by Hiromi Goto
Despite the fear in her throat, warmth swelled in Melanie’s eyes.
Ms. Wei was always nice to her. Even when it meant that her store would be vandalized on Halloween.
Melanie kept on running, her body heavy, her sides stabbing with pain. She could hear the echo of her tormentors’ footsteps pounding behind her, though it sounded like they were slowing down, losing interest.
A tiny portion of her mind gazed upon her flight with detached humor. What a waste of effort, she thought. If only her gym teacher could time this run, her P.E. marks would go up . . .
When she finally pattered to a stop, she was trembling with exhaustion and far beyond her neighborhood.
Her tormentors were gone.
Panting, gasping, Melanie bent over, almost retching. Her knees quivered with fear and exhaustion, and her long black hair clung wet with sweat. She pushed her straggly hair behind her ears and sat down on the curb. Waited, breathed, willing her pounding heart to slow.
Melanie gave a ragged sigh.
There was no point in going back to school. The Valkyries might be waiting for her by the parking lot, and she’d miss most of her Math Essentials, anyway, before ever getting through the door. After that there was only gym . . . she was too exhausted to run any laps, and she’d only get in trouble for being a slacker. The kids would make fun of her some more.
Melanie dragged her sleeve under her nose. Was there enough time to take the bus to the used bookstore downtown and get back home before her mum worried?
Melanie loved Macleod’s. Its leaning towers of dusty books teetering up to the ceilings, the mounds of ragged tomes, a great many of them uninteresting and boring, but sometimes among them a wondrous discovery, like an amazingly illustrated anthology of medieval creatures. Or a cookbook from an ancient emperor’s banquet. Or a travel-worn volume of edible plants in Patagonia, complete with photographs. . . . The children’s section wasn’t really up to date, but Melanie mostly liked to look at nonfiction books with illustrations and read the descriptions.
When she had shared her fondness for old books with a radical substitute teacher, she had heard about the store on the edges of a more ragged part of the city. It wasn’t the safest area, Ms. Lee cautioned, but most people there did no harm except to themselves. Far more dangerous, she warned, were the people who preyed upon them. Under advisement to go only during the day, Melanie had ventured to the bookstore one rainy Saturday.
And fell in love with the entire place.
It wasn’t only the scavenger hunt aspect of the books—she was also intrigued by the quiet people she saw there. In interesting clothing and odd hats, they looked like they had strange and extraordinary private lives, something beyond the mind-numbing routines of school and work.
She never saw any of her classmates at Macleod’s.
Melanie squinted at the sun as it moved through patches of dark gray clouds. It was probably too late to get downtown and back before her mother began to wonder where she was. And she would get caught by the early rush hour. Her mum had looked particularly wan this morning. There was no need to add to her exhaustion unnecessarily, Melanie decided. She would go to the small park near the train tracks, her other special place. She would rest there for a little while, before going home.
Melanie sat on an old, disused dock, swinging her dangling feet as she stared across the dirty gray water of the inlet. Light speckled over the surface, as the sun moved in and out of clouds. The tide was pushing a yellow plastic bag toward the edge of the rocky shore, which glinted with shards of broken bottles, crumpled aluminum cans. Tankers, silent and inexorable, crept toward the industrial docks. Melanie shivered as the afternoon grew chillier.
Crack! Something fell on a large rock near her and Melanie flinched.
Her heart began to pound.
Had her tormentors discovered her sanctuary? Were they throwing stones?
It was a mussel, shell broken, its pale, wet insides glistening.
Melanie cast furtive looks all around her, but she could see no one. Where did it come from? She frowned, then looked up just as a crow spiraled down. It landed with a swish of wings and hopped toward its prize. It stopped, before reaching the exposed mussel, and tilted its head to one side to peer with one glinting eye at the girl. Melanie gave it a lopsided grin. “Hello, crow friend,” she murmured.
Melanie didn’t know if the crows began loving her first or if her love had called the crows, but whenever she ventured outdoors they were nearby. As far back as she could remember. Perched on treetops, on the roof of a building across the street, her dark guardians were never far. The smile fell from her face.
