Nowhere Girl

by A. J. Paquette

  She seems to have lost all ability to speak, too, and the guards are starting to look awkwardly in our direction, so I squat down and pick up the bag and the purse. Then I let a slow smile fill my face.

  “Grandmother,” I say.

  It is the most beautiful word in the whole world.

  44

  I turn from the entryway and step into the room. She walks behind me, moves inside, and lets me shut the door behind her. But she’s still silent as an old blackwood, and her gaze sticks to me like sap. I place the bags on the table and wave her toward one of the chairs. She falls into it without even looking once behind her. She devours me with her eyes.

  “Grandmother,” I say again.

  “Yes,” she whispers finally, and that word seems to break her trance. Suddenly her eyes are full of tears, and the tears are spilling down her face so that in seconds it’s wet, dripping wet, and I’m starting to get worried. I don’t know what to do, so I jump up and grab some tissues from the bathroom. I stuff them in her hand and she buries her face in them, sobbing and hiccuping a little.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry, it’s just that you—you’re so much—so—so much like your—like your mother. She’s gone, isn’t she?” And she hardly waits for my nod before she buries her head in her hands and weeps again.

  I know about tears, how good they can be for a person. Mama always waited until I was asleep before she let the really big tears come, but they woke me up every time. I would lie with my back turned away from her, thinking that at any time I could turn around, ever so slightly, and she would see me awake—and then what? For some reason she was ashamed of her weeping, but she shouldn’t have been. She would cry noisy tears of rage and despair, and slowly the sobs would roll up inside each other, would nestle into the folds of her body, would become softer and rounder, like rocking, like comfort. Like healing.

  The next morning, she always woke up with red eyes but a soft smile, like she’d wrestled with an angel and won herself a few moments of peace.

  So I let my grandmother cry now, and I sit quietly next to her, not saying anything, not moving a muscle, until I recognize the comfort sobs. Then I do what I was never able to do for Mama: I lean over, wrap my arms around her, and place my head on her shoulder.

  We stay like that for a while, until all her tears are gone and she pulls away with an embarrassed smile. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I suppose I had to get that out of my system, but—oh! You!” Her eyes mist up and for a second I think she’s going to start all over again, but she doesn’t. “Look at you—tell me everything about yourself! I suppose Rupert—”

  “My father,” I say quickly. There are two Ruperts, after all, and I don’t want to mix them up. “I never knew him. He died.”

  “Yes,” she says. “But you—”

  “I only found out about him recently. Mama was … secretive.”

  “But how—where have you been all these years? Why did she never …”

  I reach into my pocket and fish out a very creased, very worn piece of paper, almost translucent now from so much handling. I put it on the table in front of her, and I can see from her face that she recognizes it instantly.

  “My letter. She got it.”

  “She was afraid,” I say quickly. “I—I still don’t know exactly why. I don’t understand everything. But she was in prison. They arrested her going into Thailand. That’s where I was born. Where I grew up. In the prison.”

  My grandmother’s eyes widen with horror. “No!”

  I nod, then I smile. “Come,” I say. “Let me show you.” I reach out my hand for hers and she takes it, and we stand up together—and now we’re in my cell, on the inside, in the room that was my life. Words bubble up and out of me like magic, like mystery, like big wide strokes of paint sweeping across the mind’s canvas. I show her my cot and the sums I scratched on the walls, my well-loved books and my skillful tutors. I show her science and math, spelling and languages, stories and cuddles and a sort of crazy personalized attention that somehow, despite what it lacked, gave me everything I needed to become who I am. I introduce her to Bibi and Isra, Chief Warden Kanya, and even grouchy Jeanne.

  And I give her Mama. I give her the tall, slender woman who crooned her toddler to sleep every night; the madcap dance teacher who got us doing the rumba at midnight when the fancy struck her; the sad, lonely mother who cried herself to sleep but kept her back strong so that I wouldn’t worry. I give it all to her, big and little, good and bad, and in this way the day slips by. Food comes, or maybe it doesn’t. We are not there. We are just outside of Chiang Mai, in a tiny up-country prison, reclaiming thirteen lost years, one memory at a time.

