Shadow Child

by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

  I had been dabbing at her foot with wet paper towels, which soon ran a deep, luxurious red; at one point the sight of my own arms—thick scarlet streams down my wrists—caught me by surprise. As I moved to clean it off, though, I had a better idea. I walked over to the triage desk where, again, I asked about Kei.

  The nurse looked at the fresh blood dripping down my arms and off my elbows, onto the Formica.

  “Oh my God, girl! What happened to you?”

  That was all it took. I led her back to Mama, who was immediately rushed to a cot, but by that time she was too weak to give them her own version of what happened. She waved them at me. Tell them what they need to know, Arnie had said, but I never thought about what that meant. There were two doctors, a man and a woman, and so many questions:

  When did this happen?

  Was she caught in the water?

  What did she step on?

  Is it still in her foot?

  My ploy to get the doctors’ attention had worked, and now it was my duty to save her. But I couldn’t keep up with the questions about vaccines and tetanus, blood type, and why her blood was so thin. Anemia, I said, a word I picked up from Arnie, but I’d had no idea that they would need so much information. Weren’t they the doctors? Couldn’t they see what was wrong with her by looking? Then they asked about family history:

  Was there anything else?

  It was then that everything came out: her fear of cuts and how she used to faint all the time when we were younger; her fevers and the red pinpricks on her skin. I told them how she craved water then and drank gallons of it—it was all she wanted from us. I even told them what she said when she was hallucinating. So much blood everywhere. It won’t stop.

  I told them, She’s not supposed to bleed.

  What I didn’t say—because I didn’t understand it at the time—is this: My mother had a secret. It’s obvious, now, that Mama was not only physically sick. Something had happened to her and she was suffering from it. That’s what I can feel in all these memories: the suffering. It was as if she was too close to the veil between our world and the world of spirits; that they could reach her through the gauzy barrier, and sometimes they pulled her to them, to the other side. If that sounds insane, it’s the explanation I have come to. Mama was haunted, just as Kei is now. Just as I am, by voices that shouldn’t be there and memories that should and a slow accumulation of regret. I have reason to believe that it killed her. It is not random. It is inheritance.

  But back then, I was thirteen and I did not believe in spirits. I just told them about the tramp iron because I liked the sound of the words.

  I hovered beside Mama, white and still and no longer conscious, hooked up to tubes, and wondered if she could hear me.

  Sometime after, Arnie returned. Kei was with him. She was alive. With so many victims and their loved ones crammed in around me, I barely had time to see them approaching before they were on me. I was shaking with adrenaline as Arnie scooped me into a bear hug and asked me how things were going. Just like that, like Howzit?, our familiar local greeting; like the morning never happened, and everything was fine. He stank of sweat and the sea, but I held on to him like I couldn’t stand. I told him how I’d helped—I’d done my best and I was proud of it; if he had come back even an hour earlier he would have found Mama still on the floor. And he kept that smile on his face and an arm around me as he pulled Kei in with his other arm and faced us both toward Mama.

  Were we waiting? What were we waiting for? Arnie was looking at the machines. He seemed heartened by the steady squiggles and the beeps. I thought he’d tell me I’d done well, but maybe I was supposed to assume it.

  “I’ll just go find a doctor,” he said, and then he left Kei and me alone.

  Of course, I had seen her first the moment they arrived. We didn’t hug because we didn’t have to; I could feel her as clear as my heartbeat, singing. But now, we had a chance to step back and welcome each other.

  Kei looked tired. My clothes on her body had been wet and dried and she smelled just the way Arnie did, like the bottom of the ocean. She had a cut on her forehead, with a small Band-Aid crisscrossing it to keep it closed, and her face was hollowed by old, dried blood. She looked at me, so grave and different that I almost asked if her name was Marilyn, and when I looked down at myself, I saw that I was covered in blood, too, still red. My arms were streaked with it; it had settled into spiderwebs in the folds of my skin. Kei reached out and touched my cheek and I realized I had blood there, too. She wiped it lightly with her thumb.

  I waited for her to tell me what happened. To say where she had been, and that she was sorry. I wanted to hear that she hadn’t wanted to hurt me, or Mama, or herself. That she had never really been serious about her crazy idea. Most of all, I would have given anything to hear her tell me that she had wanted me with her, and that she, too, had felt the desolation of leaving me alone.

  But by then, she had moved, and she was standing over Mama, who hadn’t said a word since the doctors reached her. I had assumed she was still unconscious, but Kei perched lightly on the side of Mama’s cot, took her hand, and reached into her slumber. Mama woke. She was dazed, of course, and at first she didn’t seem to know who Kei was. Each one of us had been redrawn by the mud and the ruin, and it would take us a while to recognize the new lines and shadings. I watched that happen for Mama when Kei started to cry.

  I was the one who had been there for Mama. Kei was the one whose recklessness drove her to the edge, but it was Kei, suddenly, who was in Mama’s arms. All the tubes I got for my mother must have given her some strength, because I heard her voice for the first time since we got there, saying Kei’s name. Mama clung to Kei’s arms, raking her fingers through Kei’s ratted hair. Here was her daughter, snatched from certain death and returned.

