What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

  “I’m going surfing next weekend at La Push,” she said. “I haven’t surfed in months. I miss it so much I ache. I’m done punishing myself.”

  “Oh, Kira.” I wished I could see her in the ocean, brave and daring in the wild, freezing waves. Maybe one day she would invite me. But I understood this was hers.

  “And Elliot is coming here tomorrow to take pictures of this for me,” she said. We gazed up at her masterpiece.

  “What exactly are that young man’s intentions?” I asked. “He being good to you?”

  “Very good.” She sighed dreamily. “He’s growing these field grasses in little boxes in class and making a photo-movie of their lives, all the way until they go to seed.”

  “What the hell is a photo-movie?”

  “I have no idea. He’s a genius.”

  She seemed happier than in all the months I’d known her. She hugged me, full of joy and relief.

  “Want some toast?” she asked.

  Best. Friend. Ever.

  * * *

  I carry with me a dollhouse’s dollhouse.

  Thanksgiving is a rough holiday when you live in a city named for Chief Seattle—hard to ignore the murderous reason the day is celebrated at all. For a white kid in public school, even in Seattle, reflections on genocide were eclipsed by construction-paper Pilgrim hats and handprint turkeys. As with the Little House books, I was oblivious. I took my joy anywhere I could get it. And Thanksgiving gave me a lot of joy.

  I love every bit of consistency I can get, and every house I lived in celebrated Thanksgiving, every house had traditions for the meal—potatoes the way Nana So-and-So made them or it just wasn’t Thanksgiving. People got agro over these things, and it made me happy. I have had a seat at thirteen tables, that I can remember, for people’s very favorite versions of this, the very best meal of the year, recipes so complicated and full of fat and sugar they are made only this one day.

  It was almost always noisy and fun; the kids’ table was the place, and some nice auntie or grandma always let me help in the kitchen. I have made mashed potatoes with so much sour cream and butter it would stop your heart, but you keep eating them because they are so good. I helped create a pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin and found I like frozen Sara Lee pies better, but it was fun to make a real one, fun to roll the crust and crimp the edges and brush it with butter, fun to whip actual cream and sugar instead of using a spray can, and magic to stew actual tart and sweet jewel-colored cranberry sauce.

  Only one year was Thanksgiving not so great. Seven years old, second grade, my last before I stopped eating animals. The foster parents had kids of their actual own, and they were going away to Oregon to be with the grandparents for the holiday. The other foster kids were going for home visits, but they had to find respite care for me.

  Respite care is basically a babysitter who’s got foster security clearance. I was sad about the prospect of a halfway Thanksgiving by myself. Then, two days before the day, a new kid came. His first time in care, he was near my age and already terrified, and to make it worse, he was denied a visit home for Thanksgiving. Oddly enough, he was not super comforted that at least I, a stranger, would be with him.

  The respite lady lived alone in a mobile-home park in Tacoma. She was nice, but there was no Thanksgiving dinner. She did heat frozen turkey dinners for us, in the oven instead of the microwave, so they were good—but nothing like the Thanksgivings I loved. And even though he didn’t talk to me the entire time, I could tell this was definitely different from what the new kid was used to. We ate on trays in front of the TV.

  The respite lady sat and crocheted. The boy looked at the National Geographic magazines the lady kept in a stack on the floor. I wandered around the mobile-home park and found wildflowers growing near a chain-link fence. I picked them and asked the lady for some string. She gave me a piece of dental floss, and it worked fine to wrap the flowers into a bouquet, which I put on my TV tray. Frances the badger put a tiny vase of violets on her desk at school for lunch, and I agreed it made things cheerful.