  It is the most wonderful of all days. My grandmother and I fit like we are cut from the same blanket. She eats up all my stories, and her questions draw out memories I’d forgotten I had, little things Mama said, stories and songs and nonsense words that make us both roll around with shared laughter. It’s like having a little of Mama back.

  As we sit in the dark room that night, eating my newest favorite food—pancakes with little button-sized berry-fruits and pillows of whipped cream—I get up and walk to my bag. I reach to the very bottom, pull out a mass of dirty bundled cloth, and carry it to where she is sitting. The cloth strips come off easily, with all the wear this bundle’s gotten, and my grandmother’s eyes fill again as she looks at the urn. She knows right away what it is.

  “Thank you,” she says. “You brought your mama home to me. Thank you for that, dear child. Do you know that I felt it when she went? I truly did. But I never imagined she left someone behind—some bit of her, still in the world. And now you’re here, with me.”

  “Grandmother,” I say, because I can’t seem to stop thinking it, and the word just slips out of my mouth sometimes without trying.

  Her lips curve up into an amused smile. “Nana,” she says. “It’s always been ‘Nana’ on my side of the family.”

  “Nana,” I say, trying it out. I haven’t heard the term before, but it fits her. It’s soft and sturdy, with no sharp edges. It’s just right. “Nana.”

  She sets the urn carefully on the table. The unfinished brown clay looks dull and foreign on the gleaming glass countertop, like a plant that’s been transposed into the wrong kind of soil. But this isn’t the end of Mama’s journey. She’s not all the way home yet.

  “Home,” I say. “Do you still live in Brookline, where Mama grew up?”

  “Yes! Oh, yes! And I can’t wait to take you there. In fact—” She looks at her watch. “No, I suppose it’s too late to get tickets for tonight. But we should plan to fly out first thing in the morning.”

  Then I remember something. “The man at the border said …” My mouth is suddenly dry, and I wonder how all the comfort and love of the past few hours could have crowded something so important out of my head. “He is coming.”

  Nana’s head snaps up. “What?”

  “Ru—” I shake my head. I can’t say his name, but I don’t have to. She hisses like an angry snake and leaps to her feet. My hands start to tremble. “They said his name was put in Mama’s file; she was flagged as a person of interest. They called him at the same time as you. They said—I couldn’t leave here—until …”

  The soft old woman is gone; in her place is a roaring monsoon. Nana yanks the door open and darts out into the hall. I can hear her voice, raised and sharp, and the guards’ deep bass counterpoint. I sink lower in my chair. Somehow, I know what’s coming. There was a look on that guard’s face when he told me who was in charge.

  And it wasn’t my grandmother.

  Sure enough, when she comes back into the room, her shoulders are drooping. “They won’t let you leave,” she says in a near whisper. “I don’t know how he thinks he can still—”

  Suddenly I can’t bear the suspense any longer. I rush to her and drop to my knees by her chair. “Please, tell me everything,” I say. “Who is this man, and why was Mama so afraid of him? What di
d he do to her?” What, I think to myself, would be so horrible that she would choose a life in prison over facing him again?

  Nana sighs. She closes her eyes and falls against the back of her chair like an empty coat. “Old man Payne is the meanest son of a gun you’ll ever find. He built Payne Industries up from nothing to a billion-dollar company before he was twenty-five. Whatever he set his eye on, he got. That’s the word on the street, and that’s been my experience, too. He’s made himself into one of the most powerful men on the East Coast, and, of course, he had great plans for his only son, Rupert Jr.”

  A shudder ripples through me. Without thinking I sit back into a squat, hugging my knees tightly against my chest.

