One Speck of Truth Read online

  That’s about the only thing Mom has ever told me about him.

  That’s the one thing I’ve never questioned.

  That’s my speck of truth.

  He loves me.

  I sit to the right of his headstone, next to where his body is under the earth. I reach a hand out and put it on the grass beside me, as if he is lying there sick and I can hold his hand.

  We don’t talk. We never do. But that’s only because he’s dead. I know if he were alive he would talk to me constantly.

  I sit still long enough that my pajama pants start to get damp from the wet grass. My shoulder starts to ache from reaching my hand out to him. I start to yawn.

  I should stay longer. I always think that if I could just make myself stay here a little longer, he would come to me. He would bring me answers. But I’m weak and I get uncomfortable and tired.

  I slip the garden spade out of my pocket and make a new hole. The grass in front of his tombstone is pockmarked with little holes where I’ve left questions in the past. Then I dig in my other pocket. I choose the most important scrap of paper and straighten it out. I open the earth on top of my dad’s grave and plant my question above him for him to answer. Then I cover it up using my garden spade. I always try to put the earth and the grass back exactly as I found them so you have to look closely to see the little marks I’ve left behind. But if you do, you’ll know. I don’t bring my dead dad flowers and Christmas wreaths like a normal girl.

  I bring him questions. I bring him the Bad Questions.

  I imagine him reaching his skeleton hand up toward the scrap of paper. I imagine him hooking the bones of what used to be his index finger around it and bringing it down into his casket.

  I know he’s frustrated.

  I know he’s crying for me.

  I know he would give me the answers if he could.

  This one might be the worst question ever. Even worse than Julia’s question at dinner.

  Did Adam stop loving me?

  “Answer this one,” I beg him. “Please find a way.”

  Of course he doesn’t say anything. He never does. He can’t.

  I sit and stare at the spot where I left the question. Then he says my name.

  “Alma!”

  It’s clear as a church bell ringing on a silent Sunday morning. I jump three feet in the air.

  “Alma!”

  Then I turn. It’s not my dad.

  It’s Julia.

  Three

  Where Are You?

  JULIA IS JUST INSIDE THE GRAVEYARD fence, walking toward me. She found the crack in it. She must have followed me.

  I shove the garden spade into my pocket. How much did she see? How much did the darkness protect me?

  Julia tells me everything about her life. And she tells me that she tells me everything. I know all about how lucky she feels to have been adopted from Korea, even if she sometimes doesn’t like sticking out in her white family. She tells me all the good and bad things. She says we’re best friends and best friends know everything about each other. But I can’t even start to think about telling Julia everything about me. There’s too much about me that I don’t even know.

  “Who were you talking to?” Julia asks when she reaches my side.

  I’m still sitting in the grass.

  “What are you doing here?” I say, looking up at her.

  She raises her eyebrows above her square black glasses. “I’m here because you are. What are you doing here?”

  I bite my lip again. It’s still sore in the spot I made bleed earlier.

  “I noticed the last time I slept over that you left in the middle of the night. But you didn’t tell me about it in the morning. So this time I followed you. What are you doing?”

  I bite down harder.

  “Please, Alma? Tell me. I’m your best friend.”

  And she is. Any other friend would run away from someone as weird as me.

  “It’s my dad,” I say. I point to his headstone.

  My face is burning and I’m sure it’s red but she can’t see it in the darkness. I don’t want her to ask me how I know. I don’t want to have to tell her that I went out here and searched all the graves when I was eight years old, that I read them all over and over again until I found the right one. I don’t want her to know that no one ever told me he was here. I don’t want her to know how little my family tells me, how little they think of me.

  Julia’s eyebrows fall. She kneels next to me. “Oh,” she says, hushed. “This is his grave?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  She looks at it. “JFC?” she says.

  “Jorge Francisco Costa,” I say. “That was his name. This must be his grave.”

  As soon as I say it, I want to eat the words.

  “What do you mean, it must be?” she asks.

  I shrug.

  “Did your mom tell you this is where he’s buried?”

  “She told me he was close by,” I say quickly. “Well, Nanny told me that. My grandmother. And this is the closest graveyard to my house.”

  Julia stands up and looks at the headstone. She squats next to it and squints. She starts brushing the high grass around the headstone. She’s looking so closely I’m a little worried she’ll notice all the indentations in the grass.

  But she doesn’t. She turns back to me with her mouth open and a look on her face that only means she feels sorry for me.

  “Alma,” she says.

  I stand. “No. Don’t say what you’re going to say. It’s his grave. I know it is. It has to be.”

  “Alma,” she says again. “I don’t think—”

  I cut her off. “Do you know how many nights I’ve spent out here? This is my dad. It has to be. I feel him here. He squeezes my heart the minute I sneak through the fence. He sits with me here and he tries to answer . . .” I stop. I’ve said way too much.

  Julia deserves a best friend who is fun. Who loves sleepovers in the living room with late-night snacks and movies. I try hard to be that for her. I try hard not to show her the girl who loves to be in graveyards more than anywhere else in the world.

  Julia is shaking her head.

  “What?” I ask. “Just say it, OK?”

