Although, considering that history, I couldn’t help it; my gaze twitched to those outsize pearl earrings. It was a fast look, barely a blink’s worth, but she busted me and laughed.
“Oh, you want to see?”
I did. I couldn’t help it. “Bet your ass,” I said.
She slid the earrings off; they were clip-ons. The fissures were gone, but I could see a faint, neat scar in the center of each lobe, pointing straight down.
“Plastic surgery,” she confided. “They had to excise the old wounds, and that hurt about as much as it sounds like it would. Expensive? Lord, yes. But I saved up and had it done when I was twenty. I never forgot you saying my earlobes looked like old-lady bottoms.”
I looked down at my hands in my lap, rueful. “Well, I was kind of a turd.”
“You and me and every twelve-year-old female ever born. It’s going to be a miracle if Kim doesn’t flat eat her daughter. I’m glad I had boys,” Shar said, still smiling. “I’m sorry about Joya, but at least your other friend landed on her feet.”
It took me a second to realize who she had to mean.
“Candace?” I asked. “I did not keep up with Candace.”
Shar’s eyes widened with surprise. “You two were peas inside a pod.”
I had no response that was both true and suitable for polite company, so I only said, “Last I heard, she ran away.”
“Yes. She ran away a bunch of times, but she always came back. Candace and I aged out together. Well, it’s a long story, and I have afternoon appointments. But sometime, you should Google her. She goes by Candace Cherries now. She’s a little bit famous.”
“In porn?” I said. I didn’t know what else it could be, with that name. It wouldn’t have surprised me, either, but “porn star” didn’t fit with Shar’s pleased tone.
“Just Google her sometime,” Shar said, closing the subject, but she made no move to leave. Small talk was over, then. I felt my spine get a little straighter.
“So this is about Hana,” I said.
“ ’Course it is,” Shar said. “Once I realized it was you, I got what’s called a little overinterested. So tell me. Why do you think this girl is your sister? She’s a quiet type. Doesn’t say three words if one will do, but she told me she has no siblings, same as she said when she was interviewed at intake.”
“Told you?” I said, leaning forward. “You’ve met her?”
“I came here straight from meeting her,” Shar said, and instantly I was on my feet, going to my desk to get my laptop. “I didn’t tell her about you. I said I was a supervisor, checking on a few things. No sense in riling the child if she isn’t the girl you’re looking for. But if she—” She stopped talking abruptly because I’d brought the laptop back to her, open to one of the scanned pics of Hana feeding fat ducks on the riverside with Kai. There was a long pause, and then Shar said, “Well, I’ll be damned,” with wonderment in her voice, “that’s her.”
“Are you sure?” I said. My voice was shaking now, in spite of my best efforts.
“ ’Course I’m sure. I left that girl’s foster home at about eleven thirty,” Shar said.
“So you’re really sure,” I said.
My hands went numb. My face, too, as Shar nodded.
This was Hana, so Karen Porter was Kai. And Karen Porter was ashes. I’d known that Kai was dead, down to my bones, but this was so specific. Not just dead, but small, reduced to only that which would not burn. Ashes in a box. How Kai would hate that.
At the same time, this was Hana, alive, and maybe even safe, and—I needed to go see her. Now. No, I needed to call Julian. Or— I didn’t know what to do next.
I stared at Shar, suddenly helpless in the real and simple presence of a woman who had seen my missing sister not an hour ago.
Shar reached out a hand and touched Kai’s face on the screen. “I remember her.”
I blinked. “You saw Kai? But the mother in this case was—” I faltered.
“Oh, God, no, I’m sorry,” Shar said, overloud, almost horrified. “No, no, Karen Porter passed. Months ago. I’m so sorry. I meant, I remember seeing her at Mrs. Mack’s. Years ago. When she came to visit you.”
It was the second shock I’d had in as many minutes, but of course she would remember Kai. My mother had visited me four times a week while she worked on finding a job and getting us an apartment. That would stick hard in the memory of a girl like Shar. I couldn’t think about Kai now. Not with Hana found, living and so close.
