by Jill Ciment
“Look up images for the Elizabeth Detention Center.”
A windowless warehouse festooned with razor wire filled the screen.
“How do I sponsor a foreign national already in custody?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Why do you want to sponsor a foreign national already in custody?” asked the phone. “Would you like me to search the web for ‘How do I sponsor a foreign national already in custody’?”
“Yes.”
Every link led to another link.
“Who qualifies for amnesty?”
Who qualifies to be forgiven?
At nine sharp the next morning, without having gotten a wink of sleep, she called Stanley’s office, but Janice told her that he was in court all day. “How are you holding up after yesterday, Kat?”
“I’m fine, I’m calling about Ashley.” She told Janice what had happened. “I’ve been doing research all night. If she stands a chance of being released, Stanley needs to file Form I-864 and draft an Affidavit of Support granting me the right to sponsor her. I’ll also need an affidavit from the trust proving I have the financial means. We have to hurry. She can be deported at any time.”
“You sound just like your sister. Edith was always telling Stanley what to do.”
At noon, Kat went to bed with a splitting headache and a chill. Frank closed the blinds, but she still couldn’t sleep, though she lost track of time. When she next checked the alarm clock, the hands read four, though a.m. or p.m. she wasn’t sure. Frank was napping beside her, or maybe he’d been sleeping there all night. Had Stanley left a voicemail? Had Ashley been given her one phone call and Kat had missed it?
No one had called.
The next time she opened her eyes, her lashes produced a swish like high grass blowing in a gale. Lightning branched whether or not her eyes were open or closed, a cyclone of brilliance. She could see the shimmering tornado simultaneously from all sides, as if a storm posed before a three-way mirror. Was she having a migraine? Edith had suffered them, though until now, she’d been spared.
Just as abruptly as the headache began, the pounding quit. She could hear herself think again. But no thoughts came. She listened for her internal voice but the silence was absolute. All she heard were the inhalations and exhalations her throat made with each involuntary breath. She had never been so alone with herself before.
Frank was less than six inches away, but when she tried to call his name, her tongue slapped against her teeth. She tried to shake him awake, but her arm was gone. If she hadn’t been able to see the flaccid limb beside her, she’d have thought her whole arm was only a memory.
Summoning the last of her strength, she managed to swing her torso until her dead arm lassoed against his chest.
Only when she saw his frightened, confused expression did she panic, if one could be said to panic in utter stasis.
“Kat, what’s wrong? Say something, you’re scaring me.”
A bubble rose from her open lips as she struggled to construct a word. A speech balloon?
He leaned closer, his ear to her mouth.
She’d forgotten how to speak.
“Don’t leave me, Kat. Stay with me, please. I can’t be alone.”
He phoned for help, then returned to bed and stretched out against her. He wrapped his arms under and over her useless body and held her as tightly and securely as he could, so her soul couldn’t escape.
She recognized the paramedics, the same two seasoned men who had come for Edith, though they didn’t appear to remember her. The skinnier of the two aimed a penlight into her pupil. The brilliance was so excruciating, the beam might as well have been a knitting needle. The next thing she remembered was being hoisted onto a gurney and strapped down, like a log on a flatbed truck. Frank wasn’t allowed to ride in the ambulance with her. They weren’t related. He took her hand and squeezed. She felt nothing.
Maybe she was dead? But if she was dead, wouldn’t Edith come find her?
Anushka’s arrest met the quota of Russian deportees needed to fill a chartered plane bound for Volgograd. She was handed back her new dress, winter coat, and boots, and put on a plane in the dead of night. At least she had the window seat. She’d only flown once before, nine months ago when she and her red suitcase had traveled to America. Unlike the first flight, this one didn’t have any stewardesses to demonstrate how to fasten a seat belt. Two armed guards were posted at either end of the cabin and no one trundled colas and peanuts and pretzels down the aisle.
Until the plane door closed, her fisted heart clung to the shredding hope that Kat could still save her. After the plane took off, she started to despair. The lights of New York City were now passing below her, as if millions and millions of stars had fallen out of the night heavens. Would she ever come back? What if she never did? She could feel her panicked heart trying to punch free of her tight dress.
