31

Lilla

I sit in the attic on a cardboard box marked “textbooks” in Sharpie. I wonder if there are really textbooks inside, or if there are baby toys from when Jojo and I were little. I remember all the mismarked boxes in the house in Bayou St. John and the thought makes me smile. But it’s a sad smile.

I’m studying two photographs in my hands. Baby pictures of me. One of baby Georgina I took out of the family photo album downstairs. One of baby Lilla from a box Dad had brought here from the house in Bayou St. John. He meticulously labeled the boxes; I’ve only opened one, the one that said “photos,” but the contents reflected the label.

I stare at the photographs, one in each hand. I guess I’m not really a baby in them. A toddler would be a more accurate description. The photo of Georgina is dated two days before Sharon kidnapped me. I’m wearing leggings and a long-sleeved green Tulane T-shirt. I’m laughing, a blue balloon in my hands. It looks like it was taken in the back of the house near the crepe jasmine bush. The other photograph is of Lilla, taken two weeks later, according to the date on the back. I can’t believe Sharon’s gall. She abducted me, took me to another state, and then she dressed me up in what looks like a party dress and snapped a photo of me. Pretended I was hers. I’m not smiling. I look sad.

Why can I not remember her stealing me? How did I grow up to like her so much? To love her. How did that happen? Being here now, I realize how small my life with her was. With no family, it was only ever the two of us. We didn’t have anyone else, which I suppose made us closer.

She said we had no family. The grandparents died in the Holocaust. She said she was an only child and that her parents were, too. She said they died when she was twenty. In a car accident. She always told me, when I asked questions, that she didn’t want to talk about them because it made her too sad. Now I wonder if she didn’t want to talk about them because everything she told me was a lie. Is she really Jewish? Maybe she has a brother and a sister. Maybe her parents are still alive. Do they know their daughter is in prison for abducting and holding a minor?

I hear footsteps on the attic stairs. “Georgina?” It’s Harper Mom. “You up here?” She appears at the top of the stairs, first her head, then her body. “Whatcha doing?”

“Just looking at stuff. Dad said it was okay.”

“The things he had brought from the house?” She points to another box; I can’t read from where I’m sitting what it says. “Okay if I sit?”

I nod. “I found some pictures Sharon took of me when I was little.” I hold the one in my left hand tightly, not sure if I want to show her. Little Lilla looks so sad. It almost seems wrong to invade her privacy this way, to share her sadness. It seems even more wrong to show the baby’s mother. I offer it to her.

She studies the photo for a long time. I watch her. Her eyes tear up. She flips it over and I see by the look on her face that the date registers. She flips it back to look at sad Lilla again. “The police said you lived in Alabama first.”

“Mobile, I think. Less than three hours away.” I say it softly as if that will somehow ease the blow.

“I can’t believe you were so close,” she muses. “Pretty dress.” She hands back the photo, which surprises me a little. I thought there might be a good chance she would rip it up. Or at least confiscate it.

“And me before—before,” I say in an exhalation. I hand her the other photo. “I found it downstairs, in one of the family albums.”

She smiles, but her smile, like mine had been, is sad. “I remember taking this. Your dad offered to walk with Jojo so I could get out of the house. She’d been screaming bloody murder all day.” She gives a little laugh. “You kept putting your hands over your ears and telling me to ‘make the sister stop.’”

She presses her lips together. She’s pretty, my mother. Her blond hair is sleek and golden and she doesn’t have any wrinkles on her face. Shouldn’t a woman her age have wrinkles? Sharon had wrinkles. I know Harper Mom wears makeup, but you can’t tell. And her green eyes, they’re really green. Like Jojo’s . . . and Granddad’s.

“You and I went outside,” she goes on as if it’s a bedtime story. “You’d gotten the balloon at a birthday party that Saturday. A little girl from church. I thought for certain you’d pop it before you got home, but you didn’t. That day, we batted it around in the garden and you laughed and laughed. I could hear Jojo crying, but it was okay because you were laughing.”

I’m staring at her and not the photo. “Why don’t I remember?” I whisper.

She keeps looking at the photo. I can tell she’s trying not to cry and I feel bad. She’s been crying because of me for fourteen years. And now Sharon’s crying. In her prison cell. How can I only be sixteen and already have caused so much unhappiness?

“Why don’t I remember her taking me from you?” I ask her.

“You were so little, Georgina, and . . .” She meets my gaze and though her eyes are watery, she’s not crying. It’s weird, but ever since I got here, I’ve been thinking of Dad as the strong one, but looking at her face, I think she’s strong, too. Just a different kind of strong. The kind of strong moms seem to be.

