Shadow Child

by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

  The old man flinched when he heard them speaking, then—as Lillie looked up at the soldier, considering what to say—he began pouring out a story of two sons dead and a wife waiting with no food…He insisted that Lillie translate, to help him get payment for his leg. She owed him. But she knew that if she started to barter for him, the soldiers would suspect a scam. And if they left, she would never have the strength to take the man to the hospital alone.

  One of the GIs had retrieved her case and was watching her mutter at the injured man. The soldier’s hair was a spiky blond crown, and he wore a splash of pink sunburn on his nose and the tip of his prominent chin. She would come to find out later that the little leaf on his jacket meant sergeant. He wasn’t young or old, nor did he seem particularly kind or evil, but she was too distracted to notice more. Her attention was split between the frantic pleas of the old man and the fate of her entire worldly possessions, which were dangling from the soldier’s barely curving fingers. Then he crouched down to her level and looked at her.

  —Miya? he asked, holding the case out to her.

  —What?

  —Miya, right? I met you last night. Miya, Miya, Miya. I never forget a face.

  It was such a bizarre little song that she almost corrected him, but the old man could tell from the sergeant’s voice that he thought he knew her and that set him off again; he had decided she was one of those bar girls in the shadows, just as the sergeant must have. Lillie felt oddly liberated, suddenly, by their judgment. She owed them nothing, especially not some soldier who clearly thought all Japanese women looked the same. She rubbed the corner of her case, trying to smooth a new abrasion away with her thumb, imagining the shock on their faces if she walked away and left them there with their shouted words and their hand gestures. Then it occurred to her: In this devastated country, she could say she was anyone—American, Japanese—and no one could prove any different. She could define herself.

  —This man needs to get to the hospital, she said.

  —Sure. Sure. You’re good with him, you know? Talking like you do, so calm. You’re American, right? That’s what you told me. It’s like I said the other night—we could sure use someone like you.

  Anyone watching might have thought she answered instantly. But a million thoughts exploded in her head. The long lines in the street full of women who had surely touched a typewriter before. The fact that she hadn’t eaten in two days. She would have nowhere to sleep tonight unless she retreated to the train station or went into the subways with the rest of the homeless.

  And then there was the question of Miya: the possibilities and pitfalls of this new, American woman. Who was Miya? Would Lillie get caught?

  —I don’t have any papers.

  —Such a worrier, Miya. Never fear, there are a lot of filing clerks here. Hey! It’s a rhyme.

  It was the delight on his face that got her. How simple he seemed then, and soft. Or maybe it was the possibility of file clerks.

  —Why are you crying? No, no, don’t do that! Don’t worry, little Miya. I’ll help you. Once we get this mess set to rights, we’ll all be going home.

  Kei

  You get into a rhythm. Kicking, breathing, pulling until your arms are coming out of their sockets. During the off-season, Arnie works with you on breathing, deep into your belly, but in a race it’s no calm meditation. It’s sucking air in as deep and hard as you can. Everything synchronized, yes, but not relaxed. Arms cycling, legs. Just like now. Can you feel it? Faster and faster until you’re swimming for your life.

  Arnie comes to every meet, even the exhibitions. He’s one of those parents who arrives too early for pickup, who coaches from the edge of the pool. But it’s good to have his company, now that you understand his purpose in your lives. He came to be Mama’s savior. And also Mama’s voice.

  When you first tried out for the team as a freshman, you didn’t realize who you’d be swimming against. Girls who could tuck and turn in their sleep before you learned that a race could be longer than a single length. You had never lost before that moment, so you stopped once you fell behind so no one could beat your best attempt. But Arnie was there, and patient, and he helped you break it down. “What’s the one thing you would have done differently, Kei-girl?” he asked, as if winning was only one choice away.

  “Do what you love and forget the rest,” Arnie always says. “There’s nothing you can’t do. Nothing you can’t try.”