Then the curvature of the earth grew saturated with red, as if a knife had sliced the night in two. Dawn bloomed over the eastern horizon. Her mood began to lift with the young sun. Just because she was being sent back to Russia didn’t mean that Kat couldn’t adopt her. Look at all those Chinese babies with American mothers. Kat wouldn’t let her down. She hadn’t let Kat down. Kat probably had no idea where she was. No one let her make a phone call before she was marched onto the plane. She’d call Kat as soon as she landed.
The plane was flying straight into a new day. The sun broke through the sea’s surface and rose faster than a bubble in water. The red quickly diluted into pink, and then orange, yellow, flax, straw, and soon it was colorless. Dawn’s promise was over before it started. At this speed, she would be back in Russia in no time. She felt despondent again. Who would be waiting for her when she landed? No one.
The plane had been flying only three, four hours when the sun began its descent behind her. How could the day already be over? Clouds cluttered the western horizon, their tips flaming. Mauve and pink vapors crisscrossed the sky. Where the sky and the sea kissed looked tooled in gold and silver. Then, just as fast as a coin drops into a wishing well, the sun fell into the sea and the world lost all color.
The absolute darkness that followed made daylight seem a feeble child’s fantasy. She tried to sleep. The plane bounced and trembled, as if it had run over a body.
What time was it? What if the adoption took years?
She was hyperventilating in her tight dress. To catch her breath, she loosened her seat belt and looked out the window. And there it was, another dawn, with all its expectant hope.
The plane landed in Volgograd. Anushka was given a train ticket to the city of her birth, Omsk, courtesy of the U.S. government.
She hadn’t eaten in two days when she pounded on her parents’ door.
“Anushka?” stammered her father, hugging and kissing his eldest daughter. Her siblings swarmed behind him, gawking at their big sister in her expensive American winter coat and boots.
“Did you bring us any presents?” they begged.
“Wasn’t your contract for a year?” her mother asked.
When she took off her coat, everyone gaped at her red satin dress, everyone except her mother.
“Where is the suitcase we bought you?”
Her father went to buy Anushka’s favorite food, smoked sausages. Her mother served them with stewed cabbage in a big communal bowl. The family crowded around the kitchen table. In honor of her return, the ancient tablecloth had been laid out, with its family history of stains. Her siblings didn’t wait for the guest of honor. Even before her parents finished their prayers of thanks for her safe return, her brothers’ forks were aimed and ready.
“Did you meet anyone famous?” her sisters wanted to know. “Can we try on your red dress?”
“You look so American,” her father marveled.
“Did you save any money? Are you planning on getting a job? Do you want me to talk to someone at the factory?” asked her mother.
She could feel her shoulders slowly hunching, her
spine already starting to slouch.
“If you’re not going to eat that sausage …,” said her elder brother.
By the time dinner was over, her novelty had worn off and the family watched TV. She waited for her parents to go to bed, and then slipped into the kitchen to use the ancient dial phone. The room’s smell, at once so familiar and suffocating, almost made her cry. The neighbors’ living room window looked directly into their kitchen. A girl she remembered from high school stood rocking a screaming baby. She dialed zero, dragging the rotary dial all the way around. She’d forgotten how heavy it was.
“I want to make a collect call,” she whispered to the operator so as not to wake her parents in the next room.
Oh, please, Kat, answer. She heard Kat’s voice. “It me,” she whispered before she realized she’d only reached voicemail.
“There’s no one home to accept the charges,” confirmed the operator.
“I’ll pay for the call.”
“Kat, I in Omsk,” she told the voicemail. “Call back. Please.” She changed her mind. The ring would only wake her parents, who might not approve of someone else adopting her. “Don’t call. I email you.”
She took money from her mother’s purse and walked to the internet café where her old gang used to hang out, an ex-nightclub with smoky blue lights. She used to think it was so sophisticated. It now looked gaudy and shabby at the same time. She was thankful she recognized no one. She’d told her old gang she was never coming back.
i in omsk help me i nead tiket four jet to ny i wate ear frum u, she typed on the relic of a computer.