“A lot of people don’t remember being two,” she goes on.

“But I remember being two with Sharon,” I argue.

She does that thing again where she presses her lips together, making them thin lines. “Maybe you didn’t remember as a way of . . . protecting yourself. The human brain is an amazing organ, the most complex in the body. I think maybe your mind blocked those memories.” She’s smiling again, that sad smile. “So you could be happy in the circumstances you found yourself in.”

I stare at the photo of Lilla in my hand. “With the woman who kidnapped me from my mother? Who lied to me and told me she was my mother?”

Harper Mom doesn’t say anything and we’re both quiet for what seems like a long time. Then I say, “I think I remember the cake baby.” I glance at her. “I think I remember it in my hands. How it felt. I thought it was bigger,” I muse. “I liked it. Did you let me play with it?”

“I did. When we were out and you would get restless, I’d pull it out of my handbag and give it to you. In line at the market, the bank, in slow traffic. You’d be in the backseat in your car seat and you’d ask for it and I’d give it to you. My mother kept telling me I shouldn’t let you play with it. She said it was a choking hazard. I told her you were smart enough not to try to eat it. She said you would lose it, an antique given to me by my grandmother. But you never did.” She hands me back the photo and stands up. “I’d like to see some more pictures of you sometime. If you’d let me.” She hesitates. “I won’t come up here and look on my own, although I’ll admit to you I’ve thought about it. But I won’t do it. I’ll respect your privacy. And hope that . . . that someday you will want to share them with me.”

I nod. I’m not ready to look at any more photos today. I’m already too upset. I feel like crying. Or screaming. I feel like crying and screaming at the same time. I keep thinking about Sharon. I purposely avoided being home this Tuesday. I don’t know if she tried to call. I keep going back and forth between never wanting to speak to her again and feeling like I need to talk to her. Because she owes me an explanation. As stupid as it seems, I think she owes me an apology. But I almost feel as if I want to see her. Need to see her. One last time. Because I know I need to be a Broussard now, become one, but I feel as if there’s something holding me back. Like tugging on my sleeve every time I manage to take a step forward. I think she’s the one holding me back. My anger toward her is holding me back. My love for her. Because no matter how hard I try to hate her, how many lists I make of the reasons I should hate her, I can’t do it. Because she really did love me. And I’m reminded of that every time I use one of her knives.

I look up at Harper Mom. “I want to ask you something,” I hear myself say. “And . . . I don’t want you to answer me right now. I want you to think about it. Talk to Dad.”

“Okay.” She stands there waiting.

“I want to . . . I feel like . . .” I exhale. Maybe this isn’t a good time to bring this up. Maybe I should bring it up with Dad, sometime when we’re by ourselves. Or maybe . . . at a family meeting, or maybe when we go together for counseling. We’re supposed to go again Friday. Well . . . we were supposed to go. That’s up in the air now because Jojo finally got Harper Mom to agree to let her go camping for the weekend with her friend and then found out she had the wrong date. They’re going this coming weekend, and it turns out they won’t be back until Wednesday because they go to avoid Mardi Gras every year.

I look at Harper Mom, then at my old flip-flops on my feet. I found them in one of the boxes Dad packed at the house in Bayou St. John. He did a good job, choosing which things to keep for me.

“I want to see her. I need to see Sharon,” I blurt out.

Suddenly she looks pale.

“I . . . I feel like I need, I don’t know, closure.” I stand. “She and I, we never got to talk about what she did. The police came into our house, asked her if I was really her daughter, and she just . . . confessed. And then they took me out of the house and they never let me speak to her again.” I make myself look at her. I’m feeling that anger again. I’m angry at Sharon. At the cops. At Harper Mom and I don’t even know why I’m mad at her. “They should have let me talk to her. One last time, at least.”

Harper Mom stands there looking at me. “I can’t let you go to a prison and see her.”

“Why not?” I demand. I open my arms, a photo in each hand. A distinctly different life in each hand. And here I am, stuck in the middle. “Don’t you think I have a right to ask for a . . . an explanation from her?”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea. I don’t . . . I don’t know that it would be healthy, Georgina.”

“What right do you have to make that decision for me?” I’m not hollering at her like I did that day in the living room, but I’m sure she has no doubt I’m pissed.

“What right do I have?” she asks me, sounding surprisingly calm. “I’m your mother. That’s what right I have.” She turns around and heads for the staircase. “Your dad asked me to tell you to come down for dinner. It’s almost ready.”