After that, my only true protection was to purge my life of feeling, and empty my apartment of all reflection. Kei had vanished, and so would I. But everywhere I turned I saw her anyway, and myself.
Exhaustion almost felled me then. Somehow, I’d found the strength to pick up my mother’s case and place it, righted, on the nightstand by my bed, but I was so tired, I barely felt the piece of jade I was clutching in my hand. I pulled the hand-sewn quilt I always kept at the foot of my mattress tight around my shoulders. I wanted to curl up under it and take shelter beneath the red plumeria silhouettes on their white background. Instead, I traced the almost invisible trail of stitches that coddled the petals, encroached on the pistils and sketched each spiraling, yin-and-yang leaf in all directions.
This was my only inheritance. The only thing I cared about, and even this Kei had tainted. My mother’s stitches. Her final gift to me.
But then I had another thought. I had been right about the shower. Kei hadn’t been ignoring me since I walked in. We still had the chance to start over, to begin again. That was what I thought: that there might still be a moment of welcome, a chance to simply be in each other’s company. My desire for it surprised me, bittersweet in its impossibility, but still, palpably, there.
I got up and tapped gently on the bathroom door. “Kei?”
I had been home for about fifteen minutes by that time. My sister had always loved long, hot showers, a source of constant fights when my mother was lucid. It wasn’t just the cesspool overflowing, or the bright orange fat from Arnie’s Portuguese sausages climbing the walls of the kitchen sink while my mother waited to wash the dishes. Every morning, when Kei emerged from the bathroom, the hot water tank was empty. This went on until we were about thirteen, when, one day, my mother decided to clean up from breakfast while Kei was showering and discovered that by turning the cold water on, she could burn Kei—just a little, but enough to remind her that her time was up. Standing outside my New York bathroom, the sudden memory seemed funny—my sister’s squawk, the smile on my mother’s face that only I could see.
I smiled to myself and knocked again, a louder warning, and opened the door.
The light was off. I turned it on. The warm embrace of Kei’s shower didn’t rush to greet me; the room was cold.
The shower curtain was closed.
“You good, eh?” I asked Kei. I was doing my best: welcoming her in her own language—the pidgin she’d perfected in high school. I drew the curtain, imagining her face bright and open under the stream of water.
All the signs I missed now fairly scream at me, but I saw none of them. I’d convinced myself she was simply washing shampoo from her hair.
Or maybe I did see the signs. Maybe by then, in the face of Kei’s silence, in the room that had been dark, after so much time, I knew what I would see. I knew enough to draw the curtain, and when I did, there was no question.
My sister was lying, naked, on the bottom of the porcelain tub. Forgotten water sprayed onto her pelvis: beading her breasts, running down her belly and thighs. The tub was clear, clean; there was no blood. An inch or two of water had pooled around her, held there by a heel neatly plugging the drain. The rest of that foot flopped on its side, wrenched out of the plane of her body at the ankle, her wide, almost triangular feet looking all the more incongruous for pointing in the wrong direction. Her arms lay gracefully against her hips, palms cupped as though they had once held something too fragile to trust on its own.
I knew that body like it was mine. It was the body that would have been mine, without my scars. A long, purpling bruise pressed into Kei’s ribs under her left breast, unnaturally crisp and thin. I thought, unaccountably, of hara-kiri, though it was not a blade cut. The rest of her skin was smooth, golden down to the nested black-and-white triangles over her pubic bone. She looked peaceful, except for the necklace of marks smudged incompletely into the base of her throat, dawning bruises in varying inks of red and blue.
And above her neck, my own face floated in a long, unraveling braid of dark seaweed just out of the water. The same egg-shaped head; my own stubby, unsophisticated nose. With her eyes closed, you could not see they were the exact opposite of my own—her left one brown, her right one tawny—but her full, bow-shaped lips were still mine, her barely sketched chin. Even her nails, which we learned to bite on the same day, let grow on the same day, and, I saw, though we were now living in different worlds, had both begun biting again.
My sister and I were more than identical; we had been cleaved down the middle, and each of us, against all odds, had sprung to life whole.
How many times had Kei wished me dead? In how many ways had she tried to make those wishes come true? For a flash of a moment, I feared that it was my body lying in the cold, rushing water. My spirit hovering to say its final good-byes.
But as I moved, I saw my own hand rising. My skin, white-white, and so cold. I clenched my fists and could feel my bitten nails digging into my palms.
I was alive and standing. It was Kei’s shadow life that was over at last.
1942
They would be traveling light. How many times did he have to tell her? He said they had to be able to move quickly, slip onto trains, to keep a tight hand on their luggage. When they got to Los Angeles, Lillie would need to carry her own cases, maybe even long distances. The whole world was at war now, and Donald had heard rumors. Who knew if they would be allowed onto a bus, or whether cabs were really refusing passage to people like them?
The original plan had been to travel east, making the long trip across the country to New York for their honeymoon. But when Donald got his mother’s response to his telegram, they had decided to head south to be with his parents, whom Lillie had never met. She could tell he was worried. After that one message, there had been no word.
He had written that he was married.
