Searching for Sky

by Jillian Cantor

  Dr. Cabot sits down next to Bed, and she picks up my hand. Her fingers are fleshier than the woman who called herself my grandmother, thick and full, and if they were covered in blond hair, they might remind me of Helmut’s. “Now, I know all this must be very scary for you.” I shake my head. How can she know anything? “And this is all going to take some getting used to after everything you’ve been through. But I promise you”—she squeezes my hand—“you’re going to love it here once you adjust.” I pull my hand away from her and turn on my side, facing away. “Why don’t you relax for a bit,” she says. “Your grandmother should be allowed to take you home within the hour.”

  Chapter 12

  I do not understand beginnings, that things happened to me once, before I could remember them. There are beginnings on Island I can’t remember, either. Getting there, for one. The origins of Shelter or the wooden traps. The beginning of Tree of Days and Cooler. I know the stories, the things my mother told me about The Others Who We Never Met, The Accident, that Helmut was so good at surviving, that we were so lucky to have him. I know that every 365 days, counting from the thirty-second notch on Tree of Days, I turned another year older, and that every 365 days from the fifty-sixth notch on Tree of Days, River did.

  But now my memory is like Ocean. It moves in and out, back and forth. Sometimes it brings me gifts and sometimes it takes them away just as quickly.

  Helmut always told us that memories are things that never happened, stories we make up in our mind to make ourselves feel better. River tried to argue with him about this once.

  “That’s not true,” River said, shaking his head hard. He was younger then, stupid enough to think he actually had a chance at winning an argument with Helmut. “I remember my mother,” River told him once, “and she loved me.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Helmut laughed. “You didn’t even know your mother. She died before you were born. Petal is the only mother you’ve ever known.”

  My mother nodded and murmured in agreement, though she was frowning, her forehead dewy and shining with sweat the way it always got when the sun was too high in the sky, too bright, too hot.

  “I knew her,” River insisted to me later as we sat in Cove By Falls together, leaving my mother and Helmut to have their alone time in Shelter, which they asked us for at least once every seven notches, sometimes more.

  River dangled his feet in the water. He was smaller than me then. Shorter and thinner. Sometimes I thought I might be strong enough to pick him up and hang him over my shoulders. Helmut said I could, before he laughed, like he was joking.

  “I knew my mother,” River told me. “Helmut is wrong.”

  “You’re an idiot,” I told him, skimming the water with my feet so it splashed up at him. “Memories are just stories you tell yourself.”

  Helmut did not believe in stories. Not memories. Not anything. My mother told River and me the story once of two animals in a boat, going out to sea. The owl and the pussycat.

  They sailed away for a year and a day, and they danced by the light of the moon.

  She smiled as she said it, as if maybe this was her memory. Her story. I tried to imagine her and Helmut out in Ocean, dancing together.

  “Who am I in this stupid scenario?” Helmut growled. “The owl or the cat?”

  “What’s a cat?” River asked.

  “It’s kind of like a rabbit,” my mother answered.

  The owl. Helmut was the owl. Of course.

  I think about all this now as I sit at the edge of Bed, waiting for the grandmother woman to come back for me. I think about River’s memories, his stories, his insistence once that his mother was real, that he could honestly remember her, as something he could touch, a real person. Not just a story.

  Maybe he’s already forgotten everything else. All the nights in Shelter where we slept back to back. The fish he caught me as a present. The pictures he drew me in the sand, the wet flowers he handed me on the night of the mushrooms.

  The way he just pushed me away in his space, as if he didn’t care about me, as if he never even cared at all, makes it feel like all the things we did together on Island, they are memories, too. Untrue stories I am telling myself. Things that never even happened. Things that meant nothing.

  And then I wonder if River is leaving this place with this woman he thinks he remembers: his mother. If suddenly she means more to him than I ever did. If River loves her more than he loves me.

  And then it feels like I know nothing now. I am nothing.

  Chapter 13

  The grandmother woman arrives too soon. Without a view of the sun overhead, I don’t know how much time has actually passed since Dr. Cabot left, but I do know I’m not ready to see the grandmother woman again, to go somewhere with her.

  She walks in, and today she is wearing night, black. Her hair is down, and short, I notice now, just at her shoulders. Her strange purple lips twitch and then form a smile as she hands me a pile of things.

  “What’s this?” I ask her.

  “Blue jeans, T-shirt, panties, bra, and flip-flops.”

  I stare at her, unsure what she expects me to do with this stuff or if she expects me to thank her. I sniff it and it smells sweet, like flowers. “I don’t understand,” I finally say.

  She smiles in that strange way that makes her seem more nervous than happy. The same look my mother got when Helmut was gone too long or his voice got too loud. “Clothes, what we wear here,” she says. “Let me help you get this stuff on.”

  She tugs at my thin white pelt until I stand there before her, cold and naked, and embarrassed that this woman I don’t know is seeing me like this.

  But then she averts her eyes, as if she is embarrassed, too, and she holds the pieces out to me one by one:

  Panties. “Pull them over your legs.”

  Bra. “Here, let me,” and she hooks it around my ribs.

  Blue jeans. “Over the legs again”—which I don’t understand, since panties already cover my womanly parts.

