Norma
THE DASH SADDENS ME. THE SIMPLICITY MISSES SO MUCH. It doesn’t allow for
all the downs that bring a person low or the joys that lift them up. All the bends and turns that make up a lifetime are flattened and erased. The dash on a tombstone is wholly inadequate. Everything around it is more remarkable. The name, etched in cursive or dignified fonts. Sometimes a photo is carved into the grey granite, giving life to the dead. Yet the dash, that line that carries the entire sum of a life within it, is unremarkable.
My knees cracked as I bent to trace the edges of the dash. It was cold but smooth. It eased the pain in my finger, cut open while trying to liberate the seeds of a pomegranate. The juice stained the skin under my nail. The engravers hadn’t been here to add the year of her death, and the grass had already started to grow. A stranger might think she was still walking around this world. I’d bought a wind chime for the grave, a small pewter one with long cylindrical chimes dangling from a bouquet of grey roses. As I pressed it into the hard-packed earth beside the tombstone, I heard her voice reminding me that chimes are not music but an annoying scattering of sound. I sighed at the memory and pushed the little instrument harder into the earth. Dirt blended in with the pomegranate juice under my nail. I tapped the chime with my fingers to make it sing, since there was no wind today. Then I whispered a little prayer in the hope that it wouldn’t be stolen, kissed the top of the stone and left. I walked through the rows of granite, stepping lightly over the men and women six feet below. I wrapped my arms around my chest against the cold, my head down as I tried to fight through my complicated grief. I hoped that Mother wouldn’t be angry with me for searching for the woman from my dreams. Even now, after
everything, I couldn’t bear the thought that she would consider me an ungrateful daughter.
ON A COLD night in late September, Mother died in her sleep, quietly separating herself from me and the world. A worker from the home called me at 7:45 a.m. on a Tuesday, as I was about to leave for work. I took the rest of the week off and called Aunt June. We hadn’t spoken like family, like people who love one another, since the day she told me about my past. Those months between the truth and Mother’s passing may have been the loneliest of my life. Aunt June and I were civil. We made courtesy calls— conversations that revolved entirely around Mother and her care. There was no laughing, no plans for visiting. For five decades now, each and every day I lived as Norma, my aunt June had betrayed me. I had no mother left to blame.
After my call to Aunt June, I headed over to the home, dread settling in at the thought of seeing my mother. But when I got there and Janet’s strong arms were draped over my shoulders, I felt relief, not dread. Mother looked so calm and serene. Her mouth wasn’t twisted in a grimace. Her hands weren’t pulling at anything she could find to soothe her anxiety. Her eyes were closed and not searching frantically for something or someone familiar. I pulled up the chair and sat beside the bed, taking her hand in mine. I rubbed it softly, kissed it and placed it back before leaving. I stayed for five minutes maybe. I signed the papers at the nursing station to transfer her body to the funeral home. I told them I would be back the next day to retrieve the pictures. The rest they could give away. I stopped at the funeral home to make the arrangements. She’d planned everything the month after my father died, so there was little to decide. They offered me coffee and a tissue, but I refused both. Only when I was sitting at my own kitchen table did I feel the stab of grief, deep and hard. There, in the quiet of the kitchen, I cried. It wasn’t a solemn cry. I wailed. I let loose a tide of salt water. My head pounded and my throat burned, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. Grief seemed to possess me. I was fifty-four years old and alone. I had no one to comfort me when I needed it the most.
The funeral was three days later. A small group assembled in a room that smelled of lilac and ghosts. Mother was laid out in a coffin in her favourite blue dress. Aunt June and I spoke little and softly. A few of the ladies from the church came and paid their respects. A distant cousin who’d
seen the obituary in the paper introduced herself. They hadn’t seen each other in decades, but she felt the need to come. She shook my hand and took a seat as Aunt June leaned in and whispered, “Ghoul. Just wants to be part of the ritual. I don’t even remember her. Folks like her watching the death ads all the time, they give me the shivers.” I couldn’t help but smile. We laid Mother to rest alongside Father. I placed a bouquet of roses on the grave and took my leave. I visit now, occasionally. I’m always pleased to see that no one has taken the chime.
