Chapter 12 2004
When, three days after the incident with Bart and the twins, I still hadn’t managed to utter a word, Ms. Bamford called Mother. But Mother was still being tuned up, so Ms. Bamford ended up speaking with Profe, and he came to get me that afternoon.
“Oh, Cielo,” he said when he saw me, and like a dam breaking, I fell into his arms and started to cry.
“Perhaps a few days at home will help her feel better,” Ms. Bamford said, her voice tight.
I knew she was worried about Mother. For three days, she had checked on me again and again, willing me to talk so she wouldn’t have to call her.
“As soon as she’s ready to come back, just let me know. We love having her here.”
Profe shuffled me into the back seat of the Lincoln, and as soon as we were past the gate and on the road, he looked in the rearview mirror and said, “So I understand the cat’s got your tongue.”
I nodded, and as much as I’d hoped seeing Profe might cure me, it turned out to not be that simple. My tongue sat like a lifeless lump in my mouth.
“Boodo’s excited to see you. I hope you’re hungry,” Profe said, doing a poor job concealing his worry.
I nodded in the rearview mirror and smiled eagerly.
I was hungry. Starving. For ten days, I’d been skipping meals, and each day, the boy with the big forehead stole my milk and dessert.
I really hoped Boodo was making my favorites—spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, and chocolate cake for dessert.
I rolled my hand, prodding Profe to drive faster, which frankly was a waste of effort.
Profe never drove above the speed limit, and he stopped for a full three seconds at every stop sign.
He had always been a careful driver, but since something called the Patriot Act had been passed a little more than two years before, he’d turned into a snail.
He said the law made it scary for people like him, and that something as minor as a driving ticket could cause him to be sent back to Mexico.
I thought the name, Patriot Act, was strange for something so scary, since it made me think of people dressed up in war uniforms, putting on a show.
For the remainder of the hour drive, Profe filled me in on everything I’d missed while I’d been away.
Our beehive was doing well, and he expected a good honey harvest. The previous year, we’d gotten twenty-three jars, which Boodo helped me and Astur sell at the farmers’ market.
We each made eighty-two dollars. Astur bought her pink Heelys.
My stubby five-year-old feet were still too small for Heelys, so I gave the money to Boodo and told her to buy a new mixer since her old one had broken.
She protested, but I told her most of what she mixed ended up in my stomach, so really it was a gift for me.
Every time after, when she made cookies, kaakac, or cake, I felt proud.
“And the best news is, two days ago, I found a new cave.”
I bounced in my seat with excitement.
“Splendiferous, yes? We will explore it together when you are home for spring break.”
My enthusiasm deflated. The statement meant I’d be going back.
“I’m sorry, Cielo, but I spoke with your mother, and she expects you to return to school as soon as your laryngitis clears up.”
Laryngitis. I knew what that was. Happy had it once, her voice so hoarse it hurt to listen to her talk. Laryngitis was not what I had, but suddenly I understood that was how Ms. Bamford had explained it to Profe and then how he explained it to Mother.
Boodo was on the front porch waiting when we pulled up to the house.
I leaped from the car and ran into her embrace, and she guided me inside to the couch and rocked me for a long time as I cried sloppy tears against her.
She stroked my hair with her large hand and sung a soft Somali lullaby.
Eventually, my sobs ran out, and I fell into the deepest sleep of my life.
When I woke, she was still there, my head on her lap and her large soft hand stroking my curls. Fresh tears leaked and soaked into her skirt. It was as if all the fear and sadness since I’d left was escaping through my eyes.
I sat up and wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, and Boodo said, “You lost your tadpole teeth.”
I nodded and dug into my pocket to pull out the two tissue-wrapped teeth. I shook my head sadly, and she understood.
“Of course the tooth fairy didn’t come to that place,” she said.
“She didn’t know where you were. But now, Dhoola, you are home.
You will put them beneath your pillow, and tonight, I’m sure she will find you.
” She slapped her hands on her thighs. “Now I will make us something to eat. Spaghetti and meatballs make everything better.” Boodo was a big believer that food could fix most things.
Profe came into the living room with his hands behind his back.
“I got you a gift.”
I already knew what it was. Profe always gave me books.
He pulled his hands from behind him to reveal a fantastic cover with a white boat in a blue ocean, with sharks and turtles swimming around it as an enormous tiger in the bow kept watch over the dark figure of a boy sleeping curled in the stern.
The Life of Pi. The title made my insides jump, already knowing it was going to be wonderful.
“Should we read it together?” Profe asked with a brow arch.
I grabbed his hand and tugged him toward the library, where we did our reading. The room was my favorite. Filled floor to ceiling with books, it had a great comfy couch in the middle and two chairs across from it. Three arched windows let in enormous amounts of light and looked out on the lake.
Profe took his place in one of the chairs, and I was about to curl up on the couch when my eyes caught on the large portrait across the room of my mother as a little girl around my age with her father and mother behind her.
She wore a white dress, and my grandfather’s hand rested on her shoulder while my grandmother stood stiffly beside him.
My mother had always been beautiful. As a child, her hair was honey blond and her lips were rosebud pink.