His mother had replied: Come home.
There was no room for china—too breakable. The indigo blue sugar bowl Lillie’s mother had given her was small enough and light, and it would be a nice gift for his own mother, he said, but there was certainly no room for the hand-embroidered quilt. It wasn’t a real quilt, she’d protested, just a bedspread with light batting. Her mother had been working on it for months, creating patterns in bead, bullion, and bonnet stitches. The patterns, all in white, swirled off the ramps of paisley cocoons with flowers inside them, no two the same. The paisleys themselves nestled like flipped twins.
—Your trousseau. Her mother had smiled when Lillie exclaimed over the tiny stitches.
It could have fit into any reasonable trunk with room to spare, but they would take no trunks, not now. It was no longer the right time for the young bride to set up her new home. Besides, Donald didn’t believe in possessions. He believed in her—that was what he told her—and he promised that as long as they were together he would take care of everything she would ever need. But he also believed in war—everyone was talking about Pearl Harbor and enemy aliens and espionage nets and some “fifth column”—and that made Lillie nervous. She’d felt so safe here in their home that was barely a town, with her parents’ protection. What was she doing, letting him drag her into a city where simply having a face like hers made her a threat?
Watching her pack, Lillie’s mother couldn’t shake her own sadness. She had been preparing for Lillie’s wedding for years. She wanted to send her daughter into the world with home around her.
She smoothed the quilt in her lap, still folded, unwilling to lay it back on Lillie’s bed.
—We’ll be back soon, Mother. And then we’ll go on to New York, just as we planned. Donald will finish school and we’ll start our own family. I promise I’ll send for everything just as soon as we have a home.
She was twenty-two, her mother reminded herself. Old enough to make her own mistakes.
—Why can’t he go himself, if he has to move so quickly? Lillie’s mother heard the waver in her voice and waited for it to steady. Los Angeles might only be a few
hours’ ride away, but it felt like another world. “It’s not safe there.”
There was nothing to say to this. It was hard to know what was really happening there now that America was officially at war with Japan, but the rumors about the curfews and the FBI raids weren’t comforting.
But Donald’s mother had been ill, and he wanted to be with his parents, to bring his new happiness with Lillie into their lives. They might even pack his parents up and take them East, too, if the city was really as unfriendly to the Japanese as Donald said it was. What a gift that would be from the new bride to her in-laws, Lillie thought: a home, a hand extended, and later, a trousseau. She wasn’t losing a mother, she told herself; she was gaining a new one.
She imagined herself in a family full of people who looked like she did.
—It was…Now Lillie’s mother’s voice did crack. Crying softly, but this time without embarrassment, she said, “The quilt was supposed to bring you luck.”
—Mother.
Lillie had slept beneath this quilt for the last two weeks since the wedding, and each night, she fell into a deep sleep in Donald’s arms. She would wrap herself in it if she could and wear it on the train. But she didn’t want to anger her husband now. Why couldn’t her mother understand? Why did she have to make their parting so difficult?
Their temporary parting, Lillie corrected herself. It was the first time since she had been left on the steps of their church as a nameless infant that Lillie would leave her mother’s sight for longer than a night of sleep.
Now, she put her arm around her mother. Foster mother, she reminded herself. But she’d never thought much of their differences until she met Donald. Her mother’s golden hair was shot with silver now, and her skin was like soft tissue.
—I’m my own good luck charm. Isn’t that what you always tell me? I’m the one who brought the luck.
Lillie watched her mother flinch, each taking in the consequences of her words.
What had happened to their simple days? Lillie wondered. When Donald first showed up in their town, a handsome stranger with a face like hers; when he was courting her, teaching her how to pick up rice with the ends of sticks and then throwing up his hands, but with a smile, when she tossed them down, when she declared she didn’t know what made less sense, eating with sticks when you had a drawer of perfectly good forks in the sideboard or trying to corral all those tiny little grains into a mouthful that wouldn’t feed a baby bird. Those days, her mother would laugh at Lillie’s nice young man, and he would give up and eat the potatoes she served them. And at night, when Donald and Lillie sat on the porch together and she pointed out the stars, he whispered:
—I’ll show you the world someday. Your true home. Your people.
It sounded like the promise she had been longing to hear all her life. Now, surrounded by the home she’d chosen not to question until now, and her marriage, too, she felt she could be anything. Go anywhere. She was complete for the first time.
The time had come to see the world.
Lillie ran her hand one last time over her mother’s stitches. “Let’s put it back on the bed, Mother, and then come outside with me.”
Lillie’s mother shook her head. “We’ll leave it in the trunk. That way, it’ll be ready when you return.”
Their four hands lifted the light offering, balancing it back and forth between them, then placed it into the trunk together, their hands brushing as they patted it into place. Her mother stood, heavily. “Just to the door.”
When Lillie stepped past her mother onto the front porch, where her father and husband were waiting, she took in the rolling grass of the California prairie for the last time, and their little white church, next to their little white house, bobbing in a sea of green. The congregation had come on Sunday, and the hymns that Lillie always loved to sing were sad, but beautiful. There were no neighbors to say good-bye to.