  This time, it would be even longer before Mama got out of bed, but still, it was Kei who was given a seat at Mama’s bedside. And that’s when it truly hit me: that sharp, partial oneness that I had spent the day suffocating in was not anything Kei would ever feel. She and Mama had each other, just as they did as far back as the day in the garden when Kei got dirt in her eyes and was rewarded with my name. They fit together, these two who survived unknowable dangers. They were the same, and where was I?

  Kei tried to speak through her tears, but Mama waved her words away. Then my sister’s head was on our mother’s shoulder. I was only steps away, but it was as if I had never been there.

  Kei was the daughter Mama chose.

  It’s been eight days. First the twenty-four hours, then the forty-eight. Then Kei’s clock was reset by Bree and she got five days of intensive therapy at Eckert. Bree told me that we could have a week, maybe two weeks if I had time to devote to my sister, but Kei has come down with a low-grade fever and Bree is concerned. I can feel the truth. We are running out of time. I have given Kei everything: more stories, more smells and sensations. We have almost caught up; my memories have crept forward to the time when we lost each other. Or maybe the truth is, I have done nothing. Nothing but follow orders, talk to myself, and pretend that I can create the world as I want it. Just like Kei, maybe all of this is wishful thinking.

  Again.

  It doesn’t matter anymore, of course. None of it matters. Nothing, except the fact that I lost my mother, far too young. I left her. Regardless of what she did or didn’t do, I punished her for choosing Kei and allowed myself to be punished. After I left for New York, I never called. I never wrote nor came home. I am the one who abandoned my mother. I stayed here in a cave of my own making for so long that there is no one left to find me. And now I will never know her, or know who I am through her.

  After a while, habits form. I put up a wall, and no one tried to climb over it. It made life quiet. No friends to betray me. College was simple: The school year was timed so I could dress seasonably in an unobtrusive fashion without revealing an inch of ruined skin. No wackos here, move on, move on, no rubbernecking. Over time, I no longer had to
hate anyone to get my privacy.

  But my wall, for all my bluster, is not so tall. There were plenty of days when a smile would have done it. A sincere question. A handwritten note from my mother. That was why I never responded to any of Arnie’s letters. I was waiting. Extending the grace period for my mother.

  I still have them. Arnie’s little notes. More than twenty over the years: updating me on the new refrigerator; Kei’s jewelry business, suggesting I come home for Christmas; forever asking me to write or call my mother. These, I remember them clearly. The waver that took over Arnie’s hand, making his script seem weak and uncertain. The Christmas and birthday cards, with the checks I was willing to cash so they would know I was still here—I am still here—but even these were written out by Arnie.

  There was no day that would have been too late for a letter from my mother.

  “We’re both getting old. Your mother is still a beauty, compared to my old bones. We’d love to see you.”

  I can recite them all. Each word, run over and over in my head from the day I got it, even when I tried to shut down my mind.

  “Happy to buy your ticket home whenever you want to come. They changed my blood pressure medication, but there’s not much to be done about it—it runs in the family.”

  “I hope you are getting some spring flowers there for your birthday. You know what we have here. Same old thing every day. I do most of the weeding now since your mother can’t get out into the garden anymore.”

  “A little remodeling to report this fall. We moved the bed into the living room. That way, your mother can still see her favorite flowers. Nifty solution, don’t you think? She’s a fighter.”

  “Neither one of us is well, Hana. It can’t be said any other way. If you can’t come home, then please at least call and surprise your mother. She’ll be so happy to hear from you.”

  And then, finally: “The important thing is, no regrets. Right? Your mother is happy. That’s all you need to know. When you get old like us, you want to look back on your life and know that you wouldn’t change anything. If you did, you wouldn’t be where you are.”

  That was the last one. Why hadn’t I called her?

  Maybe it was the fact that he never wrote the word cancer. There was nothing in the cards that said Mama was riddled with it, that she had brain cancer, breast cancer, cancer in her liver and bones, more cancer than any one person could possibly survive. The doctors had never seen anything like it, not in someone so young. There was no point in treatment, which was what I learned only from the neighbors at the funeral; the options were a slow, painful, and expensive death or a suicide, a lovers’ pact in the snow. Snow. Fragile as thread, balanced as a ripple, brief as a blink, as Arnie once described it. They say death from hypothermia is like drifting off from an overdose of sleeping pills. You slowly lose consciousness. You don’t feel it, and you don’t know where you are.

  What does one do in the end? What do I do? What do I do with the truth that I am the one who left my mother to die alone, without me, and with all these empty years? How foolish was I that I thought I could change things, even after Mama and Arnie died; that I could relent a little and answer a letter, that there could still be a day when I could pick up the phone and hear my mother? How I long to hear it: her lilting voice, rising, checking to make sure everything is okay. Even now, with the truth spread out before me, I can imagine it: that next time it rings, I will hear her on the telephone.

