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For several days, I spent every spare hour checking out Russian spies. If the Smiths had adopted me when I was four or five, that would have been in the mid-1950s. After sorting through piles of microfilm in a dark room at the public library, I found that, even though several spies had been expelled during that time, none of them had children. After that, it seemed ridiculous that I’d even thought my real parents might be spies, so I gave up that line of research. But I wasn’t sure what came next.
Francie and I talked about my strange memories every day while we ran our laps, but she thought I’d gotten things mixed up and there had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for them. She also reasoned that my mom must have really thought I had epilepsy but didn’t have the money to buy the real medicine, so she substituted aspirin. Such a trusting soul, Francie.
After another conversation that went nowhere, she asked, “Why don’t you look at your birth certificate and see what it says?”
I felt as if I’d been mowed down by a truck. Of course that was what I needed to do. I stopped in the middle of a turn and stared at her, appreciating her brilliance. Francie stopped, too, but then started running again.
“Do you know where your birth certificate is?” she called over her shoulder.
In her settled life, she probably knew exactly where her birth certificate was and could put her hands on it in a second. Sometimes she struggled to comprehend my stories about the rootlessness of my life before we moved to Valencia.
I started running again and strained to catch up to her. Francie had gotten really fast. “Yeah, but...” I didn’t know how to continue. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen my own birth certificate. But I knew where to find it. Mom kept our important papers in a fireproof metal box somewhere in her bedroom. She had always carried my transcripts and birth certificate when she registered me at a new school. She would probably get suspicious if I asked to look at it. So if I wanted to know the truth, the next time I was alone in the house, I would have to find that metal box.
Mom and Dad’s room was always off-limits to me. I hadn’t been in there in years. Once, when I was little, I’d gone into their bedroom and taken Mom’s jewelry box off her dresser and placed it on the floor, where I happily played with her few necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. She had some pop beads I particularly loved. Even though Mom had told me before that their room was off-limits, I must have forgotten, because when a shadow darkened the bedroom door, I looked up, eager to show Mom how I’d decorated my stuffed bunny with her jewelry. I wasn’t prepared for the dark cloud that was her face, and it scared me so much I burst into tears.
She jerked my arm to pull me to my feet, and it hurt. I cried louder. She slapped my hands until they were red, and she yelled at me to get out of her bedroom. I must have told her I was sorry a hundred times before she forgave me. Later, after she’d hugged me and apologized for slapping me, she gave me the jewelry box. It was the same one where I kept my money. But I’d learned my lesson. I never entered her room again without permission, and just thinking about it made me nervous.
Mom was almost always in the house or near it. She cooked the Barretts’ meals in our kitchen and then ran them over and placed them in the old people’s refrigerator. She was only gone for about five minutes on those trips, not nearly long enough for me to search.
Ever since Christmas, though, she’d regularly gone to church on Sundays, and she’d be away for a couple of hours. I’d have to do it then, assuming I could get Dad out of the house.
I didn’t think that would be hard.
“I’ll get it. Don’t worry,” I assured Francie.
* * *
THE NEXT SUNDAY, DAD and I were eating breakfast when Mom came into the kitchen. As she gathered up her purse and Bible, she asked in a hopeful tone, “Would you two like to go to church with me?” Every week, she asked the same thing, and we always turned her down.
This time was no different. Dad barely looked up from the paper. “Not this time, hon.”
I said, “Uh, I’m going for a run with Francie in a little while. Sorry, Mom. Maybe next week.”
Mom grunted but left without another word. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to let go of the guilt I always felt when I disappointed her. Maybe I really would go the next week. But that day, I had something else to do, and it wasn’t just going for a run with Francie.
After she left, Dad sat for a few minutes, reading the Sunday paper while I stretched in the living room. It was time for Dad to go outside. I crossed my fingers and waited.
Five minutes before I was supposed to meet Francie, Dad cleared his throat. “I’ve got some work to do in the back grove. Catch you later.” And he was out the door. I knew he wasn’t going to work, because he didn’t take his suede work gloves. I suspected he had something stashed out there—either drugs of some kind or whisky.
The previous month, Mom had put her foot down about keeping liquor in the house. When he’d brought a bottle inside, she’d given him a hard look. “You remember what happened the last time you kept liquor in the house?”
I watched him walk down the driveway and turn left into the grove and then waited for a full minute before approaching their bedroom door. Hopefully, this wouldn’t take long.
I let the bedroom door swing open and peered inside. The room was neat, with the bed perfectly made and nothing but a few knickknacks on top of Mom’s dresser and Dad’s chest of drawers. I tiptoed in and opened the closet door. Inside, light reflected off the metal box sitting on the top shelf. I took it down and tried to open it. Locked. I had to find the key. It wasn’t on top of the dresser. I opened drawers and felt beneath underwear. No key. I felt in all their shoes and in the pockets of Mom’s dresses and Dad’s suit coat. Nothing.