She couldn’t wait too long for a reply at ten rubles a minute. What time was it in New York?
where r u, she typed.
Maybe she had the wrong email address? But she knew her own street address. The next morning, she asked her mother for a pen and paper.
“Who you writing to in America?” her mother wanted to know.
“Mama, I’m going back. Another family wants me.”
Never let this happen to me was all Vida could think when she saw Kat now shrunk to half size in less than a month. A pillow had been fluffed and positioned so that Kat could see out without having to support her head, if that cloudy blue eye, opaque as an opalescent marble, could still see. The other eyelid was taped shut. Monitors, pumps, tubes, and lines were plugged into both the wall sockets and her veins. A hooked bag of fluid swelled beneath her bed, as if the tiny immobile mass under the snowy white hospital sheet were melting.
Bright, festive floral displays filled every available surface in the tiny room. The half-dozen daisies Vida had quickly chosen from the hospital gift shop looked meager by comparison.
Frank occupied the room’s only chair.
“How is she doing?” Vida asked.
“How does it look like she’s doing? She had a stroke. She had the same fungal pneumonia that Edith did, but the doctor said we got her here in time. He said she probably had the spores in her lungs all along, but her immune system kept them in check until now. Don’t say anything to upset her,” Frank warned. “She’s been through enough already.” He vacated his chair, but he stood just outside the door, leaving Vida alone with Kat.
The cloudy blue eye swiveled in Vida’s direction as she stepped closer to the bed. Was there a consciousness in there, or was the pupil involuntarily tracking her motions? Kat’s shrunken countenance gave nothing away. The two halves of her face told two entirely different stories—the left side spoke of strain and bafflement, the right, with its taped eyelid, of lethargy and slack. Suddenly, the taped eye began struggling against its bondage while the free eye sharpened, as if someone had polished it. Vida didn’t need to wonder any longer. There was a fully conscious human being on the other side of the glass.
“Kat, is there anything I can get you? Would you like some water?” She glanced out the window. “Spring is almost here. I just stopped by to bring you these daisies and see how you’re doing. I’ll let you get some rest now.”
In all her years of acting, she had never been watched with such steadfast concentration. Milky liquid began slowly leaking from the resolute, fixated blue stare.
Vida wasn’t sure if she should leave to let the poor creature collect herself, or if she should reach for a tissue to blot away the overflow of emotions. The eye valiantly blinked away its own tears and then concentrated on Vida again. The canny intelligence inside appeared to grow brighter, as if the theater’s lights had come on and Vida could see her audience.
She forgot her lines.
She forgot her lies.
All she had left was the truth.
“Oh, Kat, I’m sorry, so sorry if anything I did caused your suffering.” Her tears were scalding and uncontrollable, and came from an entirely different place than the tears she shed onstage. She leaned closer so that her lips were next to Kat’s good ear. Though her heart was sprinting, she spoke slowly so that Kat understood every word. “You were right. I wasn’t telling the whole truth. I did hear Edith’s first message. I should have called her back. I have no excuse. No words can express how sorry I am. Please find it in your heart to forgive me.”
Kat began thrashing under the covers, as if Vida’s confession had gravely agitated her, but once she freed her good hand from the tangled sheet, she became calm again, almost serene. It took an excruciatingly long time, but she managed to raise her hand and rest it on Vida’s bowed head. The hand was astonishingly gentle. Vida waited for a sign of absolution, but Kat appeared to have expended all her energy just reaching this high.
When Vida’s mother heard that her famous actress daughter hadn’t worked in months, except as a towel girl, she sent Vida an airplane ticket home, to Cebu. Her mother’s family had a modest ancestral home in Lapu-Lapu City. The last time Vida had visited was during a quick stopover on her way to a Singaporean production of Cymbeline. She hadn’t seen her mother in almost five years.