I’d sold the house when Mother went to live in the hospital, and moved back to my own apartment. Aunt June stayed with me for a week to help with the arrangements, and as much as I wanted to be angry with her still, she was a comfort. The quiet had taken on a different hue now that my parents weren’t there to enforce it. It felt lighter somehow. Aunt June sat down opposite me and set a bottle of whiskey between us. She handed me one of the glass tumblers my parents had drunk from for as long as I could remember, etched crystal. A wedding gift from long ago.
“Let’s have a drink. To your parents. As flawed as they were, we loved them.” She tipped an inch of the amber liquid into each of our glasses.
“Flawed?” I tipped the glass and downed the whiskey. It burned and my eyes welled up.
Aunt June pretended not to notice my discomfort and poured a second. “Flawed, yes. Maybe they went a little too far with you, but you cannot say they didn’t love you.” She eyed me over the lip of her glass.
“I wonder if my actual family loved me, too?”
Aunt June was quiet as the hum of electricity filled the silence. She cleared her throat. “I can’t change the past, Norma. I can only help you with the future. You are the one thing on earth I love more than anything. You are the only reason I still keep going, why I don’t give up and die. God knows, I’m old enough, but I want to see you through this.”
“You could have said something back then. You could have told me when I asked why my skin was so brown. You had the chance, but you helped them live this giant, disgusting lie.” I took another drink and set the glass down a little too hard, rocking the table.
“Norma.” She said my name with force, making sure I was listening. “She was my sister and I loved her. I loved her enough to make sure that she was happy. Were there consequences? Yes. She became obsessive, scared they would find you and take you away. That’s why she drank. But
you can never say she didn’t love you, that she didn’t take good care of you.”
“I could have had brothers and sisters. I could have lived in a house where the windows were open, and people laughed all the time, or fought and made up. I could have . . .” Anger makes people say things they don’t mean. Makes them want to hurt others like they’ve been hurt. And I didn’t mean it, not entirely, but I couldn’t stop. “It doesn’t bother you that there might be my actual parents out there, who miss me, who never knew what happened to me? I might have brothers and sisters. She was so obsessed over losing me, and yet, she did the same thing to another family. I can’t be as casual about this as you are.”
She looked past me, not at me. I was starting to feel light-headed. I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Perhaps this was all a bad dream. Anything that didn’t make sense had always been the result of a bad dream, and this one had to be the worst yet.
“I’ll help you,” she whispered from across the table. “Help me what?”
“I’ll tell you everything I know, and I’ll help you find your family.” My aunt June wasn’t a crier. The only time I’d ever seen her cry was at Alice’s funeral. But she cried then. “Just promise that I will still be your family. You’re all I’ve got.”
“Then start talking.” The whiskey was making me mean.
“Tomorrow. I will tell you everything tomorrow. I need some sleep.”
For the first time, I looked at my aunt and saw an old woman. She’d always had so much life in her, so much energy. It was strange to see her so deflated, her shoulders slouched, her head down. For the first time, I noticed the age spots on her hands, the cavernous wrinkles around her eyes, the thinness of her arms.
“Tomorrow.” I drained the last of my drink and left her alone at the table.
“I THINK WE should go for a drive,” Aunt June said. She was seated at the table when I woke, eating a toasted English muffin with peanut butter, a banana sliced on her plate. I watched as she dipped the banana slices into the melted peanut butter.
“A drive?” My head was a little sore and I just wanted to be still, to take a bath.
“I need to show you something. Something you’ve seen before but that will have new meaning now.”
“Why so cryptic?”
“I need to get my nerve up. And sometimes words just aren’t enough. So just come on a drive with me.” She sounded tired and a little bit exasperated.
I followed Aunt June’s directions, and we drove out of Augusta, north on the I-95 until we hit old Route 9. Small towns gave way to farms and fields, tractors replaced cars, and the road became rough. I knew the route well; it was the same one I took to my lake cabin, but for the first time, it felt unfamiliar. It felt like I was driving it for the first time, seeing the farmhouses for the first time, noticing the labourers in the fields, their dark skin sweaty and glistening in the sunlight. We stopped at a small shop alongside the road for water and a bathroom break. The place was old and smelled of bread, coffee, gas and fried food. The door was small and the aisles inside were narrow, the refrigerator doors coated in condensation. The shelves were stacked with an odd assortment of tools and food, and everyone inside seemed to know one another. A sign pointed to a bar out back.