I started blowing out short breaths like a woman in labor. Trying to control my panic made me so clumsy that I knocked over Dad’s bottle of English Leather. Fortunately, it bounced off the rug and didn’t spill or break. I picked it up and glanced around.
A clock ticked loudly on their nightstand, and I knew Dad might be back any second. Steadying my hands, I opened Mom’s new jewelry box. And there it was, lying among loose buttons and safety pins.
Eureka! I stuck the key in the lock, and the lid snapped open. Sweet relief rushed through me.
Inside was a stack of papers with my birth certificate on top. I unfolded it and took a look. Dana Faye Smith, born January 17, 1952, in Atlanta, Georgia. Walter and Sue Smith were listed as parents. I breathed a sigh of relief and set the paper aside.
Because Dad was still out in the grove, I took the opportunity to glance through the other papers—my parents’ wedding certificate, Dad’s high school diploma, loan applications, and a letter to someone in Boston. Hmm. Boston. That was interesting. I would check it out if I had time.
At the bottom of the box was a black envelope. Opening it, I took out a row of faded black-and-white photos from one of those drug store machines. It was of Mom and me when I was a baby, and I was laughing like crazy. Cute. Why wasn’t this in the family album?
After staring at it for nearly a minute and not seeing anything unusual, I turned it over. On the back, in Mom’s handwriting, I read, “Dana Faye Smith, born January 17, 1952, died September 24, 1953.”
I didn’t breathe for a few seconds as I stared at the back of that page. I couldn’t make sense of what she’d written. If this baby was Dana Faye Smith, deceased, then who was I?
I’d have to think about that later, because I’d used up all my time. Quickly, I put the papers back, careful to keep them in the same order in case Mom had a secret filing system. I set the birth certificate aside. I would show it to Francie before putting it back, but I hesitated about taking the photos. Even though they had been at the bottom of the box, the envelope was limp and smudged as though it had been handled many times. I could justify taking my own birth certificate, but I wasn’t quite ready to admit I’d seen those photos. They were dynamite. I stood there in shock, wondering what I could possibly do next. Eventually, I placed them back in the envelope and returned it to the bottom of the box.
Just as I was setting the box back in the closet, somebody knocked on the front door, and I nearly jumped into the next county.
Someone asked, “Faye, you in there? Are you ready?”
Francie. Of course. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down. I left my parents’ room just as I’d found it, and hoped they wouldn’t suspect I’d been inside. After slipping the birth certificate inside my geometry textbook and stashing it on my bookshelf, I ran for the front door.
Arranging my face into my best estimate of normal, I opened the door and met my friend. “Sorry it took me so long. Just goofing off. I’m a little nervous about running so far.”
She laughed. “I know what you mean. Never in a million years would I think I might run fifteen miles.” Frowning, she said, “Are you stretched out? You look a little funny.”
“I’m fine. Let’s go.” I jogged down the driveway.
All during our run, Francie kept asking me what was wrong, but I insisted I was fine. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. At first, I felt as if I might break in half or curl up into a ball on the ground and scream in agony about the contents of the black envelope. But the act of putting one foot in front of the other cleared my mind enough that I could think semirationally. I needed to tell Francie what I’d found, but once the words were spoken, I could never take them back. It was all too raw to talk about right then, even to my best friend.
Eventually, around mile fourteen, the pieces came together. I realized that everything I’d told Francie was right. The baby in the pictures wasn’t really me. It was Dana Faye Smith, who had died. For whatever reason, I had become her. But I used to be someone else. Pilot?
No matter how much I’d talked about being adopted, deep down, I hadn’t really thought I was. I’d assumed there would be some other explanation and that I’d laugh when I found out what it was. The whole spy thing had been more or less a joke, a fun way to handle my suspicions.
But there didn’t seem to be another explanation or any way to get around what I finally understood to be the truth. My parents weren’t my real parents. And I wasn’t really Dana Faye Smith.
Holy shit. Part of me wanted to forget I’d ever seen those pictures and go on with the life I knew, at least until after the marathon, and maybe even until I graduated from high school. Then, when I was safely away at college, I’d ask Mom about them.
Another part of me wanted to cry and scream and beat my head on the ground because my parents had lied to me my whole life about something as fundamental as who I really was.
Still another part wanted to ask Mom a whole lot of questions and not back down until she answered them.
By the end of the run, even though I was exhausted, I was over the worst of my freak-out. The part of me that wanted to talk to Mom had won, and I was trying to figure out how to do it so she wouldn’t know I’d seen the photos. I’d started to remember all the nice things she’d ever done for me, and I needed to give her a chance to tell me about the adoption before I talked to anyone else. Depending on what she said, I’d decide whether to tell Francie what I’d discovered.