Melanie turned to the water once more and stared at the distant shore. Industrial cranes, with their bright orange legs and long necks, looked like mechanical giraffes. In her peripheral vision she could see the crow hop closer and begin picking at its meal. Melanie’s stomach grumbled. She was hungry . . . almost hungry enough to try the abundant mussels exposed on the rocks, but she knew the water was filthy with chemicals, tanker sludge, and heavy metals. “It’s not good for you,” she murmured to the crow.
Melanie was very hungry. The fridge had been emptied two days ago, and they had finished the last box of instant mashed potatoes the night before. It wasn’t her mum’s fault. Melanie blinked. She raised her legs and rested her cheek upon her knees, her black hair falling across her face.
Her mum wasn’t well, had never been healthy and strong. Her complexion was always wan, and the dark circles underneath her eyes never faded. She couldn’t keep a job for longer than a few months before her body broke and she had to rest in bed for several weeks. For a while Melanie had worried that her mum had leukemia or cancer, maybe AIDS, but when she forced her to go to a clinic all the tests turned out negative.
The past three years her mother had turned to drink. . . .
Melanie sniffed. The material of her jeans smelled slightly sweet, like the fur of a cat come in from the cold. It was time to do laundry.
Melanie knew it was a hard life to be a single mother. In all her memories her mother had been there, never leaving her side. Her mum had never taken a lover; she never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. When Melanie had asked her why, her mum had smiled sadly. “I’m waiting for the day when I’ll see your father once more.”
Melanie had been happy to hear that when she was little, but as the years passed and her father never materialized she realized he was probably dead. Her mother had never answered any questions about her father—who he was, where he lived, how they had met. Her mother’s eyes would fill with tears, and Melanie would only feel terrible for making her cry. There were many things that her mother couldn’t tell her, and as time passed, and her mother grew weaker, the problems of the present, like money for groceries, became more pressing.
Were they in a witness protection program?
You’re the best thing that’s happened to me for all time,her mum had told Melanie her entire life. She still believed her.
Her cold nose beginning to run, Melanie sniffed again.
Crack, crack, smack!More mussels fell from the sky and crows gathered for their feast. Melanie glanced at them with envy. If all she had to worry about was finding enough food to fill her stomach for one day, what a simple life it would be. . . . The teachers had written her off at school, and she’d been streamed into the non-academic lot along with most of the other low-income students. So there was very little pressure for her to do much academically. That didn’t stop the Valkyries from hazing her every day. And her mum was slowly fading away, as if there were hardly anything of her left.
Melanie shook her head. My mum is not dying! she thought fiercely. And I can quit school in a couple of years to get a full-time job. Maybe she could find a part-time job in the neighborhood, for after school and the weekend. They didn’t own a lawnmower, and she’d never babysat before, but she could do something like walk rich people’s dogs. Dog walkers didn’t have to have nice clothes. . . .
Something fell with a hollow tock upon the gray slats of the old dock. It didn’t at all sound like a mussel. Melanie glanced down.
It was a fortune cookie. Neatly split in half. The end of a strip of pink paper fluttered. Melanie looked upward. High above, a crow made a slow, wide spiral. How peculiar, she thought. From that height the cookie should have shattered into bits.
The bird cawed once, then flew westward. Melanie reached out and pinched the fortune between her thumb and forefinger. She gently tugged it sideways out of its cookie shell and flattened the slightly furled strip of paper upon her thigh.
Melanie’s breath caught in her throat. The crows on the beach had gone silent. They all stared at her with tilted heads, with one dark and glistening eye. Melanie’s heart pounded in her ears.
What did it mean? It was just coincidence. It wasn’t a message message meant for her.
“Hahahahaha,” she laughed weakly, for her own benefit.
The dark birds burst upward with a rush of wings. They flew hard and fast toward the west, after the message-bearing crow.
Fat droplets of rain began to fall.
