Hiro Loves Kite

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  I roll my eyes. We’re not actually related. We didn’t come from the same gene pool, so what he said makes no sense, but I do wish I had some of his confidence. It’s so much harder being the one asking. I have new and deep-felt admiration for what Kite did. It also makes me feel extremely guilty. “Shut up!”

  Again, he addresses Kricket, her little eyes and ears are absorbing everything he says like its melting chocolate. I grumble. He will be such a bad influence on her when we’re all together again. The thought lifts me a half an inch from the floor. “You’ll make sure he follows through, won’t you?”

  She nods slowly. “I’ll make sure he does what he’s s’posed to.”

  I laugh. This has all gone very strangely, but it feels good. It feels like maybe, just maybe, something wonderful is about to happen to me. Like wind in desperate sails. Long overdue.

  34

  KITE

  I sit in the doctor’s office still clutching my stomach, though the pain has all but gone. Medical terms are bouncing around my brain, but finding no place to rest. Adhesions from multiple traumas. Explanations of my unpredictable menstrual cycles. Surgery is an option, but not likely to entirely correct the problem. Too severe. Too much damage. I laugh.

  “Miss Deere…” Doctor Keneally gives me a curious look. He thinks I’m hysterical. Reacting to the news in an inappropriate way. “I know this information must sound shocking to you…”

  I laugh again. It hurts like a blade is being propelled up my throat with the air. “No, not really, Doctor. Does it sound shocking to you?” I ask bluntly, eyes challenging.

  He leans back in his chair and strokes his bristly moustache. I want to reach over and slap him. But that’s not me. I am better than that. I don’t hit people. And now… I don’t cover it up either.

  “What do you mean?” he asks warily, his reputation coming undone like the loosening knot of his tie.

  “Well, surgery and the subsequent recovery may be a little challenging for me since I currently live on the streets. And, well, we both know this news cannot come as a surprise, especially to you. The man who has overseen my medical care since my birth.”

  He coughs and walk briskly to the door, his hand out to shut it. I put a hand up and say in a low voice that’s devoid of hope. Devoid of anything really. Because it’s all gone. Everything is gone like a dream I wasn’t supposed to have. He took it. He took everything away. “We don’t want anyone to hear, now do we, Doctor?”

  “Nora,” he says quietly. “I know you must be terribly upset to learn this news. Perhaps I can call your father, and you can talk about it as a family.”

  This game we play. Round and round. Turn away. Look past. Deny. Deny. Deny.

  Never again.

  I snort, disgusted. “You mention one word of this to my father and I will make sure everyone knows how you treated me, my mother, and my sister, knowing full well we were being beaten. You knew, and you never did a thing to stop it.” I throw my head in the air and half laugh, half sneer. “Repeated trauma. You meant to say repeated punches to the stomach, right? You meant to say, your father, Christopher Deere, has punched and kicked you so many times that your body is damaged beyond repair. You meant to say, your womb is too broken to harbor a life. You ought to say, I’m sorry I let it happen.” My voice runs ragged and breathless as the last pieces of my future shatter. My finger hovers in the air. “You let this happen. You share the blame for this.” I motion to my stomach. “You and so many others who just looked the other way. God! When it first started, I was only a child. I was an innocent child.”

  And now, there will be no more.

  His face drains of color and I leave him in his chair, hoping the blood will continue to run from his body until he disappears. He has already begun to disappear from my mind. There is no room for him now. I only have one room for grief. And an entire house for what I will grieve in the future.

  I walk or tumble. I feel like my feet are trudging through blackness. I follow the sidewalks up and down the streets like they might lead me somewhere other than the corner of a building, the edge of the park. I walk in circles and blocks, and just can’t stop. The second I stop, I think.

  I don’t want to think.

  Thinking leads to breaking. To sinking to my knees and screaming hollow and hard like I’ve swallowed a black hole.

  I clench my fists. The snow has melted, and it’s just cold and wet and miserable.

