Whatever my aunt was, I was no better.
So, I was prepared to accept whatever harshness was about to befall me. But Aunt Julia surprised me. She took one of the photographs and held it up for me to see.
“Do you know who this is?” she asked quietly.
“A baby.”
“What baby?”
I gave a shrug.
“You, Odysseus.”
I couldn’t recall ever seeing a photograph of myself. Albert and I came to Lincoln School with nothing, no photos or anything else that might be a guide to our past. She handed the photograph to me, but looking at it was like staring at a picture of an exotic animal. I felt that it had nothing to do with me.
She lifted another photograph from the bed. “And this?” It was of a very young child astride a rocking horse. “That’s you at three. And here you are at four,” she said, pointing to another. “And at five. This is the final one I have of you. You were six. It was taken the only time you visited me here. Until two days ago, the last time I ever saw you. I keep them in my room.”
She took the baby picture from me and seemed entranced by the smile on that child’s face—my face, although it didn’t feel that way to me.
“My parents sent you those?”
“Rosalee. Almost every year.”
“I don’t see any of Albert.”
She didn’t seem to hear, she was so lost in the baby photo and whatever deep meaning it had for her. “I remember the day you were born. Remember it as if it were yesterday.”
“You were there?”
“Oh, yes. It was here in this room. You were born on this bed.”
Well, that was certainly news, such a huge revelation that I didn’t know what to say.
“I named you Odysseus because Rosalee and I had grown up listening to our mother read Homer’s epic story to us. You know your namesake, Odysseus?”
“A Greek hero. Cora Frost, a teacher at Lincoln School, told me about him.”
“He was a great leader, and I knew that you would be, too, someday. But also I named you that because you were born on Ithaca Street. It seemed a sign.”
This was too much. “My mother named me,” I declared.
She gazed at me silently. A buzzing began in my head like a swarm of flies going round and round, looking for a way out.
In the end, I gazed right back at her, and a look of understanding must have dawned on my face, because she nodded and said in a whisper, “Yes.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
“THIS WAS NO place to raise a child,” Aunt Julia explained.
No, not Aunt Julia. Mother. I tried the word in my head, but it sounded all wrong.
After her remarkable revelation, she couldn’t be still. I took her place on the bed while she paced, glancing at me periodically to gauge my reaction as she talked. Which must have been hard, because I was stunned to silence and sat looking as senseless as a scarecrow.
“Rosalee had a child already. I knew how good she was with Albert. Much better than I could ever be with you, especially here. Oh, I suppose I could have left and tried to make a living for us some other way, but I had no skills, no training. This”—she lifted her hands to embrace the room, the house, the whole circumstance—“this is all I know. And, Odysseus, they were so good to you, and Albert was such a good brother.”
“So . . . who?” I finally asked.
“Who?”
“My father.”
That stopped her pacing. She stood a few moments with her face downcast, her body so still it might have been carved from granite. “I wish I could tell you.” She brought her eyes to bear on me, gauging my reaction. “In a place like this, Odysseus, despite precautions, a baby sometimes happens.” She opened her hands toward me like a beggar hoping for alms. “But that’s the past. He’s not important now. What’s important is that you’re here and I’m going to take care of you, if that’s what you’d like.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“When my father was killed . . .” But I stopped myself, because that was wrong. He wasn’t my father. “When my uncle was killed,” I corrected myself, but felt that, too, was all wrong, “why didn’t you send for us then?”
“I’ve told you already. I didn’t know for a long time what had happened. And when I found out, it seemed best to leave you where you were. I talked with people who know about such things,