When one person is missing, the whole world seems empty.
(PAT SCHWIEBERT, TEAR SOUP: A RECIPE FOR HEALING AFTER LOSS)
Someone flicks the overhead lights to get everyone’s attention. All heads turn to look toward the kitchen doorway, where Naysa is holding a birthday cake with sixteen burning candles.
“Happy birthday to you,” sings Brenna’s father. “Happy birthday to you.” The whole family joins in. “Happy birthday, dear Brenna, happy birthday to you.”
Naysa sets the cake down on the coffee table. “Make a wish.”
Brenna closes her eyes. Make a wish. There is only one thing she wishes for now: that her mom hadn’t become sick and died.
“No boyfriends?” Grandpa Will asks when the candles have been extinguished.
Brenna shakes her head and attempts to smile, humoring her grandfather.
“Well, maybe no boyfriends, but definitely hundreds of admirers,” he says.
Brenna notices that the crinkles that appear around his eyes when he smiles are identical to the ones around her father’s eyes. She studies the faces of the other people gathered in their living room. This is her family: her father, her sister, both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles and seven cousins. In the past they rarely managed to get everyone together to celebrate birthdays, but this summer has been different. In the month since her mother passed away, they’ve seen a lot of each other.
Half of the family—those on her father’s side—are of Asian descent. The other half are Caucasian. Naysa is a blend of both races. Brenna knows that she too has some Asian roots, but she looks more Caucasian than Naysa does.
As she eats her cake she notices other family similarities. Her cousin Danika, and Danika’s mom, Brenna’s aunt Tamara, have the exact same laugh. Joe and his father, Uncle Brian, both stroke their noses when they’re listening. Jillian and Michelle look more like sisters than cousins, right down to the way their hands flutter about when they talk. She wonders if she shares any similarities, any at all, with her family. Certainly not eye color. She is now the only one present with blue eyes. Joanna had been the other one.
When the cake has been taken away, presents and cards are placed on the table in front of her. As she unwraps them, Brenna notices that a lot of thought has been put into each one. Her aunt Laura, her mom’s sister, gives her a necklace with an angel charm strung onto it. There is a diamond chip at its heart.
“Her heart sparkles, like your mom’s did.”
“Thanks. It’s really special.” Brenna puts it around her neck, and her aunt closes the clasp. Brenna sees her blink back tears as she admires it.
The remaining gifts include candles, books and framed photos. Her grandmother hands her a scrapbook filled with pictures of Joanna, badges she’d earned as a Girl Guide, certificates of achievement from school, copies of scholarship offers she received upon her high school graduation.
“That’s for both you and Naysa,” her grandmother says. “But I thought this would be a good occasion to give it to you.”
Brenna nods at her grandmother, and Naysa slides onto the couch beside Brenna to look at it. Every member of the family is somehow represented on these pages, in photos and sidebar notes. On the second-to-last page is a picture of her mom and dad holding her, a newborn baby, beside another one of them holding newborn Naysa. On the final page is a photo of the entire family, everyone in the room, taken shortly after Joanna received the news of her cancer. She’d rallied everyone together without mentioning why it was so important to get it done promptly. They only figured that out after the fact.
The afternoon drags on, but as hard as everyone tries, it does not feel particularly festive. Joanna’s presence is huge in its absence. There are gaps in the chatter as everyone seems to notice, at the same time, that something is missing.
Finally the cousins gather in the family room, and Joe pulls the game of Cranium off the shelf. He quickly divides them into teams, and the game begins. Brenna finds she can’t concentrate. Her mind keeps wandering back to the scrapbook. She wishes everyone would leave so she could leaf through it again, absorbing her mother’s life.
“Brenna!” Joe barks. She looks up and sees everyone staring at her. “Spell tarantula backward.”
Slowly, and with long pauses, she begins to spell. “A…l…u…t…n…a…r…a…t.”
“You got it!”
As Brenna’s teammates move their marker around the board, she sits back and lets her mind wander again. Looking up, she finds Naysa’s eyes on her, those sad brown eyes. She’s having trouble concentrating on the game too. Brenna gives her a little smile. Naysa nods back. Thank goodness we have each other, Brenna thinks. No one else can really know what it’s like.
Earlier in the afternoon Danika had trapped her in the hallway when she stepped out of the bathroom. How are you doing? she’d asked.
