Burn Our Bodies Down(7)

Fairhaven, 1989, Nielsen Farm. Followed by: Remember how it was? I’ll be waiting. Come when you can.

After it, luckier than I ever have been before—a phone number.

I’m smiling, a laugh nearly tipping out of me, before I can help it. All those days looking and looking, and it was right here. Someone calling me home.



* * *



—

Calhoun only has one pay phone, smack in the middle of town. I’d rather use my own phone, an old one with no touch screen and no caller ID, but we use pay as you go and my card ran out early this month after I spent a whole afternoon playing a game at the library and forgot to join the Wi-Fi network. So it’s the phone booth outside the center of commerce, and it’s right now, while Mom’s still at work and the streets are empty. With any luck, nobody will see me, and I’ll be able to keep this hidden from Mom a little while longer.

The booth is empty when I get there, like it always is, so I sidle in, drop the Bible onto the plastic shelf under the phone, and slide the photograph from my pocket, unfolding it carefully. The phone number is still on the back. I didn’t imagine it.

Can it really be as simple as this? A photo in a book, a quarter I stole from the tip jar in the diner and my family on the other end of the line?

Maybe the number will be out of service. Maybe it’ll be another Nielsen who doesn’t recognize my name. Or maybe it’ll be my mother’s parents, who’ve been waiting and waiting and wishing for me.

I shut my eyes for a moment, square my shoulders. Stop stalling, I tell myself. Do what you’re here to do. Life with Mom will always be this way, and you have a shot at something else.

But I can still hear her as I reach for the phone, as I lift it off the hook. Nobody but you and me. Nobody, nobody, nobody.

The phone feels too heavy in my hands, and I clutch it tightly, feel the slip of sweat against the plastic. The quarter I swiped from Redman in my pocket. My family waiting for me to find them. Now, Margot. It has to be now, before Mom comes back, before the door you managed to push open slams shut.

I drop the quarter into the slot and dial the number. Take a deep breath and wait for the line to connect.

For a moment it doesn’t. Worry rippling through me—the number’s too old, it’s out of date, and I’ll never find my family, not ever—but it fades as the line clicks on and starts to ring. Once. Again. Again, and again, until finally.

Quiet. What sounds like the slow draw of breath. Then, a woman’s voice. Real, and in my ear. “Nielsen residence, Vera speaking.”

I open my mouth. Wait for the words to come out of me, but they don’t. I should’ve practiced, I should’ve planned what to say, but how could I have prepared for this? For another Nielsen on the phone, for the answer I’ve been looking for since I was ten years old?

“Hello?” But I can’t answer, and in the silence that follows, the woman on the other end of the line—Vera, her name is Vera—says, “Josephine? Is that you?”

My heart drops. Will I ever be somewhere my mother hasn’t been first?

“No,” I say. I stand up straight, try to wrestle back some composure. “This is—”

“Who is this? If you’re one of those telemarketers, I’m sorry, but I won’t be buying anything you have to sell.” Impatience and urgency in a low voice, roughened with age. Like my mother’s, but with a core of iron running through it that Mom’s never had. It has to be her. The woman who wrote that dedication, who left Mom her phone number—my grandmother.

And I should just tell her, just say my own name. But I want my grandmother to know me already, to recognize my voice. I want to have mattered enough to my mother that she told people about me. Even people she’s spent my whole life keeping me from.

“It’s me” is all I can give her. Please, please, let her know. Please.

“Oh.” I hear a staggering sigh. Don’t know if it’s mine or hers. “Margot. You’re Margot.”

Something hooks itself behind my chest. Tugs hard enough that I feel it in my whole body. This is what it feels like to get what you want. “Yeah,” and I’m embarrassed by how close to crying I sound, after barely any words between us. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to picture the woman on the other end of the phone. All I can conjure up is my mother’s face. “That’s me.”

“That’s you,” she says, and I’d bet all the money still under my mattress that she’s as close to tears as I am. “That’s my little girl. That’s my granddaughter. God, it’s good to hear your voice, honey.”

A strangled laugh lurches into my throat, and I swipe at the fresh sting of tears. She sounds like she means it. “You too.”

“I’ve been hoping I would,” she says. A pause, one I recognize in my bones, one you take when you’re weighing the risk of what to say next. Is that where Mom learned it? Is it part of our line, like our gray hair? “Your mother keeps you to herself,” she goes on finally. “But I’ve been thinking all about you.”

“So have I,” I say, and it’s eager, embarrassing, but none of that matters. My grandmother. My family. Somebody who isn’t Mom.

“Where are you these days? Are you well?”

How much does she know? About how we live, Mom and me? “We’re fine,” I say, a touch of annoyance sneaking into my voice. We’re fine, and even when we aren’t, that’s our problem.