We gassed up the car and bought some snacks before pulling back onto Route 9.
“We’re getting close. You might want to slow down,” said Aunt June.
“Close to where?” I looked into the rear-view mirror to make sure no one was behind me before I slowed down. Aunt June didn’t answer, just kept her eyes focused on the road.
“There, pull over.” She pointed to an old dirt road. I pulled in and put the car in park. Aunt June got out and gently closed the door behind her. I turned off the car and followed. The field to the right was empty, the earth still ashen from a burn. To the left was a thick stand of trees. Aunt June walked toward where the ground looked freshly disturbed.
“This is where she found you. Right here.” I took a deep breath.
“You were alone, sitting on a rock that used to be here.”
I’d passed this rock before, this place. I’d passed it with my mother in the passenger seat, headed out to the lake. I was finding it hard to breathe. There was no wind, not a cloud in the sky, and I wished there was. I needed something to look at besides this field and this dirt where a rock used to be.
I needed to follow something as it escaped this place. A truck rumbled past, casting dirt into the air and breaking me out of what I was sure was about to become a panic attack. My eyes followed it until it was out of sight.
“I’ve been here. Well, not here, but I’ve driven past, with Mom in the car. She never said a thing. She never even let on.” I bent down and picked up a handful of dirt, looking intently at it.
“She brought me here shortly after . . .” She paused. “After she took you. It’s hard to say that, that she took you. She wanted us to consider it like you came to us.”
I dropped the dirt and dusted my hand on my pants. Aunt June took my hand, and we started walking down the dirt road, she in one rut and I in the other, our hands held across the grassy knoll in the middle.
“Did she ever feel bad?”
“I don’t think so. She had herself convinced that you’d been abandoned and she’d saved you.”
We had only been walking a few minutes when a cabin came into view. It was small and old but taken care of, loved. The outside was awash with colour, childlike flowers and trees painted everywhere. A small vegetable garden lay abandoned. What remained of the greens were withered and the little fence was in need of mending. It looked like an animal had dug under and had feasted on the vegetables. A firepit lay out front, recently used, the wood burned to charcoal, black and shiny.
“We should go back. We don’t want to intrude.”
Aunt June let go of my hand and turned to walk away, but I stayed, my feet rooted to the ground. The place was lovely and familiar somehow. I could smell a fire on a rainy day, see people laughing and drinking tea. I turned to see where a path led down to the nearby lake.
“My dreams.” I turned to Aunt June, who stopped but didn’t turn to face me. “My dreams. They were memories.” I turned back to the small cabin. “I know this place. I’ve been here before, before it was painted like this. I can see people sitting around a fire, smell potatoes boiling, the smell of tobacco. I know this place.”
I walked up to the steps of the cabin and ran my hands over the crudely painted fauna and wondered if someone I was meant to love had painted it.
“Look at this.” My voice started quiet but grew as I traced the veins of a leaf. “So full of colour. I could have had a life full of colour.”
“Now, don’t get ahead of yourself, Norma. Anyone could have painted this cabin, and we don’t know for sure that this is where your other family stayed. I imagine there are a few of these cabins.”
I pretended I didn’t hear her.
“And you all made me think there was something wrong with me. That those dreams meant something was wrong with me.” The realizations came swift and solid. “Even Alice? Oh my God, did Alice know, too?”
“I’m sorry. You will never know how much, but I am. I am so sorry.” She started to walk toward me, but I turned and walked past her, slamming my feet into the ground.
“And Alice?” I yelled behind me. Aunt June was walking as fast as she could, trying to catch up.
“It’s the only secret I ever kept from her. I told her you were adopted.”
“You seem to be able to keep big secrets from the people you say you love the most.” I was angry and yelling. “You’re not who I thought you were. How could you be part of this? How could you lie so easily? Fuck!”
Aunt June was crying.
I knew what I was doing. I was unleashing my anger at the only person left to feel it. The only person left who I could hurt as much as I was hurting.
“I need to get out of here.” I got into the car and slammed the door.
“I sometimes kept secrets for the people I loved. And maybe it was wrong, but I have you, and I love you.” Aunt June closed her door and put on her seat belt. “Anger is exhausting. Holding on to it will drain the life out of you.”
