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“I don’t know. He left us years ago.”
She opened her mouth slowly and raised her head. “Oh. Well, now it makes sense,” she said.
“What makes sense?”
“Mrs. March has been sponsoring little girl orphans, sending tons of money to these worldwide charities ever since her daughter died. She sits in her office and studies the pictures of those poor kids and compares them with the picture of her dead daughter. I’ve seen her doing it. She only sends money to those who look a little like her. You don’t, but you’re about her daughter’s age and size, I guess.”
She paused and looked at the doorway before turning back to me.
“Don’t let her talk you into dyeing your hair.”
“Dye my hair? Why would I do that?”
She shook her head. I watched her leave and then turned back to the television, but it was as if I could hear nothing, as if Rosie’s words had put me into a daze. Hours passed. I prepared for bed and was just wheeling myself up to it when Mrs. March appeared.
“Oh, you’re not asleep yet. Good. I’m so sorry I didn’t get up here earlier, but Donald came home unexpectedly, and I had to spend all my time with him. He’s always got a lot to tell me and new things for me to do.”
I looked past her through the doorway but heard no one else. She saw where I was looking.
“Oh, Donald had some work to do in his office. He’ll stop by some other time. Let me help you get into bed,” she said, and moved quickly to my side. “Did you enjoy your dinner? Mrs. Caro said you ate almost everything.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Dr. Milan will be stopping by in the morning to check on you, so if there’s anything to complain about, you make sure to tell him, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
She tucked me in, stood back, and smiled down at me. “Girls look so much smaller than they are when they’re tucked into bed. No matter how old they are, they look like they could use a bedtime story. I used to read to Alena quite a bit. Would you like that?”
“Thank you, but I’m tired enough to fall asleep,” I told her.
It didn’t make her happy, but she kept her smile and then leaned down to kiss my cheek. “Sweet dreams,” she said, then turned off the lights and closed my door as she left.
My second night there didn’t feel any less strange than my first. I lay there with my eyes wide open and listened. There was a stronger breeze that night. I could hear it searching for nooks and crannies in the house, places, as Mama might have said, to scratch its back. The darkness seemed quite different from the darkness I had known when we lived in our apartment, stayed at the hotel, and then slept at the beach. There were no street sounds or sounds of the ocean. Oddly enough, I missed all that. Street sounds gave me the comfort of knowing we were not alone, completely lost and forgotten, and the ocean was reassuring.
The silence enhanced my sense of loneliness. There was not only too much emptiness in this family; there was too much emptiness in this big house, too many places unused, untouched, unnecessary. Cemeteries weren’t only for dead people; there were cemeteries for the living, as well, and despite all that was there, I felt encased in a tomb. I wasn’t shut in because of any lock. I was shut in because there was simply nowhere else to go.
What good would Lazarus’s resurrection have been if he had had no family to embrace him?
Thinking of Lazarus reminded me of Mama quoting from the Bible, reminding me that her father was a Bible thumper, but I was tired of crying for myself and for Mama. Sleep was the only balm to soothe the pain in my heart. I closed my eyes and waited as eagerly as someone waiting for a train that would take her home. It came mercifully quickly, and I was deep in it when the sound of my door opening and footsteps woke me abruptly. The lamp by my bed was snapped on. I wiped my sleepy eyes and blinked to focus on the beautiful tall girl who stared down at me.
“What are you, Chinese, Japanese?” she asked. When I didn’t respond quickly enough, she added, “Don’t you speak English?”
“I speak English. I’m part Chinese, yes,” I said.
“What part?” She laughed. “I can’t believe this,” she said, looking around. “She put you in my sister’s room. If she was going to do this, she should have at least put you in one of the guest bedrooms. There are enough of them, for crissakes.” She stared at me a moment and then reached down to feel the sleeve of my nightgown. “What, are you wearing one of my sister’s nightgowns, too? Jesus.”
I pulled out of her grasp. “I didn’t ask to be put in here and be given your sister’s clothing.”
“I bet you didn’t. I bet you didn’t ask for anything.” She paused and shrugged. “Actually, I’m not saying you did. I’m sure it’s all been my mother’s idea. This is all just one of my mother’s new ways to punish me. She thinks this really bothers me, her taking you into the house, giving you Alena’s things, and letting you sleep in her bed. Who cares? Half the time, I don’t know who the hell is in this house, anyway.”
She paused again and stared at me. I stared back at her. I was disappointed. When I first had heard Mrs. March say her daughter had caused the accident because she was on Ecstasy and was a selfish girl who had been in trouble often, I had expected the face and body of some spoiled rich girl, overweight and even ugly, with distorted features.
Instead, this girl was the one I had picked out yesterday, the one with the model’s figure and, now that I saw her close up, a model’s attractive facial features, too. She had soft, not cold, azure eyes, beautifully shaped full lips, and high cheekbones. When Mama and I would watch television together, she would always remark about the good-looking actors and actresses and say it was much more difficult for them to portray bad guys.
“We want our bad guys to look bad, have scars or ugly faces. It’s not the way it really is, Sasha, not out there,” she would say, and she would nod at the window.
Out there was always a desert, a jungle, a rocky cliff to climb. We were always safer inside, even inside a dingy hotel room.