  She points to his headstone. “Did you read the rest of this?” she asks. She moves the grass in the front of the headstone to the side.

  “The rest of what?” I demand. “It just says JFC. Jorge Francisco Costa.”

  I’m talking too loudly. So loudly maybe the McKinleys will wake up and hear me and call my mom. I can’t help it. My heart is sinking. My knees are weak.

  Julia hasn’t even explained anything yet and I already know she’s right.

  But she can’t be right.

  This has to be him.

  “There are dates,” she says. “Under the initials. See them? There are dates on the headstone.”

  “Dates?”

  A picture dances in my brain. My dad and my softer mother leaning close across a candlelit table.

  “Like the dates he lived. Or she. Whoever this is. JFC.”

  “He,” I say. But quieter. My voice is shaking like the rest of me.

  “It says 1901 to 1973,” she whispers.

  “But . . . but I wasn’t born in 1973,” I say.

  “You weren’t even close to born in 1973,” she says.

  I sink back to my knees and hold the headstone in each of my hands. I see the numbers, carved so small underneath the JFC: 1901–1973. How could I never have noticed that before? How could I be so stupid?

  So many things fall away. The idea that my dad is humble and reserved because he only wanted his initials on his headstone. The image of him holding hands with my mom while I listened to his voice through her belly.

  All the questions I’ve ever asked.

  No wonder he hasn’t given me answers. I’ve been asking the wrong person.

  I look up at Julia. Her eyes are red, almost like she’s the one who just lost her dad.

  “I’m sorry
, Alma,” she says. She crouches next to me and puts her arm around me. I let her.

  I adjust my glasses and look into her eyes.

  “Where is he?” I ask it as if she’ll give me an answer. I ask it as if she has all the information my mom has but with the attitude my dad would have if he were still alive.

  “You have to ask your mom,” she says.

  I take a shaky breath. I have to tell her the truth. “I can’t,” I say. “She won’t tell me.”

  “Oh,” Julia says. “OK. I get that.”

  I hate when she says that. She gets it. She doesn’t. She couldn’t. Her mom tells her everything.

  She takes a deep breath and says, “Then we’ll have to find him ourselves.”

  I forgive her immediately.

  “We?” I say.

  She nods.

  “You’ll help?” I ask.

  Julia looks around. “I don’t like graveyards,” she says. “Especially not at night . . . But for you, yes. I’d help you do anything.”

  I jump and wrap my arms around her. “Thank you! Thank you!” I say.

  “Just like you’d help me, right?” she says.

  “Right!” I say. “Promise!”

  It’s an easy promise to make. Julia’s parents don’t die. Julia’s parents don’t keep secrets. She’s the better friend because she has to be. I need her more.

  We link arms and start the walk back.

  “Tomorrow night, let’s sleep over at my house,” Julia says.

  I slept at her house two nights ago. And two nights before that. Ever since Adam left at the beginning of summer, Mom has been letting me sleep over there more and more.

  It’s a relief, usually, to be away from my heartbroken mom who forgets all her rules and comes down extra hard on mine.

  But after being at Julia’s more than I’m at my own home for weeks, I’m starting to feel a little weird about it. I’m sick of being a guest so much of the time. And I bet Julia’s parents are sick of having a guest all the time.

  “I bet there’s a graveyard near me somewhere that we can search. I’ll Google it.”

  And suddenly I don’t care if her parents want me there or not.

  When Julia leaves the next morning, I sit down at the piano that’s pushed against the wall of our dining room.

  This is the most peaceful spot in our house for me. It’s the only place I can be myself without hiding. Mom loves that I love the piano. Of course she has a whole list of rules about how much I must practice and which pieces I should learn to expand my talent. But I never mind these rules.

  I play a few scales, my fingers dancing up and down the keys while I think about what song I want to play first.

  My mom appears behind me like she always does when I start to play.

  “Oh, good,” she says. She starts the timer. She doesn’t need to, though. I know I’m going to play long past my required time. I can already tell it is that kind of morning. A piano morning.

  I have to get in all the playing I can before I go to Julia’s to sleep over tonight. Julia’s house doesn’t have a piano. It’s the only way my house is better than hers.

  Mom sits on the tiny couch in the living room adjacent to the room I’m in. She shuts her eyes, which means she’s going to sit there and listen to me play today.

  She doesn’t know it, but I choose what to play based on how I’m feeling.

  When I’m happy I play this great mashup of Disney songs. The big, boisterous showstoppers like “Under the Sea” and “Be Our Guest” and “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” I learned all the songs with my piano teacher, but I put them all together myself, figuring out how to weave one into the other and then back again so it fills you with all the happy dancing cartoon characters you’ve ever seen until it’s impossible to sit still.

  When I’m angry I play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony of course, banging my fingers against the keys for each satisfying dun in all the dun dun dun duns.

  When I’m sad, it’s harder. Sometimes I play a Broadway ballad like “On My Own” or “Light My Candle.”

  But today I’m not feeling any of those things. I think about exactly how I’m feeling as my fingers take me through the warm-up. I’m a little sad that the JFC buried behind the McKinleys’ house wasn’t my dad. But there’s something else I’m feeling too. Something bigger.