  T-shirt. “Over the head; pull your arms through.”

  And then last—flip-flops on my feet.

  I feel strange in all this … stuff. Everything is too tight, and it’s hard to breathe. But the grandmother woman doesn’t seem to notice. As soon as all her clothes are on my body, she takes my arms and pulls me out the coming-in place.

  “You’re going to love the house,” she says. And we walk back into the long pathway where I walked earlier and found River. “We’re walking distance to the Pacific Ocean, so you’ll feel right at home.”

  She holds tightly to my arm, pulling me, and I feel light like a bird. I glide along next to her, skimming the water, as if I can walk on it. She talks, and her words feel very far away and empty. I’m dressed just like River now, I think, in these strange, uncomfortable things that tug at my stomach and my chest. River. His coming-in place is open, and as we walk by his space, I see that it is already empty. River is gone, without me. I’m not sure if I will ever see him again, and I bite my lip to keep from crying.

  “Do you know where he went?” I ask the grandmother woman now.

  “Who?” she says.

  “River.”

  “Who?”

  “Lucas,” I say, the word feeling funny on my tongue.

  “Oh.” She stops walking for a moment and looks at me. “Don’t worry about him,” she says. “He’ll be fine. Okay? I promise you. And besides, we have so much else to talk about.” Her voice goes on and on, like the bright green birds that would chatter all night just before the rains. Helmut got so mad at their squawking that he swore if he ever saw one, he’d climb the tree and wring its neck. They were smart birds; they never showed themselves when they were that loud. “Now, I know you have a lot to learn,” she is saying now, “so anything you don’t know, you can ask me. Don’t be afraid. And I have a team of professionals coming to the house. You’ll be so much more comfortable there than in some sort of … establishment.”

  I nod, though
I don’t really understand what she’s saying. Except it seems she is right about one thing. I have a lot to learn. When we reach the end of the pathway, then turn, then walk down another, and then finally go out a coming-in place and into real sunlight, everything is unfamiliar.

  The ground is black like the night sky and hard beneath my feet, which already feel strange in these terrible flip-flops. They flap and make weird squawking noises as I walk, and my toes slip away. I don’t understand why I have them on, and I reach down to take them off.

  “Don’t do that, honey.” The grandmother woman stops me with her hand. “The ground is dirty.” I wonder if that means there is nothing like Falls here, that there is no way to get clean in California, and the thought makes my heart pound. Everything is different. Everything is wrong. River is gone.

  I look up to catch the sky. I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve seen it, and I want it to comfort me now, to show me that something here is as it always was. But even that looks different. Less blue and more white gray. The air is cold against my skin, and I shiver.

  “I should’ve brought you a sweatshirt,” she says, and she looks up to the sky, too. “It isn’t always like this. This is just June gloom, the marine layer hanging around a little longer than it should. Give it a month and the sky will blue up again in the afternoons. The air will warm up a little, too.”

  I don’t answer her but I look around. In the distance there are pale brown hills, higher than anything I have ever seen. They are blank, like the sand, missing green trees. A few palms dot the far side of this blackness we are standing on, but they are different from the palms I know, thinner, flimsier. And between us and them, there are rows and rows of strange, oddly shaped … bushes? All different colors and sizes, but very shiny like sea glass, dotting the blackness.

  The grandmother woman takes my arm and pulls me toward one of them, a red one, the color of what she was wearing when she first came to see me. She pulls something out of the rabbit pelt container over her shoulder and then reaches in front of me to pull the strange bush—(or maybe it’s a cave?)—apart. “Go ahead,” she says. “Get in.”

  I shake my head. I have no idea what this is or what it will do to me. The inside looks like a small black cave, and I’m afraid I might become trapped.

  “Oh, good lord,” she says. “I didn’t even think …” She puts her hand on my arm. “Honey, this is a car. This is how people get from place to place. I turn it on with my key.” She holds up the thing in her hand. “And then I power the engine on, and it takes us where we want to go.”

  I think of the engine on the boat, the way it moved so far and so fast once Roger turned it on, Island becoming like a tiny shell behind us. “Like the boat?” I ask her now.

  “Yes, sort of. Only it takes us places on land.”

  “Why can’t we walk?”

  “Oh.” She laughs. “Honey, think of it this way: this island where you’ve been all this time, it’s the size of this freckle.” She points to a tiny brown spot on her wrist. “And, California, well, it’s the size of this.” She gestures to show the length of her body. “It would take us two days to walk home from here. “We’re not all that close. Even in the car, it’ll take a good thirty minutes or more. Freeway traffic this time of day, well, it could take even longer.”

  Nothing she says makes sense. Freeway? Traffic? California is the size of her body? Island the size of a brown spot on her arm? But I understand that I need to do what she’s asking or stand here in this strange blackness forever. So I get into Car Cave, and I let her tie a rope around me, which she promises will keep me safe. I don’t argue with her, because, really, what other choice do I have now?

  And this, I begin to realize, might be the worst feeling of all. Even worse than being here without River. On Island, especially this past year, every decision I made was my own. But here, I’m so lost. I know nothing. I am nothing. All I can do, for now, is listen to her and do as she says.