  I hug my coat around my body, sniffing. Not sure if I’m still crying or it’s just the rain.

  Everything is always so hard. The ground beneath my feet. The pressure above. The way my stomach tightens and contracts. Which it does for nothing.

  Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  The light dims, and the cold starts to dig into my bones. I can’t stay out here much longer, and I edge my way closer to home. Home. At least I can be a King, and be where none of this matters. At least I can keep Frankie safe. My head falls as the heartbreak begins to push up from the depths of my chest. Squeezing my heart harder. Hurting. Hurting. Hurting.

  At least Hiro said no.

  35

  KITE

  When I open the door to the King’s tunnel, my senses are flooded with warm candlelight. The room appears empty and I search for the others, landing on beds and cases and finding only a trail of paper stars like breadcrumbs in a fairy tale leading to the back of the large cavern.

  I wipe my eyes and smooth down my hair, hoping I don’t look as empty as I feel. Leaning down, I scoop up a handful of the tiny folded shapes, poking them with my finger. Most are made from newspaper. Delicate and beautiful. I follow the path to the rear of the tunnel. Hiro’s curtain is closed, and voices come from Frankie’s room. Candlelight brings the night sky into the room. Golden twinkles. Against sandy stone.

  Frankie’s head appears from behind the curtain, and she grins impishly. I step toward her and she frowns, flicking her hands and pushing at the air for me to keep following the path of stars. Confused, I do as she tells me. When I turn back, she’s disappeared.

  This is all very strange. But I feel safe. I also feel devastated.

  I am the end of a hurricane. The flattened buildings. The roofs with no walls to hold them.

  I point my toes and move to where candles have been placed in every crevice of the collapsed end. A dead end that’s been filled with life. Hiro’s shadow stands strong and sure against the stones. My heart leaps to life, and my head fills with sorrow.

  I must press it down. Down. Down.

  Everything is yes. When it must be no.

  He comes to me across a bridge of stars. His blue eyes catch the light like the sea reflecting the harbor lights. He looks nervous and handsome beyond words, and I’m going to ruin it.

  I am the hurricane to his heart. I rip the structure out from beneath his feet. I wrench the walls away, leaving him exposed.

  Tipping his head, he smiles warily. Reading my face. The words he sees there are a jumbled mess.

  His voice is shaky and unbearably sweet when he lays his love over me like a blanket, and I can’t take it. “Look at you, you’re soaking wet. Though you still look beautiful. You always look beautiful.” He takes my soaked coat and rubs my arms, and I stare at him wordlessly. There isn’t anything good to say. He takes his jacket off, then drapes it over my shoulders. “Kite. Um, Nora…” he starts.

  “Kite, please,” I whisper. “Always Kite.”

  He nods, a small spark in his eyes. “Kite. I’m so sorry about before. I, um, I just…”

  Drips of water run down my neck and nose. My body begins to shake, and he takes my hands. They’re ice. I’m icing over. Becoming a stone. A worthless, barren stone.

  “Kite. I love you.” Hiro bends on one knee. His words ring truer than a bell. But they sound out defeat in my ears. He holds out a simple metal band with a star on it. No diamond. No gold. I stare at it. It’s perfect.

  I want it. I want it. I want it.

  My hand aches for i
t.

  I can’t take it. I can’t take it. I can’t take it.

  I shake my head, slowly at first, and then faster. “Hiro,” I start.

  His eyes plead with mine. “Please, let me say this. I wish I hadn’t said no to you. I wish I could take it back. But you know it wasn’t because I didn’t love you.” His eyes drop. “I hurt you, and I was wrong to think we couldn’t make this work. That we didn’t deserve to be happy. Kite…” He says my name like the last sweet note of a song. “I know you still love me.”

  I’m breaking apart. I can feel cracks forming in my skin like fault lines. There is no mending this.

