Shadow Child

by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

  Breathe, I told myself.

  “Please. She’s my sister.” I dropped the phone back into the cradle and backed up until I could feel the comfort of the wall behind me. “She’s my sister,” I said again to no one.

  Across the room, I saw that someone had shoved aside my heavy curtains. Through my large, unblinking windows, I had a clear view of the elevated subway tracks. Washed in the struggling, cellophane light of the overhead lamps, the platform was mostly empty at this time of night. None of the people waiting on the downtown platform were looking toward me. Yet.

  Had Kei been the one to open the curtains? Had the perpetrator looked in and targeted her that way? Once it was night, my fourth-floor apartment was a beacon in the darkness. Any one of the shifting mass of commuters could look straight in at me. He might have watched me regularly if I was on his usual route, might have stepped off the train to see me drift from one window to the other as I washed my dishes or read a book any night of the week.

  On impulse, I pulled the curtains shut, but it was too late. Now that he had been here, inside my private spaces, I’d never be able to get him out. It wasn’t the kind of invasion I had imagined up to that point: a physical confrontation I could avoid with my double-locked doors.

  The phone rang again. The perpetrator, I thought, with another flash of panic. No one ever called me; I only had a telephone number because I needed it to get electricity and gas. As I put the receiver to my ear and heard no voice but the distant, almost otherworldly, static in the earpiece, I had the strangest thought: my mother.

  My mother was here. Somewhere in the phone. She’d come back to me. I waited to hear her curl the tail of her sentence up and into a question, just as always. What would she say to me? I had been waiting for her for so long.

  “Hello?” I ventured into the silence. Mama? stayed on the tip of my tongue.

  The static clicked off then and I could hear a male voice in mid-shout through the handset that also doubled as the building intercom.

  The police.

  I buzzed them in, then listened to their shoes clomp and the chatter of their walkie-talkies. There were two on the third floor already and more coming up the stairs. By the time the hall had emptied into my apartment, there were six officers, bumping into each other as they tried to avoid touching my things. I watched them separate—two down the hall toward the sound of the shower, while the others headed to the roof or down to the basement laundry room looking for clues, witnesses, the perpetrator. I took a breath as the activity eased, and then the sole female officer moved forward. I read her name tag: DETECTIVE LYNCH. She had short, badly permed hair, and about forty pounds on me.

  “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  I was her duty then: a woman, an English speaker. “You are…?” she prompted.

  “Hana. Hanako Swanson.”

  “You’re the one who called? Did you see what happened? Who are we looking for?”

  Her questions piled on top of each other so fast I didn’t know whether to nod or shake my head. I must have looked entirely useless, because once she figured out that I’d just come home and discovered Kei’s body, she led me out to the hall so I wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene. I was relieved to get away from the bustle, and, despite her assumption that I was an uncomprehending foreigner, I was grateful when she sat me down on the wide marble stairs just outside my apartment door and took out her notebook. I could feel myself shaking. I grabbed my elbows, hugging myself as she asked for my name, again. My address. Kei’s name.

  Hanako—I spelled it. Keiko—I spelled that too. But then the questions got murkier. Had I touched anything? What was out of place when I walked in? Who knew Kei was here?

  There was nothing I hadn’t touched, I realized. The leftovers I had tampered with, and Kei’s strewn clothing…they could have been decisive clues. And the shower: I had obliterated any fingerprints that would have been on the faucets. But I’d been in a daze, surely understandable; there was no reason to volunteer my stupidity. No, I kept saying, to myself as much as to the detective. No. No. The words echoed in my mind, threatening to take on a tune.

  The ambulance stretcher arrived shortly after the police did. Two paramedics carried it, hanging vertically between them; two black bands strapping the sheets down so they wouldn’t slide off the backboard as the paramedics jogged up the stairs. Both of the men were loaded down with black bags of different sizes. All that equipment just for Kei.

