Back at the house, Kira left another voicemail for Dan, then texted him. It occurred to her that he was ignoring her because she didn’t sound convincingly repentant. She made coffee again, went outside to feed the fish while the machine hissed and spat. With each tossed pinch of food, the golden bodies surfaced and disappeared. Maybe the women in her family weren’t meant to stay married, weren’t capable of loving the men they had. Or of letting the men love them.
Wind rustled in the trees and the afternoon light dimmed as if preparing for rain. In the house, the air felt heavy, the kitchen subdued but vigilant. Kira half expected to see something change—a shift in the texture of the paint, perhaps, or in the color of the countertops. Wind stirred the top branches of the towering eucalyptus trees, exuberance bordering on violence, and pink plum blossoms flung themselves onto the lawn, misshapen polka dots against the green. Dan loved storms, called them nature’s power trips, and if he were here he’d go outside and watch. Kira rushed to the front porch, watched the sky laboring under low clouds, pressure building. Thunder groaned in surround-sound, and seconds later lightning roadmapped the sky. Then, with a roar, rain slapped at the street, pelted the parked cars and raced through the gutters in instant streams, an over-the-top display of might and will. Ten minutes of torrential excess, then the clouds drifted east, thinning into tendrils, moisture rising like steam. Kira hugged her arms, suddenly chilled.
Let go. She stopped breathing. Let go of me.
A hand on her wrist, so hard it hurt. Fear. And rage.
She waited, ready for more. But her hands remained cool; the porch, the street, empty; the world rainwashed.
Another chill, rippling through with high voltage. That hand on her wrist—Maddalena had run into the street here, died here. Had someone attacked her? What was the date? It was 1963, but when? Kira rushed inside, grabbed the death certificate. It said March, not April, the seventeenth, not the seventh. Not today. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. The paper shivered in her fingers.
Those iron claws on her arm. Someone had been with Maddalena right before she died. She was trying to get away.
Kira charged through the house, closing blinds and curtains and flipping on lights. The buzzing continued, an internal alarm. Go there. Where? She felt like screaming, turned on the CD player to let the music pour out, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, one of her mother’s favorites. Had she loved opera because Maddalena did? What else didn’t Kira know?
Go there.
“Go where?” she shouted. “For what?” She charged into the kitchen, where a box from the attic sat on the table. She rifled through it—stacks of pictures, herself as an infant, a toddler, dozens of cards. A box of birth announcements, pale pink card stock topped with a slender bow of yellow satin. Kira exhaled, slowed herself. Her birth announcements: Kira Madeleine Esposito, born at ten a.m. on December 12, 1977, six pounds, eight ounces. Half a dozen cards unused, one a reject with a note, a few crossed-out words, no signature. Her mother’s handwriting.
Dearest Helen, I am overjoyed! Our sweet little girl is healthy and so beautiful, with dark brown hair that stands up straight and eyes that remind me of my mother. She always told me I would have a daughter one day and I was to name her Kira, and so I have, in her memory. I don’t know why she chose that name, but she was quite insistent, and I think it suits our little love perfectly. Her middle name is for my mother, of course.
What? Her grandmother had named her? Maddalena, who couldn’t possibly have known she’d have a granddaughter one day, had chosen a name for her?
The wind chimes outside the back door erupted into a mad dance and Kira jumped. The dream from last night, the horse beneath her like an unstoppable train—she was on the verge, she could feel it. On the verge of something she had to give in to. The thought again, snakebite fast: Go there.
She grabbed the announcement again. Its deckled edge, linen finish—it was something she might have chosen herself, for Aimi, whose name meant “love” and “beautiful” in Japanese. What joy there must be in announcing the arrival of a child. The tears came without warning, and with them memories of that devastating day in the hospital, her belly too flat, the bedsheet pulled taut across her knees and feet so that she could barely move. Her mother and Dan next to the bed, crying. The nurse taking Aimi away. Sunlight filling the window, pretending it was a beautiful day.
