Free Off Balance: A Memoir by Dominique Moceanu Page A

also,” Jennifer said. “I mean, they’ve known since I was very little that you were my sister, but they never told me until much later, when I was older, which was the right thing to do.”
    “You’re lucky that your parents were honest with you,” I said. “That’s the best gift they could’ve given you—their honesty. I was very upset with my mother and father for not being open with me and my sister. It came as a complete shock when we found out.”
    “This October will be five years that I’ve known about you, but it’s still surreal for me, too,” she said. “Ever since I was a little girl, I was always hooked on you. I don’t know why. I loved gymnastics and I knew that we were both Romanian, and you know, your birthday is the day before mine.”
    “Yeah, I saw that on the court documents. So, you are going to be twenty-one this October. Wow! Maybe soon we can start making up for lost time somehow. I look forward to meeting you,” I said and meant it, but inside I knew I was not ready to meet. That would have to be down the road a bit.
    “By the way,” Jennifer blurted out, “you know I have no legs, right?”
    Excuse me, did I hear correctly? I thought to myself. I remembered how Mike sometimes pokes fun at my bad hearing—probably a result of listening to blaring music in my teenage years.
    “What? What did you say?” I asked.
    “I was born without legs. You didn’t know?” she asked.
    Hearing it from her hit me like a ton of bricks, and I immediately welled up but tried my hardest not to let her know I was crying.
    “Well …” I searched for the right words, but I’m not sure what the right words would even sound like. “Well, my dad did say something about it, but I thought his memory might’ve been a littlefuzzy or that he was exaggerating … I guess not.” I realized as soon as the words left my mouth that they sounded really bad. Definitely not the right words.
    I tried hard to remember exactly what Tata had said about the birth. I do remember him saying that they wouldn’t be able to afford to take care of the baby because she was born with “no legs.” I certainly didn’t take him literally. It’s the way Tata talked when he wanted to emphasize something. He had a way of twisting things to fit his purpose, so I never really knew what was true and what was exaggerated. I guess I interpreted Tata’s version of “no legs” to mean that Jennifer was born with a minor disability or other health issue. Besides, in her letter, Jennifer had said she did gymnastics and volleyball, and I never in my wildest dreams pictured her doing those sports without legs.
    Things got so crazy after Carmen’s birth that I still hadn’t had the opportunity for a true family summit on Jennifer. Christina and I had talked about it for hours on our own, but my face time with Mama and Tata was limited to their visits after Carmen’s birth. They were glowing as first-time grandparents, and it never seemed like the right time to bring up those painful memories and a part of their past that they had kept deeply hidden for twenty years.
    Now, sitting here talking to Jennifer, I was kicking myself for not getting better answers when I drilled Tata and Mama immediately after I received Jennifer’s package. Maybe I was in denial and really didn’t want to know everything yet. Perhaps I just couldn’t process all of that information at once—a sister I never knew of and , by the way, she has no legs.
    “People forget about me having no legs within minutes of meeting me,” she said.
    I was fascinated with this girl. She had so much confidence and positive energy. I was drawn to her and wanted to know her.
    “I think it was just a hard time for my parents in their lives,” I said, realizing that I sounded almost silly defending Mama andTata. But I couldn’t stop. I explained that they were poor immigrants who came to this country with very little in their pockets and struggled for a long, long