  Why was Kei visiting in the first place? Detective Lynch was asking. I pulled my attention away from the medics, but I had no answer for her. Wasn’t that what I’d been dreading to learn this whole time? Now, what if I never could?

  The detective was still talking. Did she take drugs? Might she have slipped in the shower?

  I reminded myself that she hadn’t seen Kei or her bruises.

  “You sure she knows no one here?” She flipped through her notes. “No one who would want to hurt her?”

  Then another cop joined us.

  “Detective Tapper,” he said to me by way of introduction. “Which one’s her purse? She must’ve had one—you said she’d just got off the plane, right?”

  “I—” I tried to imagine my sister—much younger in my mind. She was cramming what little she needed into her pockets. “She doesn’t…I don’t think she carries a purse.”

  “She is your sister, isn’t she?” He raised an eyebrow. “I mean, she must have a wallet. A plane ticket. Don’t you girls always have some place to put your lipstick and a bit of gum?”

  Gum, I thought, guilty. Did Kei chew gum? What was wrong with my brain?

  “Sir, in here!” Another officer leaned out of my doorway. “The window.”

  I lost their attention immediately. As quick as that, we were back inside my apartment, and I was hovering near my bedroom door as one of the officers pointed to a dusting of white paint chips beneath the window ledge by the fire escape.

  “That you?” he asked me.

  “What?”

  “Did you open it?”

  “No.” It was true.

  He turned to confer with the detective. “Could be like the others.”

  “Others?” That was my voice.

  “Break-ins in the neighborhood. Small stuff usually, jewelry, cash—easy to carry. Guy comes in off the fire escape. Did you leave it open?”

  Did he really think I would leave my apartment open? Had he failed to make a connection between the relative safety of my neighborhood and the floor bolt braced through my front door? My building was on a quiet side street, only ten blocks long, and next door to a theological seminary, a park, and a church. It was less grimy, less bustling, than the bodega-lined Broadway it was tucked behind, and so inconsequential that some people who’d lived on the Upper West Side forever didn’t even know it was there. But still, it was New York and nothing was safe.

  “There’s a gate on the window,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe he opened it himself, after, you know, whatever happened in the bathroom with her.”

  My chest caved right then, and I could feel myself slipping. I held on to my head with both hands as if they could keep me from losing my mind. That was why there were so many policemen. They were chasing a guy…and he did this to women. In my neighborhood.

  When I didn’t answer, he waved his hand at the sill, showing me that the window sash was indeed lifted, just a crack. He slid a pencil through the opening and pushed at the security gate. It swung outward at his touch. “Painted shut, looks like. See these flakes? That’s all that was keeping anyone from getting in. These old buildings are like that. You probably didn’t know.”

  “No.” I was still trying to scrub my mind of all the new images they had just evoked. It could have happened to me, I realized. My security gate…how had it opened? I had checked it, obsessively, just like all the other locks, hadn’t I?

  Except I couldn’t remember.

  “Robbery,” Detective Tapper said,
with some consideration. “Did she bring anything else with her? Anything someone might have been looking for?”

  My eyes fell on Mama’s case, though there was nothing in it that a stranger would want. There was nothing in it for me, either, except old pain. But I didn’t want them pawing through it, so I kept turning my head, hoping they wouldn’t notice my hesitation. I kept turning, until I had spun myself around.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t have anything valuable. Just the sister’s purse, then. I don’t suppose you can describe it?”

  “No. I said that already. About the purse. I don’t know.” I could feel myself breaking, but they didn’t have to know that there was no way I could know any of these answers, having been outside of Kei’s life for so long.

  Detective Lynch was explaining that they would be dusting my apartment for fingerprints and I would be more comfortable spending the night elsewhere when Kei was wheeled, feet first, out of the bathroom.

  “Kei!” I said. “Oh, thank God!”