They’d stumbled through the paperwork, the decisions, the funeral, all of it surreal. In the weeks that followed, Dan pretended to be strong, handled everything because Kira couldn’t. But she knew how destroyed he was. He startled at the slightest sound, went running and was gone for hours, came back looking half dead. In the evenings he sat looking over his drawings, then abandoned them without ever having picked up a pencil.
Kira and Dan had gone silent, but Rosa spoke of Aimi incessantly, going on and on about her beloved daughter’s first child, her darling grandchild, such a loss, it was more than anyone could bear. Kira wanted to scream at her to shut up, and Dan knew it. He would steer Rosa into another room, tell her Kira couldn’t talk about Aimi just now. He would sit with Rosa, listen to her like he always did, which was one reason she adored him. She had from the moment she met him.
Kira had taken Dan to her mother’s house for dinner, and Rosa had watched from the doorway as they approached, her face the flat white of porcelain. “Excuse me, what’s your name?” Rosa said in a breathless voice. She’d looked startled, a mixture of excitement and alarm.
“Mom, this is Dan.” Kira nudged Dan and said, “I told her your name. Really.”
Dan smiled, unfazed, and offered his hand. “Dan Kaneko. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Esposito.”
“Oh, of course, forgive me. Kira told me all about you. I just—I thought—for a moment you reminded me of someone.” She smoothed her hair back, a nervous habit. “But never mind that, please come in. And call me Rosa.”
“He reminds you of someone? Really? Who is it, Mom?” Kira followed Dan and Rosa to the kitchen.
“Someone my mother knew. I don’t know his name. Please sit, Dan, and have some wine. I’ve made my mother’s lasagna, Kira’s favorite. I hope you like artichokes.”
“I do. It sounds delicious,” Dan said.
Rosa beamed. All through dinner, she smiled and looked at Dan with what Kira could only describe as love. After lemon cake and coffee, while Dan took out the trash, Rosa grabbed Kira’s hand. “You’ll marry him,” she said as if stating the obvious.
“It’s kind of early for that, Mom. But I’m glad you like him.”
They left at ten, after Dan promised to visit again soon. On the way home Kira said, “My mom really likes you. It’s kind of a miracle, actually, since you don’t have Italian blood. I’m half kidding,” she added, “but only half.”
“I believe it,” Dan said. “My parents are the same way, but they had to get over it a long time ago. When I told them I was taking a blonde to the senior prom, they nearly stroked out. Both of them. Simultaneously.”
Kira laughed. “At least I’ve got dark hair.”
“I’m glad your mom likes me, but tell her not to get any ideas. I’m already taken.” Dan stopped at a red light and kissed Kira until the driver behind them honked.
The birth announcement slipped out of Kira’s hands as she stood, her head a dandelion gone to seed. The wind had quieted, but the air in the room felt thick and charged. Dan had reminded her mother of someone Maddalena knew. Maddalena had named the grandchild born after her death.
Go there.
“I’m trying,” she said. Talking to herself was becoming a habit.
Dan had brought her laptop and left it on the dining room table. A quick search for Maddalena’s obituary and there it was, a brief accounting of her death, attributed to a tragic accident, with the usual dates and survivors and funeral plans. A few other sites carried the same article. Then Kira s
aw a link to someone’s blog, something about racism. She clicked on it.
The blogger had posted a scan of an article in the Inyo Register with the comment: “Found at the Eastern California Museum while doing research for a school paper. Unreal.”
The headline screamed, “Jap Killed by Lone Pine Rancher.” Below, in smaller type, “Love Nest Discovered, Girl’s Father Takes Revenge.” Kira scanned the story and froze at her grandmother’s name. What the hell? Maddalena was the girl, and the man who was killed was a Manzanar internee named Akira.
Akira? Then it hit her. Akira, Kira. Her grandmother had named her for the boy she loved, before Kira was even born. This was it, the beginning of an answer. Hope percolated, bumping up against fear. Was this a path into the maze or a step into an abyss? How could any of this be real?
