Spirit Level Read online

  “Ten minutes, huh.”

  Verna pats my arm and says, “Start with fifteen. No more though.”

  I nod and straighten the pile of trashy magazines on the table in front of the loveseat, idly reading the headlines. The Kardashians are up to their usual tricks. I wonder what it would be like to have such a big family. Mom was an only child, and I’m an only child. I don’t have a dad. So no cousins, no big family reunions. No fighting with a big brother over the last piece of pie or yelling at a little sister for wearing my favorite shirt. I’ve never missed it.

  My eyes fill again, but I don’t want to cry in front of Verna, so I pick up another old magazine and read the story Bonnie was talking about on Sunday, the one about the guy with all the kids. Turns out he was a sperm donor who decided to contact as many of his kids as possible. All of a sudden I wonder if I’m one of them, which is ridiculous. Or is it?

  I stuff the magazine into my bag.

  “Do you need me anymore?” I ask Verna, who is counting the cash in the till and writing down totals with the stub of a pencil, which she licks every now and again.

  She looks up at me and smiles. “Run along, honey,” she says. “I’ll close up here. See you tomorrow?”

  I nod and give her a peck on the cheek before I head out.

  When I get home, Mom is in the glassed-in porch she uses as an office. I stick my head in to say hi, and she gets up from the computer, stretches and says, “What’s up? You’re home early.”

  “Not much,” I say. “Verna said she didn’t need me.”

  “Lots of work here when you’re ready,” she says. “I’ve missed my assistant.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’ll get to it soon, I promise. Right now I need a shower.” And a nap. But I don’t say that out loud. Mom doesn’t approve of naps.

  She nods and sits back down at her desk. She’s doing research for a book about homeless girls, and I’m her official transcriber. Better than any transcription software, she says, because humans can hear nuance. I listen to the recordings of the interviews she does and type them up for her. She’s a terrible typist. She even has an old T-shirt that says Never Let Them See You Type. And yet she suggested I take Keyboarding at school. Not sure what changed (actually, I am sure—I’ve suffered through enough lectures about the three waves of feminism), but it’s a useful skill these days. It’s not like I’m aiming for a career as a secretary or anything. It’s not 1962.

  Anyway, the stories I transcribe for my mom are heartbreaking, especially since my mom was one of those girls, although she doesn’t talk about it much. Who knows what would have happened to her if Verna hadn’t taken her in? Now she’s trying to, as she says, “give them a voice.” She pays me fifteen bucks an hour to transcribe, and I had to sign a confidentiality agreement. I don’t ask what good having a voice is if you’re still hungry and cold and you ran away because your stepdad raped you and your mom doesn’t give a shit. If I did ask, Mom would babble about empowerment and connection, about youth shelters and high school equivalency programs, but most of those girls will still be on the street. Not that my mom isn’t sincere or committed—she is—but there’s only so much she can do. She used to be a frontline youth worker, but she’s a sociologist now, an academic.

  The last interview I transcribed was with a fifteen-year-old girl named Angie (not her real name, of course; Mom gives them all fake names) who had been on the street for two years. When she was barely fourteen, she had a baby, who was immediately taken into foster care. Angie is a prostitute, probably an alcoholic but not yet a drug addict. She also has a genius-level IQ and a stepbrother at Yale who is the baby’s father. Her family has discarded her like a used tampon. It’s a miracle she isn’t suicidal. I would be.

  I can’t face anybody’s misery but my own right now, so I go to my room and try to sleep. Sleep is the one thing I’m still good at. That and crying. But neither sleep nor tears will come. All I can think about is that guy and his five hundred kids. I grab the magazine out of my bag and read it more carefully. A phrase jumps out at me: accidental incest. Apparently, two of his kids met and ended up dating. It isn’t clear whether dating is a euphemism for screwing, but either way, you know those kids are going to have hefty therapy bills and serious trust issues. A psychologist quoted in the article recommends that all donor kids carry around their donor’s number and grill prospective partners before even going out for coffee. That would be one awkward conversation: I really like you, but I want to make sure we’re not related before I get in your pants.