  Because Julia and I are going to find my dad.

  We are.

  I take my hands off the piano and shake them out. I know just what to play.

  I take a deep breath as my fingers find the first few tingling notes to the introduction, and then, even though my mom is sitting behind me, the music overtakes me. My fingers dance up and down the keys to Bach’s “Solfeggietto” faster and faster until I cannot think about anything else but the next perfect note in each series of sixteen notes.

  The piece is too short. I play it again, making it more perfect than the first time.

  Again.

  Again.

  There’s only one feeling that fits Bach’s “Solfeggietto.”

  Determination.

  Four

  What’s Wrong with My Mom?

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, I GO TO Julia’s house and we start the search for my dad’s grave. It lasts the rest of summer.

  The graveyard closest to Julia’s house, which is also the graveyard second closest to my house, doesn’t have any Jorges or Costas or JFCs or even Franciscos.

  “It’s OK,” Julia says. “We’ll keep looking.”

  I can see how she hates walking into graveyards. I can feel her heart racing with fear whenever we lean over a headstone to read it properly.

  We spend the long days of August riding our bikes all over our Pittsburgh suburb searching graveyards. We run out and start to ride into neighboring towns. All of this happens because I spend more and more and more time at Julia’s house.

  My mom is acting stranger and stranger. She’s always worked from home, but now she never leaves. She’s spending all day every day by herself and can’t seem to find room for anything—even me—in our house. She says she’ll tell me what she’s working on, some big, exciting project, soon enough. But I can’t count on that, because she never tells me anything. Instead she keeps dropping me off at Julia’s house.

  Looking for my dad keeps me from thinking about how weird it is that Julia’s mom has started to pretend I’m also her daughter when we’re out in public somewhere. And it keeps me from thinking about my mom and Adam and all his promises that went away as soon as he did.

  On the few nights when I am home, I stay tucked into my room, out of my mom’s way. I don’t want to see the way her hair is loose after years of tight buns. I don’t want to notice when she misses some part of our daily routine. I don’t want to see her coming apart. Instead, I sit at my desk and I write. I fill up one scrap of paper and then another. I cannot keep up with all the questions in my head. Paper questions fill my desk drawers and the corner of my underwear drawer. They pile up under my pillow and mattress. They fill the pockets of my school bag. They take over my room the way they’ve taken over me.

  I start burying questions in some of the random graveyards, even when we don’t find my dad.

  In each new graveyard I manage to sneak away from Julia for a few minutes and bury a new question.

  Where are you?

  Where is Adam?

  What’s happening to Mom?

  What happens when you die if your loved ones can’t find you?

  Why did YOU have to be the one who died?

  He’s under the earth somewhere. Maybe whoever I’m asking can pass the question to him so he can answer them all when I finally find him.

  The days get shorter and summer starts winding to a close. Julia gets her sixth grade letter telling her she’s in Mr. Hendricks’s class for next year, our last year before middle school. I don’t get mine for days because I don’t go home and when I do unearth it from a pile of mail on the little coffee table in our living room. I sh
ove it into my pocket, unopened. I’m scared I’ll get another teacher. Julia and I have been in the same class the past two years. I’m sure this year I won’t be as lucky. I’m too scared to imagine sixth grade without Julia.

  Julia starts to complain that we aren’t doing anything fun and we run out of graveyards to search, so I try to pretend to be a regular girl. For the last few weeks of summer, we go to the pool and the mall and the ice cream shop. I pretend to be having fun, but I keep thinking about my dad under the ground somewhere. Waiting for me.

  In the last week of summer, I spend two full days at home, and then I’m back on Julia’s doorstep.

  I should be standing with my own mother. Instead, Julia and I flank her mother inside her front door while mine stands on the stoop outside.

  “Thank you so much for taking her again,” my mom is saying. The sun is shining behind her back, making all the little flyaways of her hair sparkle around her head. She looks angelic and messy all at once. An angelic mess.

  I don’t know what my mom is doing all by herself all the time. I don’t know why that’s how she wants it to be. It’s like she’s craving loneliness. After a lifetime of her constantly on top of me, providing me “structure” at every minute of every day, I don’t know how to handle this new version of her.

  I feel Julia’s mom’s arm come down over my shoulders, like she can tell how this is hurting me even though my mom won’t let herself see it.

  “It’s our pleasure,” Julia’s mom says. “Alma is wonderful to have around.”

  I wrinkle my nose so that my glasses readjust. Mom shifts from side to side. Her bra straps stick out on either side of the blue tank top she’s wearing. Her hair is long and wavy like mine, swinging behind her back. It’s disconcerting to see her without her bun.

  I need my mom to say something back. Something like, “Yes, of course she is.” Or “You know, you’re right, what was I thinking, I’m going to take Alma home right now.” Or even “I love Alma too, it’s just lately . . .”

  She skips over the part I need to hear. “It’s just lately I’ve had this project that . . . well, Alma isn’t . . . well . . .” Mom’s eyes are getting glassy. She’s very good at making people feel bad for her when she’s asking for help.