  I waited too long. It was my fault; I can admit that now. And I am waiting again, and I’m tired. Tired of not sleeping, tired of living a life that has been turned upside down and shaken. What is Kei doing in there? I can’t help it: I imagine her as willful, in hiding, maybe even watching me, while Bree monitors her vitals and looks more doubtful every day. I have been convinced that our childhood can save Kei, but now I am beginning to appreciate Dr. Shawe’s total lack of concern for the blanks in my past. Who would want to relive so many betrayals? Who would choose the endless loop over questions about who did what?

  But if the past cannot save either of us, it has given me a gift: a reminder, not of who I am or what happened, but of what I can do. If I can’t save my sister, cannot wake her just by willing it, the fact is that there is a way for me to find the person who hurt her and bring him to justice.

  Justice, like I never had. I know what I have to do.

  Shadow Child

  Kei

  Missy is your new sister. She is the popular one, the beautiful one. She has an air about her…of air. Of drifting off. You see that about her from the very beginning. Would she disappear if you tried to call her back? In that moment of being startled, would her spirit get lost? If that’s what you imagined you were—a lost spirit—it is Lillie who Missy reminds you of. Lillie, the girl who appeared out of nowhere, stayed for the stories, and then disappeared.

  You have become a talk-story hero: the Red Cross Angel, the girl who stumbled into the intermediate school with the child you snatched from certain death in the Big Wave. You handed out coffee and Band-Aids. You helped make beds for the refugees sent by the fire department. There was even a story in the Herald about you. This is who Kei is now. What the town has decided you should be. But you are also the runaway, the girl who got away with sneaking out, who got picked up by Missy’s brother. Would Eddie have kept that a secret from his sister? Who knows what his stories are about that night?

  Arnie brings you together. In those first days of the tidal wave cleanup, he volunteers you for everything a girl can do. People almost pet you when they see you—Good girl—and you are getting practice at not shying away. You make people smile, not because your actions that night were so unusual, but because you are so young they can believe that anyone can be a hero. That’s how you end up at the river, helping to wash out the fabric from the dry goods stores for the tidal wave sales.

  It is a day just for women: mothers and daughters, sisters and aunties. The men drive their flatbeds down into the little valley north of town where the river meets the sea. There, they dump the crusted bolts of fabric amid the keikis who come to greet them. “Pee-u! Pee-u!” The stink of the wave is met with laughter. The children scatter. Then the men themselves are shooed away.

  Mama is still in the hospital. The day she will return home, with crutches and medication, a new diet, and a bandage that needs to be changed, is still weeks away. Hana acts as if Mama is dying and won’t leave her side. So you are the one Arnie sends to the river with Miss Shima. Your job is simple: to catch the bolts of fabric as they unfurl down the river, spread them out in the shallows, and wash them as best you can. Women are scrubbing, sometimes in pairs or threes. When you are done rinsing, you wring the fabric hard and give it to the children, who grab the ends and run around. Theirs is the fun part. The bolts of flowers lift into parachutes, then fall, bouncing on the little ones standing beneath them. Then the mothers swoop over and help them lay the next ribbon of color on the grass to dry.

  When the flocks of kids part, Missy is there. She is crouched alone in the shallows of the stream, trailing a piece of purple plumeria fabric like a long, flowered eel. She is close to the ocean. You are closer. Both of you near the high bridge that takes the road from the top of one side of the valley to the other. She is intent on something far away.

  She doesn’t notice you, but then the cloth pulls out of Missy’s hands and gets taken by the river. You grab it as it slithers toward you. It ripples back on itself, tugging at your arms so you have to step deeper into the water.

  Any normal girl would splash over quickly to retrieve her fabric. But Missy just gives you a long, sad look you can’t shake. Her onyx eyes seize you, and you wonder if she’s remembering the conversation you overheard about Charlene’s grandmother tumbling to death in what has now become the “first” wave. And if not, then at least she feels—she is feeling—all those lost souls that are the talk of the town.

  What you can feel is the stillness of Missy’s body. And the time it takes her to
respond, as if the little ripples of this world are slow to reach her. You can see beyond her popularity. See her: profoundly alone. There is a tenderness in that recognition. There is mystery, possibility, and loss. And she can see inside you, like no one ever has except Hana. When she finally moves toward you, she’s entranced by her feet scything through the water. That is the beauty of this girl: her otherworldly mystery. In her first, startling question, she confirms everything you feel, and your own aching loneliness:

  “When you die, do you think, will you be all alone?”

  There are flowers in the river. Flowers in the air and on the grass. After high school, when you start making your jewelry, you will think back to that floating fabric for possible combinations for your charms. But Mama is insistent: You will create only the simplest blossoms, all in a gold-edged white. She wants plumeria, Hana’s favorite flower; and pikake, her favorite perfume. She is the one who chooses, and she is the one who gives your store its name. Flower Child. Mama doesn’t know the peace-and-love hippies have already claimed the term for your generation, but it wouldn’t matter. The name is simple, happy. It lights Mama’s drawn face with a secret sparkle.

  Your friendship with Missy ignites in that moment. Hangouts, like Kress, are mostly destroyed, so you meet at her house, the house she lives in with her aunt and uncle and, at least in the beginning, with Eddie.