Melanie leapt to her feet, her heart pounding in her chest. The plip, plopof rain slowly accelerated into a low roar.
Melanie thrust the fortune into her jacket pocket.
She began to run.
TWO
MELANIE WAS EXHAUSTED by the time she passed Ms. Wei’s corner store at a slow, plodding jog. The sudden rainstorm had darkened the afternoon, and the warm light shining from the Rainbow Market sent a pang of longing inside Melanie’s heart. She did not stop. Her exhausted feet slipped atop slick wet leaves and she almost fell, catching her balance only at the last moment.
The few people who were out in the rain stepped far to the side to get out of the way of the stumbling girl.
Staggering through the rickety fence of their wretched rented house, Melanie didn’t notice two crows sitting atop the cedar-shingled roof.
She stopped.
The front door was ajar. And though dusk gathered the darkness, no lights shone from the windows.
Her mum had been home, in bed, when she left her in the morning.
It hadn’t been such a bad morning that her mum had to stay in bed all day.
She should be up, in the living room or the kitchen. For their after-school cup of hot tea.
Melanie crept up the three rotting steps, her breathing overloud, labored.
She entered the doorway and stood on the muddy mat.
The house was cold and dark.
“Mum?” Melanie called out, her voice quavering. She reached out to flick on the living room lights.
Her mum was not there.
Melanie’s heart thumped inside the hollow of her chest. “Lucka, lucka, lucka,” she chanted childishly under her breath. “Lucka, lucka, lucka, lucka, lucka . . . ”
That she wasn’t there was both good and bad. Because she could be there, but dead. Killed. They didn’t live in the safest neighborhood. Or she could have given up, weak. Then drank too much on top of it. Ended up dead. Then it would be better if she weren’t there at all. Better to be alive, somewhere else, than there, but dead. Better to be gone. But then she might have been abducted. Or run away. Finally abandoned her troublesome daughter to find her missing love. She might still be alive, good, but have run away from Melanie. Bad.
Melanie clasped her arms around her soft middle. Shut up, she thought. Shut up and look!
The kitchen was empty. The kettle unplugged. The tea things were on the counter. Like her mother had set them out, waiting for her daughter’s return.
But where had she gone?
Melanie creaked across the dirty floor toward the hallway. In the bathroom the leaking faucet pattered its incessant dribble. Her mother was not there. Melanie nudged open her own bedroom door. The mounds of dirty clothes and the scattered pages of unfinished homework completely covered her floor. On her bed her large cat, Stuffie, stared at her with glassy, unblinking eyes. Melanie backed away.
She left her mother’s bedroom for last.
Either she was there, dead, or she was truly gone.
Biting her lip, both hands tightened into fists, Melanie prodded the door open with her foot.
It creaked almost gleefully.
Her mother’s tattered housecoat was tossed diagonally across her bedspread. The sleeves outspread, Melanie could almost picture her mother’s lifeless body.
A jagged sigh escaped from Melanie’s lips.
Her mum had never left her alone before. Without saying a word. Ever.
Hot tears swelled in the back of Melanie’s throat, but she swallowed hard and did not make a sound.
It’s okay! she thought angrily. I’m fourteen after all! I’m not a baby.
Her classmates had always called her retarded. “Fat crow girl,” they jeered and goaded, because crows always seemed to be nearby when Melanie was around. “Retard!” because Melanie still held her mother’s hand when they went out together. Because she did so poorly in school, never said the expected things if she spoke at all.
Melanie dragged her forearm across her eyes. She knew it was wrong of them to call her that name.
Her mum wasn’t well, had never been well, and needed her to be near. Sometimes her mother looked so faded it was like she could disappear. But if Melanie stayed close to her, stayed in physical contact, her mother’s color grew brighter. Her icy hands would slowly warm.
How cold her mother must be, away in the growing darkness . . .
Melanie’s downcast eyes fell upon the few framed photos on her mother’s bed stand. Her mother hated having her photo taken, and there was only one of her and Melanie’s father, together, before Melanie had been born. Melanie had pored over the image when she was younger.