  I’m not even thinking about another relationship and the whole idea of accidental incest freaks me out. Maybe I should find out about my half-sibs. How many, where, how old. It’s not like I have anything else to do.

  I get up and take a really long shower. Usually Mom yells at me when I shower for too long, but lately she hasn’t banged on the door or pointed out to me that water is a precious resource. I kind of miss it.

  I wash and condition my hair. I shave my legs. I can’t even remember the last time I did that, which is gross, since it’s been warm enough to wear shorts and a tank top for a while. The same shorts and tank top. I am down to my last clean bra. Definitely time to do some laundry. Mom hasn’t done my laundry or made my lunches since I was ten. If I went to school in grubby clothes and had to eat crackers for lunch, that was my problem. I learned pretty fast how to measure detergent and make a decent sandwich.

  When I get out of the shower, my head feels clearer than it has since Byron left. I’m excited about something for the first time in weeks. Maybe excited is stretching it; maybe curious is more accurate.

  I suddenly feel shy—or more like wary—about telling Mom my plan, although that makes no sense at all. She told me years ago that she was a Single Mother by Choice (yes, it’s a thing) and that I was donor conceived. I’ve known about the Donor Sibling Registry, a service that connects people with their half-siblings and/or donors, since before I could read. She’s encouraged me to check it out and accepted that I’ve never wanted to. And now that I’m going to, I don’t want her to know. I want this to be my thing, not hers. And it’s not like she has any connection to my half-siblings anyway. She is not the common denominator—my donor is. (We never call him “dad,” because he’s not. Mom says “dad” is a social construct anyway, whatever that means.) All I know is that he was a tall, part-Latino medical student, which I guess accounts for my height, my dark wavy hair and my brown eyes. Mom knows a bit about his medical history, but I’ve never asked her about it. She always refers to him as Dr. GM (short for Genetic Material). When I failed Biology in tenth grade, she said, Damn. I thought Dr. GM might have passed on some of those science genes. Then she hired me a tutor.

  Do I miss having a father? I’ve thought about that a lot. I know some great dads—I adore Byron’s dad, even though he did drag Byron away to New York. My friend Anna’s two gay dads have never missed one of her dance recitals, even though they’re both big-deal lawyers. Martin has a stay-at-home dad who makes bread and coaches Martin’s soccer team. But Brianna’s dad fell in love with another man and moved to Detroit six years ago. He hasn’t contacted her or paid child support since the day he left. Martha’s dad is in jail for vehicular manslaughter. Gwen’s dad left her mom two years ago and moved to France, where he lives with a woman who’s not much older than Gwen.

  So basically it’s a crapshoot. Not having a father doesn’t feel like an absence or even a lack. It’s just a fact. And really, can you miss what you’ve never known? I don’t think so. Dr. GM could be dead or in jail. Or he could have raised three perfect kids who adore him. He could even have grandchildren. It makes no real difference to me. It’s not him I want to find. And I couldn’t even if I wanted to—you have to be eighteen to contact your donor through the DSR. And they have to want to be contacted.

  Even so, I feel bad about excluding Mom
from my plans. Maybe I’ll tell her later, when I’ve found one of my half-sibs. Maybe not. I’ve kept some stuff from her over the years. Dumb things like taking her car for an unlicensed spin while she was out of town, or drinking too many vodka coolers at a party (she probably figured that one out—I was pretty sick the next day). And she doesn’t tell me everything either. I only know the basics about her family: alcoholics, far away, not in touch, one dead brother. She won’t say why she never dates anyone for more than about six months. And I don’t ask. There’s a line you don’t cross with my mom. If you do, you can really see the tough teenage girl she used to be.

  “You look better,” she says when I go back downstairs. “Less…snotty.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  “Clean clothes too.”

  “It was time,” I say.

  “Past time,” she says. “I’m about ready to quit for the day. Shall we order Thai?”

