Right Where You Left Me
Page 13
We create two stacks, the three rejections and then the acceptances: NYU, Emerson, Berkeley, and San Francisco State. So my choices are New York City, Boston, the East Bay, or running and biking distance from home.
She hugs me again. “Your dad would be very proud of you. I am too. Sick of Chinese food yet? I don’t have anything for dinner, and I know you’re tired of pastries. Mu shu?”
“Potstickers, too.”
I re-read the acceptance letters as Mom calls the restaurant. She’s ordering too much food. We’ll live off leftovers.
* * *
A few hours later, Mom and I curl up on the couch and watch another sci-fi movie, one that didn’t tempt us when in the theaters. I polish off the last of the pot stickers, now cold. A text came in from Emma a while ago, but I want to be with Mom. Emma probably came home to her college letters too. Suddenly, someone knocks on the door, fast and determined. When Mom answers, Raj Singh comes in. He’s furious. Shaking mad.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he shouts. He stares at me, his eyes disapproving. He looks at Mom. “Has she told you? Change the channel—it’s all over the news.”
I bolt upright. My stomach clenches. I practically double over. I feel like someone has crushed my middle. I reach for my phone and read Emma’s text.
He posted it. CALL ME!!!!!
It’s not Dad on the TV screen this time, or Pascal. It’s me, with tears running down my cheeks. Mom’s eyes volley between me and the TV, confused. I see her hands shake as she works the remote. My face is everywhere. When she turns to meet my eyes, it’s like I’m the terrorist. I never thought she’d look at me so furiously, with so much anger and blame. I stare at the floor.
Uncle Miguel doesn’t knock. He rushes past Raj without a word and stands in front of the TV. “Lottie, what the hell were you thinking?”
“I didn’t do it!”
Raj folds his arms across his chest. “You’re on television saying your government is failing to bring your father home. What exactly didn’t you do?”
“I made the video, but no one was supposed to do anything until I talked to you, Uncle Miguel. I thought you would know what we could do with it.”
Raj’s phone rings. He declines the call and continues to perfect his angry stare. “You were supposed to be discreet. You were supposed to let the FBI handle this. Did you really think this would help? These people aren’t reasonable. They’re not going to release Jeremiah because a kid makes a video. They’ll probably retaliate in some way. They may beat him, or worse.”
“That’s enough,” Uncle Miguel says in the most forceful tone I’ve ever heard him use.
I look at Raj and Uncle Miguel. Retaliate by beating Dad? They’d do that because of me? It was supposed to be in the news to help Dad, not hurt him. I swallow hard and try to breathe. What have I done?
“Miguel, please move,” Mom says in her scary quiet voice. “I haven’t heard what my daughter has to say on national television.”
“Mom—”
She raises her hand. “You don’t say a word.” She doesn’t even look at me.
I want to cover my ears and run out of the apartment.
Uncle Miguel doesn’t take his eyes off me. It’s like shame replaced the blood in my body, and I feel it seep into every organ, every joint, every muscle.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Who posted it, then?” Raj asks. “If you didn’t do it, who did?”
“Someone on the school paper. I don’t know him as well as I thought I did.”
How could he do this to me? I won’t say it was Josh. I won’t turn him in, but I won’t trust him again. Ever.
“Charlotte,” Mom says. I’m prepared for her to cry or even yell. I brace myself. “Go to your room. We’ll discuss the situation and let you know how it will be handled. You’re grounded. You are not to leave this apartment. You are not going for a run, you are not going down to the bakery. You are not going anywhere.”
“And you will not speak to a member of the media, including the ace reporters on the school paper,” Uncle Miguel says.
I look at each of them: Mom, Uncle Miguel, and Raj. The magnitude of my mistake is clear. Just this afternoon, I felt relieved knowing that I didn’t have to deal with this alone. Yet here I am now. Exactly that. Entirely alone.
Twenty-Five
I delete Josh’s texts without reading them.
