The Josh Manely Mystery Characterizations Series

Lucy with Diamonds

Lucy Gallagher is an important cast member in Orphans Inc., a YA Mystery series. This essay is her final assignment in English 12 before graduating high school. Lucy is a year and a half older than her classmates because she missed some time at school for personal reasons. Her life experience resulted in a surprising level of maturity. This is Lucy's backstory, and my way of getting to know her.

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Final Essay Assignment - Grade 12 English – June 3, 2002

Lucy with Diamonds by Lucy Gallagher

I'll begin this essay about my life history at its beginning, with a story my dad told me when I was old enough to understand why my mother never came to Canada with us.

I was born in a magical place, a small village setting in rural Indonesia. My dad was a Canadian agriculture scientist working with the IDRC in co-operation with the Indonesian government. My mother was an Indonesian agriculturalist working on the same project, and that's where my mom and dad met in 1980. They married in 1981 and I was born a year later. My mom's name was Anna Lin Leung. She was a Eurasian beauty, part Dutch, part Indonesian, and part Chinese. I get my exotic looks from her.

My dad called me Lucy with Diamonds since the day I was born. He loved the Beetles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds because it reminded him of his older sister who played it so often. He said the melody and words became an ear worm that never left his brain. When I was born, he was right there in the delivery room, and according to him, I was as magical as the place described in the song, so he wanted my name to be Lucy. Mom agreed.

When the project ended two years later, my dad stayed on as an advisor to the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture. We moved to the capitol city Jakarta and lived there for two more years. Indonesia was controlled by a military dictatorship at the time, and the situation for foreigners was becoming difficult. It also became harder for my mother to keep her job because of increasing prejudice against mixed race and Chinese Indonesians, so it was doubly difficult for us.

Mom and dad decided to leave our home behind and travel to Canada. Everything had gone smoothly with our plan until the day we were to leave. We were at the airport ready to board our flight, but for some reason, my mother was pulled from the line and not allowed to board the plane with us. Dad wanted us to stay with her, but she insisted we leave.

There had been some violent protests against the government already, and she was worried. Mom wanted me out of the country before things got worse, so dad and I took our flight as planned. We arrived back in Canada safely, but the sadness of losing mom never really disappeared. Dad tried to locate her with the help of the Canadian government, but without success. We couldn't find out why she wasn't allowed to leave the country with us and didn't hear from her again. Dad never recovered from these events and always blamed himself for leaving her behind, but life goes on, and so did ours.

Dad and I had a nice life during the next few years. He took a job at the Canadian agricultural research farm across the river from where we lived so he would never have to travel again. With the help of some baby sitters and local day care, we managed to get by. When I was almost nine years old, dad sat me down and told me the story that I started this essay with. Then he said he had some news and he hoped it would be okay with me. That's when I found out about Alice, a person he met at work. He said he and Alice were going to begin dating, and if things went well, he would bring her home to meet me. I told him that sounded like a plan because I didn't want to stand in his way, but I really wasn't happy about his news.

Alice and dad must have gotten along okay because it wasn't long before he brought her to the house for dinner. Eventually, she moved into our house and after a few more months officially became my stepmother. My step brother Steve, who was only four years old at the time, came along with the deal. Alice was a nice person, and treated me well, even though there were times when I felt she was jealous of the special relationship that dad and I had. She and I eventually ended up getting along and even learned to like each other. When I was ten years old, dad had an accident at work that landed him in the hospital and Alice and I became closer than ever.