Shadow Child

by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

  We are looking at his hair: silky gold and silver curls springing up so high he seems bigger than he is. We are looking at his skin. It’s gold too, with flecks, like dirt, especially on his nose and cheekbones, but also on his forearms and peeking between his pants and socks. Even his most secret parts have been damaged. Burned, by the sun.

  This is what Mama has always warned us about: Only the ones who wear white will survive.

  Arnie shrugs at us, tries a smile. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth bend and stretch, nudging his forehead up, exposing huge white teeth. We expect to see his skin rip, to peel off in sheets like in Mama’s stories. “So?” he barks again. “What are your names?” When we don’t answer, he drops down abruptly, his knees bouncing, so he’s on our level. “I’m Arnie.”

  “Koko,” we tell him, shocked.

  “Kei.” Mama is back. “And Hana.”

  Arnie grins, looks at us, and then he is up, adult again just as suddenly as he wasn’t. “So which is which?” he asks Mama. Our eyes grow wide, but she does not answer. These are the other things she calls us in those rare times when we are not “two girls.” When she is happy, the girl who is good is called Hana. But when she is angry, the bad one is Kei.

  In Mama’s hands, a round, scalloped tray with refreshments. A small folding table is tucked under her arm. We move to help, but Arnie is also moving. He flaps his arms and legs to stand and takes a bit of the tray.

  “No, no—” But it’s too late. The tray is rocking. When Arnie puts his hands beneath it, Mama lets go as if he’s just plucked a dream from the air.

  Once the table is set up, Arnie unloads the tray. There is tea, and juice in a tall glass. Two shallow bowls, one containing dull, wet peanuts and the other brown flower-shaped crackers flecked in black. There are several thin wafers in rice paper pouches. Another, even smaller dish that will hold the soggy peanut shells.

  This food. There is so much of it, and we’ve never seen it before.

  I missed you in town this week.

  When he’s finished unloading, Arnie lifts the tall glass in one hand and cups the other beneath it. He steps between the table and the pune’e, then turns, gauging the distance down before he sits square in the middle. We’re still in the chair, so Mama perches beside him since he doesn’t move to make more space. She is smiling.

  “What language are they speaking?” He nods at us. “Do they speak English?”

  “Hmm?” She’s shifting, trying to find the proper place. Closer to the edge. “Yes, English.”

  “Oh. Some of it sounds Japanese. I thought maybe—”

  Her head shakes. “I told you. I’m from California. American as apple pie.”

  Arnie thinks she’s funny. “Do they talk this way in school?”

  Whatever a school is, we don’t have one. We watch Arnie rake the flower crackers into his hand, then drop a few back into the dish before putting the rest in his mouth. He’s still shouting, occasionally making his barking laugh. He is saying we look like birds, so tiny. “Why don’t you eat the crackers?” he is saying. Fatten you up. His hands move from the food, to the back of the pune’e, to his knees, and once even to his head. Mama nods for him to continue speaking, still smiling, her eyes steady on him.

  “I could’ve worked for C. Brewer when I got here, but I can’t stand hierarchy,” Arnie is saying. “I had my fill of that in Pearl City. During the war. We’re all people, right? It doesn’t matter if we’re soldiers or what. Doesn’t matter if we’re haole or Chinese…Shouldn’t matter at all.”

  We see Mama shrink, and we realize that before Arnie’s comment, she had relaxed. She looks away from him now. Her next question hides in a voice so flat it wants no answer. “Were you a soldier?”

  “No.” He pauses for the first time. “I tried to enlist but with my leg and all, well…Anyway, I came here to do civilian support. But I work for myself. Electrical, mostly. I’m a good electrician. People can call me up for any kine thing or stop by Bernice’s store and I’ll go right over to their house. Poke around, fix stuff they didn’t even know was broken.”

  When he stops, finally, we breathe, awed by the sheer number of his words.

  Mama breathes, too. “Bernice. Yes. Isn’t it strange how we’re always there at the same time?”

  Arnie blushes and says, “I could set my clock by you.”

  It’s sometime after that Mama notices Arnie’s empty glass. “Hana?”

