Hannahwhere

by John McIlveen

  Debbie quietly followed Hannah onto the deck and watched as she ran her hand along the edge of the plywood. Hannah grabbed the board and tried to wrench it away from the doorframe, her face reddening and her fingers turning white with the effort.

  “Hannah! Hannah!” Debbie said, afraid she might tear off her fingernails. “There are at least twenty screws holding that in place. You’ll never pull that off.”

  Hannah dodged by her, leapt onto the railing, and tried unsuccessfully to push the window open. She jammed her arm through the hole in the pane and started pulling at the glass.

  “Hannah!” Debbie demanded like a drill sergeant. “You stop right now!”

  Hannah froze. Breathing heavily, she stared into the window.

  “Pull your arm out of the window slowly. Be careful that you don’t cut yourself,” Debbie instructed.

  Hannah obeyed, her face contorted into a combination of desperation, shock, and humiliation. “Are you mad at me?” she asked in a barely audible whimper.

  “Yes!” Debbie said. She checked Hannah’s arm. Amazed to find her unscathed, she grabbed her by the shoulders and then hugged her tightly. “What were you thinking? We didn’t come all this way so you could slice yourself to shreds, or so I can lose you! What were you doing?”

  “I feel Anna inside,” she explained and wiped at her nose.

  “I feel something, too,” Debbie said and released her. “But you won’t be helping anyone by severing an artery and bleeding to death.”

  Debbie assessed the window. It was a white, plastic-framed horizontal slider, a style common with most economically priced modular homes and condominiums. The fist-sized hole near the base of the glass was dirty, jagged, and too small for Debbie to be comfortable sticking her arm through. She pushed on the frame, but it wouldn’t budge. Kneeling on the railing, Debbie first saw the low-profile lock latch, and then the screw in the slide track, drilled in at an angle to hold the window closed.

  “You were lucky, pretty girl. That could have been disastrous,” Debbie said. “It’s screwed closed. I’ll have to break out the window.”

  Looking around quickly, Debbie saw nothing useful to break the glass. Seeing no other option, and feeling they were safely out of view from the street and other houses, Debbie removed her T-shirt leaving only an aquamarine bra.

  “A week ago, I wouldn’t have done this if my life depended on it,” she said, wrapping her shirt around her fist the way she had seen on so many crime dramas. Feeling Hannah’s evaluating gaze on her, Debbie paused.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You have humongous boobs!” Hannah said with a giggle.

  Debbie hesitated again, suddenly feeling very vulnerable, but she forced herself to push it aside for Hannah and Anna’s benefit. With forced bravado, she said. “In time you will too.”

  “You have a ton of freckles, too,” Hannah informed her.

  Debbie sighed. “Believe it or not, I’m aware of this.”

  “I wish I had freckles like you.”

  “You do have freckles.”

  “Not like yours.”

  “Why on Earth would you want freckles like mine?” asked Debbie.

  “Then we could look like each other,” said Hannah.

  “I’d like that,” Debbie said. “But I’d rather have your amazing head of hair.”

  “Your freckles are cool.”

  “Your hair is dazzling.”

  Figuring they were at a complimentary standoff, Debbie said, “Now, how about us getting into this house? Stand on the far side of the deck.”

  Hannah moved, as suggested and Debbie swung at the window, landing a pathetic, limp-wristed tap. Hannah smirked.

  “God, I’m such a girlie-girl,” Debbie complained.

  Hannah looked over the back yard as if she’d just found something very enthralling. Debbie unwound the shirt from her left hand and rewound it on her right. Standing with her back to the wall, she closed her eyes and using her arm as a lever, she hammered the window dead center. With a high-pitched snap, the outer pane of glass fragmented into a starburst, leaving large and lethal-looking spikes jutting from the frame. Debbie removed each shard from the channel, dropped them down into the long grass against the side of the house, and repeated the process on the inner pane. When the glass was clear, she shook out her shirt and pulled it back on.