I reversed out onto Route 9, too quickly, and the tires slipped in the soft dirt. The car went sideways, and Aunt June grabbed the door handle. Thankfully, no other cars were near. I pulled over to the side, put the car in park and rested my head on the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“No need to be sorry. Just let me help you.”
After our trip up Route 9, I gave up my apartment and moved to Boston and the brownstone that used to belong to Alice and was now Aunt June’s. The house had no ghosts. The air was light, the curtains open to the outside world. Music played almost all the time from a little silver radio that sat on the counter in the kitchen. With the money from my parents and the sale of the house, I was able to retire from teaching. A young teacher, fresh out of
college, was eager to take my place, to teach new and exciting things. I’d never considered myself to be “old,” but apparently I was. George Orwell was being replaced by stories of survival and vampires. It was a good time to leave.
“Why didn’t you and Alice ever live together, all those years?” We were sitting in the living room, quietly reading our own books. Aunt June set hers down on her lap.
“It was a different time.” She looked around at the home that was now hers. “And by the time it was okay, we were set in our ways. I liked my space and she liked hers. We were always together, but both of us had somewhere to go for some alone time. I guess after all those years, it just worked for us.”
“I miss her,” I said.
“So do I, every single day when I wake up and remember she’s not here.”
Despite her age, Aunt June had an active social life and went out with friends to the theatre and karaoke, sometimes inviting me along. I made a few friends of my own, people I met when I started volunteering at the women’s shelter that Alice had helped at throughout the years. I still had my car and loved to get away to the lake for days at a time, mostly on my own but sometimes with Aunt June. We settled into a rhythm of daily life that worked for both of us. And I thought about the truth. To be honest, it took a disproportionate amount of my emotional energy. I felt stuck between wanting to find my family and the fear that they didn’t want to be found or it was too late. I would lay awake at night, staring at the dim light from the street lamp cast on my bedroom ceiling, and I would try my hardest to remember them, to see them in my mind, but I couldn’t. I read my journals over and over again, but the only thing that seemed to be a concrete clue as to my identity was a name: Ruthie. She had been the imaginary friend of a lonely child and a name called out at a protest. That had to mean something. It was a puzzle, one where none of the pieces seemed to fit, or if they did, I just couldn’t see it.
A few weeks after our trip to Route 9, Aunt June and I were sitting at the table, waiting for the chicken Parmesan to finish baking, when Aunt June handed me a folded piece of paper. I looked at it and then at her, curious.
“Open it,” she said.
“What is it?”
“A clue to who you really are.”
I held the paper in one hand and ran the fingers of my other hand along the edges.
“It doesn’t bite.” Aunt June smiled across the table. “It might,” I said apprehensively.
I gently unfolded the paper. It was a photocopy of an old newspaper article. I looked up at Aunt June, confused.
“Just read it.”
The headline read, “Fight at Carnival Results in Indian Boy’s Death.” The article was dated August 1971. I read on. Apparently, there had been a fight between two Indian berry pickers in Maine. Alcohol was suspected. The boy who died, a boy named Charlie, was described as a hard worker and loved by his family. I was having a hard time understanding what any of this had to do with me, until I read the last bit: “The family of the young man who died also had a four-year-old daughter who disappeared from the same berry fields almost a decade ago. She was never found.”
The last sentence was so abrupt and so unfinished. The oven beeped and Aunt June went to get our food. I was still trying to get my bearings when she set my plate in front of me.
“Where did you find this?”
“I’m an old lady with time on her hands. I started looking for anything that could help us, and I found this at the library a couple days ago.”
“I had a brother named Charlie.”
“It would seem so. If that’s you. Although I don’t think many little girls were taken from the berry fields of Maine that same summer.” She shrugged.
“I wonder how to find them, my other family?”
“Seems that they worked in the fields. Maybe the company has records of them?”
When I didn’t say anything and didn’t touch my chicken, Aunt June spoke.
“I called the factory where they process the berries, and they are willing to meet with us tomorrow to see if they can help us.”
“Are you serious?” I could hear the shake in my voice.
“Yup. I booked us a little bed and breakfast for the night. So, let’s finish here, clean up and pack. We can leave first thing tomorrow. Leonard has
agreed to feed Henri.”
