In the Image of Grace (6 page)

“Wait,” I said stopping everybody else. “What are we
doing exactly?”

“Getting answers,” Isabelle quietly replied.

“What for, will any of it really make a difference
now?”

“We have to for Elizabeth,” Clarissa said.

I sighed and looked over at Jeremy. He was probably
thinking I didn’t come all this way with you girls for nothing. He
walked down the steps and grabbed my hand and we walked into the
building together. Clarissa started looking at the room numbers. “I
don’t think it’s on this floor, the second floor.”

We walked to the end of the hall, found some stairs
and went up.

“201 that’s it,” Clarissa bleated with excitement.
“Oh God, I’m nervous. What are we going to say?”

“We can’t just bust in there,” remarked Isabelle. “Is
class still in session?”

“I don’t know,” Clarissa responded. We were hoping to
catch Mr. Carl right as his class ended, so then we couldn’t miss
him.

“I’ll check,” Jeremy volunteered grabbing the door
handle. Right as he grabbed the handle students started pouring
out. We didn’t wait for them all to leave; we kind of shoved past
them, so Mr. Carl couldn’t slip out. We made our way across the
lecture hall and saw Dr. Carl Williams standing up front wearing a
tan blazer and talking to a couple students. Jeremy coughed, which
made Mr. Carl look up. He immediately recognized us and excused
himself from the students. He had a puzzled look on his face, his
eyebrows were drawn together and his lips seemed to of twisted
themselves up.

“What are you girls doing here?” He immediately
asked.

“We’re here to see you,” Clarissa blurted out.

“Does your father know you’re here?”

“No,” she responded. “Why should that matter
anyways?”

“Why did you lie to us?” I asked wanting to cut right
to the chase.

“What do you mean?”

I looked around the lecture hall with my eyes. Rows
of desk and chairs were tiered to the top of the room. A white film
screen hung down in the front of the room.

“Oh, because I didn’t tell you girls I was leaving to
teach college. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I
had to start right away.”

“But you’ve been working here all along,” I pointed
out.

He nodded. “Yes, your father just didn’t want me
intermingling any of my personal life into your school work. He
didn’t think it was necessary for you to know.”

“That means you probably knew our mother,” Clarissa
surmised.

“Girls, this isn’t the place to be talking about
this. You should ask your father.”

“What, we should ask our father if you knew our mom.
Why, when you can just answer us,” I retorted.

“I don’t mean that, just about your mother in
general. It’s a very touchy subject. All he wants to do is protect
you girls.”

“By keeping us in the house our whole lives and never
mentioning a word about her,” I said. I could see we weren’t
getting anywhere. I looked over at Jeremy. He was standing off to
the side pretending to be interested in the surface of a desk.
Isabelle stood defensively with her arms crossed.

“Girls, I have to get across campus,” Mr. Carl
croaked looking at his watch.

“Wait, let me ask you one thing,” I pleaded pulling
off my bag and sticking it on a desk. I unzipped the front zipper
compartment and pulled out the picture I got from the internet. “Is
this her,” I asked holding the paper up to Mr. Carl with my finger
near Grace Fernando’s head.

“Where did you get that?” Mr. Carl asked with bug
eyes.

“The internet,” I quickly responded. “Well,” I said
raising my eyebrows.

He nodded his head yes.

“So you did know her,” Clarissa said a little too
loud.

He nodded again. “Girls, just leave well enough
alone.”

“What!” It was my turn for my voice to get too loud.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything to us? Where is she? What
happened to her?” I could feel my face warming and turning
pink.

“Girls, I can’t answer these questions now. I really
have to go.” He started walking across the lecture hall. We
followed right behind on his heels.

“That’s it?” Isabelle asked taking her turn to speak
up.

He stopped and turned. “I honestly don’t know what
happened to her. One day she was just gone. I have to go.”

“But we have so many more questions,” I cried
out.

He ignored me and walked out the door. We all
somberly looked at each other and left the building.

