What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

  Kira’s house was magnificent.

  On a shelf in the stairwell were three little birds carved from wood and painted with muted, saturated colors. They stood in a row on delicate wire legs.

  “Mom, Muir. Muir, Mom. We’ll be in my room, okay, thanks!” Kira gestured for me to follow and took the steps two at a time.

  “Hello!” I smiled at her mom and followed Kira, unsure of the protocol.

  “Muiriel,” her mom called to me. “It’s so nice to meet you! Can I get you something to eat or drink?” I walked back down the stairs to shake her hand. From the landing above, Kira sighed.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said, feeling Kira’s impatient urgency. “Thank you for having me.”

  “Francine is family, so you are, too. We’re so glad you’re here.”

  “Mom,” Kira said. “We’ve got to get ready.”

  “Kira’s dad and brother are in Tacoma tonight for a soccer tournament,” her mom told me, “but they’ll be so excited to meet you.”

  “Mom.” Kira sighed.

  “Francine’s been really nice,” I said, flushing bright.

  “Oh, good.”

  “Your paintings are beautiful.” And they were. Ink and watercolor images washed in clouds of color and texture. Kira sat miserably on the top step.

  “Aren’t they?” her mom said. “They’re Kira’s.”

  “Okay, thanks, Mom—”

  “We’ve been begging her to get back in art class. Maybe you can talk her into it?”

  “Oh my God, Mom!”

  Her mom smiled at me like, Oh, that Kira. “You girls have fun tonight; tell me when you go. Back by eleven, right, Kira?”

  “Eleven, we got it, bye!”

  We passed another really striking canvas on the way to her room, where she shut the door and fell onto her bed. “Sorry,” she said. “I get embarrassed.”

  “She’s so proud of you.”

  “She is. Sometimes she’s just…a lot. Parents, you know.”

  I put my bag on a chair.

  “Oh Jesus,” she said. “I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not, and don’t be,” I said. “I’ve had, like, twenty sets of parents. ‘Nice but a lot’ is a common variety.”

  “Muir.”

  “Kira. Seriously, it’s okay.”

  Her room was under an eve, the roof slanted over it, and it was furnished as minimally as the rest of the house. Big bed, like the one in Francine’s attic, shelf of books, dresser, and an easel featuring a canvas primed and painted all shades of pink. Surfboard in the corner.

  “Twenty sets?” she asked. “Including yours?”

  “Never had any in the first place. So, twenty in eighteen years of foster care isn’t so much.”

  She sat on her bed, deflated. “Seriously. I am so sorry I said that.”

  “Okay,” I said, and sat beside her, “but there’s nothing to be sorry for; there’s nothing to be sad about, and this is my first party, so you have to convince me that going is a good idea.”

  She brightened. “It is a good idea. We are going.”

  I stood and turned to take in her room. “I love your house. Not a lot of…stuff.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess having to burn or bury every family heirloom and treasure in a worthless attempt to convince everyone you’re a loyal American in the hopes your own government won’t drag your family to a concentration camp but it happens anyway and then you live for years on a dirt floor in an empty plywood shack in the desert with nothing and somehow you survive kind of turns your home-decorating aesthetic in a more…minimalist direction. For generations.”

  “Holy crap,” I sighed. “I guess that would do it.”

  “Francine’s and ours are both fourth-generation island families. Her grandparents saved my mom’s grandparents’ house, this house. Pretended to buy it, and they protected it from the government and looting and squatters, held on to the land, made the tax payments, so after the war my family was one of the few who could come home—who wanted to, even with white racist idiots still going after them, telling them to stay away. That’s why Francine is family. Human decency is thicker than blood.”

  I took a pen from my bag and asked for a scrap of paper.

  Human decency is thicker than blood. I tucked the paper in my bag. Kira held sweaters up around her shoulders to evaluate tattoo visibility.

  “How did you convince your parents to let you get them?” I asked.