I looked over at the fish swimming in circles in the same fishbowl that had sat at Aunt June’s since I was little. “Okay” was the only word I could find.
We left the next morning, just as the sky was getting light. It was a five- hour drive and we had a two o’clock appointment with the Ellises, the owners of the same berry fields we had visited a few months prior. It was a cold day in early December. A few of the trees clung to their leaves, but for the most part, the beautiful reds, oranges and golds had given way to leafless branches. It was good to witness nature doing what it does best, letting go, moving on. I had a knot in my stomach the entire drive.
The parking lot was nearly empty. A few trucks sat by the office door. When we pulled in, Aunt June reached across and took my hand. We sat there for a few minutes before I took a deep breath, grabbed my purse and headed to the door. Mr. Ellis, a few years older than me, greeted us.
“Good afternoon. You drive up this morning?” “We did.”
“Must be tuckered. That’s a long drive.”
“We’re good. Not driving back today. We’re going to stay at a bed and breakfast for the night.” I talked like I’d never been here before, and maybe I hadn’t, really. I’d been here before, but as a different version of myself.
“So, what can I help you with?” He pointed to two chairs. We took a seat and he sat on the edge of his desk. I took the newspaper article out of my purse and handed it to him.
“You remember this?” I asked quietly.
He read for a few seconds before handing it back to me. “Sure do. My dad was the boss then and I was young, but he told me all about it when I was older. Said that boy, Charlie, was a good worker and a nice kid. Such a shame. That family was cursed with bad fortune. They had a little one, a girl, disappear years before. Sad state of affairs, I’d say. They never did find her. One of the boys, Joe, just left here a couple months ago. He lived out there near the field where she went missing. Painted up a cabin like you’ve never seen.”
“Joe?” I said softly.
“Yup. Worked here for years. I let him stay in the cabin. It was in shambles when he got here, but he made it nice. A couple months ago, he just drove the company vehicle down to the border and left it there. No idea
where he went. I’m assuming back to Nova Scotia, where the family’s from, but I couldn’t really tell ya. I got the truck back, perfect condition, so no hard feelings.”
“I see.” From the corner of my eye, I could see Aunt June waiting for me to say something else. Eventually, the quiet and my confused gaze forced Mr. Ellis to look away, first out the window and then to Aunt June.
“You see, my niece, Norma, here . . . Well, we believe that she is that little one. That Joe would be her brother.”
“No shit?” He stood up and walked over to a filing cabinet that stood against the wall. “You’re little Ruthie? Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Ruthie?” I whispered, the name on the edge of my tongue, the sound soft and airy. “Ruthie.” My entire world was suddenly starting to make sense to me.
Mr. Ellis took a file from his cabinet, opened it and laid it on his desk. He copied something onto a piece of paper. “I probably shouldn’t be sharing this with you, but since you look so much like Joe, I don’t think it’s a mistake. Here’s the address of his parents. They’ve been at the same address since they all started working down here in the ’50s. They quit coming down after that terrible thing with Charlie. But Joe came back, stayed for a long time like I told you, working these fields.” He handed me the paper. “You let me know if it all works out, won’t ya?”
I nodded and stared at the paper.
“Thank you, Mr. Ellis. We appreciate this, and we’ll let you know,” said Aunt June, getting out of her chair. She took me by the elbow and led me to the door.
“You don’t mind if we take a look at that cabin you mentioned?” I said. “Not at all.”
“Thank you,” I said, as Aunt June guided me out of the office.
I tucked the paper in the zippered part of my purse, but not before I memorized it. I pulled out onto Route 9 again and headed to the dirt road that led to the cabin that might be my brother’s, Joe’s. Joe, I kept repeating over and over in my head until the word had no meaning anymore. It became a sound. A crooked sigh.
Aunt June walked behind me this time, following my footsteps in the thin layer of snow that had fallen that morning. When I got to the cabin, I took the three steps up to the door and, for some reason, knocked. It felt wrong to just walk in. When no one answered, I pushed the door open.
Inside was a sparse but tidy home. Everything seemed to belong, and nothing was out of place. Dust had settled, and I ran my finger over the tea kettle, clearing a long line around the top. There was nothing personal, no pictures or mementoes. Only the walls, painted like the outside. There was an apple tree on one wall, and a campfire on another with two small children lying on a blanket, watching the stars. The painting was crude but beautiful. A coffee cup sat unwashed on the table, a dark stain around the bottom. Before we left, I traced my name in the dust on the table: Ruthie.