In it her parents looked so frightened and odd. Melanie took after her father, with her round face and downward-tilted eyes. “Watermelon seed smile,” her mum used to say.
The photo was sepia colored, as if it had been taken in the 1800s, and the image was grainy and fading. Her mum looked too young to be pregnant, and her father looked dazed and rather hopeless. Melanie shook her head. How could her mother be waiting for someone like him?
Melanie tilted her head to one side. She flipped the frame over and pried the cheap cardboard back. Slid out the contents.
It wasn’t a real photo, it was a duplicate on a piece of paper, folded up to fit inside the frame. Melanie frowned. She slowly opened the folds. There was nothing written upon the back. She turned the sheet over.
It was a cheap reproduction of a “Wanted” poster, like the kind people posed for at carnivals and amusement parks.
Melanie read the details written below the image.
WANTED: For having appallingly become with child and risking the Half Lives of all citizens of Half World. Fumiko and Shinobu Tamaki are considered pregnant and extremely dangerous. Last seen seeking passage into the Realm of Flesh. They must be caught and the pregnancy must be terminated. Under no circumstances must a child be born in Half World.
All sightings are to be reported to Mr. Glueskin at the Mirages Hotel. Creatures found harboring the fugitives will be treated with perpetual cruelty—psychological, emotional, and physical.
Melanie felt sick.
Had her mother really felt this way? About her? Before she had her? What an awful, awful thing to joke about.
Why had her mother kept this? If it was true that she was unwanted, then obviously her father had just abandoned them. Her mother had had her after all, because of guilt or something, but she nev
er really wanted to become a mother in the first place. . . .
And that was why she was gone now.
Melanie let the awful poster fall to the floor.
She ran out of the room and stood, breathing hard, in the middle of the hallway.
“No!”
Melanie’s voice was so loud she startled herself.
“No,” she said with quiet determination. Her mum had never said one cruel thing to her, ever! It had always been the two of them, together, against the hard and exhausting world.
The fridge was empty and there was nothing left to eat; that was why her mum had gone out in the evening. Maybe she went to Fujiya to salvage the boxed lunches they threw out at the end of the day. That was all. She had roused the energy to find them some dinner even though she had looked so ill this morning. Her mum would be back soon. Melanie would not think about the fortune cookie message. It had only been a weird coincidence.
She thrust her wet hand into her soaking coat pocket. It wasn’t waterproof, and the cheap paper had disintegrated into grainy pieces.
She would wait for her mum in the living room, with all the lights on. She would watch TV underneath the blanket. As Melanie walked toward the TV, she saw the handset of the telephone on the dirty carpet. She frowned.
She glanced at the empty cradle, then raised the receiver to her ear. It was silent. She pressed the switch hook, once, twice, but there was no dial tone. Of course not. Their service had been terminated five months ago because of unpaid bills. Her mum must have knocked it off the cradle. Melanie returned the handset to its place and sat on the sagging couch.
Her eyes were pulled toward the pictures on the wall. Her mother had cut them out from old calendars and placed them into used frames Melanie had salvaged from recycling bins.
Her mum had such odd taste in art. Nightmare images of Frida Kahlo in a bathtub, her double row of toes reflected away from the crease of the waterline, looking less like feet and more like something fleshy that crawled out of the sea. In the bath-water a building erupted in the crater of a burning volcano, and a dead woman lay with string tied around her neck, insects traversing the taut thread. Her mum also loved Bosch’s freakish idea of Hell, the helmet-headed chimeras and vulnerably naked people. A man whose arms were tree trunks, which ended in rowboats, his chest broken open like an eggshell, with people being tormented inside him. A bird-headed man gobbling a naked person, while he pooped out the others he’d already eaten. It was so gross and weird. Her least disturbing artist was Escher, but his strange up-and-down perspectives made Melanie’s head spin with confusion if she tried to figure out how he made it work. Something quavery and hollow ballooned inside Melanie’s chest.