I want to call Emma, hear her voice, tell her how right she was. But I worry that if Mom hears me on the phone, she’ll take it away and forbid me from talking to anyone.
I stick to texting. Emma is kind and generous. She doesn’t say, I told you so. Instead, she tells me that her acceptance letters arrived too.
We compare notes. She didn’t get into USC or Northwestern either. Or Berkeley. She got into Brown, though, and I know that’s her favorite.
We’ll figure it out, we promise. There are bigger and more pressing issues at hand, like pissing off the FBI. Way to alienate the United States government.
I can’t bring myself to read the news. If I see my face on TV, I’ll destroy either the screen or my face. A toss-up.
Josh is persistent, but not more than me. I stop counting the number of texts. I delete each one as soon as I see his name. I don’t tell Emma this. Most of me feels betrayed, but part of me is still protective. I don’t know why.
I wonder if this is how Mom feels right now, the way I feel about Josh. Confused and hurt and a particular kind of angry that I’ve never felt before.
I hear voices and the door and then quiet. I lie on the floor now, in the nest Emma and I made. I snuggle under the pile of down comforters, well aware that I’m in exile.
Mom finally opens my bedroom door. She seems hurt and exhausted, and she still won’t look at me. “Give me your phone,” she says.
“But, Mom—”
“Give it to me, Charlotte. Teper’. Now.”
I place it into her hand. Now I have nothing to hold on to. I can’t cradle Josh’s cannonball rock. Not anymore. I should hurl it out the window, except with my luck, it’d strike an old lady shopping for produce at the Chinese market across the street.
“No more talking to anyone. You and your friends have done enough damage. Wait until tomorrow when Raj comes back. He wants to meet with us after they have an idea of the ramifications. I never thought you’d be so foolish. I’m going to bed. Get some sleep.”
“Mom—”
“I don’t want to discuss this. I’m going to bed. You should too.”
She’s made it clear that I can’t leave the apartment or communicate with the outside world. Apparently, I can’t leave my room either.
She turns off my lights.
I close my eyes, not because I expect to sleep, but because it is the only thing I can bring myself to do.
Twenty-Six
She’s gone when I wake up. I smell apples and apricots. She’s downstairs with Tatya Nadine, baking as she details my sins.
Dad’s car keys are gone as well. She must think I’m a flight risk.
I want to shroud the TV in blankets. I can’t even watch a movie. I can’t stand the possibility of seeing my own face on the screen.
She’s brewed coffee, so she doesn’t completely hate me. Then again, she could have made it for Raj Singh and Uncle Miguel.
It’s unfair to compare my captivity to Dad’s, but I do. I wonder how he passes his time. Is he left alone for hours on end? Does he have anything to read? Aside from missing us, he must be going crazy knowing the Giants will start playing next month. He’s stuck in Eastern Europe, where they probably don’t give a shit about major league baseball.
I stretch like I’m going for a run.
I finish off the coffee.
I’m starving, but the kitchen is bare. I could go downstairs for breakfast. I’m sure that’s what Mom’s expecting, but I’m taking my imprisonment literally. Besides, shame still pumps through my veins.
The college packets still sit on the coffee table, but I can’t bring myself to think about my future when I’ve messed up the present so spectacularly. And publicly. So much for staying behind the camera.
I can’t get Raj’s words out of my head. The rebels may retaliate. They may hurt Dad for my stupid mistake. I imagine Dad sitting on that mattress, with triple the number of bruises blooming across his skin. A bloody face. Broken bones. If they hurt him, I’m responsible.
We have a 1,800-square-foot apartment. With the exception of my parents’ bedroom, I walk every inch.
My room is a mess. I could clean it, but I don’t want Mom to associate my grounding with anything positive. I’ll take responsibility for the video—not its airing, but its existence—but not for improving the conditions of my room.
That’s when I see it. She took my phone, but not my laptop.
