Unburying Hope (33 page)

Celeste froze again.
 
She could kick herself for not having read the birth
certificate.
 
What if Rosalinda’s
mother hadn’t named Eddie as Rosalinda’s father, what if she had named some
other man?
 
She stealthily opened
the envelope Rosalinda had handed to her days ago and slowly unfolded the
official document.

Mrs. Lokelani was distracted, telling
Rosalinda about the after school sports program.
 
She could play volleyball or do Lego camp so mom and dad
could work regular hours instead of worrying about her after school, she said.

The birth certificate had been crumpled and
flattened so many times that it was aged nearly as old as Rosalinda herself.
 
Celeste saw for the first time
Rosalinda’s mother’s name.

Strange.
 
Her mother was dead and she was sitting in her stead, representing her
in getting her daughter to a safe school.
 
The gravity of the responsibility suddenly weighed heavy on her.

Colleen was the mother’s name but in the
squished up, crumpled spots, the letters could conceivably read similar to Celeste
and she gasped at the odd coincidence, handing the form over.
 
Eddie’s name was listed as the father,
she was relieved to see.
 
If she was
found out, at least Eddie could walk in with his head up and do the legal
transacting.

Mrs. Lokelani took the document, looked it
over carefully and flattened the crumpled parts, reading it out loud.
 
She said “Rosalinda Immaculata
Rodrigues, daughter of Colleen Rosalinda Rodrigues and Edward Rafael
O’Halleran.”
 
She reached next to
her, lifted the lid off the printer and placed the birth certificate face down,
pushing the button to make a copy.
 
“Such lyrical names you each have.”
 
Smiling, she handed the birth certificate back.
 
“Thank you.
 
It’s nice when families are organized, it makes my job so
much easier.”
 

Celeste folded up the birth certificate,
quickly put it back into the envelope and stowed it into her purse.
 
Part of her was terrified at being
found out, part of her wanted Mrs. Lokelani to trill her own name, calling her
into the circle with her beautifully melodious voice, ‘Celeste Elisa Beatrice
Hoffman’.
 
She realized that even
in her fear, she wanted to be named, to be part of a family.
 
But it was too dangerous.
 
Rosalinda’s safety needed to be
protected.
 
“What else do you need?”
she asked.

“I’m named after my mommy,” Rosalinda piped
in, “not Celeste.”

Mrs. Lokelani stared directly at Celeste.
 

Celeste felt her shoulders deflate but she
kept her head held high, staring back at the woman, biting her lip.

“Do you have her previous school record?
 
Her transcript?”
 

“Why do you need that?” Celeste asked, her
voice unexpectedly high pitched.
 
“She told you she’s in 4th Grade.”

“If you don’t have it, we can write for it.
But we need to make sure she’s taken pre-math and science for our
curriculum.
 
Don’t worry,
though.
 
We’ll test her tomorrow
for an hour or so, to figure out what she knows and what we need to teach her
to make sure she’s at the same learning level as our students.”

Rosalinda motioned to Celeste to get the
envelope out again.

Celeste did not want to pull the errant birth
certificate out again, but she reached into her purse, looking in askance at
Rosalinda.
 
The little girl looked
at her intently, almost angrily.
 
She opened the envelope and fished around, awkwardly extracting another
sheet of paper in the envelope.
 
There were two more sheets in the envelope, one a formal typed document,
the other a hand written note.

She almost whistled to herself at the
thoughtfulness of the grandmother when she read the typed word at the top of
the pristine formal page – Transcript.
 
Folded inside was a torn sheet from a yellow pad, with
‘Whoever can care for Rosalinda’.
 
Her heart constricted with the unfocused pathos of the words and the
weakness of the hand that wrote them.

She handed the official paper over to Mrs.
Lokelani, smiling wanly at Rosalinda.
 

Nonchalantly, she lowered her head and quietly
unfolded the other note, reading it quickly.
 
“I have applied for custody change from myself to my son,
Edward Rafael O’Halleran and his girlfriend Celeste Hoffman.
 
The court papers are nearly completed
and will be sent wherever Rosalinda needs them.
 
I am sick with cancer and cannot raise her anymore.
 
In case something happens to Eddie, I
ask that Celeste find a safe place for Rosalinda to grow up, since I’m the last
one alive on both sides of my family, except for Eddie and Rosalinda.”

“I’ll need to make a copy of the transcript.
 
Who has legal custody of Rosalinda?”
Mrs. Lokelani asked with a forced calm in her voice.
 
Celeste could see that she was straining to stay
professional in front of Rosalinda.

Rosalinda looked at Celeste, stricken.

“I believe that her grandmother does.”

“Well, we’ll have to get a letter stating that
she approves Rosalinda’s enrollment.
 
Can you get that to us in the next few days?”

“I’ll call her Grandmother and ask her for
it.
 
As soon as we walk out of
here.”
 
Celeste knew what this
meant.
 
She would have to cross the
great divide of her brokenness with Frank to ask him to help her get the forms,
in case the grandmother was more ill than she had been when she’d seen her at
her trailer on the way to the airport.

“That about does it, then.
 
We’ll let her come to school on a
provisional basis, but we’ll need the legal documents,” Mrs. Lokelani said,
making a copy of the transcript on the small copy machine next to her phone.
 
She turned towards Rosalinda and said, “Tomorrow
you’ll meet your class.
 
We serve
healthy lunch and snacks in the cafeteria, made locally.
 
We try to do everything
sustainably.
 
