A Thousand Voices Page 5

  “Oh, man, no more Shakey’s Barbecue Fridays?” From the seventh grade through high school, I’d had Shakey’s Barbecue with the Jumpkids every Friday night. “It won’t be Friday without Shakey’s.”

  Karen gave me a last kiss. “Times, they are a-changin’,” she said, a little sadly, then turned to leave the room. “Stop by the office later?”

  I shook my head, wincing inwardly. Being with her only made me feel that much more guilty for what I was about to do. “I think after I visit Mrs. Bradford, I’m just going to head on, okay?”

  “Okay, kiddo. Your car should be all gassed up and ready. James ran out and filled it up, checked the oil and so forth this morning.” Glancing back over her shoulder, she smiled. “Safe trip.”

  I watched her disappear in the mirror, then tossed the last of my things into the bag and zipped it up. Grabbing the duffel, my backpack, and my purse, I took one last look around my room and headed for the garage. In the kitchen, I found my keys in the usual spot, with three hundred dollars underneath.

  Tucking the money in my pocket, I shook my head at myself. Grown up, yet not so grown up after all.

  CHAPTER 4

  The second-period bell was ringing as I pulled into visitor parking at Harrington Arts Academy. Standing at the bottom of the middle school steps, I gazed at the art deco frontispiece, remembering how I’d felt entering that building for the first time, the year I turned thirteen and James and Karen took me in. Walking up those steps the first day between them, I felt at once suffocated and exhilarated. My head was full of music and my heart was full of fear. I wanted to go in, yet I wanted to run back home to Hindsville, to my secret places along the river, where no one would find me. Ever.

  Those desires were at war inside me as we neared the front door, and I didn’t know which one would win. I only knew that my life was changing and I was powerless to stop it. My hands trembled and my throat felt thick and dry, but I couldn’t tell James and Karen that. I didn’t want them to rethink taking me into their family.

  Karen slipped her hand over mine, and we walked through the door together. I’d never had anyone walk me to school before. Back home, if I went at all, I caught the bus on Mulberry Road and sat in the back, as close to invisible as possible. When I got to the little school in Hindsville, I went in the side door, where the other kids wouldn’t bother me. At Harrington Academy, I walked right in the front entry, just like everyone else.

  Shaking my head at the memory, I trotted up the steps and slipped into the administration office. Mrs. Jorgenson, who’d been the school secretary since before I could remember, was writing something on a sticky note. Glancing up, she did a double-take, blinked like she’d seen a ghost, then rolled her chair backward off the plastic mat and almost fell over.

  “Well, Dell!” she said with her usual huge smile. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” Motioning toward the door to the principal’s office, she gave a regretful frown. “Mr. Bradford isn’t here, though. He’s at the downtown street festival with the jazz band. He’ll be gone all day. One of the guitar players has a broken finger, so Mr. Bradford’s serving as principal, chaperone, and bass guitarist.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for Mrs. Bradford,” I said. “Is she here?”

  Mrs. Jorgenson rolled her eyes. “Unless the labor and delivery wagon has taken her away by now, she’s here. She’s in her office. I’ll buzz her if you want.”

  “No, that’s all right. Can I just go surprise her?”

  “Sure.” She shook a finger at me. “But not too much of a surprise, all right? I don’t want to be delivering twins on the floor of the counselor’s office. Don’t say boo or anything, okay?”

  I turned to leave, remembering back to when I thought being in the principal’s office was the end of the world. “I won’t. Thanks, Mrs. Jorgenson.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, then tore off the sticky note and pasted it on her computer with several dozen others.

  I crossed the hall and peeked around the corner. Mrs. Bradford’s door was closed and I could hear her talking to a student inside. I waited in the hall, thinking of all the times I’d come to see her for tutoring or just to talk. Mrs. Bradford had saved me during that lost, lonely first year at Harrington. I could talk to her about anything—even issues I couldn’t bring up at home, like my curiosity about my biological father.