“Well, that could have gone better,” Clarissa
groaned.

Nobody said anything after that for a while. We
walked back across campus in silence. While waiting for the train I
started thinking out loud. “At least we know who our mother is,
right, so we just have to find out where she went and why she
left.”

“How do we do that?” Clarissa asked.

“I don’t know.”

“How about missing persons?” Jeremy suggested.

“Huh?” Clarissa, Isabelle and I all seemed to say at
once.

“If she just wasn’t there one day maybe somebody
filed a missing person report. That professor guy made it almost
sound like a mysterious disappearance or something, ya know.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea, but what if nobody did?
What if it was just something between our father and her?”

“Doesn’t hurt to try,” Jeremy said giving me a half
crooked smile. I knew he was just trying to help. I gave him a meek
smile back.

The whole way back on the train I looked at that
picture, at Grace Fernando, our mother. Our mother now had a name.
We could actually refer to somebody as our mother. We weren’t just
our father’s children anymore we were the children of Dr. Reginald
Schlobohm and Grace Fernando. For a moment I felt somewhat happy
and sad all at the same time. Happy, that we actually knew who our
mother was, but sad that Elizabeth died not knowing. My happiness
quickly went away and I was overwhelmed by sadness. Jeremy somehow
sensed my sadness, grabbing my hand, holding onto it the rest of
the train ride. I only had known him for a handful of days, but he
was quickly becoming the best friend I ever had besides my
sisters.

Jeremy walked us down the block and then we parted
ways. I then had to test the keys we copied on the lock to the gate
to figure out which one fit. Third time was charm. We let ourselves
through the gate and then found the other key that belonged to the
front door. Ms. Dundefeltz had already left for the evening, so
Clarissa ran across the foyer to enter the code and turn the alarm
off.

During study hall I did what had become my routine
and that was going to the library. I didn’t go to the computers
right away. I went to look for Jeremy so I could thank him. I
looked around the library when I walked in and I didn’t see him. I
actually saw my literature teacher, a man wearing a blue jumpsuit
and an extremely short red haired girl; I didn’t even stop to
ponder the combination of characters. I turned around and looked up
and saw Jeremy up in the balcony shelving books. I went to the
other side of the library, up the set of wooden stairs and down
over to Jeremy. I noticed that his jeans were hanging dangerously
low on his hips, his brown belt saving them from the fall.

“Hey,” I said.

He looked up and smiled. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I paused and studied his face for a second. His
eyes were a deep brown and lit up every time he smiled, which he
did a lot. He had some stubble growing on his chin and across his
jaw line. “I wanted to thank you for all that you’ve done for us.
You barely even know me, but yet you’re so kind, thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

“Jeremy.”

“Yes,” he responded his smile getting larger.

“After school would you like to get a quick bite to
eat?” I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing, but I did know I
wanted to spend more time with him.

“Why yes I would,” he replied bobbing his head.

“Wonderful, I now have to go and do some more
searching on the internet.”

“Okay, hope you find something.”

I went back downstairs to the computers where there
was one available in the middle directly under the windows. I was
perfectly centered and it pleased me. I drummed my fingers on the
table and thought about where to continue my searching. I decided
to start with the police department website. It wasn’t much help to
me. I found information on stopping crime in your neighborhood,
becoming a city officer, finding my beat and then I found the
missing persons section. I clicked on it and then hit city wide. A
list came up of about eleven people. It didn’t seem like that big
of a list for such a large city, but then I saw they only had
missing persons for that year posted. It was pretty sad to think of
all those people missing. The one listed on the top was a little
kid. Underneath was a link for an age progression photo of the
little girl.