The stairs squeak. The floor creaks. I’ll hear her approach, but she was clear: no communication with the outside world. I shut my door and burrow in my nest of blankets, leaving on the overhead light so the glowing blue hue of the computer won’t be so visible if she comes in unexpectedly.
My in-box contains 163 new messages, mostly from people I’ve never heard of before.
Emma sent a recap of college news: Isaac got into Columbia, Dartmouth, and Stanford. Not surprising, given his grades. She says she’ll call my mom today, after things quiet down in the bakery, ask if she can visit. She doesn’t mention Josh.
Four messages from him. I delete them all without opening them.
One from Megan. She spoke to Mom last night. She’s worried and is available if I need anyone to talk to. Have I considered broadcast journalism? She thinks I’m a natural in front of the camera. I never took her for someone who would type smiley faces in emails, not with her tattoos and a dozen earrings. She goes on to tell me that she shared my photos with Mr. Donoghue, the ones I left drying in the darkroom. Since she imagines I might be absent from school next week, she is assigning me an independent project—to distract me and keep me focused on something positive, she says. Create a photo essay that draws from personal experience, but not from the current situation with my father. Something personally or culturally significant. Be abstract. Use metaphor. Don’t rely on portraiture. Transcend yourself, she instructs. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Exile and homework.
I slide the laptop under my bed to keep it hidden from Mom.
My pictures of the bread, the piece with Mom’s message written on it, were different from anything I’ve ever taken. It wasn’t just that they were of an object; I knew that they captured emotion. I’d managed to take a photo of my feelings. The depth. Everyone tells me I overthink, but there was something about that morning, how I was rushed for time, worried about being late. More than that, though, I had confidence. Mom believed in me. She wanted me. She loved me. These are things we’re supposed to take for granted, but I never could—maybe never can—because of what happened with Lena. I’m the daughter who lived. That should put me in a winning position, but it doesn’t. No one can compete with grief. My baby sister will never grow up and make the stupid move of filming a video that could be considered treason.
That’s when it comes to me: the game I play with myself, how Mom is the ghost mother and I’m the potercha, the troubled spirit of a dead child. How we’re characters in Russian folklore.
I pull the book off my shelf, the illustrated one Mom used to read to me when I was little. It doesn’t take long to flip through the pages. I’ve always related to other stories, the ones about the Snow Maiden and the Firebird, but I haven’t considered this one before. Two daughters. One good and one bad. One who leaves and one who stays.
Twenty-Seven
A stepmother lived with two daughters, one her own and one her husband’s. Her love was unequal and cruel, just like in Cinderella. Every time she looked at her stepdaughter, she pictured her husband’s past, his first wife—his first and true love. She died in childbirth. He never recovered, not really. He carried a visible sadness. His new wife had hoped she could make his sorrow go away, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t bring him the same joy. Anger, at first as small as a stone, was born and grew with each passing year.
She blamed her stepdaughter, who was as beautiful and kind as her dead mother. The stepmother aimed all of her rage and resentment at the innocent girl, who grew up in a house of quiet fury.
The stepmother came up with a solution to her problem: banish her stepdaughter. If she couldn’t have her husband’s love, she could at least dispose of the girl.
Who knows how—magic or threats or intimidation—but the stepmother convinced her husband to abandon his child in the middle of the woods in the middle of the winter.
The father was a coward. His fear eclipsed love. He chose his wife over his own flesh and blood because he was too weak and too spineless to fight. As the stepmother watched, the father cried as he helped the girl, wearing a sheepskin, into the sleigh. Even though he wept as he drove to the field at the beginning of the woods, he still coaxed her out of the sleigh and left her there to die.
He was too ashamed to say good-bye. He didn’t look back as he returned to the house.
The girl, alone and devastated and terrified, stood in the ankle-deep snow.
