“You’ll steal it? Won’t Miss Joe notice?”
She probably will, but I don’t have a photo of my mom. She never took any for my dad and me, and though this isn’t the face I know, it’s still her face. “She might, but I don’t care. I want to keep it.”
Voices come down the hall, one of a woman complaining about something we can’t hear, and I know immediately it’s Missus Wilhelmina and Miss Joe returning.
I take Kalinda’s hand and we rush out the room quick as lightning, but they’re already so close that they see us, and Missus Wilhelmina yells and screams and tries to run after us, but we run so fast back to her classroom that she isn’t able to follow or see where we’ve gone. By the time she returns, we’re already sitting in the classroom, sweating with the rest of the class, though no one else will have known it was from running. The second we exploded into the room, Kalinda begged them all to lie for us and say that we have always been there, and though no one likes me, they all like Kalinda, and so the entire class agreed.
Missus Wilhelmina walks back in and immediately comes to a stop beside my desk. “Where were you, Miss Murphy?”
“I was always here.”
The class hesitates, and then Anise agrees loudly. “She was always here stinking up the room.”
They all laugh.
Missus Wilhelmina looks confused. She crosses her arms. “I would’ve remembered you being here. I even thought to myself that you were not.”
I force on the most confused face I can muster. “I was always here, Missus Wilhelmina.”
Everyone else nods their agreement. Missus Wilhelmina frowns at me until she goes to the front of the classroom.
“Two students were seen running from Miss Joe’s office.”
Everyone gasps and eyes swing to Kalinda and me, but no one says anything.
“Nothing was taken, but if these students are ever found, believe me and God, they will not be coming back to this school. Do you hear me?”
We all murmur, “Yes, Missus Wilhelmina.”
She looks pleased and so begins her lesson once again. Neither Kalinda nor I dare to look at each other for the rest of the period.
I’m home, laying on my back on my bed, holding the photo in its frame high above me. The frame is silver and rusted, with the paint scraped away from its edges. The color of the photo is brown and white, and it’s yellowed with old age. My mother and Miss Joe are posing together, their flowery skirts flaring out around their knees, and I see that Miss Joe’s are swollen, and that my mom’s knees look like round rocks sticking out from her skin, just like my own. They stand side by side, their hands folded together in front of their stomachs as proper young ladies should place them, but their smiles aren’t genteel and poised. They look like they’re about to burst out laughing and they’re trying their best not to. Seeing them like this, I don’t know whether I want to laugh or cry myself.
I want to know what the photo feels like—want to touch it, because then maybe that’d mean I’m touching something my mother has touched, and want to smell it, because maybe it somehow still smells like my mother too, like the scent of her perfume. I pull and tug the back of the frame until it creaks open, and then slide the photo out gently so it won’t tear. The paper is surprisingly rough, and the photo smells like mothballs—not like my mother at all.
I flip it over, and on the back are yellow stains and cursive writing in pencil that has almost faded away. I hold it close to my eyes to see more clearly. It says: Doreen Hendricks residence, 5545 Mariendahl, 19th of September, 1974.
I run my finger over the writing. 5545 Mariendahl? I flip the photo over again, and see that they’re standing in front of a house that looks to have a short roof and wide windows, and though I’ve never seen this house before, I’m willing to bet anything that its address is 5545 Mariendahl. And I don’t know for sure if this is where I can find my mother—but I also know it’s the only clue I have.
The next morning, I walk out before the sun is in the sky, when it’s still hidden behind the green hills, and the clouds are pink and the birds have just started to sing their songs, and I walk to the guava tree to find Bernadette. She isn’t there, swinging her legs or grinning with her too-big teeth, so I keep walking the road until it takes me up the hill and back down again. The little house where she was living is empty now, its windows so black it’s like no one ever lived there at all.
The photo is still in my hand. What was I going to do? Ask Bernadette if she knew of this house? Go there myself, if she told me yes, that’s where my mother could be found? If I walked up to this house today and knocked on the door so it would swing open and reveal my mother standing there, looking down at me like a stranger, I’m not sure I would have anymore a reason to stay alive. If my mother opens the door, and she can’t tell me why she hasn’t come back for me in all this time, I think I really might as well just let myself die. Nobody but my mother has ever loved me, and if she doesn’t love me anymore, I have not a soul on this Earth that cares anything about me. No one cares about someone like me, and no one cares that I’m angry about that either. Might as well be the crazy man screaming at everyone around him, or might as well not exist at
