by Thea Lim
“You look exactly the same,” Donna kept saying. “I knew you would, but still, I can’t believe it. You’re like a vampire. You finally look young enough to be my niece.” She had somehow managed to find a Polaroid camera with film inside, and she used up this entire precious resource on photos of Polly. She stuck these photos on the fridge, propped them on the buffet, tucked them inside of books. “I always wished I had more photos of you,” she said.
Donna’s apartment was on the nineteenth floor. Her favorite thing was her balcony, and she spent ages with her watering cans and flowerpots. Birds came and sat on the branches and ate from the sugar water feeders that hung the length of the colossal terrace.
Donna didn’t ask what happened in America. Every moment they spent together, Polly was grateful for this reprieve and devastated by her apathy. The push and pull kept Polly in the middle, sedate. But Polly too did not ask Donna the details of her injury. So they understood each other’s wounds, without knowing them.
One day Polly woke at dawn, sweaty and cold. The phone was ringing. She reached for the receiver and braced herself for the voice, ill with dread. Then she saw there was no phone and that she was somewhere else altogether.
Polly went into the living room.
“Sorry,” Donna called from the kitchen, “that was just Al, my neighbor. We’re both early risers.”
At dawn you could see everything from the balcony, the entire sky banded with rose, lavender, and gold, the whole beginning of the day. After that, Polly got up at dawn always to watch the sunrise with Donna and Derek, Donna’s tubby little terrier. Polly didn’t ask what happened to Chicken and Noodles.
“I didn’t think that birds that size could get up so high,” Polly said.
“Tenacity,” Donna said. Then, after a pause: “Frank wanted to buy me the penthouse, but that seemed unnecessary. Blood money.” Donna sniffed. “I couldn’t forgive him at first, for what he did. Marrying some rich bitch, not four years after you were gone, when he’d promised to wait twelve, after you gave your life for his.”
“We don’t have to talk about Frank.”
“But twelve years is a long time, right? And eighteen? That’s a very long time.”
Polly said nothing.
“I was trying to suggest another way to think about it.”
“Do you think anyone has photos of the way things used to look?” Polly asked.
“That’s a funny question. Why do you ask?”
Polly yearned to hear that, even if her home had been converted from its full sidewalk-and-smokestack body into the flatness of the second dimension, it still had corporeal form. If there were photographs of how things used to be, then she still lived in a world with a Buffalo.
“Al would know. He lives at the library.”
Polly only left the apartment to take Derek for walks. They went for hours-long journeys, Polly carrying Derek when he started to wheeze, but never beyond the boundaries of where Polly had already been. She stayed away from the old places: her mother’s bungalow, where she was born; Frank’s apartment near Hertel Avenue; and all of Riverside, where she had lived with Donna until that December day when Frank decided they should drive south. Until she saw them those places were preserved, as they once were.
Once or twice she walked Derek all the way down to the canal. They watched the boats come in, until it got dark and Derek whined for his dinner. She was looking for her cabin mate. Polly had this outlandish, unshakable notion that she alone recognized who Polly was.
Every day was laced with hatred for Frank.
Al was from Greece. He had a big belly and a weakness for puns, and after dinner one day, he withdrew a lumpy envelope from his satchel and put it on the dining room table.
“These photos were donated by the son of a local photographer. We haven’t sorted them yet, but I’m told they’re all dated around ’75. I understand you, my dear. The first time I returned to my town, it was like going back to a childhood home where all the rooms had jumped up in the middle of the night and traded places.”
Polly wished to say how completely she knew what he meant, but words failed her. She was even more distressed moments later when the photos weren’t the salve she had expected.
It was true they were photographs taken by a local photographer, but they were family photos. Someone had been visiting from somewhere far away, an aunt or cousin, and they’d taken pictures in front of all the necessary landmarks. There they were at Anchor Bar. The aunt had hair to her waist. There they were in front of City Hall. Polly tipped the photo as if it were a window, and at the right angle it would reveal something of Frank’s bar. Here they were in Delaware Park.
“No?” Donna said. “Not what you’re looking for?”
“It’s not . . .” Polly tried. “I don’t know. What was right there?” She pointed to where the frame cut out the rest of the park.
“This is not a systematic record. We just get slices. They organize the photos by date in our collection, not specific locations, so if it’s specific locations you want, that’s more involved. But we have photo plates going back to 1901! We’ll find you something.”
How brittle an existence Buffalo led, living only inside these strips of feeble paper. Faced with this, her brain emptied. She studied the photo of Delaware Park. This was their beginning, but she had no feeling at all, as if necrosis was setting in along the seams of her memory.
In late September, Polly started making wider and wider circuits with Derek, pushing the edge of what she could bear, and one day she made it to the high school at the rim of the Fruit Belt, minutes from Frank’s house, just as school was letting out. She watched the teenagers, a stream of ponytails and shouting, until just a trickle was left, then no one. She returned at the same time the next day, and the next and the next, each time waiting by a different gate, until she found Felicia.
