Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) by Barbara Stuber Page A

coat. Mr. Howard checks the wall clock. Don’t leave, Mr. Howard. Please don’t leave.
    â€œWell, gotta go to work . Pull that door, will ya?” He taps Elliot’s shoulder and is gone.
    Elliot’s voice seems to have walked out with Mr. Howard. He does not ask why I’m here on a Saturday. I have no idea either, except the world tilted funny and rolled me in the door.
    â€œI—I couldn’t find my protractor last night,” I stutter. “I thought I might have left it in here.” Last night—spending Friday night hunting down my protractor?
    Elliot says, “So . . . getting back to Picasso . . . he wants us to make our own sense of his paintings. He starts it and we finish it.” He points to the Girl before a Mirror . “What do you see?”
    â€œShe’s got two faces in one. The profile’s white, and the full face is yellow. One face split into two.” My mouth has not tripped and somersaulted. It has just performed a miracle—uttered the truth, plain and simple.
    â€œYeah, but if you let your eyes go blurry they combine into one.”
    I soften my focus and the miracle happens—the girl’s two faces blend, then separate into the yellow side and white side, and then meld together again.
    Elliot flips to a blank page on his tablet. “Face me a minute,” he orders, all business. “Now turn to the side. Now back.”
    He works fast, looking from me to his paper, then back at me. “Now the side again.” He chews his lip. His pencil scrapes the newsprint with confident-sounding strokes. Elliot turns his sketch to me. “See? Drawing works if you need to understand something. Two perspectives, two sides mixed.”
    I squint at the shading on the sides of my nose and chin, and the upward curve in my cheeks. My lips are open, as if I’m about to speak. My eyes look focused on something intriguing that’s just outside the picture.
    It looks like me, but better. Much better.
    Elliot lifts the corner of the paper like he might tear it off, then stops. Are you going to give it to me? “Still needs work,” he remarks, I guess to himself. He takes a deep breath and shuts his tablet on my face.
    *  *  *
    Wednesday after school Evangeline opens the orphanage door before I ring the bell. Sister Immaculata dozes in a rockerin the living room, the baptismal stole she’s mending draped over her lap. It has replaced the babies she used to rock in that very chair. She taught me how to do it—cradle the head and keep the swaddle tight. I used it on Ralphie when he was freshly home from the hospital, barely two weeks old. I taught the technique to Mother. She’d never held an infant before, but I had, lots of times.
    Sister Evangeline hurries me to the kitchen and shuts the door. Unless it’s hidden in the bread box, I do not see a belonging from my pagan past anywhere. I start to remove my coat, but she says to keep it on. She checks the clock, motions me to a kitchen stool. “The transfer sisters will be here any minute.” She’s tense and businesslike today. Maybe she’s sorry I came.
    â€œTransfer sisters?”
    â€œNew residents. Retired teachers. One is allergic to cats,” she remarks, putting a saucer of milk on the floor for Joy. Sister’s ring flashes in the fluorescent light—a wide silver band with an incised crucifix. Nuns are brides of Christ, a marriage of commitment.
    I have no idea why we are waiting for the transfer sisters, but that is exactly what we are doing. As much as I want my mystery belonging, if there is one, I grab the chance to ask something I’m dying to know. “How does it work when a couple wants to adopt a child?” This is a safe version of the question I really want answered, which is why Donaldand Vivian Firestone picked me , out of all the orphans to choose from. There were thirty occupied beds in the