  He was right about 1960. It was a turning point.

  * * *

  When you scan the crowds, sometimes you still see Missy. She comes to cheer when you’re competing against one of your hot rival schools and everyone knows you are going to win. Even though she’s annoyed that you are the team captain, still your success reflects well on her, since you two are best friends. But sometimes, she’ll also come to reward you, when she’s managed to coerce you into giving her something, or doing something you didn’t want to do.

  Lately, being good means being with Eddie. Your connection to her brother has rekindled your own friendship. For three years, you two have been skirting the edge of trouble, being sisters. You saw yourselves in each other, and it wasn’t until this year, now that you are a senior, that you began to realize how constricting that was. Just when you began to feel you had to break out of the box Missy had put you in, Eddie came between you, and he’s the one who did the breaking. Now, you are more than the half that completes her, but also less: You are a third of a new triangle that you created. But you are also the one who brought Missy’s beloved brother back to her.

  Mama comes to your meets more frequently than Missy does. She is out of the house often these days. After the tidal wave, whatever had afflicted her was driven under, and she left the hospital restored. The intensity of your childhood is gone, but in its place, Mama’s own youth is rising. She looks more beautiful than you have ever noticed her to be. At the state meet, she wears a green-and-white shift, with a belted waist and round neck that sits at her collarbone, dabbed with her favorite pikake perfume. Her hair rests on the tips of her shoulders. It is this, her most vibrant moment, that you will hold on to later.

  This, and the growing inkling that she might be proud of you.

  Mama’s face is in the water. That’s how you see her. Isn’t that odd? Her hair floats above us, long and drifting. Are we hiding beneath her at the bottom of the pool?

  Or…are you rising? The surface around her is bright silver now with darker spirits inside it. The voices around her are muffled. Can you hear them? You don’t know who is speaking. Hana, maybe. You should listen better. It sounded like her before.

  Hana is the only one who’s never seen a single swim meet. Not that you need more of a cheering section—you haven’t lost the 200 freestyle since you were a sophomore swimming against seniors—but you miss your sister. She’s so bent on leaving the island for college, she won’t take her nose out of her books, even though her applications were already submitted. She thinks she is better than everyone else, and the truth is, she probably is. You don’t beg her to come. You let her spend her time as she likes, studying the Greek roots of a word like sophomore.

  Hana is leaving. Even though the acceptance letters haven’t come yet, still you know. She’ll get in everywhere, invited to cities you can’t even visualize, and she’ll go. She’s been talking about it for months, looking at brochures and maps in the library, exchanging letters with alumni. But it’s only now that you have begun to feel the ache beneath your breastbone that the thought of Hana living off the island brings.

  You don’t want to stay behind and teach kindergarten or get married. You don’t want to spend your life working in a store. That’s what piques your sudden desire to show up all the teachers who decided you weren’t intelligent. How many months, even years, has it been since you first started making pretty patterns on multiple-choice tests, seeing how much effort it might take to score a perfect C minus every time? Flip-flopping your smart, succinct essays so the right answe
rs were in the wrong places?

  In the evenings, you find yourself gorging on dead philosophers and old battles you should have learned about years earlier. It’s too late for you to apply to college, but still, can’t you borrow a space? Hana can only go to one school. How would the others know the difference? You know it’s delusional, but still, you want to be ready. With this new clarity you realize it would be a simple thing, really, to be Hana.

  Maybe you are walking in Hana’s footsteps on the day you see the poster for the art show. You’ve never paid attention to it in past years—why would you?—but there is a senior prize. It would be perfect for Hana. The ghosts and monsters she used to draw when you were still Koko gave you chicken skin. You know Hana would never enter it, but what if you did it for her? She’s got several notebooks of old drawings under her bed.

  Are you hoping you will derail Hana’s college plans, even inspire her to stay at home? Or do you just want people to see her the way you do? You don’t know, will not even think about it, because it feels right, doesn’t it?