I clicked the back button and wrote down a phone
number figuring maybe if I called the police department they could
help. I did one more search and found a national missing person
website. I clicked the search missing adults’ button and chose F
from the drop down menu for searching by last name. I scrolled half
way down the page and saw her. Grace Fernando, it said below her
picture. My mother stared back at me. In the picture she looked
younger than the one I had found online the other day. She looked
fresh and happy. A small smile was on her face, as if somebody just
told her a wonderful little secret. Her hair was perfectly in place
falling down her back. She looked so much like Elizabeth, so much
like us. I touched the screen longing for the mother I never knew.
I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.

Our mother was an actual missing person, which meant
she could possibly be alive somewhere, but why did it take so many
years for me to find out just even her name? Was our father trying
to spare us the pain? Were we kept in the house out of fear that we
might go missing? I could feel the warmth of my tears roll down my
face. I wiped them away with the back of my hand. I looked under
the picture at the date missing and it made absolutely no sense.
The date missing was right after Elizabeth’s birth. It had to be
wrong because our mother had three other children. I sniffled and
printed the page. I actually printed the page three times, so I
could also give Isabelle and Clarissa a copy.

……………………………………….

Jeremy and I stood outside across from a wooden
picnic table with yellow peeling paint. We were at a small shack of
a restaurant that served some of the unhealthiest yet most
delicious food available. Jeremy asked me where I wanted to go eat
and I said fast food because our father never let us have any.
Jeremy didn’t want me to have any ordinary fast food, so he took me
to a place where he claimed my taste buds would be changed forever.
The food shack looked like an old, white, wooden dog house,
complete with red roof and more peeling paint. We went in. Inside
there was barely enough room for three people to stand side by
side. Up high on the wall was the menu which was all written out by
hand in black marker on poster board. On the side of the big menu
drink and shake cups and fry containers were affixed to the wall
with all the different sizes you could order.

I didn’t know what to order when it was our turn and
there was a line out the door, so Jeremy stepped in and ordered me
an Italian beef. “Ya like cheese?” He asked. I shook my head and he
had them add mozzarella. He also ordered us both large
banana-cookie shakes and fries. A large man with an extreme amount
of oil shining on his forehead rang up our order. I guess it’s one
of the downfalls of working in that business. He just kind of
grunted when he wanted us to pay.

After we paid we went and stood at the other end of
the counter to wait for our order. The woman who gave us our food
looked almost like the guy at the front counter, but she had her
hair pulled up into a gray greasy ponytail. I’m pretty sure her
hair was really blond, but due to the enormous amounts of grease
and oil collected in it, her hair appeared to be gray.

We took our white paper bag of food over to the
picnic table with the peeling paint. The bag almost instantly
turned translucent from all the grease. Jeremy opened the bag and
handed me my Italian beef that was all wrapped up in white paper. I
laid it on the picnic table and slowly peeled away its shell.
Inside was a big crazy mess of beef, cheese, French bread like bun
and what was called au jus, the greasy beefy sauce that the Italian
beef was cooked in and then the sandwich was soaked in it. I picked
it up and half of it instantly slipped off the bread and hit the
paper that was holding it together just seconds before. I took a
bite and Jeremy was right about the taste buds never being the same
again. My tastes buds instantly exploded, they didn’t know how to
handle the delicious flavor. I had never tasted anything like it
before. I looked up at Jeremy who was eating his with more
expertise.

“Good?” He queried.

“I can’t even find words to describe how delicious
this is.”

“Well, I’m glad you like it.”

I continued to devour my sandwich. It felt nice
sitting outside with the cold city wind slapping me in the back. I
would never of thought of sitting outside during that weather and
eating greasy food, but I found it most enjoyable. All the cars
whizzed past on street we sat so near to. Buses and trucks stopped
in front of us and then continued on. People passed on the
sidewalk. A few other people sat at another picnic table also
enjoying their helping of greasy goodness. I then took a sip of my
shake. It just kept getting better. I then indulged on some French
fries and ate some more of my Italian beef.

“You said that professor guy was your tutor, right,
so why again did all of sudden you start going to regular school?”
Jeremy asked taking a gulp of his shake and trying to make
conversation.