  I expected her to answer. I assumed they had woken her up. They’d had so much time to do it. She was tied down on the stretcher, tucked under a layer of blankets mounded with meters and monitors. What was left of her braid had been dumped into a wet pile beside her head. Between her closed eyes and the oxygen mask, most of her face was covered. Her neck was braced.

  When Kei didn’t respond, I turned to Detective Lynch. “She’s going to be okay?” I asked, as if she could know. She just looked at me, with the first real sympathy I’d gotten since they’d arrived.

  We stepped aside as they maneuvered Kei into the hall in a cloud of radio static. “I’ll drop you at the hospital. We can finish up in the car.”

  “The hospital,” I repeated. Hospitals have never been my favorite places—less so since I spent my eighteenth birthday in an ICU.

  To her credit, Detective Lynch noticed my expression. “I can drop you with a friend instead. If you want someone to be with you. Who will you stay with, in case we have more questions for you tomorrow? Where will you be?”

  There was no one. She must have seen that in my expression, too.

  “Friends? From college? A teacher?”

  I shook my head, turning away to find my own purse. Since I had stopped meeting Dr. Shawe, the shrink Arnie had insisted I see in exchange for my college tuition, the only person who ever even checked on me was my boss, and I certainly wasn’t getting Nick involved in this mess. After my own turned against me, I’d had enough “family” to last a lifetime.

  I grabbed a sweater and my shoes, hoping she wouldn’t ask anything more. I lived a solitary life, but the truth was, I kept myself separate by choice. Since Mama died, I’d allowed myself to be friendly with some of the waitresses, especially the ones who worked semester to semester, because I could count on them to leave. We could share a laugh, but we didn’t get together outside of work, or exchange telephone numbers. It was a relief to me.

  When you have no one, no one can hurt you.

  But of course, a detective wasn’t going to let that drop so easily. The fact that there was no one waiting to take me in at one a.m. took on a significance it didn’t actually have. I wasn’t going to explain how I’d never really had friends, not until high school, and then the worst had happened. As we walked down the stairs to the lobby, she asked, “What about you?”

  “I’m all right, thanks.”

  “I meant, is there anyone you know who might have done this? Someone who might have a bone to pick with you?”

  “No.” It was shocking to think of.

  “Any guys in your classes look at you funny? Maybe a special fellow?”

  “No. I—” There had never been anyone after Russell. I couldn’t even bear to be alone with my own body, much less become intimate with someone else. “No fellows. Boyfriends. No. No friends. I mean, I graduated two years ago.”

  “Work, then. Any strange characters—”

  “No.” I cut her off. “I don’t work.”

  The lie just burst out of me—I had to stop her from speaking. Then I saw her face. I had already told her I worked at a restaurant and had been forced to wait tables that night until it closed. And now I realized that my story of being required to stay would be very easy to check. “I mean…it’s a restaurant, not a real job…Not like I’m in anyone’s way for a promotion. I’m in the back mostly, doing the books, ordering the supplies, and making sure the shifts are covered. Most of the day, I’m completely alone. I only wait tables sometimes, if I want to, which is almost never, really. Tonight was an exception. But no one there would ever…I’m mean, I’ve never even dumped a pot of coffee into someone’s lap!” I was babbling, but only because it seemed less peculiar than the truth. I pulled the sleeves of my sweater down over my wrists so she couldn’t see my skin. An old reflex. Panic bubbled in my throat, though whether it was because of the detective’s skeptical expression or the suggestion that I could have been the target, I didn’t know. How could I admit to her that I’d spent years making myself invisible? No one even whistled at me on the street.

  It was then I remembered the double take. Kei and I got them all the time when we were growing up.

  “Oh my God,” I said, looking around at the empty lobby. “I know who it was. I walked right into him when I came home.”

  It was a gift, and I could feel the rush of thanks that ran through my body. I had something to offer after all.

  Detective Lynch picked up her walkie-talkie, ready to broadcast his description. “What did he look like?”

