After three days of intake—spent sitting, squatting, and lying on a mat just inches from all the other unwashed women—Lillie was released, and, to her surprise, Donald was waiting for her right outside the door. He had stayed. Thank God he’d stayed. He hugged her roughly, as if it was her fault for taking so long to get to him. There was a thin, high smell of fear in his clothes. When she saw him, hard and tired, but himself, alive and there to rescue her, it occurred to her that perhaps things had worked out for the best after all. She and Donald had walked into this nightmare together, from the moment they left the farm, and here he was, still beside her. Was it love she felt sweeping through her, or relief, or was there a difference? Lillie grabbed her husband’s hand.
She looked around her, at this new world she had never quite been able to imagine. The Japanese citizens didn’t look prosperous to her. The new arrivals, fat from the Swedish ship even after a month on the Teia Maru, seemed the healthiest among the people she could see. The women released with Lillie were being met, tearfully, by these skinny, real Japanese in their pajama-like clothing.
Her kind, the camp director had said.
—Where is—she made a choice then—“our family?” Like it or not, she was one of them now. She knew the Tateishis were from a city called Hiroshima, a place of arcades and many rivers that meandered through the city, low, sluggish, and green. A place of swans, Donald had told her.
—Here, he said, with tenderness, and Lillie knew he had heard her capitulation. He pointed toward her father-in-law, drooping on the pile of their things. Toshi was standing in the dirt beside the old man, his feet in socks, hanging on to the edge of one of the hard-sided bags. This was everything, then. It was both impossible to conceive of living with so little, and to imagine carrying so much.
Hiroshima was a day away. There was another train in her future. Beyond that, she didn’t know.
Toshi let go of the luggage and reached up, laughing, holding his hands out to her. A dried smudge of food puckered his cheek, and his palms were a map of filth. This was her family, she told herself, grateful for the light in his eyes, and the truth that at least one of them still needed her. Wherever Toshi was could be home enough for her. She put her hands out and picked up her son.
The Wave
Hana
I was dead asleep the next morning when the telephone rang again. The sound sliced into my head; I must have grabbed at the receiver as if it was an earplug: anything to cut off the noise.
“Hanako? Is that you? What’s going on?”
I heard the worry in Nick’s voice as I tried to understand where I was. Home, apparently, draped on top of my covers, and sideways across my bed. My filthy clothes were piled on the floor, but I could smell a mixture of Ajax and milk souring on my skin.
“Hanako! The police were here, checking your alibi. You have an alibi!?”
“Nick. It’s okay.” But of course it wasn’t. “I’m okay. It…wasn’t me.”
Nick, my boss, was the son of the original Luciano. He was the patriarch of one of the largest extended families I had ever known. He wouldn’t have understood the distance that lay between me and Kei, and I wouldn’t have known how to explain, so I never mentioned her. Now, though, not only did I have to tell him Kei existed, but also that she was here and in the hospital. I kept my story vague. Something about a robbery. I didn’t want him worrying that my job had been somehow responsible, or worse, have him show up at the hospital to see how he could help. That was the problem with working for a grandfather; Nick was much more attuned to family than to his business, which was how I ended up working for him in the first place.
When I was in college, I used to eat at Luciano’s every Sunday. It’s one of those cavernous Old World restaurants on the Upper West Side I could trust would never be trendy. I didn’t socialize, but Nick of course noticed his regulars. One Sunday, close to college graduation, he came over to my table.
“You all right there, Missy?” he asked me. That was all he had to do.
I had just come from Dr. Shawe’s; that was the day I had brought my therapy to an end. Our four years were up, and I’d been dropping small fibs about making a few friends at some gallery openings so she would think I was better. Still, my sudden desolation when she agreed to end it took me by surprise. I burst into tears, and Nick’s response was to offer me a job organizing his paperwork and “keeping him honest.” I had majored in math, and if bookkeeping was not exactly differential equations, the prospect of straightening out someone else’s life was attractive. Besides, I felt comfortable with him: He never asked me if I was waiting for someone or showed any curiosity about my scars. Working for Nick meant no job interviews, no explanations for my too-thoroughly covered skin. I had no ambition left—I was fine with tucking myself away in the back office, alone.
