Maria, Sophia, or Anna
by Addison Zeller
We called her Maria, Sophia, or Anna, but I don’t think she was Anna because I’d remember having two sisters with that name. For a few years my mother insisted we call her our sister, my sister and me. Your sister in India, she said, slipping a photo out of an envelope. She looks like this. She waved the photo in front of us and fastened it to the door of our refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a cow.
My sister and I knew about adoption because when we lived on Hanson Avenue our mother told our father she wanted another girl, not another boy, and the best way to get one was by calling an agency that distributed girls from China.
It’s moral to adopt a girl from China, she told us. We’ll raise her Catholic, for one thing. She didn’t mention a second.
It’s not appropriate, our father said, to discuss this in front of the kids, who will now expect a girl to arrive from China. It is appropriate, said our mother, who produced a trifold corrugated cardboard display board to which she had fastened a map of that country and various printed images from Encarta Encyclopedia.
A China Unit was added to our homeschool lessons. Whenever our father entered the kitchen, our mother produced the display board and taught a Chinese subject, such as Chairman Mao or rice paddies, the refreshing greenness of which she encouraged us to acknowledge.
We were excited about our Chinese sister for two weeks, after which our mother concluded the China Unit and didn’t mention her again.
Now we lived on Fisk Avenue and our sister was Indian. All week, as we worked at the kitchen table, my sister and I looked up at the photo of Maria, if that was her name. We didn’t know many other children. We couldn’t stop thinking about her. We knew she was three or four years younger than my sister and four or five years younger than me. That meant she’d been hidden for a long time, like a rabbit in a hat, waiting to be pulled out and changed into our sister, the hat being India.
That was our feeling when we looked at the photo under the cow magnet on the refrigerator door.
I looked at the photo every time I opened the refrigerator door, remembering each time that it showed Maria (or Sophia), our sister in India. I looked at the photo a second time when I closed the refrigerator door, because the magnet was so unwieldy it dropped to the floor, along with the photo, every time the refrigerator door was closed with unnecessary force. Because I was a boy of twelve or so the cow magnet dropped to the floor every time. That meant I was obliged, every time, to pick up the photo and the cow magnet and restore them to the refrigerator door. That meant I looked at the photo several times a day, each time remembering it showed Sophia (or Maria), our sister in India.
What I see when I close my eyes is a photo of a thin girl with long limbs, or limbs that look long because they are thin. Her pose looks awkward because of the embarrassed grin on her face and the excess weight she puts on her right foot. I smile as I remember this, because I imagine she was seated on the floor, cross-legged, in a line of children as she waited for the photographer to reach her. I imagine that the photographer moved down the line of children as quickly as possible, snapping a perfunctory photo of each child as it leaped up to smile for the camera. Elbows and kneecaps visible in the edges of my memory of the photo appear to confirm what I have imagined. She must have been seated in that stance, cross-legged, long enough for the circulation of her legs to have grown impeded by the time the photographer stepped in front of her to snap the perfunctory photo. She must have leaped up, smiling, as quickly as possible, only to discover the impediment in her circulation. That is the reason for the unequal distribution of weight in her feet. She grins with embarrassment, I imagine, because she realizes that the photo will look awkward to her American family when they see or remember it. My sister in India has brown skin. Her hair is black and her eyes are red from the flash of the camera. She wears thin white shorts and stands barefoot in a dark room under a bare lightbulb.
Because our mother used the word “adoption” we didn’t think to ask if we were adopting Maria. It was several days before I looked up from my work to ask when she was coming.
Our mother was teaching her India Unit with a trifold corrugated cardboard display board to which she had fastened a map of that country and various printed images from Encarta Encyclopedia.
My question surprised her. She turned to look at the photo under the cow magnet.
I guess that wasn’t clear, she said. She isn’t coming here.
My sister and I looked at each other. We won’t meet her?
She shook her head.
No, you won’t meet her. Not unless you plan to go to India someday, or she plans to visit America when her circumstances improve.