“So now what do I do?” I said.
I didn’t mean the process, necessarily. I meant it more existentially, but Shar gave her shoulders a little shake and let her hand drop away from the screen. She dug in her oversize bag, pulling out a legal pad and a manila file. The tab said Hannah Porter, and she opened it up onto the coffee table. She got a notebook with a pen stuck through the spirals, too, and bent over the coffee table to write.
“First, I’m going to give you some direct contact information,” Shar said, copying names and numbers and email addresses as she spoke. “I’ll talk to Hannah’s caseworker myself, get her to contact you ASAP. You’re going to want to call the guardian ad litem. This is him, Roger Delany. I don’t know him well. He’s new. But her therapist, Dr. Patel, is very good. I’ve worked with her for several years. She specializes in trauma, which considering Hannah has lost her mother—”
“Her name is Hana,” I interrupted, not wanting to hear the end of that sentence. I knew what Hana had lost. I’d lost my mother, too, years ago, but also four months back, and again a few days past, weeping in bed with Birdwine. It had happened a long time ago; it was still happening now.
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“No, you’re saying Hannah, and it’s Hana.” My sister had been named for a god in my own pantheon, and her name would rhyme with Ghana, not banana. Shar stared at me as if I’d grown a second head, and I realized I had no idea what my face was doing. I’d lost control of it entirely.
Shar said, dismayed, “Oh, hey, now! This is good news.”
“How’s her placement?” I asked. My voice sounded thick, like I was choking.
“Excellent!” Shar assured me. “I know Mrs. Beale. She’s a former schoolteacher, retired. Hannah is her seventh foster, and her only one right now.” I still couldn’t seem to stop the awful shapes my face was making, and Shar petered out. Her voice got cooler, a little more reserved. “It’s not permanent. Hannah is going on the adoption track. It was my impression that you were looking for this girl because you wanted her.”
“I want her,” I said, immediate and raw. I think we were both relieved to hear the truth, ringing in those simple words as clear as bell song. “It’s just a lot. It’s very fast.” Damn Julian, the kid had been right all along, and I was not prepared. “I only have one bed. She’ll need a bed. And sheets. Sheets with whatever ten-year-old girls like on them, and I don’t know what ten-year-old girls like.”
Now Shar was the one with an odd look on her face. I could not read it.
She said, “It’s always like this, when a kid comes into your life. You’re not going to be a hundred percent ready. But we’re going to get you ready enough.”
“When can I have her?” I said, changing lanes again, raw and abrupt.
“Have?” Shar said, eyebrows rising. “That’s going to take a while. We’ll need to do the standard background checks, inspect your house, and give her time to work on the transition with her therapist. Most importantly, you two need to get to know each other. So have is going to take a little time. But visitation? If you call this lawyer, Delany, and you and I conference with the caseworker today, they can get you shoehorned into family court Monday or Tuesday. You could start visitation next week.” She looked at me, hard, and said, “If that’s what you want.”
“Yes. I want her,” I said again, and
damn, but the truth had such a ring to it. Then I amended, “We both want her—I have a brother. She has a brother, too.”
“Yes, you said so in your fifteen thousand messages,” Shar said, and that look was back again. I placed it this time. It was pride.
Now my smile felt as wide as hers had ever been, and my eyes felt hot, although I didn’t cry. I thought I’d likely pull my own eyes out and throw them in a fire before I cried in front of Shar Roberson. But ye gods, I was so grateful to have her here to help me.
I think she knew it even before I told her, “Thank you. You don’t know what this means.” But that was crap. She did.
“Now, let’s get this to-do list going,” she said briskly. “I really do have to get back to my office this afternoon.”
I bent over the legal pad, and together we laid out a plan to get the wheels of DFCS spinning. Government wheels, so they would spin slow, but we were headed in the right direction. Top of my list was to make contact with her lawyer and her therapist, while Shar set up a conference call with the caseworker.