A FEW DAYS later, as Boston was lighting the giant Christmas tree, a gift each year from Nova Scotia, I tried to write a letter. But each time, I ended up tearing it up or throwing it in the trash. There was too much hope, and I had learned to mistrust hope. Finally, Aunt June put her foot down and helped me write one that I could send.
Hello,
You don’t know me, but my name is Norma. I was raised in Maine by my mother, Lenore, and my father, Frank. It has recently been revealed to me that I was not their natural child. Apparently, in a moment of despair and confusion, my mother took me from a rock in a blueberry field in Maine along Route 9. This would have been in 1962. I have come to believe that I am your “Ruthie.”
I can understand if you are skeptical and may not want to contact me. I have attached the newspaper article that helped me to find you, a photo of myself as a child, along with a recent photo. This must be difficult for you. However, if you would like to contact me, I have included my return address on the envelope and my phone number is 001 555 9921.
Regards,
Norma, maybe Ruthie
I remember that, as a child, I found the anticipation of Christmas unbearable—the wait for Santa and the one day a year when I was permitted to eat as much sugar as my tiny body could handle. However agonizing I thought that was, the waiting for a response from my birth family was far worse. I couldn’t sleep, imagining what I would do if they sent a response back telling me I was wrong, or a response confirming my identity. I checked the mail three times a day, even though I knew the mail was delivered between twelve and one in the afternoon. I volunteered at the women’s shelter to keep my mind off a letter that might never arrive. I jumped each time the phone rang and was nearly sick each time I saw the light on the answering machine blink.
At the end of December, I was in the bath when Aunt June knocked on the bathroom door.
“There is a phone call for you. From a woman named Mae from Nova Scotia.”
I nearly slipped and fell in my rush to get out of the tub and into my robe. I was dripping wet when I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Hi, are you Norma, the one who sent us a letter saying you’re Ruthie?” She was speaking low but there was a forcefulness in her voice.
“I am. Thank you for calling. Mae, is it?”
“Yup. If you are Ruthie, I’m your older sister. And I’ll be honest because I don’t know any other way to be: you gotta be her. I’m saying it because that photo of you as a little girl is just how I remember you, and besides, you’re the spittin’ image of my mother. Spittin’ image. So, since this all lines up, I think you might just be Ruthie.”
I started to shake and cry. Aunt June brought over a chair and a cup of peppermint tea.
“I think I am, as well,” I said.
“Now, I don’t want to talk on here about your past—it’s long distance and that’s expensive. But I want to ask you a question.”
“Okay.”
“You ever been to an Indian rights protest in Boston?”
A memory of that day with Aunt June and the man who kept yelling, “Ruthie,” flashed before me. “Yes, in Boston in the late 1970s. There was a man who called my name, my real name.”
“Then you’re Ruthie, and I guess some of us have some apologizing to do to Ben. We didn’t believe him when he told us he saw you.”
“Is he my . . .”
“Ben’s the oldest. You’re the youngest. Charlie died, but then you know that. Joe is still here but not much longer. He’s got cancer all through his lungs and into his bones. And I’m Mae. And Mom. She’s old and needs some help, but her mind is fit as a fiddle.”
“My mother is still alive?”
“Yup, but you missed Dad by a couple of years. He’d be happy you found us again, though. I know he would.”
I was having difficulty speaking. Aunt June took the phone from my hand.
“I’m sorry, but Norma—Ruthie is overcome. Can I jot down your number and she can call you when she gets her breath back?” Aunt June got a notepad and took down her number. “Yes, I will tell her. Thank you, Mae.” Aunt June placed the receiver back into its cradle. “She says she can’t wait to meet you in person and give you a great big hug.”
I started to cry harder. It all seemed unreal in that moment. Everything seemed unreal, and at the same time, while I sat there sipping peppermint tea, my hand in Aunt June’s, everything seemed to suddenly make sense. I was a strange sort of puzzle, it seemed, and a piece that had been missing for five decades had suddenly been found. I only needed to put it in place. I was going to go to Nova Scotia. I was going to meet my family.