  I nod. “I do, but…”

  Hiro holds up the ring to my shaking hand, saying the words I want. The words I need. The words that will kill me. “Kite, I thought you were the corner of the sky I could never reach. But somehow, you lifted me up there. You made me feel like I could fly. Like together we could and can do anything. I’m eighteen in a few weeks, and I want to know.” His nervous smile is shattering. “Will you marry me?”

  His hand is on mine. The ring touches the tip of my finger. Offers a dream I can’t take. I yank my hand away.

  The Kings emerge from their hiding places. Faces going from hopeful and happy to fearful and forlorn. Instantly, the golden light turns sour and yellowing as everyone watches me come completely undone.

  “No,” I whisper, backing away, crushing paper stars under my feet.

  I thought I was out of tears, but fresh full-of-regret-and-pain ones come crashing down. I am the sea. Unforgiving and threatening. And I will drown us all.

  I turn from his stricken face.

  I run from the tunnel while my sister shouts my name.

  The sound of the ring hitting the floor is like a hammer striking an anvil. Loud and final.

  I don’t know where to go. I just know I’m too broken even for Hiro. This is one thing he cannot fix, and if I said yes, he would eventually regret asking me. I am sure of it.

  The hurricane doesn’t get good things. It blusters and buries until there is nothing left. And then it simply disappears.

  36

  KITE

  Blinded by tears, I push past the crowd and onto the subway. I huddle between two people who shuffle away from my sniveling, shaking body. I was offered everything I wanted, and I said no. The look on his face will never leave me. It will be the wallpaper of my mind. The glass behind my head thumps as the car pulls away. I turn to see Hiro standing on the platform, mouthing the words, “Wait, Kite.” Even in his humiliation, he is concerned for me, he came for me, and it hurts harder and deeper. Scraping out space between organs. Setting a crooked break inside me that will never heal properly. Because I can’t wait. Waiting won’t change anything.

  I stumble onto the street, cold and alone. I’m still wearing Hiro’s coat and I pull it around me, wishing it were his arms. Burying my nose in the collar, I inhale. It smells so much like him. Soap. Salt. A boy who always wanted to be better, when he was already the best one.

  My lips tremble. My body propels forward. My heart hangs so heavy in my chest it may well snap its bindings and land on my stomach. I thump my chest. I wish it would. I wish it would just leave me. I don’t deserve it anyway. I’m as pathetic and useless as my father always said I was.

  People stand aside as I wobble and kick my way down the street. Streaked with tears that dig deep into my skin. Scars like canyons. The world doesn’t only look gray—it feels gray. Like color can’t live here any longer. Love has died, and a colorless drear has taken its place.

  It begins to rain again. And black water splashes my clothes. I look down at my legs, a red drip running down my pale stocking. I sigh hard. There is no end to my indignity.

  Head down, I shuffle into the first empty alleyway I see. I’m going to have to change my undergarments in the street. I find a dumpster to hide behind, then kick off one shoe. It lands upside down in the drain. I start peeling my stockings from my legs.

  The dumpster lid being opened and slammed shut makes me freeze. I’ve only managed to get one leg out, one foot still in my shoe. I press my back against the wall as sharp footsteps wind around the large metal bin. Black leather shoes. A rhythm of walking I’ve come to know like my own heartbeat.

  I hold my breath. I hug my chest. I pray. I pray. I pray.

  But no one hears me. No one will save me.

  “What the hell are you doing?” My father’s voice anchors into the cobblestones with anger and disgust, breaking them up, and I curl around the tone. I am disgusting. I am… His eyes slide from my bare leg and stained stockings to my red face. I look past him, afraid to meet his eyes. The new apartment building is taking shape. Remnants of the fire are all but gone save some black stains on parts of the salvaged wall. They leech into the bricks. Forever shadows. I’m in the alley behind my house. I shake my head slowly, wondering how I could have found my way here without realizing.

  His hand shoots out and grabs my collar. “Whose clothes are you wearing?” His fingers clench around the rough fabric. “Is this that Japanese kid’s coat?” His eyes rake over me like I’m already dead.