* * *
Polly missed her at first. Felicia was under her eyeline, at the lip of the soccer field, knees up, her back to the fence, the pearly fabric of her purple bomber bulging through the chain link. Polly stationed herself on a stone bench a breath away, near waiting parents drinking real coffee in glass jars. She pretended to fiddle with Derek’s collar.
Felicia was powerful; others came to her. The only time she raised herself was to greet an equally magnetic girl. They kissed each other on the cheek, like the French. Felicia was all legs. She glided, walked like a celebrity. She must have learned to walk like that from her mother. Her mother who is not me. Polly felt unwell; her eyes wouldn’t focus. It was like looking through a broken camera. She wanted to leave, but she was screwed to the bench.
A boy, not in their league in his one-color outfit and unremarkable hair, came to talk.
“You girls going to the game this weekend?”
“Uh-huh,” her friend said. Felicia was doodling in a notebook and didn’t look up.
“Okay. Where do you think is the best place to sit?”
“Near the front, I guess?” The friend’s voice lifted into mirth, not nicely.
“Okay.”
But he was brave, this boy, standing over them, exposed like a house in a desert.
“Okay, bye,” he said.
When he’d gone, Felicia leaned in close to her friend and said, “You girls,” in a teacher-type voice. They giggled—loud, showy laughter. The boy’s shoulders curled over as he retreated.
Another, a soccer ball bobbing between his hands, came over. He slithered down the fence to sit beside them.
“What was that?”
“Huh?” The friend made Bambi eyes. Felicia kept doodling but smiled. Polly was mesmerized by her, as if by fire or water.
“Don’t talk to that clown.”
“I talk to who I want to.” Defiant words, neutered by a singsong tone.
“Psshht, whatever. His family are Journeymen. You should stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“They’re old-school. They’re afraid of microwaves. They want
to make abortion illegal.”
“They’re afraid of microwaves? You’re so weird.”
“Really. They’re backwards. They don’t believe in equal rights. For women.”
“Why?”
“My sister had a Journeyman neighbor. She was always waiting at the peephole, judging my sister for having guys over. Unlike me, I’d never judge a lady for liking the bone.”
“Gross.” This was Felicia’s first contribution. But shouldn’t she say, A Journeyman saved my father?
“And it’s on the news. The government is considering—”
“The government,” the friend interrupted, in a self-serious voice.
“Whatever. The government is considering changing driver’s licenses so they don’t list year of birth, just age.”
“So?”
“That does not sound like something true.” Felicia again. Confident, matter-of-fact intonation. But shouldn’t she use that voice to say, Without that Journeyman, I wouldn’t be alive?
“Mr. Cherry told us all about it. They want to differentiate between—”
“Differentiate—”
“Between age and birth date, but that could breed statutory rape, voter fraud—”
“Voter fraud! You are such a nerd.” Felicia’s friend leaned over, fingers fanned, to defile his hair. He danced his head out of reach, smiling.
“It’s a gateway to pedophilia!”
Laughter. Rage rent a hole inside Polly.
“How old is that Journeyman clown?”
“He was six when he arrived,” Felicia said.
“How do you know that?” asked the friend.
“He’s a pedophile!” The boy erupted. “It doesn’t matter how old he was when he arrived. He’s still at least twelve years older than us. He’s twenty-seven. Dirty old man.”
“I gotta go.”
“No! Fefe!”
Felicia bounced off in a cloud of passionate farewells. Here, Polly could have stopped.
But this girl had grabbed the gift of her life so greedily. Her pea brain could not fathom the debt owed to the woman following her with a dog under her arm. This thieving girl had snatched the body and the life meant for Polly’s baby.
It did not take long to catch up with Felicia. She’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to riffle through her knapsack, blocking foot traffic. She groaned, lost the halo of confidence bestowed by her friends. She was a child, still too inexperienced to know to muffle her emotions in public. Vulnerable.
Her head snapped up. She’d found what she wanted: a portable cassette player. A bus arrived at High and Main. As Felicia ran, her headphone wires billowed in the wind and her knapsack careened from side to side, the zipper not secure, some kind of wrapper flying out.
Polly gathered up Derek and climbed on the bus.
Felicia sat three rows back from the driver. Polly took the empty seat behind her, Derek organizing himself in her lap. Low-roofed residences condensed into office towers. Felicia pressed play and sang along under her breath. She moved the air with her little mouth, her shoulders dancing in time with her sighs. What was she listening to?
Polly wanted to see her. She wanted to squeeze her smug little jawbone between her fingers, fix her in place, so she could stare at her. What in her was her father’s? But Felicia’s hair made a screen. Half of you should have been mine. Felicia’s hair cascaded over the back of the seat. Brown curls. Polly lifted her fingers, wiggling them in the wash of Felicia’s hair.
A cyclist raced across the road and the driver hit the brakes. Everyone jerked forward and Polly’s thumb twisted in the waves.
“Ow!” the girl shouted. She turned to see what had hurt her pretty head.
Polly stared forward with a voided face.
Felicia gasped. “Cute dog!” she said. She reached over the seat rail and then paused, her hand in the air, her shoulders bunched up to her ears. “Is it okay if I pet him?”
Polly hoped she was smiling, but she couldn’t feel her lips.
