Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) by Barbara Stuber Page B

little girls’ dorm, plus the cribs.
    â€œIf a child was adoptable, then I . . . well, each match was unique.” She appears to be reliving something. “On rare occasions the child picked the parents.”
    â€œDid you learn the stories, why mothers brought their children to be adopted in the first place?”
    â€œIt wasn’t always the mother. Regardless, I didn’t ask, but it was frequently offered. The young women needed so desperately to explain themselves. They were so often ashamed, overwhelmed, and distraught. They just couldn’t go on.”
    I inch toward Gone Mom. Evangeline must feel it too. “Did you think the girls who had babies, you know, and left them here were bad  ?”
    â€œAre you wondering if I thought they’d sinned and required forgiveness?”
    â€œWell, yes, that they were, you know . . . that my birth mother might go to . . . hell.” The air tightens around us. “That she was deprived of her relationship to God.”
    Sister Evangeline straightens her back. “The God I believe in doesn’t punish people, Lillian.”
    Really? An impossible thought lights my mind, then blurts out of my mouth. “Y . . . you mean you pick your own . . . God  ? Not the real one?”
    Sister Evangeline’s words gain conviction as she talks.“I pick forgiveness and compassion and grace and second chances. Women who bear children they can’t raise should not be condemned. And women who can’t bear children shouldn’t feel they have failed God.”
    â€œSo you don’t believe in . . . hell ?”
    â€œI’ve known many young women who think hell is where they live on earth.” Sister Evangeline folds her hands on the countertop, her face like The Thinker ’s. Amen.
    I recall Ralph’s Catholic sister philosophy: Don’t push nuns. They won’t budge. They’re half mule. Ralph should know. The teachers at Our Lady of Sorrows dig in their hooves whenever they see him coming.
    We hear the front door and voices. Evangeline grabs her coat on a hook by the back door and practically yanks me outside.
    I follow her across the frozen side yard to a shed—a place that used to terrify me because wasps floated around their nests in the rafters. Without a word we slip in the door. She pulls the chain on the light—a single hanging bulb dimmed by dust.
    Sister Evangeline stands under it in her habit. The dusky shed takes shape as my eyes adjust. Dead vines rustle around the black oilcloth window covers. A lawn mower and rakes and hoes fill one corner. There are stacks of apple-gathering baskets and shelves full of coffee cans and tools. It smells of dust and dry grass.
    Did Gone Mom leave me a wheelbarrow or a bucket of nails?
    â€œI believe everything of importance,” Evangeline says, “a move, or an opening of the heart, or a birth, requires a gestational period, a critical time for development. To everything there is a season.”
    But I am not waiting nine more months. It’s already been thirteen years.
    Sister Evangeline takes a cardboard container the size of a recipe box off the shelf. She stares at it as if she’s forgotten I’m here. I reach out, then withdraw my hand. She’s obviously not ready to let go.
    â€œIt’s from your birth mother. Extremely fragile,” she says, her voice husky.
    Oh, God. I want to ask if she left any instructions or a message, but the look on Sister Evangeline’s face stops me cold. She looks fragile, about to crack. We stand together, shivering. “I’ll be very careful,” I say, my heart drumming as I take the box. It’s light as air.
    â€œOpen it at home. Not here and not on the bus. Use a pillow.”
    I glance up at her and nod. She holds my gaze a long moment, and then looks into the rafters, blinking away tears. A strange loneliness seems to have