  I can’t remember the last time I was hungry—I’ve been living on smoothies for a while—but suddenly I am ravenous. I call in the order—it’s always the same—and set the table while we wait for the food to be delivered. One of Mom’s weird rules is that we can only order takeout once a week (never more), and we have to eat it off proper dishes, sip our tea from small pottery cups, use place mats and wipe our greasy fingers on cloth napkins. So I put the kettle on and set out bowls and plates and red lacquered chopsticks (we both hate the nasty wooden ones that come with the food). I put a jug of cold water on the table and turn on the oven to warm some serving dishes. I even light a couple of candles.

  “What’s the occasion?” Mom asks.

  “No occasion,” I reply.

  “Well, maybe I should be celebrating,” she says.

  “Celebrating what? The fact that I’m wearing clean clothes?”

  She laughs and says, “No, but that too. You remember that girl I interviewed? Angie?”

  I nod.

  “She’s off the streets. One of my colleagues was able to get her a spot in a school that’s been set up specifically for street kids. She’ll be starting in September. And she’s living in a girls’ shelter and working part-time at a grocery store. I thought you’d like to know.”

  Maybe I was wrong about having a voice. Maybe I’ve underestimated the power of sociologists. After all, I’m named after one—Harriet Martineau, the first female sociologist. My mom worships her the way some women worship the Virgin Mary. Actually, I’m named after three Harriets. The other two are Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist, and Harriet the Spy, from the book. So far, I don’t show any signs of being a sociologist, an activist or a detective.

  I pour boiling water over loose green tea in a white teapot with a bamboo handle. “That’s great, Mom,” I say. “Nice to have a success story.”

  “So far so good,” she says. “Lots of street kids can’t cope with the structure of school or a job. They miss their street families more than they ever miss their biological ones. But we can hope for the best. Sometimes that’s all we can do. And all victories, even the small or temporary ones, deserve to be celebrated.”

  “Sounds like you’ve done a lot,” I say.

  “Thanks,” she says. “But the more I talk to these kids, the more I realize that you can never do enough, no matter how hard you try.”

  I think that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Sadder than Byron leaving. Sadder than the polar ice cap melting. I can’t bear it that my mom doesn’t think she’s doing enough.

  “Verna did enough, didn’t she? For you?” I ask.

  She nods and rubs the little red grooves her reading glasses make on either side of her nose. She looks tired and worried, and I realize that it’s not just about Angie. It’s about me too. The doorbell rings before she can answer, but I say, “I’m okay, Mom” to her retreating back.

  After dinner I head to my room and go online to the Donor Sibling Registry. A long time ago, Mom paid for a lifetime membership with DSR. I could use the service or not, she said. My choice. She wrote the sign-in information on a pink recipe card, which she stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet that says Be the exception, not the rule. A lot of stuff has come and gone on that fridge over the years—drawings, cartoons, appointment cards, school photos, grocery lists—but the card was always there. Until now. Now it’s sitting beside my laptop, a bit faded, kind of grubby. Username: Dirtydog. Password: 1rainyday. All the information Mom had about my donor is already entered on the site—donor birthday, donor id number, donor type, name of facility, et cetera. It’s up to me to make the information public. To check the little boxes and wait for a reply. It’s optional whether you reveal where you live. I decide it can’t hurt. According to the site, some people get a response almost immediately, and some people wait for years.

  I consult the FAQs, read a few of the success stories, stare at the happy families in the photographs. Some of the stories are amazing—one woman found out that she and a close friend had used the same donor. Their kids were already good friends—now they know they are related! One person talked about being glad she had found her child’s half-siblings in case anybody needed “a kidney or a lung or something” in the future. I’d never thought of that. It could come in handy, although it makes a sibling sound more like an insurance policy than a human being. But let’s face it—if I needed a kidney, I’d probably be glad to have a few half-siblings to ask.