Her mother hovered in the doorway as if she might dissolve if she stepped away from the house. Her father hugged her, stiff and oddly formal, and then handed his daughter over to the husband God gave her.
—It’s all a mistake, her father assured them. “Don’t worry about what the newspapers are saying. They’ll realize soon enough that you aren’t the Japs they should be worrying about.”
Japs. Lillie knew what her father meant, but Donald flinched at the word and she realized that she had, too. She was a Jap now. Even her father had said it. She’d become an enemy alien, when she had always only been herself.
Donald picked up her bag and thanked her parents for their hospitality. He addressed the preacher and his wife formally, and for a moment, when the words “Mother” and “Father” refused to cross his lips, Lillie wondered if her mother wasn’t right after all: He could travel much lighter to check on his mother if he was alone.
But the choice had been made, and her mother was holding her, her tears falling into her daughter’s black hair. Lillie felt her own tears rise in response. She blinked them away. It was supposed to be a happy day, the first real day of her adulthood. Still, she hugged her mother tight, unwilling to be the one who let go first. They clutched each other until Donald gently touched her arm.
—Don’t forget us, her mother whispered, finally releasing her grip. They stared at each other.
Lillie’s father patted his wife’s back awkwardly. “You’ll be just fine,” he said again, directing his words to Lillie. “War or no war. If you can’t make it on your own in the world, we didn’t do our job right when we raised you.” He turned to his wife, gave her a pained smile. “Right, Mother? Children are supposed to leave. She is strong. She’s beautiful…”
—Wait, Lillie’s mother said. “Take this.” She unclenched her fist and held out her balled, damp handkerchief. “See? Light and luck. You remember the song? She’ll bring light and luck wherever she goes. And it won’t take up any room.”
Lillie looked at the tiny pointed stars her mother had crocheted herself—snowflakes, as Donald would later correct her, perfect for a winter wonderland on the East Coast. She unbuckled the clasp on her leather handcase and tucked it inside.
Lillie’s mother collected herself and spoke one last time, as the preacher put his arm around her shoulders. “Wherever you are in the world, even if you never come home, promise me you won’t forget we love you.”
The future that her mother released her into slipped beneath Lillie like a startled horse. Never come home? They’d return in just a few weeks, as her mother well knew. Lillie almost spoke, to insist on it, but something in her mother’s face stopped her. Instead, she promised, and waved good-bye as she walked, backward, to the waiting car.
Hana
Nothing that happened that night will stay where it belongs in my mind. It’s a kaleidoscope. Forever shifting, without end. The shards of broken time: No matter how fast I spin my mind, I cannot fit them into the picture that I used to carry.
When I found Kei, what did I do? I knelt beside her. I know I called her name. I can still feel the spray, light on my face when I bent over; I can watch it grow on my lashes as I wonder what to do. I think my hair spilled over the side of the basin and grazed Kei’s rib cage. And then I watched myself move—slowly—my hands floating away from my body as if the world no longer ran on time.
I reached out, expecting to help her, but instead, I touched Kei’s neck. I felt her heartbeat quite clearly. Thank God—she was alive. As the tips of my fingers brushed her bruises, my hands felt disconnected, hovering over her, trying to make sense of those ugly, brutal marks. I flipped my hands thumbs up; I overlapped them; I faced them off against each other, nail to nail. Impossible.
How could someone have hurt my sister?
What I remember is this: her heartbeat in my temples, and the singsong running through my mind. She left me, she left me not. She left me, she left me not. She left me…
“Kei,” I whispered. It bewildered me to look down at her, her adulthood washed off her, as if the years between us had never
happened. But somehow that made it harder, not easier, to accept that it really was her. “It’s me. Hana. Can you sit up?”
I thought then about lifting her so she didn’t drown, but what if a rib was broken? What if I punctured her lung? I raised my hands, then dropped them. I stood, then knelt, then stood again. I was useless, unable to change even the angle of her torso. All I could do was turn the water off.
And then turn it back on once I realized my mistake.
Evidence. I was tampering with evidence. And then tampering again in my effort to rectify the problem because my mind could not keep up. Evidence meant police. And police? I left Kei with the water running and called 911.
Time started moving forward then. A woman’s voice answered. I told her what I knew, that my sister was unconscious. I could hear her typing as she talked.
“Is she breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Bleeding?”
“No. I don’t think so. Please, can’t you send someone?”
“They’re on their way. Stay with me. How long since it happened?”
I knew she was trying to be helpful, but I couldn’t bear to think of the hours Kei could have been lying there while I wasted time at the restaurant. “Please…” I said, letting whatever words that might have wanted to follow fade before they could be formed.
She continued typing in the background. “Any medications?”
It took me a moment to understand what she was asking. “She was attacked. I think. I don’t know.”
“Is the perpetrator there?”
“I don’t—no.” The perpetrator? I spun around, as if her words could conjure up a figure in the hallway. An attacker, here in the room with me still.
If he was here, was I safer looking for him, or letting him hide until the police arrived? What was I thinking? The hallway was empty. I was alone, of course. My apartment was so tiny, and I had been in every room.
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