“Keep this a secret,” Jessica whispered to me, “and the money is yours, Raelyn.” After saying that, she looked me in the eye with a stare that was intense. It looked like it was saying, “Do not betray (背叛) my trust.” Then, she gathered her books from her locker and walked off.

I quickly came to my senses after I agreed to Jessica’s strange request. Why did I agree? Just for money? I knew it was wrong for her to lie to her parents, telling them that she was going to meet me for a school project. In truth, she wanted to go to East Coast Park to meet her online friend. It was not safe and I knew this, but I did not want to ruin our friendship, neither did I want to betray her trust.

A few hours later, I received a phone call. It was from Jessica’s mom. Cold sweat started dropping down my forehead. What should I do? Multiple questions flooded my mind. My trembling fingers were forced to pick up the call. “Hello, Aunt May.” I greeted her with some nervousness in my voice.

“Hello,” she said. “How is your project going? I need to tell Jessica something as she doesn’t seem to be picking up the phone. Can I trouble you to pass the phone to her?”

My eyes widened. I quickly thought of an excuse. “She’s in the toilet now. I think she’s having a stomach ache.” Then, many more thoughts rushed through my mind. After a big struggle and debating in my mind, I decided to tell the truth.

Before Aunt May could reply. I said directly. “Aunt May, I’m sorry I lied to you just now. Well...you see. Jessica isn’t at my place doing our project. She went to East Coast Park to meet her online friend. She asked me to keep it a secret, but I had to betray her. This is for her own good if her online friend is a bad person.” I paused and then added, “I think you and Uncle Ron should look for her now before it’s too late.”

The economic downturn caught us. We sold our ranch and moved to town, Mother had decided to open a day nursery. She had had no training, but that didn’t stand in her way. She sent away for correspondence courses in child care, did the lessons and in six months formally qualified herself for the task. It wasn’t long before she had a full enrollment and a waiting list. I accepted all this as a perfectly normal instance of Mother’s ability. But neither the nursery nor the motel my parents bought later had provided enough income to send my sister and me to college. In two years I would be ready for college. Time was running out, and Mother was anxious for ways to save money. It was clear that Dad could do no more than he was doing already — farming 80 acres in addition to holding a full-time job. A few months after we’d sold the motel, Mother arrived home with a used green typewriter.

“That’s all we can afford,” Mother said. “It’s good enough to learn on.” And from that day on, as soon as the table was cleared and the dishes were done, Mother would disappear into her sewing room to practice. The slow tap, tap, tap went on some nights until midnight. Soon I heard Mother got a job at the radio station. I was not the least bit surprised, or impressed. But she was wild with joy.

Monday, after her first day at work, I could see that the excitement was gone.

Tuesday, Dad made dinner and cleaned the kitchen. Mother stayed in her sewing room, practicing. “Is Mother all right?” I asked Dad. “She’s having a little trouble with her typing,” he said. “She needs to practice. I think she’d appreciate it if we all helped out a bit more. You might just remember that she is working primarily so you can go to college.”

Wednesday, I arrived home earlier and was surprised by what I saw — Mother was crying in the corner of the couch.

Mother took another job earning half, but the evening practice sessions on the old green typewriter continued.

Her pale face stood out against the blackness of her hair. She looked much younger than her fifteen years, a worn coat hanging loose above her. We weren’t supposed to take a child, but an emergency call came through that morning. A home was needed for a young girl immediately.

I, together with four children, hurried to get her room ready. The kids were great. Joanne, our second-eldest daughter, did the cleaning and Margaret, Rob and Jeff helped make the bed. I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I was excited, but scared at the same time because I was told an adopted child might give us a lot of trouble.

That afternoon, Trudy arrived with the social worker Mrs. Kline. She stepped into the front hall and stood against the wall. I will never forget the look in her eyes. The first thing that came to my mind was that she looked like a hunted animal. The children moved towards her, and Jeff grabbed her hand and said proudly, “Come and see your room. I helped make your bed.” Trudy pulled back, speechless.

At this point, I stepped towards her and said, "Welcome to our home, Trudy. “She looked at me with such blank eyes. But with her head bowed, she simply said, eyes moving back and forth like a creature looking for a way out, “No, thank you.”

For the first two weeks, Trudy was very quiet. She would come into the kitchen while I was working, and we would discuss school and what she would like to do in the future. Mrs. Kline had given us all the information about her history, but I never mentioned the terrible things that had happened to her.

As the days went by, Trudy became a delight to have around. Very quickly, it seemed like she had always been with us. The girls would sit in each other’s rooms and giggle(咯咯笑) like typical teenagers. It was a sound that warmed my soul. However, when they talked about new clothes, Trudy fell silent again.

I took Joanne shopping for a winter coat, and Trudy came too.

Back home, I presented the jacket Trudy had tried on.

6 . In 1990, during a performance of my stage play, I became preoccupied with one particular member of the audience. While everybody else laughed, there she sat, staring at the floor, with her fingers in her ears. I’ll never forget her look of complete discomfort.