  She smiled. Kind of sadly. “They had to take me to Vegas and bring their photo IDs and mine and my birth certificate to prove I was their kid and that they were giving me permission. It was a deal we made. Trade.”

  I sat on her bed and watched her put herself party-together. “Tattoos in exchange…for what?”

  She pulled a sweater over her head and took her hair down, went to the mirror at her dresser and put on some bright red lipstick. “It was them giving me something I wanted to try to get me to stop doing stupid shit. Bribery, but they were desperate. I had trouble back home. Los Angeles home. Trouble finding decent friends; like, discerning who was a friend and who was miserable and just wanted someone to be miserable with them. I did a lot of stupid shit. Expensive, professional ink was really the only currency they could offer me.”

  “Did it work?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  “What about when it didn’t?”

  Another sad smile. “Then we came here to live for good.”

  I could not fathom the scenario she was painting: parents who loved their kid so much they let her ink her body to try to keep her from something more self-destructive? Who loved their kid so much they uprooted their entire lives to get her somewhere safe?

  “Do you miss it?” I asked. “Home?”

  She paused her eyeliner swooping and turned to the surfboard in the corner. “I mean, this is home, too. But I miss the ocean. I surfed every day there. Every single day I was in the water.”

  “You’re on an island in the ocean!”

  She snorted. “Salish Sea. The Sound has no waves; I have to drive almost three hours for decent surf, through the Olympics and up into vampire territory.”

  “Do you get to very often?”

  “Sometimes. Not as much as I’d like, but…” She started pulling dresses from her closet.

  “You really made all those paintings in the living room?”

  “Yeah. Not the birds—those are my great-grandmother’s.”

  “Artistic lineage.”

  She went to a shelf in her closet and brought out a battered shoebox, which she put in my lap, then went back to the mirror. The lid was smashed in, a word, maybe a name, written in faded pencil across the top. Gaman.

  Inside, in wads of white tissue, lay one more carved bird. A thick, flat piece of wood carved in sort of 3-D relief; delicate wire legs; black, white, and gray paint: a black-capped chickadee.

  “She made them in prison, at Manzanar. They found a set of Audubon bird identification cards in an old National Geographic and carved them from scrap wood. She made paint from plants and berries; the legs are wire from screens over bars on the windows. They’re brooches. Something pretty to wear around the detention camp.” On the flat back of the bird, a safety pin was glued, still holding on even now.

  A grandma. Making jewelry in a concentration camp.

  The only grandma I had met personally was Zola’s. She was slow-moving and soft. Entire families, Kira’s family, imprisoned by their own American government for being born not white.

  The familiar burn flared in my stomach. I wrapped the bird in its nest of tissue and tucked it safely beneath the lid, replaced the box on the shelf, and sat back on the bed to work the tangled chain in my left hand. The exhaustion of working overtime all your life to prove you are worthy
of human dignity, just because the people in charge are ignorant and suspicious of the circumstances of your birth.

  Kira held up dresses and blouses and tossed them on the bed beside me.

  I pocketed the chain and ran my hand over a black silk slip dress. “Did she make more birds when she came home?”

  “No,” Kira said. “Nothing. She wasn’t an artist before the internment, and not after.”

  “But…they’re beautiful. She was so talented.”

  Kira shrugged. “Survival by art. We never knew she made them; we only found them in that box in the garage last year when her daughter, my grandma, died. My grandma was a baby in the camp; she said her parents never spoke about the war, ever. Their son, Grandma’s older brother, died fighting for America in the war while America imprisoned the rest of his family at Manzanar. They brought his purple heart to Great-Grandma in the camp. Gold Star mother.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Seriously. Like, Thanks for the fucking award. Does my dead son prove our loyalty now? Spoiler, it did not. Poor little birds. They might have been thrown out. I’m saving the chickadee for a shadowbox. It’s my favorite.”