But now, as I listened to Nick’s good wishes for Kei’s swift recovery and got off the phone, I recognized something else: He reminded me of Arnie. They were both wired to save people. I wondered what it was like to be so confident in the world that you could just expect to be able to.
Last night, the adrenaline that had fueled my assault on my apartment had left me shivering and puking into the toilet; the bile burning my throat a reminder of how little I had eaten in the last two days. Now that I was awake, I needed some food, as well as a shower, but first, I needed to hear how Kei was. I lay where I was and called the ICU off the number on Kei’s admissions paperwork. After a brief hold, they let me talk to a doctor.
They still didn’t know why Kei was unconscious, he told me, but the good news was she could breathe and swallow on her own. The bad news was there were other patients who couldn’t, and they could use her ICU bed. We were at fifty-six hours and counting, and every hour she remained unconscious, her chances of a complete recovery lessened. Kei would do better on a medical floor that specialized in head trauma. If she remained stable for another day, and with my permission, they would transfer her to the Eckert Trauma Center.
A transfer would mean new forms, and new forms meant admitting—and correcting—the mistake with our names. I had no idea what all this was costing, but I knew I couldn’t afford it. Hanako Swanson’s insurance could. My sister had been entered into the health care system on the gold-plated insurance Arnie set up for my ruined body when I left for New York. You can never live too well and too long, he used to say. If there was more than a little irony in that, still, Mama had created a small fund in my name—the “flower child funds,” her lawyer called it—which had continued to pay for my insurance after she and Arnie died. I had every reason to expect that she’d done the same for Kei; we might even share a family policy, and then why would it matter which one of us used which card? But I was not so far gone that I couldn’t hear my own excuses. If I tried to find out through official channels and failed, I would no longer be able to keep her on my insurance by claiming shock and a mix-up in the emergency room.
I told the doctor I’d be in later to sign the release forms. Then, I did the one thing I have refused to do in the six years since I left for New York.
I called home.
My home. Ours, and our mother’s, and now Kei’s.
I had given Kei the house after our parents died. I knew she was living there, but it was only when I saw she’d kept Arnie’s key ring that I guessed she kept the phone number, too. It was still in my fingers; the numbers never even made their way to my head. My heart pounded as my fingers ran around the dial. It was barely dawn in Hawaii. If Kei had a boyfriend, or someone who lived with her, he would surely answer. But how would I break the news to a stranger, or worse—someone I knew? I didn’t want to think about who might be missing her. I didn’t know what I would do if he wanted to come to New York to see her, too. Now, I don’t know what I dreaded most: being sucked back into Kei’s life against my will or forming the words that would make Kei’s coma real. Or perhaps it was something else, something about being faced with a life of companionship and intimacy I would
never have. No one would ever love me, or want to touch me, when I couldn’t bear to stand naked in front of myself.
Once I realized no one was going to answer, I kept the receiver to my ear. I listened to the trill of beeps, which were not unlike the sound of a mother bird singing her babies to sleep. I could feel my heartbeat slowing almost back to normal as I imagined them tumbling out of our old desk phone that sat on the small table right near the door, then wandering across our gray linoleum floor tiles to check for life in each room. I was sliding back home with the sound, jumping on the bed-like pune’e with it. I could even see our faded cushions covered in a rusty hibiscus pattern unevenly worn by the sun. The call of home dragged me under, like the surf on the beach, and for a moment I couldn’t tell which way was up or what forward looked like.
I started to dial again—my mother’s lawyer, or even old Harada-san, could easily get Kei’s insurance information for me and solve this whole mess. But my hand hovered over the phone.
What if Kei never woke up?