  Debbie hoisted herself onto the deck railing, knelt before the window, and then leaned through to look around. She was above the kitchen sink, which was empty except for ashes from a fair number of cigarettes. From her vantage point, she could see the entire kitchen and most of what was the living room or den. It was dusty and stale with an underlying scent of mildew, but it looked better than she had imagined. She had expected a vandalized shell. A refrigerator was to her right, the doors removed and set atop the far counters. To her left, dust coated and lonely, was the oven. It surprised her that these appliances remained, and appeared to be in respectable condition.

  “Hello! Is anybody here?” Debbie called, feeling absurd yet wary. She was fairly certain no one would be inside, but taking the last week into account, she wouldn’t have been surprised if John Lennon and E.T. rounded the corner riding tandem on a Day-Glo unicorn. As she expected, no one answered.

  She maneuvered herself through the opening, twisting a little to allow her hips through, and nearly tumbled off the sink. Searching for a handhold, she gripped the lip of a cupboard to right herself until she was squatting in the sink. She leaned back through the window and offered a hand to Hannah, who skittered quickly up the railing and slipped easily through the window. Debbie climbed down from the sink using the island for balance, and then helped Hannah.

  “We could have traveled into here,” Hannah said. “And not broke the window.”

  Debbie laughed and said, “You’re right! Why didn’t you, instead of taking a chance of cutting yourself?”

  “I didn’t think of it,” said Hannah. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t think of it, either. This is going to take some getting used to.”

  Hannah walked around the kitchen, solemnly taking in the cabinets, but saying nothing. The cupboards were painted white and trimmed with fine, hand painted sandalwood designs. Each cabinet was adorned with small, intricate Tole paintings of fruits, berries, birds, and leaves. One drawer was missing, as was a cupboard door on the island.

  “Did your mom paint all of this?” Debbie asked.

  Hannah nodded and brushed her hand gently along the top shelf of the refrigerator. “No more SunnyD for me,” she said in a whispered croak.

  Hannah moved around the island, through a vacant area where a table once surely stood, and into the living room. A dazzling display of sunlight poured through four large windows, igniting the crystalline tears that coursed down her delicate cheeks. Debbie ached for her. She wanted to take her from this place, to hold her and help her pain go away, but she resisted. Healing was happening before her, within this house and through acknowledgement and acceptance.

  In the far corner of the room, a small circle of discarded beer cans and candy wrappers littered the lauan plywood underlayment. The carpeting had been removed from the floor, but it was about the only confirmation of the horrors that had occurred in the room, or the abandonment that came afterward. There were no markings on the walls and no graffiti, which seemed odd to Debbie. There were no huge colorful swirling letters and illustrations like the ones covering the outer walls of the house. Even the circle of cans and papers seemed to be reserved as if any outward displays of negligence would have been a further act of desecration.

  Hannah walked to the small circle of detritus, averting her eyes from the large span of wall on the right side of the room. It was the obvious place for a couch, where the ravaged body of Elizabeth Amiel was found… where Hannah had found her. Hannah tapped a beer can dispassionately with the toe of her sneaker and returned across the room, still not looking at the area where the couch had been.

 
; On the left side of the living room stood three doors… all of them closed. The one nearest to the kitchen led to the bathroom, evident by the double fan/light switch outside the room. On the wall, about five feet up from the floor, was a small wooden plaque with the rendering of a doghouse painted on it. Five brads on which to hang five dog figures were evenly spaced across the plaque, one inside the doghouse and four outside. One lonely dog hung inside the doghouse, while two more waited patiently outside. Two of the brads were unused. The words Family Doghouse were painted across the top in red letters. Debbie hadn’t seen one of these tacky doghouse setups since she herself was a child.

