Paul is sitting on a high stool behind the counter, his grubby face absorbed in a magazine that’s not really for public viewing. When I come to the counter, he ignores me and sweeps another page over, licking his finger as he turns it. I swallow my disgust and pull the chain from my pocket, letting it drop to the glass cabinet noisily to startle him from his ‘reading’.
Gently laying the magazine across his lap like it’s made of silk and lace, he gives me a skeptical look. He’s a jellyfish, parts of his cheeks, chin, and brow bulging out and wobbling. He’s wearing only a vest with suspenders and the smell coming from his armpits is absolutely horrendous.
“Hello, young man,” he says in a most genteel and sophisticated tone, one so at odds with his appearance that I take a step back from the counter in surprise. He bows his head, folds the corner of the magazine down to mark his place, and puts it under the counter. “How can I help you?”
I shift from foot to foot as the swinging metal fans move back and forth like judges shaking their heads at me. Then I stare down at the necklace and remind myself why I’m here. “How much for this?” I ask, jamming some confidence into my voice.
He grasps at it with chubby fingers smudged with ink, and other things I’m trying super hard not to think about, and holds it up between us. Below, encased in glass, watches, jewelry, and lighters with personal inscriptions glare at me dully, trapped and separated from their owners. “Very beautiful piece. Quite old, I’d say. A family heirloom?” he asks me, even though I’m sure he knows it’s not mine and probably suspects I stole it.
I nod.
He gently lays it down, the chain of the necklace coiling over the stone like a protective snake. He pulls a notepad from the register and writes down a number. Pushing it across the counter, he waits for an answer as the fans hum and blow body odor around the ‘shopp’. I look at the note. It’s less than it’s worth, but I don’t have time to bargain. So I take what is offered.
As I’m leaving, Paul shouts, “Young man, if you have any other family treasures you are willing to part with, please consider my business in the future.”
I slip out the door, the heat crashing down on me like a wave, turning back as it closes. “Sorry, that was all I had.” He’s already picked up his magazine and is re-engrossed. I shove the cash in my pocket and run toward the hospital.
She’s like a drawing coming to life in my head, the sharp lines of her face and body, her lack of height and carefully curled blonde hair. She was kind to me that night, and I’m hoping she will be again.
I trip over the curb and onto the lawn in front of the hospital. My hands hit the cool grass that’s just been watered, and I take a moment to compose myself. When I lift my head, wheelchair wheels are in front of my face and a nurse stares down at me impatiently. “Excuse me,” she snaps as she pushes a wilting old lady, who’s covered in lacy shawls with large, fancy rings barely clinging on to her crusty fingers.
I stand swiftly and mutter, “Sorry, ma’am.” I take my cap off and pat down my black, spiky hair. “Sister,” I say, reading the title on her name tag. “I wonder if you could help me? I’m looking for a nurse.”
She rolls her eyes and makes a point of landing her gaze on the ten other nurses and sisters strolling around on the lawn and paths as they smoke on their breaks or walk patients. “Do you have her name?” she asks, locking the wheelchair and putting her hands disapprovingly on her hips. She’s scrutinizing my face as many do. Trying to work me out. I let her eyes roam over my smooth features, my darker-than-normal skin. When she comes to my blue eyes, she stops. I smile, and she doubtfully returns it.
“Regretfully, I don’t have a name,” I say, shaking my head. I go on to describe the woman as I remember her. The sister listens patiently, rocking the old lady back and forth in her chair like she’s settling a baby. “She was about this tall,” I say, holding my hand up to my shoulder. “She had short, blonde hair curled under, you know, like a lady.” The sister’s mouth twitches at that. “She would have been about thirty years old, and um, she was definitely a nurse, not a sister, er, Sister. She was a nice lady. Kind.”
“I think you’re talking about Sue,” she replies after tapping her chin a few times. Her gray eyes crinkle as she searches her memories, and the old woman who seems more like a dressing table groans or snores quietly. “She got married a few months back. Her name is Sue Alvarez now. Susan Grace Alvarez.”