That woman was my mother. Despite the fact I’d established myself as a humorist, my mother never found me or my work particularly funny. She was my hardest critic. “Is Drew really that funny?” she’d ask family members.

To make matters worse, the feeling was mutual (相互的): though our social circle swore that she was humorous, I never saw it. My mother was supposedly very funny in her first language, Anishinaabemowin—an Indigenous (原住民的) language, but alas, I didn’t speak it. At family gatherings, when somebody would say something “funny” in Anishinaabemowin, she’d explain it to me. Sometimes the humour translated. Sometimes it didn’t.

For a while I was convinced I would never make her laugh. Then, in 2005, I succeeded. I had published a book called Me Funny. In it were dozens of essays deconstructing Indigenous humour, along with 50 so-called “Indian jokes” to break up the various chapters. (For instance, “Why do Native people hate snow? Because it’s white and all over our land.”) She laughed hard and declared, “Wow, that was funny!”

In 2009, my mother passed away at the age of 77. During the funeral, in the tears, family member after family member got up and recounted things she had done and said over the years. To my surprise, I found myself laughing. Suddenly I remembered a moment from the early ‘90s, when my mother asked me, completely serious, what “owie” meant in French. I struggled to come up with an answer until I spelled it out in my mind: oui (“yes” in English).

More and more stories about her surfaced. We laughed as we remembered her. I couldn’t see my mother’s forest for my own trees. I wish I could have shared those laughs with her while she was alive, but I’m glad I finally made the connection.

As Christmas decorations appeared in town, our parents called my two younger brothers and me together. At first, I thought someone had died, because I had never seen my parents look so sad. My brothers and I stood waiting for the awful news.

Mom hugged me as she murmured, “Christmas is going to be different this year. We won't be having a tree or presents. We can barely afford food.”Dad, resting on the couch, beckoned (招手示意) the boys into his arms.“Things will change when I get back to work.”

My family was poorer than dirt. Dad, the only bread-earner in our family, worked in a coal mine. However, soon after returning to work at the end of a long strike, Dad was hurt in a rock fall that broke bones in his foot. Lying on the couch with the swollen foot high on pillows, he didn't talk or smile much. There was little to smile about. No work, no income.

At nine years old, I mothered my younger brothers: Rodney, aged six, and Stevie, three. We shared a small bedroom. That night, after our parents’ announcement, we talked.

Rodney began. “Em, did you see how sad Mommy and Daddy looked? I thought Mommy was gonna cry.

“Me, too. Daddy's foot’s … this big” whispered Stevie, holding out his arms.

“Yeah..We're in hard times," I said.“It makes Mommy and Daddy sad."

“But we don't have to be sad," I added, hoping to brighten the mood.

“Since there are still several weeks to go, maybe we can do something to cheer them up," I said with overdone enthusiasm. The boys proposed, “We can take the money from our piggy bank...earn some more..and surprise them with gifts!"

“I can run errands(跑腿) for Aunt Em and neighbors to earn money," I offered.

“Yeah," Rodney added, “I and Stevie can return bottles and save the deposit money... instead of buying candy!" He pushed Stevie gently with his elbow.

“Yeah!”Stevie clutched his hands together.

We had a plan!

Until they nodded off, I coached my little brothers (especially Stevie) in ways to guard our secret. “Don't talk about it during the day."

We awoke in the morning, transforming from sad children to the secret agents on an important mission!

On Christmas morning, we hurried into the living room and handed the gifts to Mommy and Daddy.

Sarah grew up in West Virginia as a normal American girl. Jim, a professor at WVU, and Judy, a teacher, showered their youngest daughter with love and encouragement. Sarah picked roses in her garden, rode her bike around the neighborhood, and enjoyed vacations with her parents and two sisters. Sil, she could never quite shake off the sense that she didn’t belong in her fair-haired family or the community with few minorities. Worse, she felt the anxiety shared by many adopted children: if one set of parents abandoned you, why wouldn't another? She tried very hard to be a good kid so that her present parents would never want to give her up. This feeling kept haunting her all through her childhood and teen years.

Sarah studied drama and in 2001 got some minor roles in films after graduation. She moved to California to pursue her career. It was then that she felt the urge to find her birth parents. She hired a private detective, who, after some investigation, found that her biological mother was long dead, and her father was then an exchange student from the Mende tribe in Sierra Leone, an African country on the Atlantic coast. In fact, her father, Kposowa, belonged to the ruling family, which made Sarah a princess in her father’s tribe.

But she leaned through the news that a brutal civil war had been raging in Sierra Leone, and her native county was let in ruins. Sarah also noticed that the local news in Sierra Lcone made no mention of her father as the head of Mende tribe, and she couldn’t help wondering if her inquiry was too late. But she sent a letter anyway, with her contact information, hoping it would somehow reach her biological father half way across the globe. To drown her doubts and regrets, she threw herself into her acting and was on the fast track to success, the letter to her father half forgotten amid actress’s life.