  The farthest of the three doors led to Hannah and Anna’s bedroom, in front of which Hannah now stood. On the door, two painstakingly painted faeries hovered beneath a large rainbow. They were excellent caricatures of the sisters, from the long, snowy hair to their sweet, freckled pixyish faces. Wings aflutter, they held a sign aloft between them with HANNAH painted across it in a bold, playful font. The H’s were pink, and the A’s and N’s were black with white polka dots, so ANNA stood out boldly from within the name HANNAH.

  “That’s excellent! What a neat idea! Did your mother paint it?” Debbie asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Hannah said. “She said identical twins are extra special because they are part of each other before they are born, and will be forever after that. She picked our names because they are part of each other just like Anna and me. ”

  “It’s beautiful. It sends shivers down my spine,” Debbie said.

  Hannah gave a hint of a smile, closed her eyes, and released a deep breath. She turned the knob and pushed the door open, revealing an empty room. The sun shone through the window so brilliantly that Debbie had to raise an arm to shield her eyes as they entered. The room was standard and nondescript—four walls, a window, and a closet—until Debbie saw the two walls to the left.

  “Oh my,” she said with a hint of wonder in her voice.

  “Anna and me had bunk beds over there. I mean, Anna and I.” Hannah pointed to the opposite corner of the room.

  Debbie stepped closer to observe an amazing mural that fully covered the two walls. It was so intricately painted with so much detail it would probably take days just to discern everything.

  “It’s Hannahwhere,” Debbie whispered, lost in the elaborate panorama.

  “It’s Annaplace, too. Mom drew it so we could see it and learn it, and remember it in our heads, so we could make it when we were there,” Hannah explained. “I started to forget what it looked like.”

  It was all there… from the countless extraordinary flowers to the colorful odd shaped trees with blue fruit or chocolate hanging from their sturdy branches. Along the top of the mural on both walls, a vast array of what appeared to be large, elongated stars populated the skies even though the sun was also dazzlingly displayed. Dense along the top, the stars then tapered down into a scattering among the trees and flowers. Each one was a painstakingly formed point of light spraying out from the center into five points… clearly star-shaped, yet without any definitive lines.

  “Are there stars like that in Hannahwhere?” Debbie asked.

  “Yeah,” Hannah said.

  “When?”

  “All the time,” said Hannah.

  “Really? I didn’t see any,” Debbie said.

  “They’re all over the place,” said Hannah. “They’re hard to see when it’s sunny.” She seemed sincere.

  Debbie dismissed it and returned her attention to the painting. On the top left edge of the mural, a series of images flowed in clockwise fashion, starting with Elizabeth Amiel standing amid the flowers with her abdomen distended in pregnancy. Next, newly born Anna and Hannah, their eyes closed and content in sleep, are swaddled in thick blankets and rest upon Elizabeth Amiel’s lap in the shade of a blue-leafed tree. Over the trio, a dazzling red cardinal is perched on the lowest branch of the tree and appears to be watching them. The next in series, pudgy-cheeked Hannah and Anna sit delighted amidst the flowery field, their hands raised to the hovering cardinal. The succession continued year by year until the last image climbed the left edge of the mural to meet the first. Hannah and Anna, at seven, are draped over and clutching the lower branch of a tree. The toddler plumpness is leaving them in their transformation into girlhood, and their smiles are genuine and all-encompassing. The cardinal is again perched on the branch, as if waiting to greet them.

  “The cardinal,” Debbie said. “If I hadn’t seen him myself, I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “He’s always around,” Hannah said and smiled.

  Debbie followed the story of the mural, stopping at the figure of a woman standing in the field near a river’s edge, silhouetted by a distant gray and ragged mountain line. She is in profile and dressed in an emerald-green Victorian gown with a laced, form-fitting bodice that accentuates an already bountiful bosom. The green of the gown contrasts perfectly her pin-straight hair, which is slightly wind tossed, and so very red it seems closer to orange. Her hands are raised and her palms cupped, ready to catch a floating red heart that hovers before her. A rush of disbelief ignited Debbie’s nerve endings so intensely that her legs nearly buckled.

  “Is that… me?” Debbie asked. She knew the answer.