After Shar left, I sat on the sofa, feeling shell-shocked. I was going to meet my little sister. Next week. She had no idea that I existed, and Kai, the bridge between us, was ashes. In a box. Somewhere.
I imagined her on a shelf inside some ugly government storehouse, like the warehouse at the end of that Indiana Jones film. I saw her lost, anonymous, her box filed in rows and rows of plain white boxes, all the same, full of the ashes of unclaimed people. I knew then that I would not leave her there. I would find her, and I would claim her. But not today. I had to see to Hana, who was whole and living, first.
What if Hana didn’t like me, I wondered, and then laughed. I never gave two shits if anybody liked me. It was a foreign feeling. I didn’t care for it. Damn Kai and her long way home.
I took my laptop back to my desk, along with the sheet of contact information and my to-do list. I had calls to make before five P.M., and once those were done, I had some housing problems. What if Hana was a dog person? We would need a yard. Great schools. I wasn’t even sure what grade a ten-year-old was in. Fifth? I needed to find a Realtor and go look at some of Julian’s damn listings.
I stared off into space, thinking I should keep the loft regardless. Most people in my income bracket had two houses. I’d hold on to it for noontime meets with Birdwine. After all, I couldn’t very well have a strange man with a drinking problem doing overnights. Not with DFCS looming in the background. More than that—I’d have a kid in the house.
I couldn’t swallow. And I sure as hell could not pick up the phone and make all this begin. Hana didn’t know me. She didn’t even know that I existed.
Then I realized I had to call Julian, first of all. He was still in suspense, and also, he would be so useful. He would drop everything and rush into town to help me out. I needed him to come clot up the air with rosy chatter, bright-siding, and believing all would work out for the best. But I still couldn’t reach for the phone.
I’d said the truth to Shar. I wanted this. I wanted Hana. But I couldn’t start.
Finally, I pulled the laptop over and I typed Candace Cherries into Google.
The first link at the top was Candacecherries.com. I clicked it.
The splash page was a high-res picture of a piece of mixed-media art. I wasn’t sure if it was rightfully a sculpture or a painting. It hung on a wall, but it was definitely done in three dimensions. It showed a human figure, the right half of its face cut out from one of those 1970s velvet paintings of big-eyed, weeping orphans. The left half was a wooden tribal mask, broken so that it had a savage, jagged edge. From that side, a coarse pigtail made of what looked like real hair jutted out, tied up in a tatty bit of pink ribbon. The body was composed of rusted bits of metal: springs and pipes and chains and old watchbands. It had been dressed in ragged patchwork.
Doves on stiff wire bobbled in the air above the person, affixed to a huge blue sky made of what looked like painted driftwood. The doves had stolen the figure’s hands and a red, fleshy rag that could have been its heart, its tongue, or some other key internal organ. The feathery little fuckers looked quite smug about it, too. It was primitive and visceral and disturbing. It was also really, really good.
The menu bar above gave me a lot of choices: Methodology, Reviews, Show Schedule, Online Gallery, Biography. I clicked the last link, and there was Candace.
She was so skinny she looked like a bobblehead doll, and the emaciation emphasized the crow’s feet etched deep around her watery blue eyes. She was wearing jeans with an aggressively ugly serape draped across her shoulders like a blanket. The bio said that she was living in Wyoming on a horse farm with her partner of nine years. It talked about where her work had been shown and the awards and fellowships she’d won. Near the end, it quoted a review that praised, among other things, her innovation with found items. I snorted. So Candace was still digging through other people’s things. There were more pictures of her below the bio, several with her partner, a very tall Native American with coppery skin and a wealth of black hair tumbling down her back. She looked like all kinds of an ass-kicker, looming protectively over Candace in most shots.
So, Candace had a type. It was a little disconcerting.
I started clicking through the galleries, looking at all of Candace’s crazy pieces. Animals and people made of bits and broken ends. Interesting stuff.
