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Looking for Jamie Bridger

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

"I just want to know, that's all," Jamie said, careful not to raise her voice. Grandma was like a big timid flower, filling the house with the good smells of her cleaning and cooking, seldom going out. Her petals were frail. When voices rose, Lily Bridger tended to droop, and curl at the edges, and fall to pieces. Therefore, though it was hard for a kid who had been known to yell from the art room clear down to the girl's gym in school, Jamie kept her voice down. She spoke softly and tried to reason with Grandma.

"It's pretty basic, knowing who your own parents are," she said. "Even adopted kids know who their parents are."

"You're not adopted!" Grandma's mouth quivered and her hands fumbled with the early strawberries she was slicing. It must have been the wrong thing to say. Damn, double damn. Now Grandma was upset.

Jamie felt her head start to pound with frustration but managed to keep her voice gentle. "Of course I'm not adopted. Good grief, I look just like you." Jamie had a wide freckled face like her grandmother's, a cleft chin like Grandpa's, blue eyes like both of them. Anybody could tell they were related. "I never said I was adopted." Jamie pushed her school books to one side, because the dowdy old kitchen was small, like the dowdy old rented house, and Grandma needed table space for dinner preparations. "Do you want me to get a pie crust ready?"

"No. Not if you are going to say such awful things." Grandma snatched a posy-print towel and wiped her hands on it, sniffling, working herself up to a crying fit.

"It's not awful, Grandma! It's natural. I just want—" Now Jamie heard her own voice start to shake with wanting; she was getting emotional the way Grandma did, and she hated that. She forced herself to say steadily, "I just want to know who my parents are."

"I raised you, isn't that good enough?" Grandma cried. Chin jerking, she marched to the old gas stove and started slamming pots around without accomplishing anything. "I fed you, I made smocked dresses for you, I—"

Just this once, Jamie promised herself, I am not going to back down. No matter how much Grandma cried, no matter how mad Grandpa got when he came home and found Grandma in a snit fit.

"—taught you how to tie your shoes, I—"

I have to find out. I can't go on not knowing who I am. Jamie was fourteen, closer to fifteen, already a freshman in high school. In a few years she would be able to drive a car, vote—she would be an adult. She had to get a handle on this parent thing.

"—made you real chicken soup when you were sick, bought you peppermints—"

Grandma wore her hair in braids pinned tight to her head. When she was little, Jamie had loved to watch Grandma brush her hair and do her braids. Grandma's long hair had never been cut, not once in her whole life, and now it was like a history of Grandma, mouse brown at the tips, pure white at the roots. Braided and piled on her head, it made Grandma look both old-fashioned and girlishly young, with the brown hiding the white. But right now the white was showing. As always when Grandma fell apart, her braids were coming loose, coiling away from her head.

"—and ice cream and coloring books—"

"I know," Jamie said. "I love you." This was true.

Her grandmother wheeled around to face her, braids swinging, rose-print skirt swinging from her wide hips, tears running down her wide, plain face. She wailed, "So what do you need a mother for?"

Jamie looked straight back, assessing her own commitment to what she wanted—no, what she needed. Yes, she really was determined enough to keep pushing. This time she was not going to give in, and knowing it made her very calm, almost cold. "Is that what I'm likely to find? A mother?" she demanded. "A daughter of yours, I mean, who had me?"

Lily stared back at her without moving even to sob.

"Just tell me that much," Jamie urged. "Please." She had never gotten even this far before. "You had a daughter? A son?" Much later, looking back, she knew she should have asked other questions: You had a child you have not seen in fourteen years? You had a child whose pictures are not in the photo album? You had a child you never talk about? But she did not ask those questions. She barely dared to think them, because then she had to think ... no. It was just not possible. Grandma had a child she had ... disowned? But Grandma would never do that. If Grandma could do that to anyone, then she could do it to ...

No. That's stupid. She loves me.

But Jamie felt a catlike, secret fear. She needed to know who her parents were. She needed parents.

Just in case ... something happened.

Jamie insisted, "You had a daughter who got in trouble? Or was it a son? Did you have a son who got a girl—"

She stopped because of the look on her grandmother's face, which frightened her. But why? Lily did not seem the least bit angry, or even weepy anymore. Instead, she had suddenly become totally serene.

"I don't remember," Lily said.

"Grandma, please."

"I'm sorry, honey, I just don't remember." Grandma came back to the table, reached for the flour canister and started to measure and sift for pie crust, her movements smooth and deft, as if not a thing were wrong. "That was a long time ago," she added.

Jamie stumbled to her feet, tried to speak calmly yet found herself shouting. "You have to remember!" How could anyone not remember her own child?

But Grandmother—was this Grandma Lily who so easily wilted? Unperturbed by Jamie's shouting, she gave her a sweet, rueful smile. "I am so forgetful these days," she said.

"My parents," Jamie whispered. "I need to know who my parents were."