We don’t allow a lot
of big diesel delivery trucks to come this far up the mountain, it keeps the
air clear.”
 
She grinned brightly,
“Some of the parents work at the best restaurants on the island, so we’ve got
great kitchen staff and you won’t find any greasy cheese pizzas or French fries
here!
 
You don’t need to make your
own lunch at home.”

Celeste sat for a few seconds, and then
suddenly realized the finality of the remark.
 
They were finished with the business, so she hastily stood
up, motioning to Rosalinda to stand up also.

“Thank you so much,” she put out her hand to
shake, but Mrs. Lokelani walked around the desk, pulling her into a hug.
 

“Aloha and welcome, Mrs. O’Halleran”, Mrs.
Lokelani smiled.

Celeste’s smile froze and her response, a
heartfelt ‘thank you’ caught in her throat at the ‘Mrs.’
 

But Rosalinda took her hand and led her out,
getting her own ‘Aloha and welcome!” embrace as she passed Mrs. Lokelani.
 
Rosalinda was very nearly Mrs.
Lokelani’s height and she beamed back at the stocky lady.

“Well, that’s a very huggy school,” Rosalinda
said, as they walked quickly out the school doors to the car.

“We did it!” Celeste high-fived her after
turning on the car engine.

“We did it, Mrs. O’Halleran“, Rosalinda
giggled into her hands before high fiving Celeste back.

“Hush, now”, Celeste blushed.

“Oooooh, you love my daddy!”
 
Rosalinda covered her louder giggles
with her little hands.

Celeste rolled her eyes.
 
“Of course I do,” she said.
 
“Yes, I do.”

Rosalinda bounced on the car seat, smiling and
Celeste realized what a gift it must be to feel safe enough to bounce after
hearing that you are going to a new school.

She steered the car out the school driveway,
heading towards home, grounded with a lease, a birth certificate, an old
transcript and now approved enrollment forms for the new school.

She couldn’t wait to show Eddie, she
thought.
 
She handed her cell phone
to Rosalinda and asked her to text her father with the news.

The next step would be harder and she realized
she would not be able to simply make a phone call to Eddie’s mother.
 
She needed to feel grounded.
 
She’d wait until she got home to the
cottage, until Rosalinda was occupied and she could go out to the front steps
to make the call, to reach out to Rosalinda’s grandmother, to ask for the court
documents that could make Rosalinda a legal student at her new school.

Chapter
Thirty-Five

Preparing a light dinner of roasted chicken
breast with a mango salsa, pasta, and asparagus spears covered with shaved
parmesan, which Rosalinda deftly avoided looking at, Celeste noticed that Rosalinda
sat at the kitchen counter, thoughtful and quiet.
 

She had taught Rosalinda how to chop and sauté
tomatoes and together they made a garlic marinara sauce to go with some boiled
gemilli pasta, only to discover that Rosalinda wouldn’t eat the red sauce.

“What?” Celeste asked.

“I’m allergic.”

“Are you really?”
 
Celeste put her hands on her hips.
 
“Because I used to only eat plain pasta with butter,” she
watched Rosalinda’s eyes light up, “when I was your age.”
 
She stared directly at the girl, “I
thought so!
 
You’re not allergic,
you just like plain food.”

“I’m sorry.”
 
Rosalinda hung her head.

“Why didn’t you tell me?
 
Why did you let me go to all this
trouble?

“I like watching you cook.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing.
 
What did you eat at your grandmother’s
house?”

“Toast or plain pasta.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all I could make.
 
Grandma thought I was naughty for not
eating what I was served.
 
She said
I turned my nose up.
 
Then she got
too tired to make dinner so I just make plain food.”

“What did you eat at school?”

“Rice, an apple, a bagel.”

“Anything with color?”

Rosalinda’s face reddened in confusion.

“Like red peppers, or green broccoli or orange
carrots?”

“No.”

“No vegetables?”

Rosalinda’s face skewed up with embarrassment
and sorrow.
 
“No.”

“Is that why you’re so skinny?”
 
Celeste looked at her toothpick arms
and legs.
 
“Are you hungry?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, let’s get you fed.
 
I didn’t put the sauce on the pasta yet,
so I’ll save half the gemilli for you.”
 
She drained the water from the pot and separated the pasta into two
bowls, one with the simmering sauce, the other with a small pat of butter
melting in the pasta’s spirals.
 
She cut up a few pieces of chicken with the skin pulled off and put them
on top of the bowl.

Rosalinda wolfed down everything in the bowl,
while Celeste watched aghast.
 
“If
you eat too fast, you’ll throw it all up.”

But she hadn’t.
 
She’d helped clear the dishes, wiped the counters, cut up an
apple for dessert and then taken a bath to get clean for her first day of
school.

“Can you dry my hair?” Rosalinda asked.

“With a blow dryer?”
 
Celeste cringed.
 
It wasn’t the work involved, it was the intimacy she balked at.
 
She reached under the sink cabinet and
found a red plastic blow dryer, plugged it in and turned it on, running her
fingers through Rosalinda’s long, wet, soft hair.

Celeste watched as the little girl wrung her
small hands, flattening them occasionally onto the bathroom sink to cool them,
then nervously wrung them again.
 
Finally, her little voice squeaked, asking what kids in Hawaii wore to
school.

Celeste admitted that she no idea and it
occurred to her that she didn’t ever look at kids, except Rosalinda, so she had
no idea what kids wore when they were walking around the island towns, let
alone what kids wore back in Detroit.