fensandmarshes

Your name is Sofía Valdez, apparently. It tastes like a lie when you say it.

Your mother tells you she'd named you for some unquantifiable wisdom she had been sure, even as an infant, you'd possess, or had possessed. You bite back something bitter about how would you know. You're not sure if it's cruel of you to nurture that seed of resentment - all your mother had done, those years ago, was disappear. You'd done plenty of that yourself. Like mother, like daughter - the two of you had been a tale of two cities, and it stings, after those years combing almost every continent in search of her, to sit at the kitchen table and look into eyes the same shape as your own.

(Carmen Sandiego, of course, is ever the lady-thief, ever walking the tightrope of reputation that depends wholly on whether she's polite. She dares not be resentful. Maybe Sofía, this new and untested name, can be an angry woman without fearing retribution.)

"Why did you leave us?" you want to ask her - just weeks before, you're told, the manor burned, and Suhara-san scooped you from the ashes to stow you with his swords. Of course you don't. Carmen Sandiego, professional coward: you've always been in the business of running away. How dare you judge your mother for it, really? When all she'd wanted was this altruism? An orphanage, for goodness' sake. Surely Carlotta Valdez should be beyond reproach.

"Sofía," this stranger murmurs, leaning across her kitchen table to clasp your hands in hers. She hadn't cried when you introduced yourself, had not gasped, had indeed given very little reaction at all; she'd just regarded you, lips faintly parted and perfectly made-up, and invited you in. It feels like she's speaking to a ghost. You are not there; you did not die. "I ... always wondered if you would take after Ben."

"Please," you tell her, grasping for the witty politeness that makes you who you are, "call me Carmen." You pause, watching it strike home like a hidden warning, then say, quietly, "Ben?" You don't want to be cruel to this woman, you really don't. You've searched for her all your life, after all.

"Bennett," Carlotta Valdez says, almost wistful, still wary, a glint to her eyes that you've seen in the mirror. "Your father. Wolfe was a code name, of course - like your Sandiego."

"They called me Black Sheep, actually," you say conversationally. "A little ... cliché, in retrospect, but hey. It always seemed to fit."

"You're just like I imagined," your mother murmurs, sidestepping the barb and raising an eyebrow. "I wondered if you'd find me."

"You didn't even know I was alive."

"Oh, I knew." Your mother takes a breath, slow and measured, like she's reciting prayer. "You were clever before you were a year old. Light-fingered before you could walk on your own two legs. You had Bennett's eyes. Of course you'd find me someday, Carmen Sandiego."

--

Ivy had been the first person to call you Carm, and you kind of miss it. It's been a while since the two of you have run in the same circles, given your recent disappearing act and the subsequent cleaning-up of hers - but back when she was twenty and you weren't much more than that she'd brought you more laughter than you knew how to deal with, a new and brilliant shade of red you'd grown to find complementary. (You're sure you can be excused the pun.) She'd taught you a name could mean a new life, a new start, could be more than just a tool. The name Carmen Sandiego was a complete fiction pulled from the lining of a hat, and Ivy had made it a lived-in thing, something more than a superthief, with nothing but Boston informality.

Sofía, less like freedom and more like freefall, feels faintly singed and impossibly fragile - you aren't sure what to do with it. Your names nestle within each other like core and mantle and crust: where in the world is Carmen Sandiego, you think wryly, is she the continents or the oceans or the shifting magma beneath? What's your real name? Legally you suppose it must be Carmen, as per your fifty fake passports - you make a mental note to ask Player if he can find you your birth certificate, now that he has a name and date to work with.

Sofía Valdez. The impossible name. Like spiderweb fractures in an eggshell. Like wings unfurling in your chest. Like Dickinson on things with feathers, you think, because you've always been allergic to looking your real feelings dead in the eye.

You can imagine it in Julia's voice: she'd repeat it, you're certain, to be sure she had the pronunciation right. You can almost hear the soft planes of her voice. If you closed her eyes, you could pretend she was here. God, but you're so alone. You could give Julia your name for safekeeping, let her hold onto it while you tried to grow into it like a scarlet coat two sizes too big - you'd have to call it yours first, though, and that's too intimidating to consider.

Ivy wouldn't give it the same reverence Julia would, but she'd be respectful. Would make it feel less impossible, probably. Maybe she'd construct a nickname - you wonder if you'd be a Sofie or a Fi or a Fia, can't quite reconcile any of the names as possibly belonging to you. Ivy could never be quite so quiet as Julia, though, and soon the name would be its own sort of house fire, as though you had offered it to Zack, to Suhara-san (you are still growing out of calling him Shadow-san, but really that codename had been somewhat ridiculous, and besides, he's more than a shadow these days. He deserves to hear his brother say his name). And maybe someday you can live with that. Can call this name, dubiously legal and only half-yours, a thing to be freely given.

For now, though, you hold it close to your chest and regard your mother across the table.

"If you'd like," you say, "if it makes you more comfortable, I wouldn't mind trying out Sofía." You falter, but forge onwards. "It's - it's a beautiful name." You're not a beautiful woman, you know. Certainly you're a classic femme fatale, in a way that's partly a shield and partly a disguise and all something you donned at sixteen with a coat and a hat - but you're a thief and a liar and even though you have lofty ideas of honour and compassion and love, you know somewhere beneath your surface you're fundamentally vile. You have your father's eyes - window to the soul, and all that. Dexter Wolfe - or Bennett, as your mother says, because no one related to you would ever give out their real name for free - was not a good man, and you're trying your damnedest to be a better woman but you're pretty sure Black Sheep is the name you keep at your core, like a little rotten thing, the blackened tiniest of a scarred set of dolls. It's shameful, and right, and it reminds you of a childhood island paradise and a burly coach who had been the closest thing you had to a mother.

But you're free, you made it out - you're Carm, Red, perhaps la femme rouge in a pinch. You're here, in Buenos Aires, at a tea-stained kitchen table. Your mother says, "Carmen, I would like that very much," but you understand the olive branch she's extending: The name is an offer, not a demand. You do not have to be my long-lost daughter.

You'll keep the name, you think - for now, it is between you and this mystery of a woman who called herself Vera Cruz, who calls herself Carlotta Valdez, who you might yet call mamá if you can muster the courage. You think it might taste like a lie, were you to try it - but hey, maybe both of you can leave the lying life behind.

You won't run away just yet. Maybe your name is Carmen Sandiego, or maybe your name is Sofía Valdez, or maybe you don't have one at all. But you're well-accustomed to stealing things that don't yet fit, and you more than proved you could grow into that coat.

"If you wouldn't mind," you say, treading carefully, "I might stick around for a while."

Maybe a name is just the same.

( Card )