  My cursor hovers over the little boxes underneath the question Make Public? I check them off one by one. Click. Click. Click. There’s only one step left: adding a posting to the registry. The site says it’s the most important thing of all. Once you do it, you open yourself up for what they call “mutual consent contact.” Which sounds sexual but clearly isn’t. I smile and reach for my phone to call Byron and ask him if he’d like some mutual consent contact. He’ll laugh his weird, high-pitched cackle and then we’ll talk about what I’m doing—whether it’s a good idea or not, how many siblings I might have. He knows all about the sperm-donor stuff—and he’s definitely not my half-brother. He looks exactly like his dad, who is Chinese, right down to a mole on the back of his left knee. I want to talk to him so badly I’m breaking a sweat. Then I remember. It’s over. We decided. He’s probably already dating one of the dancers in his dad’s ballet company. The words on the screen blur, and I save my changes, set the timer on my phone for fifteen minutes, lie down on my bed and start to cry.

  THREE

  THE NEXT FEW days are torture. Limiting my crying to fifteen minutes a day frees me up to fret about whether to submit my posting on DSR. The possibility of hearing from hundreds of half-siblings—or none—freaks me out. I’m not sure which would be worse. I can imagine feeling either bereft or overwhelmed but nothing in between. I open my profile on the DSR site at least once a day, fully intending to take the next step, but I can’t make myself do it. I go to the salon for a few hours every morning, and I take the dogs out for a walk in the afternoons. Most of the dogs are rescues—a little brown mutt with a huge personality, two adorable beagles, a gigantic German shepherd-rottweiler cross who is the sweetest dog on the planet. And maybe the strongest. Thank god she’s well trained. They all get along really well, but even their antics don’t stop me pining for Byron or worrying about the donor thing.

  I’ve started working for Mom again too, although I’m finding it really hard to concentrate. Sometimes it takes me ten minutes to transcribe a single sentence. Sometimes I read back what I’ve transcribed and it makes no sense at all, as if I had only heard every third word.

  I finally submit my DSR posting on Sunday after dinner. Mom is at the youth shelter where she volunteers and does her interviews. I’ve had a good day—one of my favorite clients, a girl my age named Annabeth, showed up at the salon. She’s been coming in for a couple of years, and she volunteered to be interviewed for Mom’s book. When I typed up her transcr
ipt, I knew it was her, even though Mom gave her a fake name. Mom read me the riot act about respecting Annabeth’s privacy. I was never to discuss anything I learned from any of the transcripts with anyone, but I was to be especially mindful (Mom’s word) when I saw Annabeth at the salon. Annabeth knows I’m Mom’s transcriber, but she doesn’t seem to mind that I know a lot about her life. She even jokes about it sometimes, although there’s not much to joke about. She’s blind in one eye because her mom beat her when she was a baby, and she’s been in and out of foster care most of her life. She prefers life on the streets to having a permanent roof over her head. Most of the homes she has been in were, as she puts it, shitholes run by assholes. She makes money singing on street corners. Old jazz standards—“Summertime,” “All of Me,” “Blue Skies.” She doesn’t do drugs or drink.

  She hasn’t been to school since sixth grade, but she spends part of each day in the library, where she can’t get a library card because she doesn’t have an address. She reads biographies of singers—Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Etta James—and then listens to YouTube clips on the library computers. Her prized possession is a set of cheap earbuds. Her dream is to go to a performing-arts school.

  There’s something about Annabeth—the way she chooses her words, the lilt in her voice, her calm acceptance that life is a nightmare, her joy when she sings along to my playlists—that makes me want to bring her home, feed her, share my bedroom with her, lend her my clothes, pay for singing lessons, enroll her in a school that has a music program.

  Mom says the best I can do is pamper her on Sundays. “Boundaries,” she reminds me.

  “Bullshit,” I say. “Verna took you in.”

  “That was different,” she says. End of discussion.

  So I haven’t done anything yet other than give Annabeth a scarf I knit last winter. And lend her books. We always talk about books—we both love To Kill a Mockingbird and hate supernatural/paranormal romance.