  I bite my lip. “Yes, this is Hiro’s coat,” I mumble.

  He points at my bare leg, my disarray and disaster. “Were you using the alley as a toilet? What has happened to you? You’ve become nothing but a vagrant. No manners. No dignity. I can’t believe you’re my daughter. That you are my blood.”

  I straighten. Still holding one stocking leg in my hand. “I’m sure this will make you even more uncomfortable, but I just got my monthly and I was trying to change my clothes.” I hold up the bloodstained leg, and his face flares. It’s rage. Disbelief. Embarrassment.

  He grips my collar furiously, then pulls it upward so I must stand on tiptoes to stop from choking. “How dare you speak to me this way.”

  I can’t help it. I should. But I can’t. I laugh. It’s not a funny laugh. Nor a bitter one. It’s a laugh born from all that is ridiculous in my life. That I found myself here. That my situation embarrasses him. That he thinks he even has the right to be offended by my presence in his alleyway.

  It is a mistake. I should roll inward. Agree. Not spark out like a camera flash. Not give him any more fuel, because I can tell by the way he looks left and right, checking for witnesses, that I’m in trouble. I bow my head. “I’m sorry, Father. I’m not feeling very well… I…”

  He shoves me hard against the wall, and my breath is knocked from my lungs. I am the cocoon after the butterfly has escaped. An empty shell. “Where’s Frances?” he demands. “You know I gave up the case of a lifetime so I could be a better father. So I could raise her at home with me.”

  You gave up the case of a lifetime because I had dirt on you. Because I photographed you beating one of your clients. I don’t say it. It won’t do any good. He believes in some alternate reality. His forearm is a bar across my chest. Pushing, pushing, pushing. My spine is crushed against the stones behind me. I feel my skin grazing. My bones grinding.

  “I will never let you near her,” I manage with the slim amount of oxygen that’s getting through my narrowed windpipe.

  He releases me and I fall to the ground, knees knocking against hard, cold cobblestones. I look up to see him wipe his forehead and remove his jacket. He neatly folds it before placing it on top of the bin. It is the meticulous preparation before the violence, and I know it well.

  I push myself up; I need to run.

  The pound of his boot into my stomach is familiar and almost… normal. “I don’t know why you make me do this.” I collapse, head hitting the ground, heels of my hands ripped of skin. But I push up again. I crawl toward the street. Pain is like battered, black stars in my eyes. Flicker and out. Flicker and out. Absence of light.

  “Please…” I cough.

  “Take that off! You look like a whore.” Grabbing the back of Hiro’s coat, he yanks it off. I shiver from cold and fear, one bare leg and not enough clothing. Streetlamps start to come
on. Beacons of light just out of reach. Desperately, I stretch a hand out, but am dragged back into the dark. Please let it go dark.

  He flings me against the dumpster. It makes a loud metallic boom, but this doesn’t seem to bother him. He pulls me to my feet. “Get up,” he spits. “Get up! You think you can get away with this? You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?”

  My hands come together. “I’m not trying to do anything.”

  His fist finds my face, and my words are gone. My mouth fills with blood, and my vision goes fuzzy. I clutch the bin behind me, hands slipping on the metal surface. There is nothing to hold onto. He hits me again. I slide down until I’m sitting on the ground, and he kicks me.

  The lights. The lights. The lights. They’re so close.

  They float like fireflies.

  He comes at me again, and I cross my arms in front of my face. “Stop! Please!” my swollen lips stammer into my skin.

  He grabs my arm, twisting it hard. Up. Up. Up. And I scream as it snaps.

  That’s when he leans down, holding my head with both hands, and slams it against the dumpster. “Shut up! Just shut up. Shut up! Shut up!”

  The side door opens, and I hear a soft voice. A frightened, faraway voice. Small light from a candle illuminates a slice of the alley, and I stare down at the ground with detachment. I frown. There’s so much blood. That can’t be my blood.