I’m not sure why we’re whispering: we’re supposed to talk during language lab. Ms. Garcia looks at us funny, so Jamie translates the headline of the story.
EARTHQUAKE SHAKES MEXICO CITY
“El terremoto…” She reads aloud in Spanish as she writes the phrase, accentuating the tongue roll to make me giggle. I know she’s trying to lighten the mood.
I hear Amber Valentine behind me, struggling to pronounce “hambre,” or hungry. Giving up, she decides to amuse her partner by saying “tengo hamburger,” and I suspect the reason he laughs so hard at her stupid joke is that Amber Valentine looks like someone named Amber Valentine.
“Let me see another one,” Jamie commands when she’s finished writing. I offer her the dictionary with the photos inside.
As she checks them out, I look at the pictures upside down and backward, thinking to myself that my dad looks exactly as I’d imagine him to look.
He has kind eyes and a huge, openmouthed grin. Clearly, I got my hair color from him, but his skin is ghostlike and freckled, whereas mine is more creamy porcelain, like Mom’s. Wearing 90 SPF sunblock, I am capable of getting a tiny tint of tan; I see from photos that Dad is either white or burned.
I can almost hear an easy, booming laugh erupting from the worn images. His uniform of choice seems to be faded jeans and untucked shirts, and in it, he’s big and strong, ready to fight off monsters real or imagined.
Jamie pauses at a photo of my father teaching a preschool-aged me to swim. In the picture, he’s looking at my younger, more scraggly self with a mixture of admiration, curiosity, and blatant love. I feel like I’m going to cry.
Jamie glances my way and then turns the page.
“Is this your grandmother?” she asks quietly.
“Where?” I say, leaning toward her now. She turns the book in my direction and points to the background of a photo of my dad holding baby me.
There, standing behind us, is someone I hadn’t even noticed.
Someone I don’t know, but recognize.
Someone I haven’t met yet, but will.
My heartbeat quickens as I grab the dictionary and yank it back to my side of the desk island. I lean in closer and closer still, wishing that I had one of those tiny magnifying glass things that diamond dealers use.
There, in the middle of Spanish, with Jamie staring at me like she’s embarrassed to know me, something clicks.
The woman in the background of the photo is very clearly my grandmother. She is looking at baby me with such love and devotion that it almost hurts.
More than her expression, her appearance is the dead giveaway. Her hair matches mine and my father’s, and much of the rest of her is carbon copied in him and sprinkled in me.
“Twenty minutes,” Ms. Garcia calls to the class, interrupting my analysis.
Jamie mutters something profane under her breath and grabs our paper. She begins furiously translating.
“Want help?” I offer.
“No, keep obsessing,” she says without looking up.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Twenty minutes later, Jamie has turned in the lab paper we’ll get back next week with a bright red B+ on top, and we’re gathering our things. I’m carefully sliding the dictionary back into my bag, trying not to let any photos loose.
>I whip my head in her direction. “Did you read my notes? That’s a total invasion of privacy,” I snap.
“Whoa,” Mom says calmly. “I most certainly did not read your notes, London Lane. I would never do that. Why would you suggest such a thing?”
“Because you know about the guy.”
“London, you told me about him,” Mom says, with an annoying smile.