She had a small, upturned nose and round eyes blue as a robin’s egg.
She took after her mother, while I looked a lot like my grandfather, my hair dark and curly like his and our eyes the same wet granite gray.
I also had a cleft chin, which I must have inherited from my dad, since I was the only one in the family who had one.
Though I couldn’t be certain, since I didn’t know anything about my dad.
I’d asked Profe about him once, and he’d explained I didn’t have a dad in the traditional sense.
He said Mother had gone to a bank and had chosen the man she wanted to make me, and then I was made at a doctor’s office.
I imagined her going to the Wells Fargo, where we sometimes went to get money, and Mother sitting in the wide blue chairs beside the stairs, paging through a catalog, much in the same way she shopped for shoes.
Mother said she looked for “reputable brands, timeless designs, and quality construction.” When I was born, and she saw my nevus, I imagine her first thought was to return me as damaged, but of course, I wasn’t a pair of shoes, and so she was stuck with what she’d ordered.
I stepped closer to the portrait and pointed to my grandfather and then to myself and rolled my hand, gesturing for Profe to tell me about him.
“Oh,” Profe said, understanding crossing his face. “Your grandfather came up at school?”
I nodded, and he blew out a hard breath. “Fiddlesticks. I was afraid of that. Your mother has a short-term memory when it comes to such things. While others, of course, do not.”
I returned to the couch, and he set The Life of Pi on the table, then leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“It happened before you were born.” He paused, tilted his head. “It might actually have been the reason you were born.” He smiled a little. “Unforeseen consequences. The butterfly effect.”
Profe loved the butterfly effect, and he brought it up often.
Basically the theory is that small changes can have vast and unpredictable impacts on the world.
Every action and every person, no matter how small, or seemingly unimportant, can set off a chain of unforeseeable events that unleash consequences far beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.
Of course, when I was a child, he didn’t explain it that way.
Instead he told me an ancient fable about a Chinese farmer.
The farmer’s horse ran away, which seemed like bad luck.
The next day the horse returned with several wild horses.
Good luck. The farmer’s son tried to train one and broke his leg.
Bad luck. Shortly after, the emperor’s army came to conscript all healthy young men and passed on the farmer’s son because of his broken leg.
Good luck or bad luck, it’s hard to say—the war possibly won or lost for the lack of a brave soldier.
All of it because a horse ran away. I loved that story, and I used to ask him to tell it to me again and again.
“Do you remember your grandfather?” Profe asked.
Before I could shake my head, he said, “I suppose not. He died when you were a baby.” He glanced at the portrait, then back at me.
“He was a complicated, brilliant man, a thorny mixture of good and bad. Like most people, I suppose. But to a greater extent thanks to his money and intelligence.” Profe’s eyes settled on mine.
“I owe him my life. Without him, I’m not sure what would have come of me.
He gave me a job and took a chance on me when no one else would. ”
My grandfather discovered Profe in a park, playing chess. He said he would give Profe a job if Profe could beat him at a game, which Profe soundly did. My grandfather hired him as his driver, and Profe worked for him for close to thirty years, until my grandfather’s death.
“But I wasn’t blind to the other side of him,” Profe went on. “He had no tolerance for idiots or fools, and the world is full of both. He was also intensely spiteful and kept a running tally of every slight, perceived and real, ever done to him.”
He went on to tell me the most awful story.
My grandfather, when he learned he was dying of cancer, set out with great deliberateness to settle the score against every person he believed had ever wronged him.
Using his charm and the recent surge in the stock market, he convinced people to allow him to invest their money, promising high returns and little risk.
He didn’t disclose his illness and kept himself out of sight for the months it took for him to swindle them out of their fortunes.
By the time the investors figured out what was going on, it was too late.
Their money was gone, and he’d be dead before they’d be able to sue him.
“Your grandfather justified it by saying, ‘All they need to do is say no and walk away. But they won’t. Brainless leeches and maggots, the lot of them.’”
I pointed to Mother in the portrait and then to me.
“Yes. Which brings us to the reason you were born. Your grandfather didn’t want his enemies recouping their money, so he convinced your mother to have a child so he could leave his estate in trust to an unassailable heir, one who would be difficult if not impossible to sue.”
When Profe saw the hurt he’d caused, he added quickly, “Not that your mother didn’t want a child. She did. It was just the timing of it that I was pointing out.”
But I knew it wasn’t true. From the start, I was nothing but a pawn in my grandfather and Mother’s twisted game.
Profe looked at the floor. “It was awful. One of the investors killed himself, a young man who had invested heavily. He’d never even done anything to your grandfather.
It was his father who had stolen the girl your grandfather was dating in high school.
The man lost everything and left behind a wife and young son. ”
I thought of Bart’s parting words, That was for my dad, and I knew it was his father who had taken his life. I felt a well of sympathy rise within me and silently vowed not to tell anyone what Bart had done, feeling it was a debt I owed.
Profe blew out a breath, picked up the book from the table, and turned to the first page.
As he started to read, something hard and cold formed in the pit of my stomach, a leaden weight I would come to recognize as loneliness, a lifeless stone that would form, from that point on, each time I carried a burden alone.