Kira zoomed in on the black-and-white photo that accompanied the story, what looked like a school picture of a teenage boy with hair that fell forward, wire-rimmed glasses, a smile that broke her heart. She knew instantly that it was the photo in the attic dream, the one Maddalena showed to her baby. Akira was the mysterious man Rosa had spoken of—dark-haired, yes, but Japanese, not Italian. That was why Rosa had stared at Dan when she met him; he’d reminded her of Akira. She seemed to understand that, yet she knew nothing about Akira, not even his name. But she knew he was important to her mother. If Rosa had had the dreams, what else had they told her?
Kira searched for a date on the article: August 23, 1945. Maddalena had been sixteen.
Tears blurring the words, Kira read the piece again. The Register had gone for the lurid, editorializing about the blast of a shotgun, the splattering of blood, the screams of the girl. It said Maddalena’s brother, Marco Moretti, discovered the lovers’ hideout and fetched his father. “We didn’t ask any questions,” the article quoted Marco as saying. “It was plenty clear what was going on. My papa wasn’t going to let a Jap have relations with his daughter.”
Those poor kids. They were kids. By the third reading Kira was able to skip the gore and look for facts. Akira was from Berkeley—from Berkeley!—born there to Japanese parents, a carpenter and a housewife. They’d been sent to Manzanar in the spring of 1943. Akira worked as an orderly at the hospital. Manzanar—Kira remembered it from school, a World War II internment camp. Racism in the guise of national security.
A wave of sweat and nausea hit her. Opening the back door, she breathed in crisp air until her skin cooled. Peppermint tea would calm her stomach. She was filling the kettle when the sounds of a baseball game drifted from a nearby park. Heat seared her hands and the kettle clattered into the sink. The color shift descended, swift as winter nightfall.
A figure shimmered into view. Maddalena, a small, hesitant figure in slacks and a white blouse, halfway up the stairs to the bedroom, her hand on the railing.
The radio clicks on and there’s the crack of a bat, the cheers of the crowd. I should have gone to the attic earlier, before he got home, but there was the laundry, the market, the cooking, the baby. But there is time—his mind is on the game, and he won’t leave his chair in the kitchen and come looking for me, ask why I’m going upstairs, what I need up there. It will take only a minute to get to the attic, only a minute to look at his picture, his dear face. One look, then I will be able to go on.
Downstairs, the baby begins to cry. I lean against the wall, my hand at my breast. There is no time. I will have to endure another meal listening to him complain that dinner was late, that I don’t understand how hard he works, how hard he works for me, for the baby. My baby, not his. He finds every chance he can to remind me of that. The tingling in my breasts becomes a burn, wet circles bleeding into my blouse. The baby—I have to go to her. Later, I will take her with me to the attic, hold the picture up so she can see it. She looks too much like me, too Italian. If only I’d had a boy, his small round face a mirror of his father’s.
Kira couldn’t move. The late afternoon sun angled through the screen door, a silent dust storm swirling in the light. That baby was Akira’s. Akira was Rosa’s father, Kira’s grandfather.
“Akira,” she whispered. “Kira.”
Kira. Akira. Kirakira.
Twenty-Six
July 27–29, 1945
At four o’clock, when dinner was prepped and the kitchen was clean and her mother had turned on the radio and “put her feet up for a minute,” as she always said, as if not working required an explanation, Maddalena saw her chance. “I’m going for a quick ride,” she said. “I’ll set the table the minute I get back, I promise.” Her mother nodded, eyes closed, and Maddalena ran to the barn.
As she headed north, the wind was fierce, hurling dust and sand like Zeus pitching lightning bolts. Within minutes Scout’s black eyelashes looked like pale, crocheted fringe and Maddalena was coughing. She pushed the horse hard. There would barely be time to get to Manzanar and back before her mother raised a fuss.
Today Manzanar was quiet—the fields empty, a lone policeman making his rounds, people scurrying between buildings, heads down. For a moment Maddalena wished she were home, listening to the ghostlike gusting of chimney drafts and watching the weathervane whirl atop the barn. At the hospital there was no sign of Akira, but the Friday rock was missing from the windowsill. Maddalena moved her rock, matching his, banishing the fear that she might be too late. Surely he would check for her signal before dark. Tonight, tonight, tonight. She galloped Scout all the way home.