All Brenna could do was shrug.
Danika had leaned into her. I’ve heard that it’s the first time for every occasion that’s the hardest after a death, she said. The first birthday, first Christmas, first Mother’s Day and so on. Next year will be easier. She spoke with authority, like she was imparting great wisdom.
Yeah right, Brenna thought. Easy for her to say. Her mother is alive and well.
Brenna had shrugged again and pushed past, leaving Danika standing in the hall.
When the day is over and everyone has finally gone, Brenna retreats to her bedroom with the scrapbook. Sitting on her bed, she flips through the pages slowly, savoring the unfolding story of her mother’s life. She pauses at the page with the picture of her parents holding her, a brand-new baby. They are smiling into the camera, and clearly they are happy…but there’s something else in their expressions, something Brenna can’t quite read.
A soft tap on her door breaks her trance. The door opens and her dad’s face appears. “May I come in?” he asks.
Brenna nods, noting once again the dark circles under his eyes. A stab of worry passes through her—what would happen if her dad up and died on them too? She couldn’t handle it.
He sits on the end of her bed, and it’s then that she notices the wrapped packages in his hands. “I hope your birthday was okay, honey, as good as it could be, anyway.”
She nods. “Thanks for the driving lessons. I know they cost a lot.”
“You’re welcome. They say it’s not good for a parent to teach their kid to drive, not good for their relationship.”
“You’d be a good teacher,” Brenna tells him, “but you can get tested sooner if you take lessons.”
He nods. “So I heard.”
A silence falls between them, and Brenna wonders what’s going through his mind. And what’s in the packages? Why didn’t he give them to her earlier? When he doesn’t say anything, she turns back to the scrapbook. “Dad?”
“Uh-huh?” He looks up, clearly coming out of some deep thought.
“Who took this photo of us?” She hands the scrapbook to him and watches as he studies the picture. He stares at it for so long that Brenna wonders if he’s forgotten the question. She asks another one. “Where was the picture taken?”
“In the hospital.” There’s another long silence before he adds, “In the chapel of the hospital.”
“The chapel?”
“Uh-huh. Your birth mom’s minister had created an adoption ceremony.”
Brenna doesn’t comment but watches her father’s face as a range of emotion sweeps across it.
“It was a beautiful ceremony. He reflected on what a momentous day it was in our lives and also acknowledged all the feelings in the room.”
“What kind of feelings?”
“Well, your birth mom was grieving because of what she had to do—give you up—but your mom and I were overjoyed to be receiving you, yet…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Yet?”
“Yet…” He pauses. “Yet our hearts broke for her too. And for her parents, who were also there. It was terribly hard for her to hand you over to us.”
Her parents. Brenna’s biological grandparents.
Brenna had been given the facts about her birth mom, Kia, and why she felt she had to give her baby up for adoption, but she’d never understood how hard that would have been. She peers into the faces of her parents, their sixteen-years-younger faces. That explains their bittersweet expressions; they were feeling sad for her birth mom.
“So was it my biological father who took the picture?”
Her dad shakes his head, still staring at the photo. “No, your biological father was a teenager who…who wasn’t there. Apparently he struggled with your birth mom’s decision to go through with the pregnancy.”
Brenna doesn’t say anything as she absorbs this information. She wonders why she’s never asked about him before now. “So who took the picture then?”
“Justin, I guess—or Reverend Reid as he’s now known. He was Kia’s friend then, before he became a minister, the one who spoke at your mom’s service. There were just the eight of us in the chapel,” he says, remembering, “including you and Kia’s minister. So it must have been Justin.”
“Was Justin her boyfriend?”
“No, I don’t think so. He was quite a bit older than Kia, and he ran the church youth group.”
“He spoke to me after Mom’s service and told me he was at my birth.”
As Brenna’s dad continues to stare at the photo, she remembers something. Climbing off her bed, she goes to her dresser and pulls open the bottom drawer. She slides her hand under the folded T-shirts and pulls out a large, thick envelope. Back on the bed she opens it and shakes out a bunch of greeting cards.
“Why did she quit sending these to me?” Brenna asks her dad, picking one up and reading the inscription on the inside.
Dear Brenna,
Wishing you tons of fun, presents, cake and surprises on your 4th birthday!
I love you so much and think of you every day.