  “Thank God you found them.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Hey.” I said after a long, quite while. “What does your mom mean, ‘getting you back in art class’? You’re not taking art?”

  She tossed some clothes off the bed and flopped down beside me. “First day last year, I go to class and Katiana are in there to easy-A fulfill the grad requirement—they have no actual interest at all in art—and I’ve got my portfolio from my other school because I have a huge fucking ego, and so the teacher is like, These are great; I, a teacher, proclaim you are a talented art student, and Katiana were like, Fuck that girl, she thinks she’s better than us; we are suddenly super interested in being the world’s greatest artists who get attention from teachers, so they started their daily campaign of messing with me, and I didn’t enroll this year because why give them prime access to me for ninety minutes three days a week.”

  I got it. When every day is one battle after another, sometimes it’s better to know when to nope out if the alternative is daily misery. “Won’t they be there tonight?” I asked.

  “Maybe. But it’ll be crowded, and they’ll be drunk; I can avoid them.”

  “You sure?”

  “I want to go,” she said. “I’m sick of avoiding things I want to do because of them. They can have art class, fine, but this is a coveted bonfire invitation, and we are going.”

  “I bet Sean could get them to stop.”

  She turned to look right at me. “No. I mean it. Please.”

  “Okay.” I studied the pink canvas, barely begun but already beautiful. “It’s not fair. You should be there, not them.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I can paint better here in my room, away from those assholes. And another good thing is, I’m taking psychology instead and it’s fascinating. We’re studying the Myers-Briggs thing? It’s this mother-daughter psychologist team. The mom met the daughter’s boyfriend and probably hated him, so she got all compelled to make up these trait and personality categorizations based on Jungian philosophy. I have learned that I put the J in INFJ.”

  She was so smart. Hard to keep up. She obviously wanted to change the subject, so I followed. “What?”

  “INFJ. Introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging. I judge the crap out of people and situations, which I used to think is a bad thing, but, truthfully, human existence essentially consists of going through each day making a series of value judgments. I judge that eating salad is better than scarfing cake. Not getting wasted is better than being a worthless drunk. Katiana are a pair of shallow bitches who lack self-esteem and empathy, so they work hard to make other people feel scared and miserable, which makes them feel better. I judge it, and it is so.”

  Her candor was so refreshing. “What other kinds are there?” I asked. “Myers-Briggs, what am I?”

  She tipped her head at me. “I need to know you better. But I’ll figure you out. Francine is an ISFJ: introverted, sensing, feeling, judging. It’s a good one. Beyoncé is an ISFJ.”

  Fascinating. “Is there a JJJJ? Because that’s probably me.”

  She laughed. “We’ll make it one. But I have to say, it doesn’t seem like you.”

  “No, it is. I’m the worst. I get mad when people decide who I am before they know me, but then I Judge Judy them all day long. I try so hard not to, but people. Adults.”

  “Well,” she said, “you’ve probably earned that.” She treaded carefully. “Were they all awful? The foster parents?”

  “No,” I said. “No, not them, it’s just—everyone. The parents, the foster parents, the social workers. They all want to help, but then a lot of them act like it’s their job to treat us, treat me, like…My Joellen, my social worker, she says they treat us like ‘unreliable narrators in our own experience.’ Like they know better and we can’t possibly understand our own lives as well as they do.”

  She sat there. Still listening.

  “I’m so close to being out. I’m good and obedient and understanding year after year just so I have some leverage to have the tiniest bit of choice in what happens to me, but all this time is, like, whittling my patience away. It’s sort of sharpening a…like, a stick of judgment that I use to stab anyone over the age of thirty.”

  No one at any school had ever been as nice to me as Kira was being right then, listening to all this. I hadn’t said so much out loud to someone my own age in…possibly ever.

  “I mean, metaphorically,” I mumbled. “The stabbing part.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I figured. Is Francine good? Little kids always love her.”

  “She is. She’s nice. Good food.”