Grandma stood there briskly mixing dough, shaking her head at herself, looking puzzled and cheerful. "Maybe the angels brought you," she said. "You were such a beautiful baby. And now you're a beautiful, beautiful girl."

Jamie knew Grandma meant this, but it was not true, and no help. She wanted to cry. She wanted to stamp her feet and scream. She stood there.

Grandma said softly, "I remember thinking how beautiful you were, dressing you to bring you home. You were like peaches and cream. I wished I had a pink bunting for you, but all I had was blue."

The remembering look on Grandma's face was as if a door had opened, just for a flash. Jamie cried, "Home from where?"

But she had spoken too loudly. Her grandmother went blank and blinked at her. "Why, I don't know, honey child. I don't remember. That was fourteen years ago."

The dowdy house was one of many, ranked in rows along narrow streets, standing tall and narrow like an old horse's brown teeth. Originally built by a coal company, these houses were never meant to be pretty, and they were not. Dexter, Pennsylvania, was not a pretty town. Therefore it did not look at other towns too much. Far from anywhere, shut off by mountains, Dexter ignored a lot that had changed outside. Jamie was not the only high- school girl in Dexter who was not allowed to date or wear bicycling tights or get her ears pierced or use makeup or stay out after dark. Dexter had a tradition of hiding its daughters. The houses were built so that the daughter in the back upstairs bedroom had to walk through her parents' room to get out. Jamie's grandpa's rules did not make her so very different.

But she felt different, because she liked to read, and she loved to draw, and she had no parents, only dreams. And memories so vague, they might as well have been dreams— hazy memories of a house very different than any house in Dexter. A house with a bay window, lots of windows, a house filled with light, with a half-moon glass over the front door and a porch thickly edged with fancy railings, fringed like a cowboy's white shirt. Once in Jamie's very early life, evidently, there had been a place that was not Dexter, and she dreamed of going there. It was quite possibly the place where her parents were.

"I could scream," Jamie complained to her friend Kate.

"Chill out, Jame. Your grandma is sweet." Standing behind Jamie, Kate was trying to do something with Jamie's hair. Not that it would help, but being fussed over felt good. One of these times Jamie and Kate were going to give each other canned-frosting-and-shaving- cream facials, and it would not be the craziest thing they had ever done together. Having a best friend who lived right next door was the best part of Jamie's life. When she was at Kate's house, Jamie felt real, as if she could be herself, when at home she felt—what? Was that silent, patient Jamie less real? Would the real Jamie Bridger please stand up?

No, forget standing up. She sagged down in Kate's bedroom chair and relaxed.

"How old was I when we moved here, about four?" she asked with her eyes closed.

"Five. Same as me." They had started kindergarten together. "You getting forgetful in your old age?" Kate teased.

"Not really. I knew I was four or five. So it's been, like, ten years?"

"Like, yeah. You getting nostalgic too?"

The teasing was gentle. Kate's hands were gentle on her head. Jamie smiled but said, "I keep asking my grandmother where we lived before. Can you believe she doesn't remember?"

Holding Jamie's hair straight up in the air with one hand, Kate came around to the front of the chair and studied Jamie. Kate changed future careers about once a month, and this month she was going to be a hair designer, so she was practicing analyzing the shapes of faces. She said, "I think it would look cool if you got it cut real short and wore it kind of wild on top."

"Give me a break." Jamie felt sure no hairstyle could make her look attractive, ever. Pretty girls had oval faces like Kate's, not square ones. "Does it make sense to you that Grandma wouldn't even remember the name of the town where we lived when I was little? She ought to remember the name of the town where she lived before she moved here!"

"Yes," Kate admitted, letting go of Jamie's hair, which fell straight down around her ears. If something was wrong with Grandma Bridger, it was a problem for Kate too, because Kate had no grandparents of her own; Lily was Kate's "Mamaw." Therefore, Kate started paying attention and sat on the edge of her bed to face Jamie. "Mamaw ought to remember that. Is she getting, you know, too old?"

"Senile? I don't think so. It's not like she's changed." Grandma had always been the same person, the one who bloomed in the kitchen, shriveled outside the house.

"Is she just saying she doesn't remember? Because she doesn't want to tell you things?"

"That's what I used to think. But today—" Jamie sat up, feeling herself go tense and quivery just thinking back to the conversation in the kitchen. "Today all of a sudden I felt like, it's for real, she honest to God does not remember, you know? She doesn't remember—anything." Jamie hunched her shoulders and shivered. "She forgets who her own kid was who had me."

Kate looked as shocked as Jamie felt. "What?!"

"I mean it. I asked her if it was a son or a daughter, and she said she can't remember. And she meant it. I mean, I just know she meant it. She really has forgotten."

"Whoa." Kate's eyes had gone huge. "That's spooky."

"It's crazy, is what it is! She scares me."

"Aw, c'mon. You can't be scared of your grandma."