  The door opened, and I waited as the student walked out, giving my Russian Coca-Cola T-shirt a curious glance as we slipped past each other.

  Mrs. Bradford had already turned to her computer. “Yes?” she said, without looking up.

  “Ummm…excuse me?”

  She finished a few keystrokes, then turned around. Her mouth fell open, and she was momentarily dumbstruck. “Dell?” she gasped. “What in the world…? I thought you were overseas for weeks yet.”

  “I’m…uhhh…I came…” I couldn’t stop gaping at the huge belly beneath her flowered maternity top. Mrs. Bradford had always been tall and thin. “I…ca-came back early.” To my horror, I started to giggle.

  “Stop that.” Pushing out of the chair with one hand and holding her stomach with the other, she stood, then stretched out her arms, waddling around the desk to me. “You just stop that laughing and come here.” She pulled me close in a hug, and I felt something squirm against my ribs.

  “Oh, my gosh!” I stepped back. “I think something kicked me.”

  “Probably Keiler Junior,” she joked, motioning me to one of the student chairs by the file cabinet. “Every time they do an ultrasound, he’s the active one. The girl is much more sedate.”

  “Awww,” I said as she hobbled back to her chair. “He’s a chip off the old block. Mom e-mailed me and said you were having a boy and a girl. That’s so great.”

  “Yes, it is. After trying for so long, we’re really excited.” Her eyes glittered with an abiding contentment. I wondered if that would ever happen to me—if there would be a point someday when I would feel perfect in my own skin.

  Mrs. B. smiled. “So, when did you get back? I want to hear all about your trip. How was Europe? And how in the world did you end up going on to Ukraine? I never did get the full story on that. Your mom just said you met a friend over there who was going to volunteer in an orphans’ mission, and you decided to go, too….” She trailed off, leaving an empty space at the end of the sentence, an old trick she’d used on me in my middle school days. She knew I’d feel compelled to fill in the blank.

  “I don’t know.” I felt like the shy, uncertain seventh-grader who’d first come to her office. “I just wanted to do…something different, I guess.”

  Pursing her lips sympathetically, she nodded. “Something other than come home and start college, you mean?”

  I glanced away under the weight of her X-ray vision. “I just needed…I don’t know…time.”

  “Time to…”

  “I don’t know.” How could I explain what I didn’t understand?

  Leaning back in her chair, she waved a hand in the air, swatting away the inquisition like fog. “Sorry. Once a counselor, always a counselor. I forget that you’re an adult now. It doesn’t seem possible. Just yesterday you were this stringy little transfer student singing ‘Jesu’ in the spring fling.” The two of us laughed together and the tension floated away. Mrs. B. clapped her hands, then rubbed them together lightly. “So, you’re back here now and headed off to college?”

  “Yes…yeah, I guess.”

  “Juilliard?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Missouri State?”

  “I have friends there.”

  “NYU?” Mrs. B. had pushed me toward NYU my senior year of high school. She thought it would be a good place for me if I didn’t go to Juilliard.

  “I don’t know….”

  “Timbuktu?” she teased, and I pressed the pads of my fingers over my eyes, feeling like an absolute loser.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  Her chair squealed as she leaned across the desk. I knew
what she’d be doing—resting her chin in her hand, waiting for me to unburden myself of whatever was bothering me. “Only because every time I start sending you college admissions information, you avoid me.”

  “I don’t. I…”

  Her frown stopped me. “Come on, kiddo. I’ve known you forever. This is like when I used to try to get you to talk about your past—the things that happened before you came to live with James and Karen. You’d either shut down or change the subject.” Drumming her fingernails on the desk, she raised a brow. “I know avoidance when I see it, especially from you. So what’s up?”