My sister and I didn’t understand.
“Adoption”, our mother explained, in this instance meant a modest quarterly sum she agreed to pay a Catholic orphanage in an Indian City to feed, house, and give Maria a Catholic education.
If you adopt a road, she said, you don’t get to take the road home. If you adopt a zoo animal, the animal stays in the zoo.
Can we at least call her?
No, our mother said. At Christmas and Easter she’ll send us cards and, if she feels like it, a handwritten letter. If her English is good enough. Otherwise we won’t have contact with our Indian family member unless we visit each other one day when our circumstances improve.
But we will receive quarterly reports from the orphanage. We’ll learn she’s studying this and that and remembering us in her prayers. We have the photo under the cow magnet on the refrigerator door.
Not that she won’t visit. She’ll remember us with gratitude, for sure. There’s no reason she can’t visit someday, when her circumstances improve.
I, and my sister, began to cry as our mother showed us a calming image of wet hills along which a turquoise colored plant grew in neat, humid rows. This is a rich tea estate in India, she said. Doesn’t it look refreshing?
The first card arrived at Christmas with a report from the proctors. Maria, they wrote, makes cards using a method she learned at the orphanage. She dips leaves in white paint and presses them along the edges of the card to create a lacy border.
The method obviously required a lot of care and patience. I could hardly believe it was made by the girl in the photo. I envied her for learning to make cards using the orphanage method.
A short English phrase had been written inside. Happy Christmas parents. A longer, more elaborate phrase arrived at Easter. I wish you Happy Easter my dear parents.
Her English is improving, our mother explained.
The cards didn’t mention my sister or me. When I think about it now, I imagine that Maria didn’t know about us. Perhaps the proctors hadn’t mentioned us to Maria, or our mother hadn’t mentioned us to the proctors. Either way, we remained unmentioned as the long phrases expanded into short letters.
My sister spent a long time teaching herself the orphanage method. In my mind I can see her cut trees or birds out of bright paper and glue them onto backgrounds of dark paper to stand or fly under a round yellow moon.
Maria’s going to get a card from me, she said.
Honey, said our mother.
No, she’s getting one. And I’m going to India someday to meet Maria. I’ll help at the orphanage myself. As a nun if I have to.
Our mother shook her head. That’s a big sacrifice for a talented young woman. We’ll have to pray about that.
My sister brought home every library book about Mother Teresa and her nuns, who were the subject of the India Unit for a week. She examined the books with pictures and the laid the books with no pictures out for display on the living room carpet.
I had no interest in Mother Teresa or her nuns. To me, their white and blue habits looked like napkins. The more I heard about them, the less I thought about Maria. Soon I only thought about Maria when I closed the refrigerator door. When a new card arrived, I didn’t imagine her life at the orphanage, making cards and writing or copying phrases for her parents in America. I only imagined an awkward girl standing under a lightbulb. I wanted to know if she mentioned me, but that was all.
Not long after my sister took an interest in her, Mother Teresa died. We watched the funeral coverage as my sister cried and laid out library books for display.
Is Maria at the funeral? she asked.
I guess it’s possible, our mother said.
My sister watched intently whenever the camera swept past the crowd. Long lines of people stood along the road waiting for Mother Teresa’s body to go by. The day was hot and dusty. After a while, she realized they were only playing the same shot over and over, of the same line of faces.
In the spring, my sister informed my parents that she was interested in equestrianism now. She checked out the library books about horses. Her new intention, of someday owning and managing a stud farm, struck her as incompatible with helping at the orphanage in India as a nun if she had to.
I begged our father or our mother, whoever was driving, to take me when they drove my sister to a barn in a neighboring town for weekly riding lessons, since I only went out for Sundays or library visits.
We usually parked along a muddy path between the barn and the house of the barn’s owner. If our mother drove, she and I usually stayed in the car for an hour and a half while we waited for the lesson to end. If our father drove, we usually exited the car and stood just outside it or walked to the fence to admire the horses grazing in the paddocks.