Felicia plunged her fingers under Derek’s collar and Derek obliged, smacking his stubby tail against the seat.
“He’s a good boy!” Felicia proclaimed.
“What are you listening to?” Polly asked.
“Oh, crap! My stop!”
She grabbed the bell cord, nearly swinging from it. The bus screeched to a stop, its contents complaining once again.
“Bye-bye, doggie!” Felicia shouted, and bounded off.
Polly and Derek scrabbled to their feet and followed. They stepped into the glare of the late-afternoon sun, so bright it erased the faces crowded around the bus stop. Polly heard her name. It was easy to mishear among the click and hustle of the street. She heard it again. A sick feeling cracked over her.
An old woman had a hand on Felicia’s shoulder. She was wearing a visor and the kind of shirt that’s meant to be creased.
“Dear Lord, it’s you.”
She was bent over and age had leached the color from her hair, but it was Mrs. Marino.
Polly held Derek like a baby, using him to protect her soft, armorless chest, gripping him so hard her fingers must have been digging into his meat, but with the mysterious kindness of animals, he did not protest.
It was rush hour, the streets flush with commuters. A woman walked her briefcase into Mrs. Marino, but she didn’t seem to register the pain.
“Felicia, this is, uh . . .” Mrs. Marino stopped. She laughed, a creaky sound. Felicia looked from her grandmother to Polly, her hair swishing and her face peeved and worried.
Polly was bound to these people. But not by blood, not by marriage. Something common, but not normal, not enough to have a legal name.
“You look just the way you did when you were a girl.” Mrs. Marino stepped close. She smelled of dough and roses. Polly meant to turn away. Mrs. Marino put her arms around Polly.
She was still the same. The kind of person who was unembarrassable, who would hug whether or not you hugged back.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Marino said. “Thank you.” Felicia kept staring, alarmed and angry at her grandmother for crying.
Here was the payment that, seconds ago, Polly had demanded. But it was wrong, seeing his mother like this: a pencil stroke the artist forgot to hide, the remains of some failed experimentation, never meant to be seen on the painting’s surface. And in his mother’s face was Frank’s, the little nose, the sweet eyes.
Polly turned away, her chest stuffed with tears. All she had done, every day since she returned to Buffalo and found Frank lost, was to try to forget all that love. She had gone through every pocket she owned looking for ticket stubs and pencils and bits of hair. But it lived on, in the atmosphere. Frank existed.
“Are you all right? Do you need money?” Mrs. Marino called.
Polly stepped to the left and let the human tide wash her away.
* * *
They all lived so close. Every night, they all slept on the same axis. Early mornings, Polly marched up and down Donna’s street with Derek. Each time she got to North Street, she almost took that left to Felicia’s school. But along with everything else, she’d lost that bionic ability to drown out doubt. Always by first school bell she returned to Donna’s.
Donna took her swimming every day. “You can’t just lie on the floor.” Polly sat on the bottom of the pool and imagined the world above was the way she remembered it. But she could never sit long enough before the air in her blood floated her to the top.
One day in November, management replaced the fall-blooming flowers flanking the front door with heavy, wide-bottomed concrete planters, each holding a delicate, diminutive evergreen bush pruned in the shape of a double spiral. There were no cuttings, no shears tucked under the foot of a bush. The evidence that a person had done the work was erased. You could pretend the bushes just grew that way. Cookie and the women of 4A1 and so many others were still trapped under the border, where Polly had left them behind.
When she entered the apartment, Donna came
in from the balcony.
“The security guard called. Why the hell did you steal that?”
A spiral bush was in Polly’s hand. Her arms were sticky with sap and her hands were scraped where the plant had tried to resist her violence.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
Polly didn’t answer. Donna came over and took the plant out of Polly’s hand and laid it carefully on the dining room table. One side of the spiral was crushed. Polly had wanted to destroy it, but once she severed half its roots and wrenched it from the basin, she had felt no satisfaction. She felt only anguish.
“Maybe we can replant it,” Polly said.
“Let’s wash these hands.”
Donna led her into the bathroom and gave her rubbing alcohol and a warm towel, and while she watched to make sure Polly got all the dirt out from under her fingernails, she said, “Do you want to tell me about what happened to you?”
“I just went for a walk.”
“I don’t mean this morning. I mean since you arrived. What happened in America?”
“You never asked before.”
“I was waiting for you to bring it up.”
“There’s not much to say. It was only a few months.”
“Will you tell me what happened?”
“It’s hard to explain. It’s difficult to understand.”
“I’ll try.”
“How did you lose your foot?” Polly asked.
Donna breathed like the atmosphere had thickened. “All right,” she said. She sat down on the toilet lid with her cane between her knees.
“I was trying to get to Texas. Took me so long that they’d erected a border before I could get south of Ohio. Pathetic. Anyways, I was still in the US, but very close to America. They were putting everyone within a certain distance of the border in quarantine camps. Do you know how long it takes for symptoms of the flu to show?”
“Twenty-one days.”
“Right. But they wanted to keep us for six months. Extra precautions. But after two weeks of quarantine I was going nuts. So I tried to jump the fence. Barbed wire.” She shrugged.