  “It’s not avoidance.” I focused on the wall, hoping I could pull this off. “In fact, I came by here to get some information from you…about the whole Native American thing. Remember, you said it would be a good idea if I checked into whether I could get a Choctaw roll number and all that stuff? With being out of school a couple years, I figured my chances of getting into Juilliard or another good music program might not be so high. Maybe the Native American angle could help give me an edge, you know? I thought I might…do some checking around. See what I can find out.” Play it cool, play it cool, a voice inside my head warned. Don’t say too much. “I was hoping you’d give me that information again…about the Choctaw tribal headquarters, and all that.” Mrs. B. stared at me with her mouth open, shocked either by the rush of words or the request, or both. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  She blinked rapidly. “Well, of course not. It’s not too much trouble, but what happened to the information I e-mailed you a few months ago?”

  “I sent it to the recycle bin.” I winced guiltily. “I’m sorry. It seemed like a crazy idea at first, but now…well, I thought I should check it out, that’s all. I probably won’t find anything. I mean, just because my CPS records said my dad was Choctaw doesn’t mean he’s actually listed in their books. There’s no telling how many people they have listed. Thomas Clay is a pretty common name. There could be dozens of people with that name.”

  Mrs. B. swiveled around to her computer. “Well, who knows? It’s worth a try.” I wished I could see her face, so I’d know whether she believed this was about a scholarship application, not about finding my biological father. “Let me print up a copy of those applications and the online directory of the Choctaw tribal offices. I don’t know how much help it will be, though. The Choctaw tribe has offices spread across at least three or four different counties. You’ll probably have to do some digging to find out who you need to talk to. I could help you, if you want.”

  “No, that’s all right,” I said. “I know you’re busy.”

  I waited while she searched for some documents and printed them out, then laid them in stacks on the desk between us. “Now here is some information about scholarships, programs, and fellowships specifically for those of Native American ancestry.” She handed the first stack across the desk. “I know that financially you don’t really need a scholarship. Your parents can afford the tuition, but some of these carry quite a bit of prestige. They’re worth applying for, just for the recognition. There’s also a good deal of interest in the study and recording of traditional Native American music right now.” She handed me a second stack of papers. “Here’s some information about that subject.” In the hall, the lunch bell rang. Mrs. B. grabbed the third stack of papers as the corridor filled with a cacophony of kids jostling, lockers slamming, and sneakers squeaking on the old wooden floors. “That’s my cue.” As she handed me the third stack of papers, she pushed herself to her feet. “That is information about the Choctaw tribal offices in Oklahoma. The biggest complex seems to be in Durant, but there are other offices and a museum in the old tribal council building in some other town with a long name I can’t pronounce. You can look it up on the map. The tribal court system is headquartered there, so it could be that’s where birth and membership records are kept. You’ll just have to make a few phone calls or do some asking around if you go there.” She laid a hand on my arm and gave a squeeze. “Good luck, kiddo. You’re off on an adventure.”

  “Thanks,” I said, following her to the doorway, where we stopped just before entering the crush in the hall. “Mrs. B.?”

  “Yes?”

  “If you see my folks, don’t…well…don’t say anything about this, okay?” Her brows drew together, and I added, “They were always a little nervous about me digging into things in Oklahoma, you know?”

  She started to cross her arms, then remembered the belly and let her hands drop to her sides. “I’m sure you’ll tell them all about it soon, though, right?”

  I nodded, but it wasn’t true. I’d probably never tell James and Karen I’d been to Oklahoma. “Thanks for helping me, Mrs. B.”

  “Anytime, kiddo.” Leaning over, she gave me a quick hug, and I bounced off the belly again. “Let me know what you find out.”

  “’Kay,” I said, then we parted ways, Mrs. B. heading for a skirmish in the cafeteria line and me heading out the door and down the stairs.

  In my car, I stopped to look at the map before pulling out of the parking lot. My fingertip traced I-75 south. Straight shot south past Tulsa, then beyond into country that held nothing but towns marked with tiny black dots. Flipping through the papers Mrs. B. had given me, I unearthed the information about the Choctaw Nation and studied the list of offices. The main tribal complex was housed in an old Presbyterian college building in Durant, a town just above the Texas border. That was probably as good a place to start as any.