Could I bury my life with her body, killing off the self I’d tried to keep stunted in New York? It would be a relief. A reparation. Besides, I’d never seen my own birth certificate. It’s not as if I had proof of which girl I really was.
A life in Hawaii could be mine again, I thought. I had Kei’s keys; I knew where she lived. I had studied her scar. I knew exactly how it ran and how long I’d have to wait for a new cut to heal before returning home. I would never do it, of course, and yet these fantasies prevented me from making the calls. I didn’t want to hear in their voices that it was common knowledge I had never finished college, that I had walked out on it after my last appointment with Dr. Shawe and had never taken the rest of my exams. I wanted to pretend, for just a little while, that I could start again. But the truth was, the life I wanted was so far in the past I could never return to it. The community had closed ranks against me. There was no way for me to go home.
* * *
My mother and Arnie died a year and some months after what should have been my college graduation, as the first summer of my true adulthood had turned to fall. Kei was the center of attention at their funeral. When I walked into the chapel, she had set herself up between the coffins, turning to whoever happened to be paying tribute beside her to throw herself into their arms.
She wore dark blue, which made my black seem disapproving. Her casual grace in her body, in her dress—and sleeveless, yet—felt like an insult. I had covered my scars in a neck-to-ankle New York suit, and I sat near the back of the chapel, where it should be so easy for my parents’ friends to pay their respects, and I marveled. Kei’s old cronies had practically surrounded her in that place reserved for viewing the bodies: her best friend, Missy; and Eddie; and a pregnant Charlene. These were the chosen four, and if I’d had any thought that I might be wrong about what happened to me in the cave, that was clearly wishful thinking. They were still together, still the town’s sweethearts. If Eddie seemed a little extra jittery, at least he was smart enough to stay far away from me.
I know the ceremony couldn’t have been as lonely as it appears in my memory. I’m sure some of the mourners must have come to talk to me. There would have been no family, of course, but Arnie would have easily made up for that in friends. The whole island would have been there for Arnie.
Kei had told me when she called that it was a single car accident, that they found the car on the summit of Mauna Kea in the middle of the night. My sister was such a good liar that she often fooled herself, but this was clearly not her best effort. I didn’t know what to think; there were few places Mama would leave the house to go, and the top of a volcano wasn’t one of them. Especially when it was blanketed in a freak early snow. But it wasn’t until I was there that I first heard the rumor that it was suicide, that their bodies were recovered some distance from the car.
No one would have said such a thing to me directly, but it was always the whispers I trusted more. It reminded me of the old days, when it was hard to walk down the street without hearing the murmur of gossip about my mother.
If they had only stayed in the car, yeah?
But you gotta figa’—who goes to sleep in the snow?
Arnie’s coffin was closed, but Mama’s was open. She was fifty years old, but she looked younger than Kei that day. In death, her skin was translucent, and completely unlined by the sun. When I was a child, I told my mother that her eyes were like pahoehoe lava. I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain then, but now I do. Her life was in her eyes, so black they were almost silver; they swirled, pocked with brittle rifts and edges. With her lids closed, she was a ghost. Dare I say it?
A shadow child.
Maybe it was that image that made me walk out of the chapel. The shadow child, the translation of my sister’s name. Or maybe there was another reason I left early. Because I remember one touch in particular. At the funeral, someone did come up to me.
I was saying good-bye to my mother when he approached. He said, “Hana,” in a tone that made it clear he thought I would welcome him. I can hear his voice. The way it settled, not rising in question, but falling as if to say, At last.
I raised my eyes slowly, preparing myself in case something about him registered. The copper-tinged curls that used to fall from a soft cowlick over his forehead had been cut short, exposing a face fuller than it should have been. Everything about him now was unfocused—his soft lips, drooping eyes—and I remember thinking he seemed strangely defeated for someone so young. But, of course, he was at a funeral. Then he said something else and held out his hands.