  She wants just one of us. A helpful one. Whose turn is it to be Hana? We split. Do you remember how that happens? One girl slips off the chair, and we are now Hana and Koko. Which is so much better than being Koko and Kei.

  “Hana.” Mama puts her hand on one shoulder. “There’s some passion orange in the icebox.”

  “And some ice, too, please, if you have it.”

  We don’t like this man who makes Mama forget things. We don’t like this passion orange that used to be juice. He likes to poke around, he said. He goes right over to other people’s houses. Is that why he came here, to see the shredded newspaper on our table? Is he here to spy on our crumbs, our unmade beds? Our beds are made, but still, he knows us now. The crocheted cover in Mama’s bedroom—we saw him look at that through the doorway when he sat down.

  Do the other people blush, too?

  One girl stays in her seat in the living room. One girl walks to the icebox. Passion orange? And ice in juice? We put ice on headaches, the cool of it on our foreheads. We cup ice in the palms of our hands. It’s for sucking on when it’s hot, and for Mama when she’s lying down.

  Arnie is burned and loud and he has strange habits. We’ll be happy when he’s gone.

  Of course…we do know how much fun it is to be a witness: to steal the things people do when they think no one else is there. Like the children we spy on through the oleanders. The fat, doomed children who pick their noses and eat the green ribbons and chewy nuggets they find. We like to watch them run in and out of their house, barefooted, past their banging screen without so much as tapping the dirt off their feet. If Arnie popped into that house, he would find trails of footprints hurrying to the bathroom. Pivoting in front of the icebox, skidding into unwashed sheets. We are spies, too—just like Arnie—he could take us with him, all of us wearing the hot skin of outlaws. Would we discover that the children sleep in the same bed, the way we do? Would we see their clothes droop from their shelves, the things they play with strewn on the floor? The wooden figures, the bottle caps, the bean sacks, the marbles…

  The boy’s marbles. In all sizes and colors. Marbles that click when he drops them, leaping off the ground, sometimes in our direction, landing so close to our oleander hedge. Marbles like stars, like fat fruit. Like Mama’s dumplings bursting in a hot, salty bath and the crunch of water chestnuts in our mouths.

  Oh, we want those marbles.

  “Hana!”

  We are Hana and Koko, and Hana is in the kitchen, not for so long, either, when Mama calls. Mama should know this, but she isn’t paying attention. Her arm sweeps out toward Koko, still in the chair in the living room. Gathering her in.

  No.

  We’ve been lost again, in a daydream of mischief and marbles. Still, this should not be happening. Mama is never impatient. She has never forgotten where we are and made a new Hana when there is one already there. But in the other room, Koko is rising, both girls confused.

  The juice is no longer important. The icebox door slams and the two girls run back together, sliding in beside each other, just as Mama picks up the empty bowl. United again, we are Koko. We are four arms, twenty fingers, two hearts.

  Mama gives us a tiny smile. “More peanuts, please.” She wants more food, for Arnie. It’s his fault—he is the rush—and despite the visit we’ve just taken into the children’s house with him, we are ready for him to leave.

  Arnie laughs. “Which one is Hana?”

  This time Mama’s eyes widen at his question as she looks at us, standing together. “Does it matter?”

/>   “Tricksters, huh?” he asks, leaning back to pull Mama’s attention toward him. “You’re lucky they’re opposites, then. Easy to tell them apart.”

  Mama laughs and turns away from us. She is caught in a net we cannot see. We were three before he walked in, shredding newspaper. Now, we are two—two little girls—holding an empty bowl that we are supposed to fill with peanuts. Now, Mama is missing, and in her place she has left a question:

  Who is Hana now?

  Hana

  The girl in the bed was Hanako Swanson. I was still trying to understand how that had happened when Detective Lynch reappeared. I barely heard her heavy heels, the jingle of cuffs and chains and keys on her belt that should have announced her. Coming in, as she did, just after Kei’s spasms, she found me shakier than I wanted to be. Still, it was good to be needed, and I jumped at the chance to get away from my sister and clear my head.