It was refreshing to stand by the fence and stare out over several acres of green prairieland.
I remember I enjoyed looking from a distance at the six or seven girls of our own age who took lessons at the same time as my sister, and that I waved, if she saw me, at the barn’s owner as she walked between her house and the barn.
I knew I would see her whenever I heard the excited barking of the whippets she bred to help pay for the barn and her seven or eight horses. The whippets yipped and leaped in the air, circling her rubber boots as she walked along the muddy path.
She was a thin, nervous person with curly brown hair and thick glasses. I liked her because she seemed like someone who would understand me or whom I would understand. She waved if she saw me, but I don’t think we ever talked. It’s possible she never knew who was waving at her from in or just outside a car on her own muddy path.
Our father, if he grew bored of the horses, drove us to a butcher’s shop in the neighboring town. He would buy me a ham sandwich wrapped in cellophane. The rolls were slightly crusty. Several slices of swiss cheese were plastered to the ham with a bright dab of yellow mustard. He would also buy me a cream soda.
I see in my memory that when we returned to the barn, I liked to sit on the bumper of our car, unwrap the sandwich, and ask our father to open the cream soda. I would take my first bite of the sandwich, which had a pure, uncomplicated taste, and chase it swiftly with my first sip of the cream soda, which interacted pleasantly with the ham and soaked the crustier portions of the roll. I remember this combination with special satisfaction. I would watch the horses in the paddocks as I ate, or the whippets circling in the pen by the house of the barn’s owner. If no animals were around, I would look out at the wet, green prairieland beyond the paddocks, and the telephone poles and windpumps standing here and there against the skyline. The insects would hum and I would enjoy watching the grass stalks shiver under them as they sprang from one to another. I enjoyed, I remember, the appearance of the chipping white paint on the fence, the beads of moisture that accumulated along it, and the silver windpumps glowing in the humid atmosphere. Most of all, I enjoyed the smells of mud and minerality in the wet air. When I finished my sandwich, I would roll the wrapper into a ball and slip it down the neck of the empty cream soda bottle.
I would watch from the car or just outside it as my sister stepped out of the barn and walked along the muddy path. If she was walking with one or several of the six or seven girls, I would admire how sure she was of herself and how easily she made friends. It must have helped that the six or seven girls rotated between the same seven or eight horses during their lessons, allowing them to chat with each other about the horses they liked best.
The horse my sister liked best was a short, plump Arabian named Arthur. I liked Arthur, too, because when he was in the paddocks he trotted to the fence to accept a piece of sandwich roll and allow me to touch his velvety nose.
When I think of it now, the touch of Arthur’s nose under my hand, or against my fingers when he accepted the piece of roll, returns like a dream I had forgotten, or a happy moment I neglected to my later regret.
He’s a good-tempered horse, my sister said. A perfect lesson horse.
She liked to explain horse terms on drives home from the barn. I learned that horses were measured in “hands”, that baby horses were “sired”, and that male horses who were not “studs” were often “geldings”.
Arthur’s a gelding, she said. Ugly Arabians are gelded right away. Arthur’s too short and his neck’s too short and his legs are too short, so he got gelded. But he’s a perfect lesson horse. Not aggressive like a stallion. When a stallion’s around, he gets aggressive because the mares aren’t spayed. Half the barn will be in heat, so the stallion will go crazy. Then the mares will go crazy and bite you if you ride them. That’s why Arthur’s a good lesson horse.
“Dressage” was the art of executing complicated maneuvers on horseback. It was an especially important horse term because a dressage competition was held at the barn every year. The students at the barn competed with each other and with students from neighboring barns. In addition to the seven or eight horses at the barn, more horses would be driven in from neighboring barns. Impartial judges would come, from where I don’t remember, to observe the complicated maneuvers and award ribbons to the girls who executed them most skillfully.