Okay, so I was scared to meet my sister. Scared of who she’d be, and how we’d manage, when we were face to face. Scared her life had been preruined.
But if Candace, of all people, could dock someplace . . . I clicked back to the bio to look at her face.
Sure, it looked like she had some kind of serious eating disorder, but she was still alive. She was doing work that mattered to her. It mattered to other people, as well; there were a lot of SOLD tabs on the pieces in the gallery. She loved someone, and she’d been loved back, for almost a decade now. She’d even found a form of faith, judging by the red string tied on her left wrist in every picture.
Who would have thought it? Fucking Candace.
I closed the website, and I reached for the phone to dial Julian.
CHAPTER 13
I am nineteen years old when Kai tells me the last story of hers that I will ever hear. I am almost asleep in my room in our basement apartment in Morningside. My door bangs open, and I jerk awake to see Kai framed in the doorway, backlit by dim lamplight from the den. Her face is a dark oval with a glowing red beauty mark: the ember of her Camel.
“What?” I say, groggy with near-sleep.
She takes a long tug off her cigarette, then lets smoke out into a backlit cloud around her head before she speaks.
This happened a long time ago, and it’s still happening now. Ganesha and his mother are playing by the river when a wealthy nobleman rides by. Parvati is quite beautiful, cooling her feet among the stones. Baby Ganesha paddles in the shallows by her, spraying water with his little elephant’s trunk. The droplets sparkle in her dark hair like jewels as she sets out fruit and crackers for their lunch.
The nobleman, Kubato, scoops her simple repast back into her basket, inviting the pair of them to dine in his home instead.
I sit up, scrubbing at my eyes. I am in no mood for stories, especially not this one. I don’t want to hear this mother-love tale with my army duffel bag already packed. It sits beside my footlocker and some cardboard boxes by the door. I am moving to Indiana with my friend William. We are leaving in the morning, early. Long before she’s usually up.
Wishing to impress her, Kubato orders a feast and calls all the nobles of the land to attend. They sit in rows at his fine tables, but Kubato seats Parvati and her son on a cushion beside him, on the dais. He hands Parvati a glass of fragrant wine.
“This wine,” Kubato says, “has waited for your lips for a hundred years in a gold casket lin
ed with sweet wood. Every cup is worth a year’s wages.”
Parvati takes the goblet, but she does not drink. “I think it is too rich for me.”
So Ganesha reaches for the cup, and then he gulps the wine all down, greedy, with red droplets running down his cheeks. He smacks his lips, and he sends his long trunk all around the room, dipping into every goblet and pitcher. He sucks the wine into his trunk, then brings it to his mouth and has it all in one long swallow.
He looks up to his mother, and he says, “But I’m still hungry.”
Kai has been drinking wine herself all night. She is very, very drunk. If I didn’t know this story down to its last syllable, I might not follow, that’s how bad she’s slurring. I’ve heard “Baby Ganesha at the Feast” since I was a baby myself, though. I have no concrete memory of the first time, that’s how long this tale has been alive between us.
Kubato calls for his servants to bring out the feast platters, heaped with roasted lamb and vegetables. The rice is soft with new oil, yellow and fragrant with costly saffron.
The servants bring the platters to Parvati first, but she says, “Oh no, thank you. It’s too rich for me.”
Ganesha reaches for the platters, though, and takes them, every one. He tips them into his mouth, swallowing lamb shanks, bones and all, and bushels of roasted apples, and a hundred thousand turnips and onions, enough yellow rice to feed an army for a year. He even licks the grease from every platter until the bare silver shines.
Then he looks up at his mother, and he says, “But I’m still hungry.”
All afternoon, Kai has seen me packing in her peripheral vision. She told my left ear where to find the boxes. She offered her heavy thrift-store coat to the spot just past my shoulder. She asked my hairline to bring her the open jug of Burgundy from the cabinet under the sink. What she hasn’t done is look at me. What she hasn’t done is tell me not to go. I’m in no mood for a scoop of mystic bullshit from her now.
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