  The detective needed my fingerprints to compare to the partials they found in my apartment. I nodded a quick, awkward good-bye to Kei’s prone form, and then I was being chauffeured to the station. Outside, the soup of New York accosted me—the smell of cooking and exhaust; the clouds of heat that lumber toward you only to be whisked away by an errant blast of cold. I was surprised by the midday sun. I’d lost track of time—how many hours did Kei have left in the sterile stuffiness of the ICU, and what would happen after her doctor-imposed deadlines had passed?—but the ride in the squad car was too short to worry for long. Detective Lynch’s station turned out to be just a few blocks north and east of my apartment. When I was finished there, I would be only a quick walk from my home.

  Detective Lynch led me into the receiving area. As we waited for the fingerprinting, she checked my statement and asked me if there was anything I wanted to change or add.

  Where to begin? I thought. And what would happen if I told them about all the cleaning I had done—the clothes folding, the kitchen—or about Mama’s case? Had they found that in my bedroom? But how important was it, really? I couldn’t imagine any of my omissions mattered. What monster might blithely eat leftovers after attacking another person?

  But that brought me back to nothing. Why hadn’t I demanded Kei tell me what demons she had following her, and why she brought them to my house?

  Detective Lynch was waiting for me to sign my statement, but how could I do that? What name would I use? I hadn’t a clue, since she kept calling me Miss Swanson.

  The man in the lobby lingered on the edge of my mind as I wavered. Who was he, and was he coming back for me? Why were his eyes, which I could sense more than see, making it so hard for me to breathe?

  “What about the guy?” I asked. “Did you…has he…?” I was having trouble asking if they had leads because the “no” I realized I would hear was more than I could handle. “Maybe I could help that way? If you put me with a sketch artist, I’m sure we can re-create him.”

  “We don’t have any sketch artists here at present. But if you come up with a more…ah…detailed description, we’ll see what we can do.”

  Diplomacy aside, she was telling me my help was just a waste of time. I knew she didn’t believe me because I had said he was white. And also because, if he had come through the window, why would he leave through the door? Or maybe it was too much work to look for a stranger with no connection to the victim.

  They didn’t want to know. Just like the cops in Hawaii who came to ask me about Eddie and his friends hadn’t wanted to know. They didn’t care, and no admitting to my shock-fueled instincts was going to change that. Since my statement would be useless, it could remain exactly as it was.

  “What if it was about me?” I asked her, as I scrawled a signature on the paper that could have been either name. We did that in high school, too: a letter that could have been an H or a K with a little squiggle. “I mean, what if there really is someone in the neighborhood, someone I don’t know but who’s been watching me? You said your robberies were local, right? Maybe I could find a photograph of someone who’s been lurking around who I just never knew to notice?”

  It was a last-ditch idea, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave without trying to identify the man I had encountered, and since she clearly wasn’t interested in him, I needed to offer her a different possibility.

  Looking back, I am amazed she agreed to let me look through the mug shots with such a thin excuse, but she escorted me upstairs to an alcove: a lopsided bulge in an already fat hallway with a door on each end. Filing cabinets were staggered like bad teeth along the wall behind me. Books and binders fell into one another across the gaps on the shelves. Even the few desks around me had been knocked toward each other or away like the unturned cards in an abandoned game of hanafuta. I sat down at one, a staggered stack of binders full of violent criminals at my fingertips. My breath caught.

  What if the face of the man who had strangled my sister brought back my memories before I was ready? Dr. Shawe was no longer there to protect me. I longed for her then, for her laugh that had made it so easy to believe I would get better. I longed for her tricks, and her aphorisms, and how she rarely used a medical term if a metaphor would do. She’d explained that all my crazy symptoms, from the singsong voice in my head to my memory lapses, were actually defense mechanisms to help keep me sane in the wake of the trauma of the cave. My memories would come back when I was ready; too soon and they could trigger another breakdown. The important thing? Don’t push.

  But here I was, pushing. Here I was, teetering as if at the rim of a volcanic crater, Kei’s attacker behind me, threatening to break me if I turned. If I recognized him…I could almost feel myself falling.

  Breathe, I thought.

