Ann Martin - Mary Anne's Book

"Mary Anne!" a voice shouted. I was startled out of the past. It was my father. He and Sharon were home!

I flushed with nervousness and shame. I didn't want them to know that I was snooping in the attic. I quickly shut the box, ran out of the attic, and yelled down the stairs. "I'm in my room. I went to bed early." I did go to bed after that. But I didn't sleep. I was more confused than ever about my past.

I didn't return to the attic the next day or the day after that. For the next week, as I. helped my baby-sitting charges explore their own family histories, I tried to shove aside the questions I had about mine. But I couldn't forget the photos I'd seen, and at odd moments I would remember the box in the attic and wonder what other secrets it held about my past.

I was also thinking a lot about my mother. I realized that I didn't even know where her grave was in the cemetery. Mimi had died recently. I thought about how the Kishis often visited her gravesite. I wanted to visit my own mother's grave.

One afternoon I biked to the cemetery to look for it. I searched up and down rows and rows of grave markers, but I couldn't find a gravestone for Alma Baker Spier. I ended up crying over Mimi's grave. I realize now that

losing Mimi was one of the reasons that I had been thinking about my own mother so much lately. In a lot of ways, Mimi had replaced the mother I never knew. Now Mimi was gone, too, and one loss was reminding me of the other. - - -

When I left the cemetery I headed directly home to revisit the box in the attic. I wanted to learn whatever I could about my past, even if it was confusing and painful. And believe me, what I learned in the attic that afternoon was confusing and painful.

First, I looked at the pictures again. But they didn't tell me any more than they had before. So I opened another box which was marked "Correspondence." I took out a bundle of letters that lay on top and were all addressed to my father. I sat back on my heels and began to read them.

I figured out from those letters that the man and woman were Verna and Bill Baker. They were my mother's parents, which made them my grandparents! I learned that after my mother's funeral, my father had asked them to take care of me. They'd agreed and taken me with them to their farm in Iowa. Verna and Bill had raised me instead of my own father! I was shocked by this news. Why hadn't my father told me that I didn't live with him when I was little? Why had he given me

away in the first place? How could he?

I read a couple of letters from Verna telling my father little details about my baby life. In one letter she went on for a whole page about how I'd taken my first step before my first birthday. I guess ,she didn't realize that he didn't care. After all, he hadn't even bothered to go to my first birthday party. He didn't want me!

Realizing that my father had given me away was so upsetting that I ran out of the attic without going through the- rest of the box. It was difficult to face my father at dinner, but I managed to pretend nothing was wrong. I couldn't sleep that night thinking about how my father had given me away. I was also perplexed. Why had he taken me back? Had my grandparents died and he had no choice? Was the only reason that I lived with my father because he couldn't find anyone else to take care of me? -

Around two in the morning I returned to the attic to find the answers to these questions. What I learned made me feel a little better -at least temporarily. The rest of the letters from Verna to my father told me that when I was about eighteen months old my father told my grandparents he was ready to take care of me himself. My grandparents were afraid my father couldn't handle raising a child on his

own. But my father insisted that I belonged with him and even hired a lawyer to explain it to my grandparents. (That's the part that made me feel better.) My grandparents were unhappy about giving me up, but finally they agreed and I moved back to Bradford Court. I put the letters back in the box.

The next afternoon I accidentally overheard a phone conversation between Verna Baker -my grandmother - and my father. Had my father been in touch with her all these years? I wondered. And if so, why hadn't he told me about my grandparents and why hadn't I ever seen them the way other kids see their grandparents?

By listening in on their phone call, I learned that my grandmother and father hadn't spoken to one another for many years. My grandmother was calling now to. tell my dad that my grandfather had died. She said that she wished my grandfather had seen me before he died and that she wanted me to visit her now. My father - objected and said that it wouldn't be good for me. Verna sounded angry and scolded-my dad.

Quietly I hung up the phone. I was afraid they'd hear me crying. I couldn't believe it.

My grandmother was alive. The one who hadn't wanted to give me up eleven and a half years ago. And now she wanted me back. But

she didn't sound like a nice grandmother. She sounded mean.

It took a day or two for me to build up the courage to confront my father about what I had learned from the box in the attic and from the phone conversation he'd had with my grandmother. I needed his reassurance that he really did want me to live with him. And I had to tell him my fear that my grandmother had some legal claim to me. Would I have to go live with her?

My father was - pretty surprised about my discoveries. But he also - seemed relieved to have everything about my past out in the open. He explained that I wouldn't have to live with my grandmother - whether she wanted it or not. But as far as he could tell, all she wanted was for me to spend a few weeks with her. She didn't want to die without knowing her only grandchild. I asked him why, if she was so anxious to see me, they hadn't kept in touch with us all those years.

My father said that at first my grandparents were very angry at him for taking me away. "And Iowa is clear across the country," he added. "They -couldn't have seen you without seeing me. If they lived nearby it might have been different."

"But lots of kids only see their grandparents once a year," I protested.

My father explained that losing me was a big loss for Verna and Bill. "And it came on top of losing their own daughter," he said. "I guess they felt visiting you only once a year or so just would have made them sadder. We could all see you were going to look like your mother."

I learned then that I reminded my father of my mother. But he said he liked that, and he thought my grandmother would, too. We hugged and cried.

After that conversation I thought about my grandmother a lot. I loved the idea that I had a grandmother - a grandmother who had loved and cared for me when I was an infant.

A grandmother who - even though she wanted to raise me herself - agreed to let me return to my own father. I wondered if I would love her as much as I loved Mimi. Of course I would, I thought. She's my own flesh and blood. She's my mother's mother.

I'd done a lot of snooping around to learn my family history. But there was still one letter

- the most important letter - that I hadn't read. It was a letter my mother wrote to me before she died. She'd told my father to give it to me when I was sixteen. But he decided that if she had known how mature I'd be at thirteen, she would want me to have it. He called me into his study and gave it to me.

The letter is four pages long. Here's a part of it:

After I finished reading my mother's letter (and crying) I went to find my father. He was sitting on his couch in his study, in exactly the same position he was in when I'd left him half an hour before. I knew he'd been thinking about how my mother was speaking to me from the past through her letter. He must have remembered the day she wrote it and asked him to save it for me. I could see that he'd been crying, too.