  After dinner the lady dragged out a basket of toys for us. Most of them were for toddlers, lots of bath toys and old Playskool stuff. But she also brought out a dollhouse. It was wooden and had rabbit dolls instead of people. The girl rabbit wore a wedding dress and a veil. I dressed and undressed her, adding a kicky pink top, fluffing the veil and smoothing it, and then, in the rabbit’s upstairs bedroom, I saw it: the dollhouse. It was plastic, blue, with white shingles and a red front door. I held it in both my hands and could not believe something so mind-boggling could even exist. I stared into the rooms, each one tiny as a marble, where even tinier furniture was glued in place. In all the world there was never anything so perfect.

  The new boy was rooted on the sofa with the Nat Geos. I brought him snacks. “It’s not usually like this,” I told him. “Thanksgiving is usually fun.” He took a lot of naps, and while he slept the long weekend away, I sat outside in the autumn sunshine examining that tiny meta house. I looked up sometimes and he was awake, sitting by the window. He waved, and I waved back, and he picked up another magazine.

  I was nearly asleep Sunday night, safely back in my bottom bunk in the foster house, when the bedroom door opened a little and the light from the hall spilled in.

  “Muiriel?”

  The boy stepped in, put the dollhouse in my hand, and left, closing the door behind him.

  * * *

  Thanksgiving morning Francine was up before dawn, which is not such an accomplishment in the Pacific Northwest, where the winter sun peeks over the horizon at the crack of 9:00 a.m., but she was up in the dark. Chickens fed, eggs collected, Terry Johnson walked and napping on the sofa, half-watching the Macy’s parade.

  “There’s nothing left for me to do.” I yawned, scratching Terry’s ears until he growled.

  “You wish,” Francine said. “We need to be at the Aoyamas’ by two o’clock; here’s three pounds of carrots and onions for you to chop.”

  I ate my toast and tea, tied on an apron, and happily got to work.

  “I’ve spent every Thanksgiving I can remember with the Aoyamas,” Francine said. “With Kira’s grandparents, and her mom, until she left for school and married, but they always brought Kira, then Ryo, every year from California. I watched that girl and her brother grow up. I’m so glad they’re all here now.”

  “Was she a cute baby?”

  “Kira? Oh Lord, yes, much cuter than her poor brother.”

  “Francine.”

  “He’s a great kid and I love him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he had an awkward phase that lasted from age two till, like, sixth grade. He’s fine now.”

  “Nice.”

  She shrugged. “Ask anyone. Ask his parents. But Kira—sweetest girl, wild hair, little-bird voice—she made us all place card holders for the table every year, turkeys out of pinecones and feathers and glitter. I have all of mine somewhere. She still want to study art in college?”

  “She does.”

  The kitchen was warm, and the Macy’s parade was a lot, but it was nice background noise against our chopping and whisking.

  “You sure you don’t want to apply anywhere? School?” she said.

  “Francine. Come on.”

  “Come on what? Free tuition’s not nothing. If you want to go, there are ways; nothing is impossible. I mean, look at your grades, and all your volunteering. Muiriel, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and I think we should talk to Joellen about—”

  At the front door someone knocked loudly, twice, and Terry Johnson barked. Once.

  “Hold on,” Francine yelled above the suddenly loud parade, a Broadway show tune being performed by nearly naked guys wearing hot pants in subzero temperatures in New York. I kept chopping, and when she didn’t come back right away, I leaned back to look down the hall to see Francine st
anding in the doorway, talking to Sean.

  I whipped off the apron, washed my hands, filled them with water, and kind of tossed it on my hair, aiming for what effect I couldn’t say.

  “Hi,” he said, and walked, smiling, into the kitchen. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Look what Sean brought us,” Francine said, hefting a colorful, foil-wrapped chocolate turkey that I recognized from the window display of the candy shop next to the Blackbird.

  “Wow,” I said. “That is…a big turkey.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s solid.”

  “It is?”

  “Not hollow.”

  “Right.”

  Why was it so weird being together with Francine in the room?

  “Okay,” he said. “Well, I’m off to meet Mom and fifty of our extended family at the ferry. Oh, and, Muir? My mom wants to meet you. Soon.”