“You call that a quick ride?” Her mother sat at the kitchen table with the silver chest and a bottle of polish, scrubbing a platter engraved with pomegranates and pineapples. She nodded toward a stack of silverware. “You can start on those. And no more dillydallying.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to be gone so long, but Scout needed a good run. I think he’s getting fat.” Not true, but her mother knew nothing about horses. “The wind was awful! The whole time I was wishing I’d stayed home.” Maddalena dabbed polish on a serving fork. “Is that a new apron? It’s very pretty.”
“I won it in the church raffle.” Her mother glanced down at the blue-and-yellow-striped fabric. “It’s pretty enough, I suppose.”
“Why are we polishing the silver? It’s not a holiday.”
“I told you two days ago that your father’s cousins are coming. You have a mind like a sieve.”
This was news of the worst kind. The women would stay up late talking, which would make it hard to sneak out. Maybe impossible.
“I hope I don’t have to give up my bed like last time.”
“Francesca will sleep on a cot in your room. Your Uncle Aldo and Aunt Jo will stay in the guest room.”
There went her plans, up in smoke. Francesca wasn’t here yet and she was already a pest. And Akira would risk his life tonight for nothing. If only she could go back to Manzanar and put the Friday rock back in its place. Maddalena’s eyes burned, but she absolutely could not cry in front of her mother.
“Can’t Francesca sleep with her parents?”
“Put a twelve-year-old in the same room with her father? Perish the thought.”
How would she survive the night? It would go on forever, all the boring conversations and the stupid, boring games she’d have to play with Francesca, worrying about Akira the whole time. How would her mother feel if she couldn’t be with the love of her life because of some stupid relatives she didn’t care about?
The timer dinged and her mother peeked into the oven. Maddalena took the cleaned silver to the sink and doused it with hot water from the kettle.
Cleaning and cooking and shopping, that was all her mother did. And worry about everything being exactly right. Worry, worry, worry. Maddalena tried to imagine her mother as a flirtatious girl or a bride in love. It seemed impossible that she’d ever been anything but a dried-out worrywart with lines around her pouchy eyes and a scrub brush in her hand. She and Papa never kissed, unless you counted a
n occasional peck on the cheek, which Maddalena certainly didn’t, and that was usually after her father had his whiskey. Maybe they gave up kissing like they’d given up playing Bingo on Saturday nights after Marco was born. The ranch was their whole world, but it wasn’t going to be hers.
“When will they be here?”
“After dinner. I want the kitchen spotless.”
There was nothing she could do, nothing but endure the evening and think of Akira every single minute. And worry, exactly like her mother.
By ten-thirty Akira had figured out that Maddalena wasn’t coming. He told himself it was something minor, inconvenient but harmless, like a stomachache, but he couldn’t help imagining one dire scenario after another. She could have gotten caught leaving the house, or Scout might have stepped in a pothole and thrown her. Maybe she was lying unconscious somewhere in the desert. After waiting ten more minutes, he set out on a search.
It was slow going, even with the moon nearly full. Cutting west to Foothill Road, Akira walked south, calling Maddalena’s name. His voice carried across the desert, then faded, absorbed by the distant mountains. The valley had never seemed so vast.
It must have been after midnight when he came to a driveway running straight as an arrow toward the Sierra, ending in a glow of lights. Definitely a ranch, but most likely not Maddalena’s. If he remembered right, she’d said hers was six or seven miles from Manzanar, and he couldn’t have gone that far. He cut through a field, brush snagging his trouser legs, and circled wide around a two-story house and a barn twice its size. The soft bleating of livestock, shadowy shapes of vehicles. Then a porch light clicked on and a sharp voice from the house brought on a chorus of barks. Akira threw himself to the ground, breathing hard. A woman came onto the porch, asked someone named Henry if he knew how late it was, and didn’t he know morning would be here before he knew it. “Coming,” the someone named Henry said. Boots scraping on a stoop, the muted thunk of a door closing, utter blackness when the porch light died.
The Wild Impossibility Page 18