  “I—”

  I couldn’t quite see him, though he had been standing right in front of me. I took in the black marble-tiled floor and the wavering light from the fluorescents above. Color, could I see any color in his clothing? “Normal clothes, maybe? He was about my height. Maybe a little taller. Average height. Not heavy. You know, ah—a normal build.”

  She was waiting.

  “He—” I couldn’t say I didn’t know. I walked toward the vestibule, as if being there could help me. “It was the look he gave me. I know it was him. The way he stared at me…it was like I had just risen from the dead.”

  “What did he look like?” she repeated.

  “Ah…” I closed my eyes to dredge up his face. I didn’t have the words to describe him, not for even the things I could almost remember. How do you describe a nose, if it’s a normal nose? What about eyes that aren’t squinty, or bulging, or ringed in black?

  The more I pushed, the greater my sense that I knew him. He was hovering outside of my reach.

  After a moment of silence, fingers pressed to my forehead, I finally came up with a word. “White?”

  The word dropped between us: belly up, unmoving. It was my only offering, after destroying the crime scene, but it wasn’t what she wanted. I searched for something more, a description that would please her, but I couldn’t make up the kind of bad guy she would recognize. “Maybe…swarthy?”

  “Swarthy.” She mouthed the word like she didn’t know what it meant, but in this case, other than not blond, I couldn’t help her.

  She left me…I felt panic rising and looked to Detective Lynch to help ground me before my worries could gain enough momentum to carry me away. Who knew how I must have appeared to her, in midargument with my inner demons?

  Her expression gave me more than an inkling. She put the walkie-talkie down.

  1942

  There were not many other people waiting on the train platform. Lillie smiled at two women she knew from church, but they turned away. Donald was furious for her. “How couldn’t they know you?” He was right. She and Donald were the only two Japanese in this town, a nub in the rough center of hundreds of acres of farms. She’d been the only until he arrived, a passenger on the bus that broke down near their church. A broken axle, and he stayed. By Christmas he’d proposed. Until Donald, Lillie had never had a mirror held constantly to her face, and she was still not used to seeing herself through his eyes.

  Once t
hey were settled on the train, with their bags stacked around their feet and in their laps, a conductor came through the aisle, cheerfully checking people’s tickets. When he got to their seats, he looked at the two of them in mild alarm.

  —You’re going in the wrong direction, he said.

  Lillie wasn’t sure what he meant—it was true they were facing the caboose—until he continued, “Once we pass into the restricted zone, you won’t be able to leave.”

  Donald’s eyes flashed as he retorted, “We’re fine, thank you.”

  And there was her choice: to believe in her husband or a stranger. Donald would consider no alternative: He was riding to his parents’ rescue. “It’s us against them,” he had been saying for weeks. Lillie understood who “us” was. She’d been having trouble with “them.” She was American: born here, dropped on her parents’ doorstep when she was only a few days old. She’d grown up in the home of a preacher. She’d taught the children music and led the Sunday choir. Surely that would prove she was no enemy to the people around her. But now, as she thought about the women on the platform, she wondered if the smiles she got when she passed through the congregation had always been as thin as they’d become since December.

  Lillie could tell by the set of Donald’s tight mouth that he didn’t want to talk about the ticket taker’s warning, so she turned back to the window as the train chugged on. When they finally crossed the city limits, she felt a mild nausea building after several hours of jostling and lurching backward on the swaying train. A pair of men in uniform whose smiles were far less friendly came through asking for their travel permits.

  Donald pretended not to understand their question. Even if he had been aware they needed permits, Lillie felt pretty certain Donald would have rejected the notion that the government could tell them where they could go. Her husband was an idealist but also stubborn; he liked to tease her that she was afraid enough for both of them. She let her hand creep toward his lap, and one of the men may have seen it because he made a crack about how it was easier to round the Japs up all together in one place anyway before he hitched his head in the direction of the door and they left Lillie and Donald alone.