  “Tell her it’s mutual!”

  “Give your mom my love,” Francine told him. “Tell her I have a ton of eggs for her.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” I said.

  On the porch I kissed him as long as would not be suspicious, and then Terry Johnson came out to bark that it was time to wrap it up.

  “I brought you these,” he said. “Is that stupid? If it’s stupid, use them for a centerpiece or something….” A bouquet of wildflowers, in November, on a national holiday, when all the flower shops were closed.

  “Where did you find them?” I inhaled. Alpine. Mount Rainer meadow flowers.

  “Mom is friends with a nursery owner midisland. Please don’t worry, Mom’s really nice, and meeting her doesn’t mean we have to get married.”

  I smiled and sighed with relief. God, he gets it.

  “I mean. Unless you want to.”

  “All right, pal,” I said. “Take that show on the road to the ferry.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving.” One more kiss and he drove away, and I waved, Terry Johnson watching with bland disapproval.

  “You’re just jealous,” I said, and carried him into the house and up to my room, where I put the flowers in a jam jar of water on the dresser beside my books.

  * * *

  —

  Later, at Kira’s house, I met her dad, who was as kind and welcoming as her mom, and her brother, Ryo, whose face scarcely left his Nintendo screen and was not at all awkward-looking, so I had no idea what Francine was talking about. Her parents did the whole Go around the table and say what you’re thankful for routine, and I realized that I had so many things to catalog I could not believe it. Kira being my friend. Francine’s kindness, her warm home with the bedroom that felt less lonely every day. Salishwood. When my turn came, I feared I would cry on my green beans and was so afraid to say some of the things I really meant, so I said only:

  “Thank you for inviting me today. I’ve never had a…Kira. Or a Francine. Or known a family like yours. It’s…these are the best mashed potatoes I’ve eaten in my life.”

  No one spoke for a moment. Everyone raised their glasses. I did, too. Francine wiped her eyes with her napkin. Kira used her sleeve. Her mom straight up went to the bathroom for tissues, pulled out a bunch for herself, and handed me some, too.

  “This is a depressing Thanksgiving,” Ryo snarked.

  Everyone laughed, and Terry Johnson, a guest on a pillow under the table, barked for us to shut up, bothered by our loudness.

  Kira’s mom stood up. “We are, as always, so very thankful for the gift of Francine and her family. And especially this year, because she has brought us Muiriel.”

  What?

  “We are so grateful for your friendship to Kira, because we made her leave the ocean and we moved her at a time in school when it is not easy finding new friends, especially really true friends, but it seems she has found one in you. She’s not so mad at us anymore, and for that we are beyond grateful.”

  “Oh, I’m still pissed,” Kira assured them.

  Kira’s dad raised his glass. Everyone did.

  I smiled all the way to my toes.

  Later, in my attic bed trying to find room around Terry Johnson sprawled in the middle, when Joellen called and asked, as she did every Thanksgiving, “How was it?” I tried to not let the dread of I cannot get attached to this; I have to leave it and be alone soon overtake my happiness, at least just for this one night. My throat burned and I said, “It was okay. Pretty good.”

  “That all?” she asked.

  “Do you know where Zola is?”

  “I do.”

  “Is she okay? Is she happy?”

  “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Is she still home? If she is, don’t say anything.”

  Silence.

  “Thanks,” I said. Home for Thanksgiving—thank goodness.

  “But today, you really had a good time? Francine said it was good.”

  I listened to her smile through the phone.

  “Well,” I said. “I helped make pies. They were excellent.”

  BEGINNING AT MIDNIGHT on December 1, Francine’s house was decorated like she was entering a Most Festive House on the Planet contest, and the TV was never turned on because she played Christmas music from the moment I got up for school all the way until bedtime. But I was mostly out of the house, at school or Salishwood or at Blackbird or at Kira’s house or with Sean—and so I got just enough of the music to love it instead of being driven nuts by it. A lot of Dean Martin. Nat King Cole. “Old guys who know how to do ‘Jingle Bells’ right,” she said. I did homework to it, fell asleep to it, woke up to it, and to hot cider and cinnamon rolls and apple strudel and a hundred dozen sugar cookies for the women’s shelter.