  “Well, duh!” said Hannah. “Look at the hair and the boobs!”

  “But… how did…”

  “Me and Anna already told you that. You’re Ms. Coppertop. Mom painted the picture, but Anna made the name up. I liked it, too. Mom said that we had to remember what you look like because someday you were going to help Anna and me. Mom used to dream things and paint them, like the bird. She said it is a rep-er-en-sation of our real father. She dreamed a lot and she dreamed about you, too. She said you knew our real dad when you were both small like us, and that we would find you near the river.” Hannah pointed to the river on the mural. “Mom said you’re a good person because you follow your heart, and that good people who follow their hearts shine, and that makes them easier to find. You shine like a penny,” Hannah said with a determined nod.

  “And you shine like the snow,” Debbie said. Kyle Janssen knew me as a child? How is that possible? Debbie wondered. Case documentation showed that he was born and raised in this part of Nebraska. Had Debbie lived in Nebraska during some point of her life? How would Elizabeth Amiel know this?

  Debbie moved to the wall and held a swatch of her hair to Elizabeth’s rendition of her. It was nearly a perfect match, even to the copper dusting.

  Remarkable!

  “Your mother was a very talented artist,” she said to Hannah.

  Hannah nodded in agreement. She reached out and ran a finger over the image of her mother.

  “She was very beautiful. You and Anna look just like her. It’s very easy to tell that she loved you girls very much.”

  There had once been love here, evident in the paintings on the door and walls, in the fine stenciling on the cupboards, and in the shadows in Hannah’s eyes.

  “I thought she’d be here. I can still feel her here,” Hannah said.

  “Of course you do,” Debbie said, and realized Hannah was speaking of Elizabeth. “Can you feel Anna, too?”

  Hannah nodded.

  “Can you pinpoint it—the feeling—where it’s coming from?”

  Hannah closed her eyes in concentration, and then shook her head. She leaned over and picked up something small, a pullover shirt for a Barbie doll, and slipped it into the pocket of her shorts. She opened the closet door and stared into the darkness for a while before slowly closing it.

  “Where’d they put everything, like our pictures of mom and us, Anna’s and my You & Me dolls?” asked Hannah.

  These words wracked Debbie, driving home the fact that fate had seldom smiled on Hannah. The poor child had lost nearly everything in her lifetime: her mother, father, home, every personal possession… and maybe even her sister. Even the shirt she wore when they found her wasn’t hers, yet Hannah still had the constitution within her to be p
erpetually sweet, to smile, and even joke at times, regardless of the perverse weight life had forced her to carry.

  “I’ll try to find out what happened to everything. I’ll get them back if I can,” Debbie promised. Hannah flashed a quick look and nodded.

  They left Hannah and Anna’s bedroom and entered Elizabeth’s, which was empty except for two bed rails leaning in the corner, either forgotten or abandoned. An intricate, hand-painted border crested the walls with pairs of conjoined hearts and cardinals, backed by a sweeping slate-blue ribbon. Debbie did not miss the significance of the twin hearts or the cardinal.

  “I don’t think Mom put herself in the border,” Hannah said. “She should have.”

  It did seem unusual to Debbie. Was Elizabeth being prophetic? Maybe she knew her time here was limited. Her eyes traveled along the border and it hit her.

  “Your mom’s the ribbon keeping Anna, you, and your dad connected,” Debbie said.

  “Really,” asked Hannah, giving her a quizzical and guarded look.

  “No question. Do you see how the ribbon always wraps around the cardinal and the hearts?” Debbie explained.

  She smiled tenderly at Debbie, shrugged, and then walked to the closet door, which was open a quarter of the way. She opened it the rest of the way with her sneaker and peered into the dim depths of the closet for what seemed like minutes.

  “Is there something in there?” Debbie asked, but Hannah didn’t answer. Dread swelled within Debbie’s numbed limbs. She was torn between running like hell or dragging Hannah away from there.