I felt myself swaying toward him. The stress of the day, most likely, and the heat, and the fact that I hadn’t eaten much since I left New York. My legs were giving out, and I remember feeling grateful that Russell’s hands were out to catch me when it struck me: He didn’t want me. Russell left me, too.
What he said was, I’m sorry. I remember it now. Maybe it was his words—their audacity—that made me so weak. My anger at him surged and twisted, and then it overflowed to sweep in Mama, too. She had known she would die; she hadn’t given me a chance to say good-bye, or wanted to say good-bye to me. I pushed Russell away and looked down at her: a woman who had killed herself before I came home, no explanation, no warning.
And that was when I saw the quilt. She was lying on it, wrapped inside it. The underside was white, and only the red and white corners of the patterned top had been brought around and placed inside her folded hands. I noticed the stitching first, so many rows and so tiny that it must have taken her forever. I reached out to finger her work and found a straight, thick line that didn’t match the pattern. It was the vertical rise of a letter, stitched in red thread over white. I lifted one of her fingers and found an H carefully created beneath it. I picked up another finger and revealed an A.
My quilt, I realized in horror. I’d never actually seen it. Mama had started making it in secret, to celebrate my appointment as valedictorian. After the cave, I’d assumed she abandoned it, too. I reached into the coffin and uncrossed my mother’s hands to be sure.
In death, her hands were heavier than I expected, and cool. They flopped, indifferent, as I pushed them further down onto her belly so the quilt encircling her shoulders was free. I tugged on the quilt. It wasn’t particularly large, or thick with batting, but the weight of her body pinned it down. When I pulled, Mama’s dress dragged up with it and into her lipstick, and I found myself yanking even harder, rolling her body as if she was asleep and turning on her side. Her hip caught; the bottom two-thirds of the coffin was closed. The agony of it engulfed me—all of it, my mother dead, her body forsaken just as I had been—as I wrenched my quilt free with both hands. I balled it up like a baby in front of me as I stared at her disarray: hands hidden now, hair floating helplessly around her, red lipstick smudging her cheek.
The first noise I registered was a wail as Kei came rushing toward me.
She looked ravaged. Disgusted. “What, are you—” she
started, and I knew the next word she didn’t say. At first I thought she would lunge at me, but she pushed past so she could get to Mama, rearranging her head, smoothing her hair. She was crying; we were both staring at our dead mother, so close I could feel Kei’s heat.
“Crazy?” I finished her question for her. I didn’t care. It was my quilt, and only then did I realize that it had to have been Kei’s decision to cremate it. “Crazy is as crazy does.” It was one of those nonsense platitudes that I must have heard in the school yard long ago that my mind had grabbed on to for the way it swung. What does crazy do? Crazy is not a diagnosis, Dr. Shawe used to tell me. Nor is it contagious. But of course, that was a lie.
“Crazy is as crazy does, crazy is as crazy…” I can hear my voice echo now in the chapel; I might have started screaming. I can feel myself hugging the quilt to my belly, as if I could open myself and swallow it that way. I was refusing to let go, although no one was reckless enough to try to take it from me. There might have been other things that were screamed, too. Like, How dare you steal it? You’re always stealing. You stole everything from me. Then there were people leading me out onto the steps: Harada-san, our former neighbor, the poor old, bewildered man who had only just picked me up at the airport hours before; my mother’s lawyer. I told them I was leaving. It didn’t matter what the lawyer was saying. It didn’t matter that Harada-san looked so broken, that he seemed to be trying to speak. I couldn’t bear another explanation, and was so tired of the excuses everyone always made for Kei. It was my quilt, not Mama’s to take, not even to the spirit world. I was not dead. I was the executor and I would take what I wanted—the quilt and half the tiny sum of money—I gave Kei the house because I wanted her to know how little I cared for our past. In the lawyer’s office, I dumped everything I had brought with me out of my duffel bag, then shoved the quilt into it. There was room left in the duffel, but nothing I had dumped out struck me as worth keeping. I left everything I’d brought with me on the lawyer’s floor.
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