  It feels like something good.

  After Mama died, you used to dream of the last story about Lillie. The one when she had to leave. By the time she told it, you had already begun to notice the way Mama’s stories kept shifting. At the time, you wondered whether you just understood more. Over time, she changed the world.

  By the time you were in high school, there was a war on in Lillie’s life. Maybe Mama sensed the war brewing between you and Hana, or maybe you were all just talking about Vietnam. Arnie was against the idea that the country might send troops there, and he used to expound upon that over dinner. Mama never shared her own feelings about the war.

  The last time you remember that she told it, Lillie’s leaving felt so real, with so many details and dialogue you’d never heard before. Mama was recounting the moment Lillie said good-bye to her parents. She was traveling light, with only what she could carry in a carpetbag and a hard-sided case that banged into her shins when she walked. Usually, at that point in the story, Mama stopped to warn you that the world was big, and good-bye was forever, but this time, you asked her a question about the young man who came to save her.

  “Did she love him because he was Japanese?”

  Mama’s response that afternoon was that Lillie thought the young man recognized her. Not that he knew who her parents were and had come out of the blank spaces in the story to reunite the orphan with her real life, but that he could tell her who she was. You tried to absorb this, to make the distinction Mama made: not just that he knew her, but that he could tell her who she was—that he could gift her with her own description. It was a thrilling idea. After a pause, Mama offered: “There’s danger in that.”

  That was all she said. You didn’t hear her. As much as you loved your Lillie stories, you didn’t realize how profoundly you didn’t understand. That day, you thought she was talking about passion. But very soon you would be learning what Mama was trying to say.

  You are at Eddie and Missy’s house during the last school period. Eddie insisted you sneak away before swim practice because he needed you. After only a few months together, his idea of need already consists of having you wash a couple of the dishes in the sink so he’ll have something to eat off the next morning, or to get his jacket for him from across the room, but you came anyway. Missy is there, too. Once, you and Missy had a special connection, then it was you and Eddie. But now, she is always beside you, between you, and around you and Eddie. She is sprawled on the couch asking for advice about which boys she should lead on.

  Missy doesn’t believe in love. There aren’t a lot of Prince Charmings in her family tree, nor in the town for that matter. Men provide for the family. They don’t ride up on white horses with spangled bridles unless they’re roping cows and drinking beer afterward. It seems ironic that you and Eddie are the one exception Missy has made for great romance until you remember that it is her romance, too.

  Right now, Eddie is rummaging through your gym bag for cigarettes because he is out of his own again. Of all days, this is the one when the art teacher finally returned Hana’s sketchbook, which you had loaned him when he asked to see more of the monster pictures, and you just stuck it on the top of your clothes. Eddie thinks he has the right to pull it out, that he has the right to everything about you.

  “What’s this?” Without waiting, he flips it open to a drawing of one of Mama’s faceless ghosts.

  “Give it back!” Too late, you realize you should have pretended not to care about the sketchbook. Now he is really not going to let go.

  “What crap is this? These are like, kid’s drawings! Have you been failed back into preschool?”

  You look over at Missy. She’s the one you are worried about. Last week, you let it slip that Hana was invited to submit to the art show even though she hadn’t taken a single class in high school, and of course Missy was instantly jealous. You knew better than to mention that you and the diary started it all.

  “What are these?” Missy asks. She starts flipping through them. “Creepy.” She seems thoughtful at first.

  “They’re, umm…” How to describe them? You can’t say they’re your mother’s ghosts. They are the monsters that united the three of you before Arnie. Your mother, the hero who stood between you and the creatures who would come. And if they were invisible, even figments of her imagination, still, Mama’s ghosts were proof that she would protect you from the devil himself. She would not let you disappear. “They’re Hana’s.”

  Missy’s expression doesn’t harden until you explain what happened. Then she slams the notebook shut and tosses it on the table. “Wow, maybe she really is a baby if she can’t even enter a contest herself.”