  Enough. It was daytime, and I was surrounded by policemen. I flipped open the red cover and looked.

  There were twenty tiny mug shots on each sheet. Ten eyes on each line; eighty on a double-spread page. Each pair of eyes was almost exclusively black, but beyond that, they came in every age and shape—thick necks and long ones, big hair and none at all, glasses, scars, muscled, grizzled, barely shaving, missing teeth. The stacks contained hundreds of men, thousands, each represented only by a staring, sullen picture. At first I tried so hard to study each one—even when I knew that the man I had seen in the lobby was not dark, could not have been fat, was never so young. They looked like my neighbors, the guy at the newsstand, even one of the security guards at the church near my apartment. And they could have been, of course. In the binder, they were flat, small, powerless, but I was beginning to realize something else. At any time, any one of the men I saw on the street might cast off his normal, daytime mask, raise his chin just slightly, and, in the same defiant pose of a mug shot, prove just how completely he could hurt me.

  There were predators everywhere, and any of them could have done this—all of them could have done this—and the worst part was, they still could.

  And here’s the truth: I spent hours in that alcove looking at every face, into every set of eyes, and identified…no one. From time to time, I had felt frissons of recognition, but the one time I brought an officer over and said, hesitantly, “Maybe, I’m not sure but I think the mouth is similar,” he flipped the photo over, stared at the back for a minute, and told me to keep looking. I did, but I also sneaked a peak at the back of that photo. Ramon Velasquez. Grand theft auto, 1969. Too dark, I had to admit then, realizing that the man, barely a boy, could have been in jail for the past two years.

  My second time through the binders, I tried something new. I flipped the pages, exchanging binders as I pleased, laying them side by side on the desktop so that I could glance at them from different angles to see Kei’s attacker in the same offhand way I had the first time. I allowed my gaze to blur, and each page to slip out of focus, in hopes that he would get cocky. It was a technique I used to use to capture an image of something I had never seen.

  People disappear, my mother had taught us. As young girls, we learned to hide at the sound of footsteps, keep to our own kind, never ever to
trust. When I was a child, hiding with Kei beneath the bed that Mama shoved us under in those times when her eyes went wild and she was sure that we were about to be stolen, I could only imagine what the ghosts in her head might have looked like, had they ever materialized to snatch us away. Even then I understood that there was no way to protect her, or us, unless I could see what we were hiding from.

  And so I drew the monsters we were afraid of so I could save us from them. I couldn’t see what tormented her, so I closed my eyes and let the images emerge from the crayon in my hand. I drew my mother’s nightmares, sightless, again and again until their burned-to-ash faces were as blind as I was and the sheets of skin that peeled off the red zombie arms they held out in front of them withered; once I had leached them of their danger, I locked them into a carton with hearts on the lid and a flimsy tin lock and stowed it underneath my bed. As Mama’s episodes faded, the sketches in the monster diaries dwindled, and by the time we got to intermediate school, I had forgotten them.

  I didn’t draw anymore, but I still imagined I could use that technique to get the man from the lobby to float to the top of my memory, his features breaking the surface—nose first, cheekbones, forehead, and finally eyes—and all the strangers I had burned into my mind would roll off his face so that I could see him. But after eighteen binders and a full afternoon, the only thing that surfaced was a truth: Once again, the police didn’t believe me. After hours of trying, even I wavered and began to doubt myself.

  There was nothing left to do there, and I had overstayed my time. I walked down the hallway, looking for a bathroom to pee and splash some water on my face. As always, I kept my gaze aimed carefully away from the mirror.

  I wet my hands in the sink, then turned my back on my reflection, raking my greasy hair into a pony tail with my fingers. I had not met my own eyes more than a couple of times since I left Hawaii for college, and it had never gone well. Beneath them, I knew deep bruises of exhaustion would show through the blanched skin of a long New York winter. My face would be vaguely pummeled and puffy. I looked like Kei, of course; put an oxygen mask on me and we could be interchangeable. But we both also looked like our mother. Something about the bone structure; something about the grit and also the giving up that I could see in Kei’s face in the hospital. And the ghosts that chased over our mother’s pupils before they scuttled out of view.