Love, Kia
She rummages through the rest: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas and birthday cards. She’d enjoyed receiving them—they made her reflect briefly on the woman she’d never known—but she hadn’t thought about it much when they stopped arriving. Until now.
“I don’t know why she stopped sending them, honey. Kia would be…hmmm, about thirty-three now. I think the last one came when you were around twelve. Who knows what may have happened. Maybe she’s had more children, and it was too hard for her to keep on pining for the one she couldn’t keep.”
Or maybe she forgot about me, Brenna thinks.
“Anyway,” her dad continues, “it’s interesting that we’re talking about her…”
Brenna meets his gaze. He looks concerned. She cocks her head, waiting.
“I have two more gifts here for you, but…well…”
“What, Dad?”
“They might be a little painful to receive.”
“Then don’t give them to me.” She flops back against her pillows. The day had been challenging enough already, with her mom being so noticeably absent from her birthday party.
“I promised your mom.”
That catches Brenna’s attention. “Well then, let’s get it over with.” Her mind is whirling, trying to imagine what her mother may have left behind to be given to her on her sixteenth birthday.
Her dad hands her one of the two packages. She opens the card first. The outside flap says For My Daughter. When she turns to the inside, she’s startled to see the words Love, Mom written in her mother’s elegant handwriting below a poem. A folded sheet is tucked inside.
“She signed it before she died,” her dad explains. “Obviously.”
Brenna unfolds the enclosed letter with trembling hands.
Dear Brenna,
I’m sorry if it feels creepy to receive this letter after I’m gone, but I had always hoped to pass this gift on to you on the occasion of your 16th birthday.
This journal was given to your father and me during your adoption ceremony. Kia (your birth mom) told us that she started writing it when she first discovered she was pregnant. She didn’t realize she was writing it for you, but the night before you were born she reread it and thought that you should have it. She felt that by reading it you would understand what she’d been through and why she chose to give you to us.
I always felt you’d be ready for it when you turned 16, the same age your mother was when she conceived you.
We haven’t talked about Kia for a long time, but I want you to know that she was a lovely young woman, sensitive and wise. I often see her again when I look at you because you’ve inherited her beauty, both inner and outer.
The nature vs. nurture debate—which component has the greater influence on a child—has always intrigued me, but of course there is no doubt that it is nature that gave you your physical qualities. However, I’d like to believe that your father and I provided you with an environment in which you could thrive and reach your potential. That is what we promised Kia we would do.
My early death changes everything, of course, but I have had almost 16 years with you and hope you’ll always feel that I was the best mother I could be in that time. I have loved you with all my heart. I hope you know that. How I would love to see you finish growing up, and maybe even get to know my grandchildren, but it seems that is not to be.
Happy 16th birthday, my darling daughter, and I hope this journal helps you better understand who your birth mother is. I can now feel satisfied that I have carried out her wishes in delivering it.
Love,
Mom
Brenna looks up from the letter, a lone tear running down her cheek. Slowly, carefully, she unwraps the small book. The cover is rough, made from recycled paper. Seeds and delicate flower petals are pressed into it. She fans through the pages, noticing the neat handwriting. Each piece of paper is unique, as delicate as butterfly wings and flecked with bits of pastel-colored tissue that has bled, creating a mottled effect. She notices an inscription on the front flap.
To my wise friend Kia. Your words deserve special paper. Keep on writing, girl!
Luv ya, Shawna.
Brenna closes the journal but continues holding it between her hands.
“Are you okay, honey?” her dad asks after a few moments.
She nods but continues to sit in silence, staring at the cover of the journal, a numbness spreading through her. Suddenly she opens the top drawer of her night table and slams the book inside. It’s too much.
After a moment her father offers her the second gift. She knows before she pulls off the paper what it will be—it’s the exact same shape as the other journal.
The cover is beautiful, with a large abstract heart painted on it, much like a child’s drawing. A small tile with the word love on it is glued into the center of the heart, and other tiles cascade down the side to form the phrase live with your whole heart. She opens it to the first page and notices the inscription on the inside cover.
To Brenna,
May you find solace in writing down your thoughts, just as Kia did.
Love you deeply,
Mom
Brenna sinks back on the bed and holds the journal to her chest. The tears stream unchecked down her cheeks. With a final pat on her shoulder, her father gets up and quietly leaves the room.