  “But that boy was nothing like him. He was …” She searches for the right word, then waves a hand as if to pull it out of the air. “Good. He was a good boy. Helena met him at a club when she was nineteen. She’d gone out with a couple of girlfriends, and I don’t know how it happened, but they ended up getting to know each other. He came by the house a few times—quiet, well mannered, nicely dressed. He didn’t use his real name. Rupert Ray, he called himself—that was his middle name. Didn’t like the attention that came with the full version.” Her mouth twisted. “Not that I can blame him.

  “In any case, time passed and eventually things started getting serious between them, and it was then he told her who he was. Of course, she didn’t care, but there was more to it than that. Payne’s people kept tabs on his son, and he finally caught on that this was more than some little fling. Payne warned his son to drop your mother and move on.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Why did he dislike her so much?”

  Nana shrugs. “Many things, I suppose. Not highly placed enough. Not rich enough. Not well-connected enough. Not his choice. In any case, Rupert ignored his father, and next thing we know, Helena disappears.”

  I gasp. “What happened to her?”

  Nana’s eyes cast down to her lap. “I don’t know. She would never tell. She was gone for four days, but after the second night Rupert came to the house. He thought she’d been ignoring his calls, and when he found out she was missing, he was livid. I’ve never seen a man so angry. He let us know his father had to be involved, and he swore he would get her back to us.” She shakes her head, looking suddenly very old. “He did, too. But she was never the same. She came back with eyes as big as oceans and hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. Anytime anyone around her moved a hand too quickly—for any reason at all—she would fly out of her chair and be halfway across the room before she even knew what she was doing. She would wake up at night screaming and whimpering. It was horrible.”

  “Was she hurt?” I whisper. “Did he hurt her?”

  “No. There were no marks on her body, nothing. But she was broken, all the same.”

  Broken. How well that word describes Mama! And how I wish I’d known all of this sooner. I could have helped her. I know I could have.

  “We all tried to help,” says Nana, as if she’s reading my mind. “She wouldn’t let us go to the police—what good would it have done anyway, with so many of them in Payne’s pocket? And over time, things did get better. Of course she wanted nothing to do with Rupert, wouldn’t take his calls, begged us not to let him anywhere near the house. But he kept coming, kept leaving her flowers, sending her books with notes scrawled into the flyleaf.” She wipes away a tear. “He really loved her. I read in the papers that he had broken ties with his father, disowned him publicly and denounced him for corruption. It was a huge scandal.” Her mouth twists. “Or it should have been, except it wasn’t. The newspapers were all ablaze for, oh, one day. Then, suddenly, the whole thing disappeared. Poof! Not a whisper on the web, in print, on TV, nothing. It’s like it never happened. He has connections in high places, that old man.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “Rupert won her over, eventually. She loved him as much as he did her, you see. And finally he broke through her fear and got her to believe that there was hope for a happy ending.”

  “They ran away,” I whisper.

  “Yes. She wasn’t supposed to tell me—Rupert didn’t want to risk word getting to his father. But she left me a letter.” She reaches down to touch her skirt pocket, and I wonder if maybe she carries it with her wherever she goes. It wouldn’t surprise me. “I was devastated at first—but I understood. She loved him. And—well, I just never thought things would end the way they did. He was a good boy. But he wasn’t perfect. He had some terrible flaws of his own.”

  I think about the end of the story, my father’s sad end. “I read on the computer about what happened,” I say.

  Nana nods. “Payne hushed most of that up, too. But his contacts aren’t as strong abroad, so some word got out and stayed out. I didn’t know then what Rupert was into, though we found out more details later, and I can’t say I was surprised when we did—I can’t imagine growing up with a father like that! And his mother died so young.” She sighs. “But that was the last I heard; after his death Helena just disappeared. I never thought it would all end like that.”

  We bow our heads, then I reach up and wipe my eyes. “No,” I say. “That wasn’t her end—don’t you see? In some strange way, she got what she wanted. She was—” And I see this with a sudden, shocking clarity. “Happy. Most of the time, she really was happy there. In prison. In her own way, she was. They were good to us. They took care of us. I think—with the bars and the guards—I think she felt safe.”