At home, my sister showed me the riding costume our parents had bought her from a saddlery catalog. I admired the black riding helmet, which had a reassuring feel. It was too small for my head, but I turned it in the air and tapped it gently, enjoying its faint, calming odor as I placed it in a moving box.
We were moving, I don’t remember why, from Fisk Avenue to Garden Avenue. My sister needed to concentrate on intricate questions of dressage, so I packed her belongings when not packing mine or doing my homeschool work.
Our mother packed everything in the kitchen, including the objects on the door of our refrigerator. She slipped the photograph of our sister in India into an envelope along with her reports, letters, and cards.
I realize, when I think of it now, that I never saw these objects on our refrigerator door at Garden Avenue, and did not remember them until shortly before I began to write these words. I had not thought of the photo of my sister in India, or of the girl who was probably named Maria, from that time until just now.
A card, as far as I remember, did not arrive at Christmas. Perhaps our parents forgot to mention our new address to the proctors, or to keep up their donations after we moved. Or perhaps they kept up their donations but no longer hung the photo or showed us the cards because they thought we weren’t interested. Or perhaps Maria was emancipated from the orphanage at approximately the time we moved.
I remember that we moved at the start of the week, that I helped pack and unpack and saw her photo slip into the envelope, and that the competition was held that Saturday inside the barn owing to a drizzle. I remember I stood by the fence after watching part of the competition and thought of several things and perhaps of Maria, who possibly never heard of me, and not again until just now.
We arrived an hour early but couldn’t park in our regular spot because the muddy path was full of horse trailers. Many people we didn’t know milled about chatting as the parents of the competing girls remained in their cars. I imagine these people were judges, or friends of the barn’s owner, or the owners of neighboring barns. The morning was so cold that whenever they spoke little plumes of air rolled out of their mouths. They warmed themselves with coffee or hot cider from two large dispensers just outside the barn doors.
The barn’s owner walked back and forth, checking on every detail of the competition as the excited whippets leaped in the mud by her boots.
When it was time we went inside and selected our seats from the rows of metal folding chairs at the far end of the barn. A man we didn’t know was testing a microphone by the barn doors while another man we didn’t know held his coffee or hot cider. After a while, the first man we didn’t know spoke into the microphone to welcome us to the barn and thank us for choosing to come inside on a warm, sunny day like this. The people around us, and we ourselves, chuckled gently from our cold metal seats. The man we didn’t know went on to explain the rules of the competition, introduce the judges, and read a list of girls and horses taking part in the day’s events. He told us a little about dressage seat equitation and the various maneuvers we would see displayed. We clapped as a distant, tinny piece of country western music started to play from a speaker over the barn doors. The girls began to enter one by one on their horses and form a circle in the sawdust in the middle of the barn. The man picked up the microphone again to read out the name of each girl as she took her place in the circle. When a girl heard her name read out, she waved her hand and smiled. My sister was among the last to enter the barn, cantering in on Arthur just as her name was read out. The timing seemed to embarrass her and her wave looked perfunctory and awkward to me compared to those of the other girls, who had heard their names read out after they joined the circle. But she regained her composure quickly, adopted a serious expression, and nudged Arthur with her boots to guide him into place under the glaring barn light.
I whispered to our father that my sister Anna looked confident on Arthur and he agreed. I turned to our mother and whispered the same to her, adding that I needed to scoot past to visit the portacabin outside the back door. She drew in her legs to let me by. As I stood, I waved to my sister, who acknowledged me with a twitch of her gloved fingers.
When I was done in the portacabin, I walked to the fence to admire the windpumps peeking out from the stationary mist banks in the green prairieland beyond the paddocks. The paddocks were empty because the horses were competing in the barn. The whippets were circling in their pen, but when I got close they started to bark, so I remained by the fence, wiping off beads of moisture that had accumulated along the chipping paint and staring into the wider world.
Addison Zeller lives in Wooster, Ohio, and edits fiction for The Dodge. His work appears in 3:AM, Epiphany, The Cincinnati Review, minor literature[s], and many other publications.
Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, and sign up for our mailing list.