess. Which I told her I was fine doing, even in the rain. But Dad said to let it go, that we were making progress. So I’m letting it go. I put my backpack on one of the stools at the center island. “I’m going to get something to eat and start my homework after I change. I’ve got a paper due Monday.”

She stops in the doorway. “What’s the topic?”

“Mrs. Dobson gave us a couple of choices. I think I’m going to write about the parallels between Daisy and Zelda Fitzgerald.”

She nods. “I can see that. I remember reading The Great Gatsby. I think I liked it.”

I open the refrigerator door and look in. “Like I said, I’ve read it before. I like it, though.”

She stands there for a second as if she isn’t quite ready to go yet. “Well . . . I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“You want coffee?” I call as she disappears from my sight.

“Sure.”

I get a pear and a yogurt out of the fridge, set them on the island, and then get two mugs from the cabinet for the coffee machine. I get milk. I’m making us both cappuccinos. I might even add a little cocoa with the sugar. Harper Mom likes mocha anythings. When I turn on the coffee machine, it says I need to fill up the water reservoir, so I have to get filtered water from the fridge door, which takes forever. Finally I get the coffee machine going and I’m standing there, waiting while it heats up, when the house phone rings.

Last night Harper Mom was complaining that no one ever answers it.

I go over and pick it up. As I hit the button, I realize I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say. We never had a house phone that I can remember, just Sharon’s cell, and I got mine when I turned fourteen. Am I supposed to say, “Broussard residence,” like I’ve seen in movies? I go with “Hello.”

“Hello,” says a female voice that sounds like a recording. I’m lowering the phone from my ear, thinking it’s a telemarketer, when I hear, “This is a collect call from . . . Sharon Kohen . . . an inmate at Louisiana Correctional Institute—”

I almost drop the phone. It was my mother’s voice that gave her name. Sharon’s. The recording is still continuing. “—accept the collect call, please press one. If—”

I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to talk to her. Not ever again.

But I want to talk to her. I want to talk to her so bad. Tears fill my eyes.

She ruined our lives. Mine and hers. I want to tell her how much I hate her. How much I love her.

I hang up and drop the phone on the counter like it’s a piece of dry ice. Sharon once brought some crawfish home in a bag and when I picked up the dry ice packet, it burned like I touched a hot oven rack. It was years ago, but I remember how shocked I was. Almost insulted that ice would burn me like that. You just don’t expect ice to feel hot.

And you don’t expect the woman who kidnapped you to have the guts to call your real family’s house. Collect. From prison.

The coffee machine spits the last of the first cappuccino into the mug and I set it on the counter and slide the other mug onto the little platform to make Harper Mom’s.

The phone rings again and I whip around to stare at it like it’s an apparition or something.

It keeps ringing.

I keep staring at it.

I want to answer it. I want to holler at her. I want to ask her how she could have kidnapped somebody’s baby. I want to ask her about her baby who died. Was her name really Lilla, too? Did she name me after a dead baby?

The phone stops ringing and I suddenly realize I’ve been holding my breath. I exhale and then inhale deeply. My heart is pounding. My hand is shaking as I carry my cappuccino to the counter.

What am I going to do if she calls again?