  Nana is crying again, but a sudden noise at the door catches our attention.

  Footsteps. Raised voices. And then a loud, thunderous knock.

  “Oh, no,” Nana whispers. “He’s here.”

  45

  It’s all happening too quickly. What can we do? There’s no escape. We are imprisoned here as surely as I ever was on the inside.

  The pounding at the door comes again, and I can hear the guard’s voice: “It’s quite late, sir. Ms. Finn might well be sleeping.”

  The return voice is low with a cold fury. “She will not be sleeping for long. And if you wish to retain your employment, I suggest you restrict your opinion to matters which concern you.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Payne,” comes the reply, and feet shuffle away from the door as the pounding starts up again.

  So this is it. I am to meet for myself the source of that haze of fear in my mother’s eyes, that terror she danced with by day and cowered from by night. Rupert Payne Sr. is standing like the devil on my doorstep. “Stay back,” Nana whispers, starting to get up. “I’ll go deal with him.”

  But I get to my feet first, put a hand on her arm. “No,” I say. “I have to do this. For Mama. I need to do this.”

  She looks deep into my eyes, then nods. “He can’t hurt you,” she says. “He won’t hurt you. I’m here. The guards are here. We’ll all stand up to him together.”

  I smile and squeeze her hand, but as I move toward the door that is now rattling on its hinges with the force of the blows, I’ve never been less sure of anything in my life. Breathing slowly and deliberately, trying not to sink into the fear my mind is screaming out, I unlatch the door. And swing it open.

  Rupert Payne Sr. leaps into the room like he has a rocket strapped to his back. He grabs my arms with both hands, then looks me up and down. His face goes a darker shade of red. He shoves me to the side with a curse. “Out of the way, child. Where is she? Where is that … Helena Finn!” he bellows. “Where are you? Didn’t I warn you? Didn’t I tell you what would happen?”

  The storm of fury has clearly been building for a long time, because he doesn’t seem to take in his surroundings. He seems lost in the moment as he rants and raves out his hatred for my mother, calls her every name he can think of.

  And I smile.

  It’s a slow smile, but it starts right in my core and grows out with a spreading warmth. Because he didn’t win. He didn’t. My mother—my weak, terrified, fear-driven mother—spent her life battling this monster. And she won.


  A dubious victory, perhaps. But she was never beaten. He never got her.

  And he won’t get me, either. I push off from the wall where I’ve been huddled and move into his line of vision. “Stop!” I yell, and to my surprise, he does.

  He blinks and looks at me. “Who are you?” he asks.

  “I’m Luchi Finn, Helena’s daughter.”

  At her name, he starts up again. “Where is she? I told her—”

  But I cut him off. “She’s dead.” And I watch with satisfaction as the blow lands.

  “What? But the border official said—” He glowers at me. “You’re lying. I had a flag on her name—they called me because she had returned.”

  “Then your spies don’t have their facts right,” says Nana, speaking up for the first time and coming to put her arm around my shoulder. “If you’re looking for my Helena, here she is.” She’s holding the urn in her arms, and for a second I’m afraid she’ll shove it at him, but instead she holds it tight to her chest.

  Payne looks at Nana, then at me, then down at the urn. Then—he crumples. He drops like a broken branch that’s been holding up a mountain and has finally collapsed under the strain. He folds in on himself and falls to the ground in front of us, gasping like a fish.

  What’s he doing? I look over at Nana. She grabs my arm with her free hand, and that’s when I know it for sure—though I still can’t believe it.

  Rupert Payne Sr. is lying at our feet, crying his eyes out.

  We stand and watch him, and it’s nothing like it was with Nana earlier, because I’m still angry with him, so angry, and I don’t want to let him get to that comfort stage. So I squat down next to him and lean in to his face. “What are you doing?” I ask. “It’s not enough that you killed her, now that she’s dead you can’t take it?”