  I drove out of the parking lot and headed toward southeastern Oklahoma, an area I’d studied on the map many times in my life, starting with a geography assignment in the second grade, a report about where I was born and what it was like.

  “Where was I born?” I’d asked Mama. She was sitting on one of Granny’s kitchen chairs on the front porch, waiting for a man to come by—I could tell because she kept looking toward the road. I hated it when she did that.

  “Oklahoma. Down in the bottom corner, by Arkansas and Texas,” she said absently, peering into the distance. Cutting her gaze my way, she frowned with one side of her mouth and smiled on the other. “Why, Baby?”

  I didn’t answer her at first, just wrapped my knees against my chest and hugged. I loved it when she called me Baby. She didn’t do that when she was messed up, so when she called me Baby, I knew she was all right.

  She shivered even though the day was hot, then wiped beads of sweat from her forehead. I could feel her attention fading off. She’d turned back to the road.

  “I gotta do a project for school,” I said. “What’s it like?”

  “What’s what like, Baby?” She slumped forward in the chair, then stretched the back of her neck, kneading the muscles with her long, pale fingers, sighing impatiently, her feet fidgeting in and out of her worn leather sandals.

  If the man with the long hair didn’t show up soon, she’d start to cramp up in her stomach, go in the bathroom and throw up all over the place. She already had the headache and the stiff neck. That was always the first sign she needed him to come with some stuff. Stuff was like medicine—it took away the things that hurt, Mama said.

  “Oklahoma,” I pressed, trying to lure her back. “What’s it like?” Her brows drew together, her blue eyes again drifting my way. “I gotta know for my report.”

  “Ohhhh.” She nodded, smiling on both sides this time. “Well…” She paused to think. “It’s a pretty place. The Kiamichi Mountains are there, and lots of rivers and lakes and rocks, kind of like here. You’d like it.” She studied me, seeming to think about something, then suddenly she jerked and shivered again, shifted her attention to the road, and absently finished with, “It’s pretty there.”

  In the house, Angelo stirred and started to whimper, dreaming his baby dreams.

  Mama slid a hand over my hair, her fingers moist and trembling against my neck. “Go on in there and check on him, okay? Put the thing in his mouth before he wakes Granny.”

  “Okay.” Unfolding my leg
s, I went inside and slipped Angelo’s pacifier into his mouth, holding it in while he rooted around in his bed with his eyes closed. Finally he laid his head down, and I waited to make sure he was asleep. I pulled the sheet back over his milky skin so the mosquitoes wouldn’t get him, then went back outside.

  Mama was already gone.

  I’d wondered about Oklahoma and those Kiamichi Mountains ever since, tried to imagine what happened there, tried to picture the circumstances of my birth.

  Granny never talked about it after Mama died. Granny said I was born in Missouri, right in Hindsville, and if anybody asked me, that’s what I should say. She said my mama was wrong about Oklahoma, just like she was wrong about everything else.

  But deep down, I wanted to be born in the Kiamichi Mountains. A pretty place. A different place. A place that made Mama smile when she thought of it. If there was something good about those mountains, then maybe there was something good about me.

  Those long-buried yearnings swirled around me in the car, trailing tangled strings of memory, until I was wrapped so tightly I couldn’t breathe. I opened the vent, then turned on the stereo and pushed the CD button. No doubt James had some of his classical guitar tracks in there, since he’d driven my Acura a few times a month to keep it in good condition while I was away.

  When the music started, I recognized it immediately. It wasn’t my dad’s seventies classical guitar jam, but my favorite Blues Traveler CD—the one I’d accidentally left in the stereo the day I boarded the plane to London. James must have kept it for me the whole time I was gone and then made sure it was in the CD player when I came back. It was a little thing, but it meant that he’d never stopped thinking of me while I was away. In a logical sphere of my mind, I knew that already, but in the back of my heart, in the empty space that never quite believed good things could stay good, I felt full again.