  I watch as she moves her key, turning it funny as if she was going to roast it like a fish over Fire Pit.

  Suddenly I hear a loud noise, like the rush of Ocean in my ears, only harder, louder, the way Ocean would sound if it pulled me under and I would have to struggle for a moment to find my way back to the surface to breathe.

  But then I understand Car Cave is moving, pulling my body, not gently, along with it.

  Black whirs around us. To my side, Military Hospital slowly grows smaller, just the way Island did as the boat moved across Ocean. And soon we have whirred so much I can no longer see Military Hospital at all.

  I put my hand up to try to stop everything from moving so fast, to hold on and catch a fistful of the air, but my hand slams into something hard. I push and I push, grasping to feel the air against my skin.

  “Oh, honey, don’t do that,” the grandmother woman says. “You’ll hurt yourself on the window.”

  We are still for a moment, and I stop pushing. There is a small red sun in front of us, and I sigh, thinking this is over. But then the sun turns green, and we are flying, as if Car Cave is a bird and we’re riding its wings.

  Suddenly there are these strange cars everywhere, all around us, so close, moving so fast. So many colors, a swirl of water and sand, sky and rocks, birds and trees, and one that is red, like blood, that moves so close to us, I think I could touch it, or that it might touch me—and crush me—and I push my hand harder now to try to push myself out, to save myself.

  I clutch my stomach with my hand that is not pushing to get out. I start gagging and I know it, that all the strange food I ate at Military Hospital is going to come back up.

  As suddenly as it began, the motion stops, the grandmother woman escapes, runs to my side, and is pulling the rope off me to let me out of Car Cave and into the cool rush of noisy air.

  Just in time for all the food to come back up, swirling in strange colors against the black ground.

  “Oh, honey,” she says, rubbing my back. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. The freeway is a lot sometimes, even for me.”

  She keeps rubbing my back, until the food stops coming, until I sigh and wish all the strange whirring cars away. I wish for Ocean, the starry sky, the sounds green birds make at night.

  “I’ll get off at the next exit,” she says, “and we’ll take the side streets back. Fewer cars, a little slower going.” She pauses. “You tell me if you need to be sick again, and I’ll pull over.”

  I nod, because I sense she is trying to help me now, even though I don’t understand most of what she just said. And besides, I don’t think there is anything left in me. My stomach is empty; I am empty.

  She helps me back behind the rope in Car Cave, but before she walks back to her place and moves her key again, she says, “Why don’t you try to close your eyes. It might help a little bit.” She pauses. And then she says softly, “That’s what I used to tell your mother, when she was a little girl and she’d get carsick.”

  My mother, in Car Cave? I shake my head because it doesn’t feel real. But I do as she says and close my eyes.

  A woman begins singing softly in my ear, and I have no idea who she is or why she’s here. I hadn’t noticed anyone else in Car Cave, and her voice sounds different from the grandmother woman’s, higher, more pure. I like it. It reminds me of my mother, the way she’d sing me to sleep in Shelter when I was little, holding on to me tightly, singing about the sunshine.

  I can’t go back there, she pleaded with Helmut.

  Skeletons, she told me. Everyone is broken there.

  I squeeze my eyes shut tightly, picturing the lull of Ocean, the great expanse of nothingness lying beyond it, River’s fingers tangling in my braid, my belly full with my birthday fish. Just a memory now. And if Helmut was right about memory, then that means nothing about my life on Island was real. As if my whole life up until now has been nothing but a dream.

  Chapter 14

  Eventually the motion of car Cave stops again, and there is quiet. “We’re he
re,” the grandmother woman says, and I open my eyes, at last. Here? “Home, sweet home.”

  In front of me is something large, what I’m guessing is her shelter. It’s unlike anything I have ever seen or imagined up until now. A very tall, high multicolored square reaching for the sky.

  She unties her rope, gets out, and opens up Car Cave for me. She tugs on my hand to pull me out, and I keep myself limp, holding on to her, following her, allowing her to pull me.

  Suddenly I hear the flutter of a flock of noisy birds, then the flashing of a hundred suns. I turn, and there are people rushing up behind us. So many of them, all at once, that I can’t remember how to breathe.

  “Mrs. Henderson, how does it feel to have your granddaughter back after all this time?”

  “No comment,” the grandmother woman says, holding up her hands to block away the man’s sun.

  “Megan,” another voice calls, a woman. “How did it feel to be Helmut Almstedt’s captive all these years?”

  I turn, and she stands behind me, waving a stick in my face. Her sun, her electricity, is so bright, I can barely see in the wash of yellow.

  “Come on.” The grandmother woman grabs my shoulders tightly and spins me toward her shelter. “Just ignore them.” She turns back. “Get off my property, or I’ll call the police,” she yells.

  Then she pulls something from her rabbit pelt, presses a tiny square, and a large, wide coming-in place begins to open in front of us. “This is the garage,” she says. “Come on in. Don’t be nervous, honey. Don’t look behind you.” She pulls me into the large, dark square, hits the tiny square in her hand again, and the coming-in place closes behind us. We stand there in the darkness for a moment.