Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) by Barbara Stuber Read Free Book Online

crossing the pale sky. I imagine the passengers as tiny, distant dolls. If one of them really needed God, she could break the rules—just open the airplane window, reach out, and brush fingertips with Him.

Chapter 7
    Toward the end of dinner these words pop from Ralph’s mouth and crash on the table. “Say, everybody, I have something!”
    Uh-oh . . . here come the Chows.
    Ralph gives me a look. My eyeballs return bullets. “It’s more a question, really.” He turns to Dad.
    Dad holds up his hand— halt! “Ralph, if this is another rendition of your when-are-we-going-to-get-a-television-set campaign . . .”
    â€œNo, Dad. It’s a legal question.” Ralphie takes a deep breath. “When kids get adopted . . .” He pauses. “Adopted” shatters our chandelier, pierces the ceiling. Mother dabs her mouth, leaving two mauve smears on her napkin.
    â€œ. . . when they are four or five years old or something . . . does the orphan get to bring all his stuff with him to the newpeople—pictures and clothes from the orphanage, or, you know, what happens to all his stuff?”
    Mother leans in, grips the table edge, and glances at my father. “It is gotten rid of.” Dad tips his head, blinks, presumably considering the correct legal answer.
    Our mother shivers, turns to her husband. “It’s best. Why should a child be encouraged to live in reverse?” Her face looks a mix of amen and dammit.
    My mind exits the dining room and enters the little girls’ dorm at the Sisters of Mercy Children’s Home. I see the scratchy green wool blanket on my metal bed—seventh down on the right side—and my pink plastic hairbrush labeled “Lillian” and my locker stacked with pajamas and undershirts. I smell the incense smoke floating in the chapel. My reverse.
    â€œBut, technically, shouldn’t the things still belong to the kid?” Ralph insists.
    Dad does not look at me. He chuckles a phony ho-ho-ho, now there’s a doozy kind of laugh and says, “If you don’t follow in my footsteps in the construction business, son, you’ve got the makings of a fine attorney.”
    No one has asked Ralph why he’s asking such a question. No one has asked what I think. Mother stands like a juggler who has lost her pins. She turns and studies her face in the mirror above the buffet, then glares at her precious crystal cabinet. She walks out, lifts a new McCall’s off the mail pilein the front hall, and heads upstairs to that tidy upholstered place inside herself with no adopted Chinese daughter, no smarty eleven-year-old Boy Scout, no old orphan belongings, no commies or chinks or Korean War—just bridge club, manicures, darning, and solitaire.
    Don’t live in reverse! That’s my mother, always summing things up, exiting a difficult conversation before it starts. In our house hard topics are either swirled away in a glass of bourbon or wrapped in sandpaper and swallowed.
    *  *  *
    â€œWhy are you stealing my misery?” I ask Ralph upstairs. “Why are you so interested in adoption all of a sudden? You’re all rooted here and fertilized and growing your nice branch on the family tree.”
    â€œI was asking a general question.”
    I nod. “Sure you were.”
    The phone rings. Ralph leaps downstairs to answer it. “Lily!” he yells, loud enough to awaken our neighbor’s dead parakeet buried in the side yard.
    I walk down slowly, reviewing who it could be. Patty Kittle? No. Anita, who acts married since she and Neil Bradford’s best friend are going steady? No. Mr. Thorp reporting that I walked out early on my detention?
    â€œHello?” I croak.
    Deep voice. I grip the phone. Elliot James! Oh, God! “Mr. Howard found your books and purse and stuff in theart room.” What’s in my purse? Oh, God. Did you look in my