"I was for a minute. All of a sudden I realized I was standing there talking to a crazy person."

"Maybe not really. People that age, a lot of them are funny." Kate looked off to one side the way she always did when she was thinking hard, and Jamie watched her. It did not bother Jamie that Kate was beautiful, with large dark eyes and almost a fashion-model face and spectacular hair, long and thick and pure black, swinging to her waist. If somebody had to be gorgeous, Jamie was glad it was Kate. She was going to do a portrait of Kate someday, when she got better at drawing humans. Right now, she was only good at drawing wild animals, deer and foxes and raccoons and such.

"First of all, your grandma is nice," Kate said slowly. "Maybe too nice. She spends her whole life doing things for other people, you know what I mean?"

Jamie nodded. She sometimes wished her grandma would get a life, like Kate's mother, who was Faye Garibay, County Commissioner. But on the other hand, she knew Kate sometimes wished her mother would bake strawberry pie.

"Second of all, she probably has some weird ideas, you know? Like, my grandmother would be about the same age if she was alive, and there were things she never told my mom. Dumb things, like Aunt Millie dyed her hair."

"So my grandmother is hiding something," Jamie grumbled. "So what else is new?"

"Well, it was a big deal back then if somebody had a baby when they weren't supposed to! Maybe your grandma is more ashamed than you can imagine."

This made some sense. Having a baby involved sex, and Grandma and Grandpa seemed scared to death of sex. Actually, they were scared of lots of things, like sunbathing, canasta, and popular music, all of which were supposed to shortcut a person straight to hell. But sex was worst of all. Grandpa used to be a kind of tent-revival preacher, and whatever Grandpa thought, Grandma thought the same, so between the two of them they never even said the word "sex." Whenever Jamie had sex education in school, she had to look up all the words. She knew better than to ask at home. Once, hearing Grandpa refer to a boy walking past the house as a "pervert" and a "Godless homosexual," she had asked what he meant, and ended up grounded for a week. To Grandma and Grandpa, anything having to do with sex was unspeakably bad.

But no, it did not entirely make sense. Jamie said, "She still ought to be able to remember. I can't imagine being so ashamed that you actually can't remember."

"Oh, boogers, I don't know." Kate got up and started to comb Jamie's hair again. Her hands made hard, jerky movements at first, but then they relaxed and played lightly around Jamie's head. "You've got a nice, symmetrical head and face," she said to Jamie after a while.

"What's that mean? Both my eyes aren't on the same side of my big fat nose?"

Kate, who hardly ever got angry, slammed down the comb. "Jamie Lee, you make me so mad, you have such a rotten negative attitude about yourself! Who says there is only one way to be pretty?"

Jamie's mouth jolted open.

"If you would smile once in a while!" Kate fumed. "You have the greatest smile."

When she managed to get her mouth under control Jamie said, "Don't mind me. I'm just bummed about stuff."

Kate knew what that meant: Jamie was on a wanting-parents jag again. "You remind me of a dog chasing cars," Kate grumbled. "What's it going to do if it catches one? It's dumb. It's kind of like me wishing I had grandparents. What are you going to do with parents if you find them?"

"I—I don't know. Write letters. Be a pen pal. Swap pictures, send Christmas cards, I don't know!" Jamie felt herself clouding up to cry, but so what. She could cry in front of Kate if she had to. "It's not what Grandma thinks, it's not that I want a mother so much." Jamie had been mothered pretty well. Also, she had doubts about her mother: She had to know I was born. Why did she give me away? Didn't she want me? But there was a chance her father had not known about her, and might have wanted her very much if he did. "Mostly I think I want a father."

"Oh." Kate's voice gentled, and she came around and sat on the bed again. "I get it."

"Yeah." Jamie's grandfather was not exactly Mr. Teddy-Bear Hugs.

"You have in mind a young, cute father, or what?"

In her daydreams Jamie did. In her daydreams her father was wonderful in every way, and he came to Dexter in a white Ferrari to take her away. But she did not feel like admitting any of this. "I don't care as long as he likes me." Grandpa had always let her know that being a girl was a mistake.

"Don't count on anything."

"I'm not."

"Well, look." Kate turned helpful. "How much your grandmother really forgets is kind of beside the point, which is, she's not going to tell you anything."

Time to face it. "Yeah."

"So how else can you find out? Can you send for your birth certificate or something?"

"How?"

"I dunno."

"Would they even give it to me? I'm a kid."

"I dunno. You could try."

"I could hire a private detective too, if I had a few thousand dollars."

Kate heard the sarcasm in Jamie's voice and sighed. "Don't be that way."

Jamie said nothing, because she knew what she actually had to do, and she was not looking forward to it. Eating raw liver would have been an attractive alternative.

Kate knew too. "You thinking of asking your grandfather?"

"Yeah," Jamie said.

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Excerpted from Looking for Jamie Bridger by Nancy Springer. Copyright © 1996 Nancy Springer. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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