  Her volunteering there was a big deal in her everyday life. Normally I could not care less about what the foster parents did. Besides fostering. But Francine—what had her life been before now?

  I was determined to not ask. To stop wondering. Wouldn’t matter soon, anyway.

  She said to me one morning as she set a plate of Swedish pancakes with warm lingonberry jam before me, “Listen. If I ever get diagnosed with a terminal illness, like with a time limit, months to live? It is Christmas. Get out the decorations and keep them up until the end. I will die at Christmastime. You got that?”

  As if I’d always be there with her to make those decisions together. To unpack the tinsel and string the lights the way she had, around every single window in the house, including the bedrooms.

  I just nodded, my mouth overfull of pancakes and jam.

  Maybe even more festive than Francine’s house were Kira’s brightened spirits—she was back in art class.

  “Mr. Taxera says I can make up quizzes and as much studio work as I can over winter break so I’ll be ready for next semester,” she had whisper-squealed during the breakfast rush at Blackbird. “But the very, very best part is, he came in last week and saw the mural and he’s letting me paint a mural on the classroom wall!”

  “Oh, Kira.” The long line of tourists at the counter had to deal with some major jumping-around excitement. “You are the Pacific Northwest’s Diego Rivera!”

  She made a face. “That guy was a dick. I’ll be Marion Greenwood.”

  “No. You’ll be Kira Aoyama, better than any of them.”

  It was true. Her classroom mural, with some directed help from Elliot, who also documented the daily progress in photographs, was a wonder to see come to life. At some point, every student in the school stopped by the class to watch her paint, especially Sean and Elliot and me, who ate lunch watching her each day until it was finished. It was another gorgeous wave of water and sky and light, lit by the art classroom’s wall of windows. She was so proud.

  Her smile was infectious. Especially when Elliot was around. He was sweet with her, tall and protective. He posed for her oil paint and pastel po
rtraits, she for his million photographs.

  I was caught off guard by how happy her happiness made me.

  And how it incensed Katiana. They skulked in the art room when Kira worked on the mural, and they stalked around the cafeteria like unfixed cats, marking their territory and glaring at anyone who did not fall in line, including and especially the four of us—Elliot, Kira, Sean, and me—eating together in the lunchroom once the mural was complete.

  “Aren’t they exhausted, monitoring your every movement like that?” I asked. “Is it bonkers with them in art class?”

  “We’re getting better at ignoring them,” Elliot said.

  “They spend a lot of time in the corner talking about how paint is a worthless medium and making these sculpted wire things, kind of like a nest all tangled and strung with colored glass, suspended from the ceiling? Which, I mean…they’re really beautiful, to be honest.” She stole a few chips from Elliot’s plate and sat there chewing while we all stared at her. She looked up. “What?”

  “Teach me your ways,” sighed Sean, who had stopped tutoring or even speaking to Katiana the moment I told him they’d been torturing Kira. He never asked me for evidentiary details, just wholly believed my word and was now actively pissed off at them on Kira’s behalf.

  It was things like that—my joy in Kira’s happiness, her and Sean’s constant unquestioning belief that I was always telling the truth—that made me wish, for brief moments, that I was not aging out. That I could somehow stay, even just a little while longer. Time was flying.

  “I mean,” Elliot said, “you’re not wrong about the wire things. But it’s hard for me to appreciate the beauty in anything even remotely related to Katiana when they’re such…”

  “Soulless monsters?” Kira said. “Oh, for sure. In perpetuity.”

  There’s my girl.

  She smiled. “I think I’m just too busy—and dare I say, happy—to give a shit.”