The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,144

get a scholarship to KU; I’m going to major in biology. If you major in biology and you do well, you can apply to go to Costa Rica your junior year. The pamphlet for the Costa Rica program has pictures of students with backpacks walking through a dense forest, taking notes, looking at beetles the size of my fist. SEE THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE FIRSTHAND! is printed at the top. I want to do this. I want to go to the Galápagos Islands.

“She might get to go to Costa Rica,” my mother says. Sam swings his fist back and forth on his tray, hitting both the YES and NO buttons, the robot voice speaking for him every time. No yes no yes no.

“Costa Rica?” Eileen says. “Goodness, why would you want to go there?”

I smile and shrug. “Just to go.” There is no need to bring up Ms. Jenkins and biology with Eileen. I fold the check carefully, slip it in my pocket. “Maybe I’ll go to Ireland too.” I say this as I think it.

Eileen looks happy about this. “You could look up my mother’s birthplace.” She squints into her lap. “Mallow. That’s where she was born. In County Cork.”

I imagine myself going to Ireland, looking up Eileen’s twelve aunts and uncles. I would have so many cousins. If I found the right town in Ireland, I might be related to everyone in it. There is a commercial on television where this happens: An American traveling in Ireland goes around to little cottages, trying to find his Irish cousins he has never met. When he finds the right cottage, they bring him in and give him beer. They make him dance with them while someone plays a fiddle.

Eileen frowns, shaking her head. “’Course there wouldn’t be anybody left from her side. They all died as babies. Just two of her brothers lived, and I think even they died in the war.”

My mother and I stare at her. She isn’t looking at us but is scratching her head, trying to remember the names of the two brothers. “Owen and Paul. Or Peter? It started with a P.”

My mother puts her fork down. “The rest of them died? You said there were thirteen.”

Eileen nods, spreading mayonnaise on a piece of bread.

“Ten of them died? As children?”

She shrugs. “They didn’t have the medicine we do now, Tina, the antibiotics. There was consumption, and not always a lot to eat. It was harder to keep your kids alive.”

“Oh God.” My mother crosses her arms on the table and puts her head down on them. “It’s too horrible. I wouldn’t have wanted to live.”

Eileen takes a bite of her sandwich. “Yes you would have. You would have adjusted to the times. You would have found strength in the Lord the way they did, and you’d have carried on.”

I think of Mr. Carmichael, lying in the grass and crying next to his lawnmower. Ten times that.

“I would have tried to find strength in doctors,” my mother says. “I think after the third one died, I would quit messing around.”

“There wasn’t a lot doctors could do back then, Tina. They just had to pray and hope. But let’s not talk about all these sad things,” she says, squeezing my hand. “It’s Christmas. Look at this new camera I bought. Let’s take pictures.”

She holds the camera up. I put on the new earrings she gave me for the picture, leaning forward so Samuel and my mother will fit in the frame.

“Beautiful,” Eileen says, and I hear the click. She is standing by the window now, the light hitting her face so I can see the glitter in her eyeshadow, creasing in her wrinkles when she smiles. “I want one of me and Evelyn.”

My mother belts Samuel into his chair and takes the camera from Eileen.

“Aaaa! You’re taller than me! My granddaughter is taller than me!” She looks up at me, her forehead grazing my chin. It’s true—I’ve grown five inches in one year, suddenly taller than all of the boys in my class except Stu Svelden. It has taken some getting used to, being up this high. I’m still bumping into things.

My mother takes two more pictures, Eileen standing beside me, her arm around my waist.

I love having a Walkman. I can play my Tracy Chapman tape as much as I want, and I don’t have to worry about my mother saying that if she hears it one more time she will have to put her head