Step two . . .” Dad read aloud. It was early May, and the four of us were gathered around the kitchen table, preparing to spit. “Fill the tube with saliva to the black line.”
I held up my tube. “Just spit into it?”
“Yep,” Dad said, showing me the directions. “Spit until liquid saliva reaches the black line. Bubbles don’t count.”
Mom smiled at me. “You go first, Imani. This was your idea.”
It was my idea, but Mom and Dad had really run with it. They’d spent a whole week researching which company’s test kit to order, and then they ordered four: one for each of us. Once we mailed in the DNA samples, the results would take four to six weeks to arrive, so we’d waited to do the spitting until today, exactly six weeks until my bat mitzvah. If the timing was as advertised, I’d have this part of my present just in time for my big day.
“Let’s all do it at the same time,” I said. “One . . .”
“Pick up your tube, sweetie,” Mom said to Jaime.
“Two . . .”
“Prepare your saliva!” Dad announced.
Jaime closed his mouth and swished.
“Three!”
We all spit forcefully into our tubes. Then we looked around and laughed, because no one’s was even close to the black line. It took a lot more swishing and spitting to collect enough saliva. When mine finally reached the fill line, I gave one final spit, for good luck. Then I screwed on the cap, which topped the saliva with some liquid to “stabilize the DNA.” It really was in there, I guess. Amazing that this small collection of spit could hold such big information.
Into a plastic bag, then a padded box, and off to the post office.
I still hadn’t decided if I was going to search for my birth parents or not. I went back and forth almost every day. Short of some sign from the universe about what to do, I was putting all my faith—my imani—in this DNA test. Either the test kit would answer enough of my questions, or I’d be more determined to find the people who’d given me these genes.
But for now, mailing that box felt like turning in a final exam at the end of school. I didn’t know the results, but the questions were out of my hands, and for now, out of my mind.