“Alvarez?” I blurt before I can stop myself.
The sister gives me a stern look and shakes her finger at me. “You, of all people, should understand that the world is changing.” The old lady snorts in her chair, startled by the louder tone the sister has just used.
I want to say a lot of things in reply, but I hold my tongue. It’s changing, but it’s too late for me. For Keeps and the others. We’re the leftovers of a war everyone wants to forget. People don’t want to be reminded. I replace my cap and thank the sister. My watch says I’m not going to make it to the docks in time to get through the gate. Kin is going to kill me.
I pull my cap low again. The sister can say what she wants. People still look at me like they’re not sure whether to feel sorry for me or run from me. I am half of them, all of me, but the only half they see is the enemy. I scrunch my sweaty hands around the money in my pocket and go get change for the payphone.
When I ask for Susan Grace Alvarez’s number, it’s given straight away. The world has changed, but not that much and not all at once. There was only one person with her name in the whole directory. I dial the number with shaky fingers, trying to plot in my head what I’ll say. When the last number rotates back to its place, it only rings three times before a female voice answers, “Hello, Sue speaking.”
I breathe in and hold. “Hello?” she says again.
“Hello, Mrs. Alvarez. I was wondering if I could ask you about a patient who you treated about six months ago.” I pause. “Her name was, um, is, Miyoko Tanaka. She also went by the nickname Keeper.”
The phone line sounds dead, just a light humming rubs at my ears.
“Hmmm. Young girl, right?” Sue asks, seemingly unfazed by the name.
My heart picks up a little, the excitement showing in my voice. “Yes. About ten years old. She came in with a fever, and a really bad ear infection. I just want to know that she’s all right.”
I hear a fingernail tapping on wood. Click, click, click. “If you care about her welfare, why did you leave her at the hospital all on her own, young man?”
I gulp. The guilt I’ve felt over the last six months builds in my throat. “I was scared,” I admit as I look up and down the deserted street, afraid of prying ears.
A sigh, deep and resigned, wraps its way through the cord and up to the plastic receiver. “You know, you’re lucky I didn’t send the police after you,” she says, though I sense sympathy in her tone. “I do remember her. I remember you as well. There is help, assistance, for people like you.”
Oh, I got the $25 dollars they handed out to each of us when we were released, I think bitterly.
“Things are changing. You wouldn’t have to go back to one of those places.” The lecture brings up a guard like a toothy tire puncture in the road.
I grip the receiver harder and try not to bash it against the phone box walls. “If you could please just tell me what happened to her. I have money. I can pay you for the information,” I beg.
I hear papers rustling and her voice sounds a little more guarded than it did a few moments ago. “Why don’t you come here and I’ll tell you what I know?” I imagine she’s looking for the number to call, the one that summons people who take me somewhere ‘for my own protection’.
I glance around again, feeling paranoid, and then I whisper into the phone, “My mother has been gone a long time now, and I have no father. I’m not lost like they’re saying in the papers. No family is looking for me. I’m not someone you can save. It’s too late for me. But Keeps, I mean, Miyoko, was my friend.” Was she more? A little sister? Maybe
. “I just want to know that she’s okay. Please.”
Another loud sigh. “She was in for a while but recovered very well. When she was healthy, she was transferred. They didn’t take her back to one of those places, if that’s what you’re worried about. They don’t do that anymore.” She talks to me like I’m seven and don’t understand that part of our history is over. She doesn’t get that for someone like me, the options have always been narrower than the space between two-dollar bills in a miser’s pocket. “Miyoko went to a home, a normal orphanage. I think it’s called Mason House. She was very sweet. I’m sure she’s been adopted by now. If you wanted to see her, I could…”
I hang up the phone. I know where Mason House is and I turn on my heel, heading straight for the subway.
