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“This again?”her papa said when he stumbled in from looking for work.“Any work he could find,”he kept saying, something that would put food on the table and money in their pocket. Five months of going place to place every day hadn’t gotten him anything, even though he was a train engineer with a college degree to boot. She didn’t expect today to be any different, but she did wish he would stop complaining about her cooking. Flour was the only thing they had left besides water, and what else could you make with those two ingredients besides pancakes? Maybe grown-up women knew, but she didn’t.
She slid two on a plate without a word.
“I got a job,” her papa startled her by saying, her mind filling almost instantly with thoughts of bacon and cheese and maybe even a candy cane or two. Foolish notions for a girl like her, but she secretly hoped Santa might bring her one for Christmas.
“Where?” she asked, excitement creeping into her voice. She knew he would find one, never doubted at all. Her papa was smart, and the whole town knew it, even if they took forever to hire him. Even if they thought he was up to no good.
His shoulders slumped over his plate as he shoveled in a few bites of pancake. “Don’t get too excited. I’m the new garbage man.” It was a lifeless statement that made her heart skip a beat. In first grade, Carmen Newton’s papa was the town garbage man, and no one at school would play with her. Not even talk to her, mostly. They gave her the nickname “Cootie Carmen.” They sang singsongy taunts like “Stay away from the garbage girl. One look at her will make you hurl.” Carmen only stayed at school a year before her family left town in search of something better. Sometimes Sally thought about Carmen, usually when she had her nose pressed to the chalkboard at school. She really hoped Carmen’s family had found better. Carmen wasn’t from here, so leaving was easy.
Sally was born and raised in Silver Bell and wasn’t ever leaving. She said a quick prayer that the old Garbage Girl moniker would stay dead and buried. The prospect of new groceries wasn’t enough to keep her fears at bay. She couldn’t let her papa see her new scared mood.
“I’m happy you found a job. When do you start?”
Her papa laughed low and short. “I start tomorrow, but I’m the new garbage man. That ain’t anything to be happy about, child.”
She hated that she knew he was right. In this town, being the garbage man was one step higher than being a beggar on the street. And you know what people say about beggars. Sally looked for the positive because theyweren’tbeggars, and that was something to be glad about.
“At least it’s a job. You’ve wanted one of those for a long time now.” It was the wrong thing to say, but she wasn’t sure if there was a right thing to say either. Her papa pushed back from the table and stormed toward the hall, his chair falling backward to bounce on the kitchen floor. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey off the kitchen counter while she stared after him until his bedroom door closed. She pulled the chair upright again and pushed it under the table. Sally sat down and reached for her papa’s plate, picking up the remaining pancake and taking a small bite. She should probably save it for her papa, but once she started, she couldn’t stop herself. She ate and ate until every bite was gone and then stared forlornly around the room, her stomach not quite full but not empty anymore either.
It was quiet out here all by herself. Paul was probably eating dinner with his parents, and Jack was probably doing chores, so there was no one to talk to. She hated the quiet, but she probably should’ve been grateful for it.
Because it didn’t take long for her mind to start yelling, to start calling her all those names the kids at school were bound to use sooner or later.
Garbage Girl. Garbage Girl.
She really wished she knew what happened to Cootie Carmen.
10
October 1998
Finn
No matter how long I stare at the papers covering my hotel bed, I still can’t make sense of them. I’ve laid them out in order, from birth certificate to newspaper articles to the slip of paper I received from the hospital only an hour ago, but it’s like I’m watching a French film with subtitles that scroll too fast to be helpful. Nothing is helpful. Everything feels like a lie.
Two days after mailing off a blood sample to that Ancestry website, I got impatient and made a side trip to the hospital to have my blood analyzed. I already knew I was type B positive, same as my mother but different from my O-negative father, so there wasn’t much anyone could tell me. It felt like a false start, a tiny push pin on a very large map, the ticket you need to enter an event. Definitely better than waiting for the post office to deliver the same results three weeks from now. I already knew what the results would be, but you can’t start the race without paying the admission fee. In this case, the fee was a slip of paper proving my own blood type.
The test showed I’m not B positive after all. I’m A negative. The printed lab result glares up at me from the bed, daring me to argue with the results. “Are you sure? I’ve always been B positive.” I stuttered over my words to the nurse right after she presented me with the findings.
“Yes, Mr. Hardwick. You’re as A negative as they come.” She wasn’t insulted. She simply smiled in amusement at my confusion. And why wouldn’t she? She had no cause to suspect my life was crumbling like a gingerbread house constructed fresh out of the oven, too hot for the glue to dry, not yet solid enough a foundation to keep it standing.
I’m A negative.
Which means I’m one hundred percent positively not my parents’ child. At least not by blood. Adoption is noble, the greatest sacrifice a young mother can make, and the greatest gift a childless couple can receive.
But no one ever told me I was adopted.
So frankly, screw gifts and sacrifices. And screw my parents, too.
I fall to the bed and pick up the paper again, studying it upside down and sideways, like a different angle might make the results morph into something else. How am I A negative? And how unfair is it that the only people who can give me an answer are both buried in Texas? Not the most respectful way to look at the death of my parents, maybe, but it’s all I’ve got. The universe took away my only source of information years ago and left me a hundred questions.
The universe.
What I really mean is God, but I’m angry with Him and don’t want to admit it. The last thing I need is for him to play with my life even more than He already has.
I crumple up the paper and sail it across the room. The hotel room door chooses that moment to open, and the paper nails Billi smack on the middle of the forehead.
“Okay, I can take a hint. I’ll come back later,” she says, both hands up as she glances at the floor and slowly backs out of the room. In her defense, I left the door open a bit, so she didn’t think to knock.