  “A retard baby,” Eddie offers.

  “For God’s sake, Eddie! Could you be a bigger baby yourself?”

  As annoying as Eddie is becoming, he seems to know where your mind goes even when you haven’t spoken. “Your mom was always loco, yeah? Maybe your twin sister wen catch ’um. Crazy cooties. How ’bout you?”

  “Shut up!”

  There is an edge in your boyfriend’s voice, the one you have been hearing too often since he got fired from the gas station for pocketing cash. Eddie says it was bull, made up by the old man since Eddie was better with a timing belt. But since that day, Eddie has been pushing at something. Cheating his friends at pool in the carport. Sending you to the kitchen to get him another beer while he jokes that you’re too young to drink.

  “Ooh, you’re so cute when you’re angry!” Eddie grabs Hana’s sketchbook and starts paging through it himself. “These are some freaky ghosts.”

  The sketchbooks were ghost catchers. That’s what you remember. You did them together. Hana drew, but you told her the stories, recalled the details, put the figures in their places. Then, when they were captured, rendered harmless on the page, you could be the ones who protected Mama, not the other way around. Is that why you keep defending Hana? “It was just stuff she said,” you say, caught between the two of them and not thinking clearly. “Stories. Your mother never told you stories?”

  Missy has been waiting for you to disown Hana and Mama. No, she assumes that you will and is puzzled that you haven’t. But now, she flinches and you remember: Missy’s mother wasn’t there to tell her anything. Maybe that’s what puts the heat in her voice. “You can’t think these stick drawings are sane? They aren’t even any good! They’re like kindergarten.”

  They were kindergarten, but you don’t say that. “They got her in, didn’t they? Mr. Kealoha asked her to submit. They must have some value you don’t see.”

  “Oh, but you do?” Eddie asked, looking toward Missy for approval. There’s something dark in his eyes now. Something that demands soothing. “Mental art if you ask me. By a mental kid of a mental mother…”

  “Shut up, Eddie.” You know you should back off but you can’t help yourself. “Let’s not start comparing mental mothers. People who live in glass houses…” It wa
s a story from the Bible that Mama used to tell them. She never had to say more than the first half of the proverb, but Eddie wouldn’t know the rest. You know he’ll hit back at you somehow for making him feel stupid, but you are too furious to care.

  But instead, Eddie seems pleased that he has you off balance. He holds Hana’s sketchbook high in the air, trying to make you jump to get it. He’s so tall you both know there’s no way for you to grab it without knocking him over or trying to climb up his body, which is what he wants you to do. When your body collides with his, he grabs you with his other hand and pulls you to him, then tosses the notebook back to Missy so he can circle you with his other arm. “No, I’m wrong. You’re kind of sexy when you’re angry. What do you think of our gutsy little tiger, Miss-Miss?” he asks his sister.

  You try to twist out of Eddie’s embrace, but he pulls you tighter and brings his lips down to your ear. “Stop it. Eddie. Please.”

  Eddie’s smile crawls across his face like a spider. He likes it when he can cut you deep. “You don’t beg nearly often enough,” he growls, delighted, and begins to nibble at your earlobe.

  “I said stop!” You push him away, hard. You must have caught him by surprise, because he moves easily as your hands shove his ribs. “Leave me alone.”

  “You, alone?” The space between you vibrates. His face is twisted. This is not how he expected it to go. “You, who’s always over here like a little puppy dog? And now you say you want to be alone?”

  He’s making you choose between him and Mama. Missy and Hana. He thought he knew which choice you’d make, and he’s pissed at the dawning understanding that he is wrong.

  “Take it, Miss,” he says to his sister without looking in her direction. There is something flat and final in his words. For a moment, you think he might move toward you, then he decides he’s had enough for the day. Missy looks crushed, both of you drained and shaking, waiting to see what he’ll do. But he only grabs his baseball cap and heads for the door.