22
Old Friend, Another Life
NORA
I almost forgot I had friends before. When I was ripped from school, I was also torn from the hands of girls and boys I’d grown to like. I wouldn’t say we were real close. Besides Frankie, I can’t be close to anyone. Secrets get in the way of friendship. They’re like a swinging knife always ready to sever ties. It’s just too hard.
My hand shakes a little as I write the lesson in my notebook. Miss Candace gave us homework this afternoon, which needs to be completed by tomorrow morning. Frankie is supposed to draw a picture of her favorite animal and write a description, but she’s distracted by… well… everything.
My fingers are sore from being crushed together in his iron grip. They shake even more when I think about my knuckles grating against each other until I felt sure the skin would break open. He’s getting careless. Doing things I can’t hide so easily. It’s like, now she’s gone, he doesn’t care anymore. I stretch my fingers and wonder, Does he want to get caught? But I dismiss the thought quickly. It’s more that he doesn’t think he will get caught.
“Frankie. Sit down and do your homework,” I say, trying to sound stern. Her eyes switch directions every second and then she leans over her chair and hangs upside down, her long, red hair swinging like a flaming curtain.
“What’s my favorite animal?” she asks, still hanging over her chair, which is dangerously close to tipping. She coughs once and giggles as she takes her hair in her hands and pulls it into pigtails, clasped by her freckled fists.
My pencil pushes too hard into the paper, and the lead breaks. I roll my eyes, sighing. “I don’t know. How about a monkey? They like hanging upside down. Or maybe the orangutan?” I point at her face, drawing circles in the air with my blunt pencil. “You’ve got the same hair.”
Frowning, she flips back up. She drives me mad by sitting on the edge of her chair, just one cheek of her backside touching the seat. “You tink I look like a monkey?” she says, breath whistling through the gaps between her teeth.
I pause, tapping my pencil to my lips, shaking off my irritation and trying to remember that she’s only seven. “You are a monkey. Didn’t they tell you? You were adopted from a jungle nursery when you were a baby.”
She stops lurching around in her chair and thinks about what I’ve just said.
Crossing her arms, she pouts and says, “That’s not… I’m not… You’re mean.”
I laugh. “Monkey’s don’t think people are mean. They don’t have the mental capacity for it.”
Frankie stands up on her chair, her lips set crooked in what I think is her attempt to look angry. “I bet they do. I bet if they saw you, they’d have the caper-osity to know how mean you are.” She pulls her hair in front of her eyes and sulks, sniffing and sighing dramatically.
I grab her pencil, write one more word, and then grasp her shoulders, pulling her to me. “Oh Frankie, I’m sorry. You don’t look like a monkey. You’re beautiful. Really.”
She frowns for a moment longer and then says, “Deddy thinks I’m beautiful. He says I look just like Mommy, doesn’t he?”
I nod, putting my chin on her head. “Mhm. Yes, he does.” Little creepy shivers crawl up my arms.
The doorbells rings, and I release Frankie.
“Miss Deere!” Marie shouts from the foyer. “There’s someone here to see you… It’s a young man,” she says, her voice peaking at the end.
I raise my eyebrows and stand up quickly. Straightening my clothes, I turn to leave but Frankie’s hand is crumpling a large section of my skirt. “Can I come with you, pleeeeease?”
I shake my head and pull her fist from my clothes like I’m squeezing out the water from the end of a towel. “No, you need to finish your homework.”
She theatrically falls to her stomach, burying her face in the rug as I shut the door of the playroom, and I walk downstairs to the rhythm of her thumping the floor with what I suspect is her chair.
I was expecting Mr. Inkham or perhaps a delivery boy, but standing before me is a boy I knew in another life. He ripples like a mirage in my vision as he leans against the doorframe and smirks at me, and I can’t help but smile back. “Noraaaa Deere,” he says, drawing the ‘a’ part of my name out.
“Robbie,” I say warily. “What are you doing here?” I’m trying hard not to smile too broadly, my hands gripping the back of my skirt tightly to stop myself from throwing my arms around his neck and confessing everything.
