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another job through one of their relatives who lived in Virginia. I was very sad over it. but I didn't have anyone to talk to about it. The Doctor was particularly busy at the time. I overheard that he had nearly a half dozen new patients admitted. Some days he didn't come home until after dinner. My adoptive mother complained about it for a while and then, as if something in her head snapped, she stopped. In fact, I sensed that she no longer cared if he was home or not.
She was angry about my being unhappy, though, and did complain to him again and again about my moods,
"I know enough about manic-depression, thanks to you, to know she's a prime candidate. Claude. Don't think I'm going to tolerate any of that in this house." she warned.
He assured her I was just experiencing what all young girls experience as they move into adolescence,
"I never acted like that," she told him.
He didn't answer, which was an answer she missed.
I spent most of my time trying to avoid her, and then doing my best to put on an act she would accept. How different our- homeis from Scott's, I remember thinking. Here, truth is rare; lies are the coin we use to buy peace and toleration of each other.
Sometimes it felt as if the floor were trembling beneath my feet. The whale structure would come down around us in a grand collapse, and the Doctor could do nothing to stop it. I imagined the seams pulling apart, the very walls severing.
I was sixteen by then, and we were all living separate lives. As a kind of negotiated settlement between my adoptive mother and the Doctor. I was permitted to refer to her as 'Mother' only when we were out or amongst people, so that there could be at least the semblance of a normal home life. In the house, however, she began to insist I call her Alberta.
"Since I'm not your mother," she told me. it makes more sense."
It was just another in a series of sour balls for me to swallow.
One day I heard a little girl tell her mother she had to go to the bathroom. I was in the lobby of the movie theater with two of my friends from school. Her mother made a pained expression and groaned so loudly, people stopped talking around her.
"What?" she demanded, tugging the little girl's arm.
"A BM," she replied, and the mother went charging off to the ladies' room.
I couldn't help recalling so many times when my adoptive mother treated me that insensitively, and suddenly it occurred to me.
I wouldn't think of her or refer to her as my adoptive mother anymore.
I would call her my AM. Just never to her face.... "Why are you smiling?" one of my girlfriends asked.
"Am I smiling? I must be happy," I replied.
The two of them shook their heads and laughed at my glee. It was not important why one of us was happy. actually. The mood was catching. All giggles, we hurried into the theater, taking jay in our youth without ever really appreciating how precious and how short-lived it was.
4
Heartbreak and Fate
.
Perhaps no day in my life was as dark and as
sad for me as the day Amou told me she was going to leave. She told me before she told my AM or even the Doctor. Somehow. I never thought of her as leaving our home. Of course. I knew she and her older sister Marisa had left their family behind in Brazil. Two years before. Marisa had returned to Brazil. I suspected from reading between the lines that the Doctor had prevented Amou from going by raising her salary significantly and by paying far her vacation trip to Rio. I didn't really understand why he was so determined to keep her in our family. I assumed it was because of the many things she was still doing far my AM.
I was at my desk, doing my homework, when she came to my room. Even though I could sense when she was near. I suspected she had been standing in my doorway watching me for a good half minute or so before bringing herself to my attention.
"What, Amou?" I asked, smiling at her, "I am always surprised at how grown-up you have become," she said. "how beautiful you are. Muito lindo."
My face flushed crimson and I laughed. Once. when I was about fourteen. my AM had
come into my room, stood there looking at me, shaking her head, and then said. "Your real mother must have been a chunky woman with a double chin. Probably with oversized, sagging breasts and a waist you could tie an ocean liner to when it was in port. She was probably short and squatty with ballooned cheeks and tiny eyes. Medicine, especially the medicine they give mentally ill people, can do that to a person, you know, and then their offspring inherit it."
I had run to Amou immediately after and told her, Now I reminded her of that.
"Remember? She said I would be forever bloatfaced."
