So B. It

So B. It by Sarah Weeks

Heidi is found as a newborn by her neighbor Bernadette. Heidi and her mother are in the hall outside of Bernie's apartment. Heidi's mom is mentally handicapped. She has only 23 words in her vocabulary. She says her own name is So B. It. Heidi and Bernie have no idea where the mother and daughter came from. Bernie becomes the mother figure for both Heidi and her mother.
When Heidi is thirteen she decides she has to know more about where she came from. Her mother has a word that she uses all of the time, 'soof'. Neither Heidi nor Bernie know what it means. Heidi finds an old camera in a draw in her apartment. She develops the film and finds pictures of her younger mother, possibly pregnant in what looks like a home for the disabled. She finds out that the pictures were taken clear across the country (Heidi is in Reno.) in Liberty New York. Bernie calls the home and after months of phoning, can get no answers.
Bernie has agoraphobia and is unable to leave her apartment. Luckily there is a door between Heidi's and Bernie's apartments so that Bernie never has to enter the hallway in order to help care for Precious (what Bernie calls So B. It.). Because of her disability, Bernie is not able to travel with Heidi. Heidi has been doing the shopping and running errands for Bernie since she was small. Before that Bernie had anything she could, be delivered. Bernie home schools Heidi.
Heidi is a lucky girl. She is able to guess numbers and win slots. She makes enough money to purchase a bus ticket to New York. She sets off, breaking Bernie's heart and leaving her ailing mother to find out the answer to questions that haunt her. Heidi makes friends with people on the bus so that she appears to be traveling with someone. She reaches New York.
When she is delivered to Hilltop Home, she finds that Thurman Hill, the proprietor, unwilling to give her any information. He thinks that she has come to blackmail money out of him. Heidi meets Elliot. As soon as he sees her he utters, 'soof'. Heidi knows now that her mother has been here. Ruby works at Hilltop Home and her husband Roy is the sheriff. They take her home until they can figure out how to get the information that Heidi has come for.
Heidi calls home to tell Bernie that she knows that her mother has been at Hilltop Home and that she met Elliot. Bernie seems uninterested and tells Heidi to come home.
Finally Thurman Hill meets with Heidi and tells her the story she has come looking for. Her mother's name is Sophia DeMuth. She calls herself So B. It because that is all she was able to say. She was born to a single woman. The woman asked Thurman to take Sophia in. He agreed and Sophia lived there for a year. During the year, she and Elliot fell in love. Despite both parents believing that their love wasn't deep enough, and their bodies not willing, Sophia becomes pregnant with Elliot's baby. Thurman feels this could ruin his establishment and everything he has worked towards for Elliot (Thurman is Elliot's father.). He sends Sophia and her mother away and pays for them NOT to give him any information about the baby or their lives. Just as Heidi is born, her grandmother is killed by a bus. This is when Bernie finds Sophia and Heidi standing outside of her apartment.
Heidi calls home to tell Bernie everything she has found out. Bernie greets her call with devastating news, Sophia has died in her sleep from headaches that have been ravaging her for some time. Heidi is crushed. She has been spending so much time trying to find out secrets that she missed out on her mother.
Heidi buries her mother in New York. She returns to Reno and begins school for the first time in her life. She still visits Liberty and sees Roy and Ruby. She hopes to get to know her father and grandfather.
Rating 4 Loved the mystery and Heidi's courage in finding out the truth!
Rating G Clean read