“I’ve missed you,” he states simply, taking a few steps into the foyer. “You know I thought you were just taking some time after your mother…” He makes an uncomfortable face. “But then you just disappeared.”
I gaze at my sensibly clad feet. “Father pulled me out of school.”
At the mention of my father, he grimaces. “Figures.”
I’m suddenly very aware that Marie is just in the other room and Frankie is upstairs. Marie will tell my father anything she hears; she’s almost as scared of him as I am. I lurch toward Robbie and grab his arm, dragging him out the door. “I need fresh air. Would you like to take a walk with me?” I ask under my breath.
He doesn’t get a chance to answer before I’ve grabbed my coat and pulled him out the door into the common area, shouting out as the door closes, “Marie, I’ll be back in half an hour. Frankie’s upstairs doing her homework.”
A neighbor turns her head just slightly in our direction as she pretends to sift through her mail. I walk quickly, dragging him with me as I push through the glass doors and outside.
Robbie turns his head to me, his brown eyes bright and untarnished. “Is that all I get? You’re not going to explain where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing all this time?” he asks, teasing.
“That’s all you get,” I say between my anxious teeth. I step up onto the stone barrier and turn. “Ready?” I say with a grin.
He steps up onto the barrier on the other side, arms out, pretending to be unsteady for a minute before straightening and winking at me. “Ready.”
We both run down the thick, brick walls at the same time. When I get to the bottom, I push up, my face turning from warm to cool as I sail through the air, legs straining. I land heavily but keep my feet, teetering just on the edge of the curb like a bird on a wire. I whip my head to my left to see where Robbie landed and laugh. “Beat you!”
He’s standing like a gymnast, arms out in front for balance, a good foot behind my line. He grimaces. “It’s not a fair comparison. You’re much lighter than me.” He flicks a hand in my direction. “You’re more aerodynamic or something.”
I link my arm in his. “Excuses, excuses.”
He tenses his arm like he’s showing off his muscles, which makes me quirk an eyebrow at him.
“What?” he asks, not very innocently.
I love this lightness. I wish it would last.
The clouds are thickening overhead. They are lighter than air, yet look like you could grab handfuls and stuff them in your pockets.
He’s still staring at me, waiting for an answer. I shrug. “Nothing. C’mon.”
We quickly cut across the street and head to the small park on the corner. It’s late afternoon and the traffic is building in th
e streets. Robbie takes my hand as we pass through the iron gate and into the cool, green garden.
I search for a private place and pull him silently into a group of bushy trees that grow in a secretive circle. He curses as a branch scratches his face.
“Nora, you’re being awfully strange,” he remarks.
I yank him through the trees, and he stumbles into the clearing. He stands before me, kind eyes, roundish face, and cap sitting sideways. He slides the hat from his head and holds it in both hands. I lean back, unable to control myself any longer, and launch at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding him close. The cap falls to the ground, and he awkwardly pats me on the back.
His voice breaks a little when he asks, “What’s going on with you?”
I release him and a tear at the same time. “Nothing…” Everything. “Nothing.”
He takes my wrists in his hands and looks down at me. We used to be the same height, but now he’s a few inches taller. “Nora, we’ve been friends for years.”
Have we?
“I know when something’s up,” he goes on.
Do you?
His eyes are pinched with regret. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. Honestly, I just kept thinking you’d be back and when you didn’t appear in class that day, I’d think, Tomorrow, tomorrow, she’ll be sitting in her chair and I’ll poke her in the back with a pencil. It’ll all be like it was.” He slams his hands in his pockets and glares at the ground. “But it’s not, is it?”
“No.”
We’ve always skirted around the edge of the truth. Our friendship was only as close as I would allow it. So, bruises were a barricade, and slow and painful movements were a flag we folded meticulously and placed in a drawer. I’ve always felt guilty about lying, but I was protecting him. My father is not shy of revenge. He’s threatened my friends before. I look at Robbie’s old clothing, the clean but frayed look to them. Robbie is a scholarship student. My father could easily crush him and his family.
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