The flight lasted eighteen hours by clock, a day and a half by calendar. At least she had the window seat. The plane took off straight into a glorious spring sunset, but two hours later, the sun still waffled on the western horizon. An ever-changing cloud extravaganza put on one performance after another, as if auditioning for the sun’s final act. After three hours of the unrelenting spectacle, she shut her window and tried to catch some sleep, but her thoughts restlessly returned to the hospital visit yesterday. Why had Kat forgiven her? That gesture of absolution, if that’s what it was, had given Vida no solace. She wished that Kat had slapped her instead. Maybe then she’d be able to sleep.
A tiny Filipina with iron-gray kiss-curls and out-of-date coaster-sized sunglasses approached Vida in the baggage claim area. Only after a jarring second did Vida recognize her mother.
They embraced, her mother fiercely, Vida with tender caution. She noted her mother’s shrinkage, smelled her coconut oil shampoo. Her mother’s gray hair had thinned to the point where Vida could see the fragile globe underneath.
“Only one suitcase?” asked her mother after Vida retrieved her frayed, taped, bruised, overnight bag from the conveyor belt, the one she’d been wheeling behind her for the past ten months.
In the sweltering parking lot, a new white Jeep beeped and flashed when her mother clicked the car keys. “Your father’s Social Security wouldn’t buy me cat food in New York, but here it buys me steak, and an SUV.”
Lapu-Lapu, an old fishing village across the causeway from Cebu City, was unrecognizable. Cement resorts had risen like termite mounds along the shoreline. The family’s coral-brick one-story home now stood outside the Imperial Palace Waterpark Resort’s cyclone fence, barring passage to the beach. But her pragmatic mother found the upside. “God showed me where there was a hole in the fence. I now have a free pool and a hot tub.”
As soon as her mother unlocked the Chinese-red door, before she had a chance to show off the new fridge and flat-screen TV to her daughter, Vida begged exhaustion after the long flight and asked to lie down, but as soon as
she closed her eyes, she was back at the hospital.
Was she forgiven?
That evening after dinner, while she and her mother sat outside under a crackling blue bug lamp, Vida said, “Something awful happened back in New York, Nanay.”
Her mother allowed herself only one cigarette a day, and she lit it now.
“Remember my tenants, the identical twin sisters I told you about?”
“One blond and the other gray.”
“Yes. They both got very sick from a mold infestation in my basement. One died.”
“You should come to Mass with me tomorrow and beg God’s forgiveness.”
“I didn’t know how toxic the mold was, no one did. It wasn’t a normal mold. It was a supermold. According to my insurance company, the infestation was an act of God.”
“He’s responsible for every living thing, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t beg His forgiveness.”
To her mother’s dismay at church the next morning, Vida refused to kneel before the priest and accept the sacramental wafer.
“Nanay, I’m happy to come and sit with you in church, but you know I don’t believe.”
“Even your insurance company believes.”
She hadn’t told anyone, except Virginia, that she was leaving New York. Was she leaving New York? A fresh start? It was oddly appealing.
Vida’s second cousin, who seemed to make a living solely by introducing people, arranged an audition, a guest appearance on a local telenovela, Angel, Angel. The part called for a Eurasian to play the star’s visiting aunt from America. The cousin told Vida the job was hers as soon as the producer saw the footage.
“What footage? Where did you get a clip of my work?”
“The Ziberax ad.”
The audition was a formality. The producer, a blond Filipina a few years older than Vida, only wanted to know if Ziberax worked.
To her surprise, Vida found soap acting’s stylized histrionics and ensemble atmosphere not so different from a Shakespeare company. By the end of the first month, her character, Maria—an extortionist who knows the beauty queen Angel, Angel’s secret, that she was switched at birth—had become wildly popular. The producer, now a friend, pleaded with Vida to stay on and promised a fat weekly check. During the next twenty-five episodes, the writers had Maria plot as many murders as Lady Macbeth. The first season was about to end with her poisoning Angel, Angel. Then, out of the blue, Virginia called with a part—two parts, actually, Queen Gertrude and Hermione. The director, Vida’s old lover, was reassembling the ensemble for another season in Central Park. The Delacorte Theater had finally been rebuilt.