The woods and the surrounding field belonged to Father Frost. The old man, with his long white beard, radiant crown, and layers of thick furs, had been watching the poor daughter’s fate. He didn’t want to scare her, so he walked slowly from the woods to the center of the field.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
She nodded. “Hello, Father Frost. Thank you for sharing your field with me.”
Father Frost, the King of Winter, was impressed by her gentle manners and kind heart. But he knew the girl wouldn’t survive long in the cold. He offered her a trunk filled with everything that could keep her warm: beautiful silk quilts, furs, and more clothes than she ever could have imagined. Of all the dresses, one stood out, a deep blue sarafan embroidered with silver thread and embellished with pearls.
She slipped on the dress, and the woods quieted at her beauty.
In the meantime, the stepmother, confident that the girl had frozen to death within hours, prepared the traditional funeral dishes. She ordered her husband to go fetch his dead daughter’s body and bring her back to be buried. The guests would come shortly.
Once more, the coward listened to his heartless wife and set off for the field.
The stepmother baked bread and made a rich stew before starting on cookies and a pie. From the kitchen window, she was astonished to see her husband and stepdaughter walk to the house. The girl was beautifully dressed and beaming with happiness. The father could barely carry the heavy trunk.
The woman rushed out, yelling at her husband to prepare the sleigh and drive her own daughter out to the field.
The husband obliged and abandoned his stepdaughter in the exact same spot.
Father Frost emerged from the woods again, assessing his new guest. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
She practically growled as she told him to go away and leave her alone.
Father Frost tried again, seeing the girl’s teeth rattle from the cold. She responded rudely to each of his kind questions. Father Frost grew angrier and angrier. What was wrong with this child? Finally, he gave up, leaving her to the snow.
Back at the house, the woman tossed out the funeral dishes and started to work on a celebratory meal. Soon, she was convinced, her daughter would return with an equally enormous fortune, if not an even bigger one. Perhaps a larger and heavier trunk.
She turned to her husband and commanded him to fetch her child. She set the table, plotting out her daughter’s future, thinking of all the eligible bachelors in the village. She spotted
the sleigh in the distance. She dried her hands and rushed to greet them. Her husband carried the frozen body of her daughter into the house. At last, the mother understood what she had done.
Twenty-Eight
By eleven o’clock, the fog appears to be growing thicker by the hour. I don’t want to shoot in black and white. I need color, but the only way to achieve what I want, that oversaturated Technicolor effect, is to go digital. That means removing the darkroom from the process, something I have a hard time giving up. Then again, it’s not like I’ll have access to the darkroom in the immediate future.
I have a printer and plenty of photo paper. I have my camera and laptop. I have what I need to complete Megan’s assignment.
Except for Mom’s beaded rose gown, everything is in the attic. A rope dangles from the hallway ceiling. It takes a couple of tries for me to yank hard enough to release the ladder, something Dad easily does with one hand.
Our flat may be cluttered, but the attic is pristine and organized. Mom’s trunks from Russia rest against neat stacks of crates and bins. I almost expect signage and labels. Grief does that, keeps things tidy. Up here, my parents preserve Lena through her belongings, some that were handed down to me.
I know what I need.
I empty one of Mom’s trunks of blankets and the kind of winter coats one would never use in California. I keep the quilt and put everything else aside.
There’s a bin full of clothes I never wore. Dresses for an infant, spanning the year in sizes. The nine- to twelve-month dresses still have their tags.
Pink and yellow and coral and peach. Layers of lace and frills. Those embroidered with gold thread were gifts from Russia, from aunties showering Mom with gifts.
I lay them one on top of the other, draping the dresses over the quilt, creating the illusion of Father Frost’s gift.
I took Mom’s gown but left her jewelry. That felt too private. Trespassing. Instead, I add Lena’s toys: a stuffed bunny, a rattle. They start as substitutes, but they are treasures in their own right. When I’m done, the trunk brims with riches, and except for the quilt and gown, all belonged to Lena.