  Kira looked relieved. “Has she made tea yet?”

  “Oh my God, the lemon curd.”

  “The brûlée,” she whispered. “Hey. JJJJ would be a nice tattoo.”

  “You think?”

  “No! I’m kidding. Listen to me, words and letters are a gateway drug—tattoos are addictive, don’t start. Oooh, want me to make your eyebrows glamorous?”

  Lane change. I was grateful. “How are eyebrows glamorous?”

  “They set the tone for your whole face.” She grabbed a fistful of pencils and brushes. “Yours are great—dark, with excellent arches. I’ll just amp them up a little.” She sat me in a chair and stood studying my forehead, then went to work. “The key to eyebrows is, you want them to be siblings, not twins.”

  “Oh jeez,” I said. But I thought of Sean. Like Kira’s kindness, his attention was also unprecedented. Arguing with him made me feel smart. It made me think about how he’d already seen me wear every piece of clothing I owned. Twice. And that mostly he saw me sweaty, hiking, hair a mess. And then I hated myself for caring what he thought.

  But like a new smoker, not yet addicted, I thought, It’s okay to have some of this—a friend, a boy to like. Friend, not “life or death”; go out, not date. Just having some fun for once. What the hell, maybe a couple of months, just for the school year….I can quit anytime.

  She turned my face to the mirror. “See? You’re glamorous!”

  Who knew eyebrows were so powerful? I liked it. “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” She got to work on her eyelashes. “Okay. You ready to go hang with a bunch of drunk, high douchebags and Sean?”

  Drunk and high. God, this was a bad idea.

  “Just so you know,” she said, “I can be a designated driver. And I can keep a secret. If you want to partake. I’m not— I can’t. Anymore.”

  Oh, relief. “I can’t,” I said. “Not ever. Not till I’m out, anyway.”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t a drunk or anything,” she said.

  “Not my business.”

  “Surfing goes well
with cutting school.”

  “Sure.”

  “And getting high.”

  “I can imagine.” I couldn’t imagine. “You patched up and ready?”

  She revealed a big patch on her hip.

  “How many?”

  “Just this! God, Mom.” But she smiled.

  I looked down at my jeans and the gray argyle sweater I’d taken in to fit kind of small, over a long white layering tank. My style can best be described as middle-aged-librarian chic. Forgettable, my freedom linked always to anonymity. “Do you think— Could I borrow something to wear?”

  She tossed the mascara onto her desk. “Anything you want!” She went to the pile on the bed, pulling out options best suited for an Italian mobster’s widow, and most were entirely too small for me. We settled on some black pencil pants that were big and long on her but fit me fine, and a black cashmere sweater.

  “You look like Audrey Hepburn!” she said. “Here, hold still.” She brushed some shadow on my eyelids, liner on my bottom lash line, then whipped my hair up in some sort of a twist-type maneuver and pinned it in place. She moved me to her full-length mirror and stood behind me. “Look at your eyes,” she crowed. “All bright and dramatic. My finest work.” Her phone buzzed and she read it. “Sean’s at the bonfire, waiting for us at the road. Our own personal entrée to the Beach Gatsby. Let’s go!”

  “I’ll be really careful with your sweater,” I promised, and looked in the mirror. Bright and dramatic. Sean. My hands went all jingly.

  “Oh, please,” she said. “We’re going to a secret bonfire—let’s not ruin it by being careful.”

  Exactly what I was worried about. I pulled the chain from my jeans pocket. I wished I could wear it. It would look nice with this sweater.

  “Ooh,” Kira said. “Necklace? Put it on!”

  I held it up for her to see the nest of tangled knots.

  “Oh no…okay, hold up,” she said. She picked up the red lipstick and put a little on my bottom lip. “Smoosh together,” she directed. “Lucky you found me, because one of my rare talents is that I am exceptionally good at untangling things: earbuds, thread, Christmas lights—let me do this for you.”