The Opposite of Everyone

by Joshilyn Jackson

  “You got the friends and family rate,” I said. His smile sparked at the word family, and dammit, it was possible I liked him. It felt uncomfortable and way too personal to like this kid I owed, this kid wearing manly versions of my nose and my hands. “Can I get you some coffee? Or a Coke or something? Or it’s after noon, you want a beer?” I could have used a beer myself, because it was now clear that whatever we ended up being to each other, he wasn’t a problem that could be solved whole, today.

  “I’d love a Coke,” he said.

  He followed me left toward the kitchen, but paused when he saw all the things I’d spread out on the breakfast bar. “Oh, wow.” He went right to Kai’s Ramayana and picked up the drawing, peering down at Sita. “Did she draw this?”

  “Yeah. It’s a self-­portrait,” I said, going to the fridge. “The blue guy with the scimitar is one of her old boyfriends. Math says he might have been your dad.”

  Julian leaned in close. “Well, if he was, I didn’t get his coloring.”

  I popped the cap off two Cokes and came around to sit beside him, saying, “He went to prison on a drug bust. Kai had me send him a copy of this poem, and if you look, here, and here—­” I flipped through the pages, pointed to a line that read, Sita’s belly, full like the moon with love and another that read, Sita waxed, love growing with each passing moon. “Plus, in the drawing, Kai has her whole lap full of lotus blossoms. See how she’s cradling them? Her hands, the way the thumbs and fingers touch? It’s a symbol of fertility. She was letting Dwayne know that she was pregnant.”

  Joya had suspected that the poem was a code. Of course it was; Kai wouldn’t have risked TPR to send a mash note to a boyfriend.

  “Holy crap,” Julian muttered. “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Adoption laws in Georgia are tricky, and when she sent the poem, Dwayne was not established as your legal father. I think—­best guess here—­she didn’t want to name him as the father and give him paternal rights. Not unless he came up with some great plan. She was almost halfway through the pregnancy when she had me send this. Best as I can tell from memory and the dates on your adoption records, she was only a few weeks away from choosing the Bouchards and going forward with the adoption. Maybe she hoped he’d work some kind of miracle? In the poem, Rama saves Sita—­he comes in with an army and another god, Hanuman, and he sets her free. I think, bottom line, she didn’t want to give you up.”

  Julian digested that, then said, “You really think that this guy was my bio dad?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it served Kai’s interests to tell him he was, in case he could help her. You can explore that, if you like. Just pick a better PI than Worth. All I can tell you is, I mailed Kai’s poem, and I never heard back from him.”

  We sat in a silence that was oddly wistful on his side, uncomfortable on mine. Kai had entered prison as full of luck and fortune as she’d ever been, but she came home empty. Under the ashes and the soured red wine, she’d smelled like loss. Her gaze was blank and distant. I’d gotten wild with boys and beer and petty crime, acting out, trying to recapture her attention. Anything to wake her up, make her eyes focus on me again.

  I never knew what I had really cost her until this boy-­child named after Ganesha showed up at my office.

  Julian set the drawing to the side and reached for the stack of early photos. I watched over his shoulder, narrating as he flipped through. I pointed out teenage Kai posing with some other hippie wannabes, showed him the ranch home outside Dothan where she grew up with our shared, sour grandparents. Then I walked him through a string of photos of our gypsy life after we left Alabama.

  “Do you have any of the guy, the one she sent the poem to?” he asked.

  I didn’t. I had no pictures of any of Kai’s boyfriends, I realized. Not directly. In the pictures I’d chosen to keep, the boyfriends were present only as objects in the background, setting tone. Here was Kai folding into a pretzel on Eddie’s purple yoga mat. Kai drinking chicory coffee at the café under Anthony’s apartment. Four different pictures of Kai and me on Hervé’s horses.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t think I do.”

  Julian’s head cocked to the side, and he looked so wistful. “It’s okay. Maybe it’s better. I’ve already lost three parents this year. That’s weird, huh? Even if I hadn’t been adopted, I still would have ended up an orphan.”

  But not an only child, I thought.

  If I had never dialed 911, we would have grown up together. I tried to imagine it—­a world where Kai never went to prison, and I didn’t land in foster care. Where I never learned to hit hard before I could get hit, and where I had a baby brother. I would have fed him, rocked him, read to him—­all the things much older sisters do. ­People come to love the thing they serve, and so I would have loved him. Who would I be, if I were sitting by Ganesh instead of Julian?

  It didn’t matter. That was a world that never happened, and now here I was with this sad boy, each of us folded up alone inside our separate histories and sorrows. I felt I should do something. Hug him? Pat his shoulder? But I wasn’t touchy-­feely by nature, and he was grieving his adoptive parents more than the mother that we’d shared. To be fair, I was having a hard time learning how to grieve for her myself.

  “It’s weird to think that I was born in prison,” Julian said. “I’m sure I’m not processing it right. Or at all. It feels distant. It’s like hearing your great-­great-­grandfather was a bootlegger or a pirate. It’s fascinating, but really fictional. I mean, I had my own mom and dad, you know?” He shook his head and half turned to me. His eyes had gone very red. “I do get that it’s real life for you.”

  Then he did the thing I couldn’t manage. The kid leaned in and hugged me. A real hug, committed. I stiffened up—­I couldn’t help it—­but he was clearly a dog person, so I didn’t pull away. It went on for several seconds, Julian patting at my back like he was burping me.

  I stared over his shoulder at the collection of items from my footlocker. There wasn’t much there. I tried to be still, feeling his heart beating inside him. Awkward as the contact felt, the kid was larger and more alive than my whole childhood. My childhood barely took up half the breakfast bar.

  My cell phone started ringing on the charger in the kitchen, and I almost leaped backward, relieved. Julian ducked his head, embarrassed.

  “Oh, sorry, I—­”

  “No, no, it’s fine. But I should get that. It could be Birdwine.”

  He sat up straight, nodding, and I went around the bar to answer it, still feeling faintly surprised at the sound. Half a year ago, that jangling ringtone had been a near constant noise, announcing calls from partners, friends, employees, opposing counsel, clients. Not long ago, I was so used to the feel of a Bluetooth in my ear that I sometimes fell asleep in it.

  I picked up the phone and looked at the screen. It wasn’t Birdwine. The screen said OAKLEIGH WINKLEY.

  How unexpected. I’d programmed her info in back when Nick first signed her, thinking I’d be sitting in on most of her proceedings. Instead, I’d botched it and lost her. Now, not even a week later, she was calling me.

  I held my finger up to Julian and said, “I have to take this. It’s a client.” I’d said those words a thousand times, but it had been a while. They felt good and familiar in my mouth. I slid the green bar sideways and said, “Paula Vauss.”

  “Oh, good, you’re there,” Oakleigh said. Her kittenish lilt had quite an edge to it today. “It rang five times at least. I was so sure I was going to voicemail.”

  “Hello, Oakleigh, what can I do for you?” I said.

  “I might be in some trouble? The police want to talk to me. A man just called me, a policeman,” Oakleigh told me, and I recognized the edge then. It wasn’t bitch. Oakleigh was experiencing fear, and she wasn’t used to it. I’d welcome her to the club, except I didn’t
want to be in one with Oakleigh. “I could call that other lawyer, my new divorce one, but I don’t think he does things with police. Then I remembered Nick saying you did, like, crime things, like, for charity?” I almost smiled, because that was so like my partner. He’d been impatient and then angry about my string of destitute criminal clients, but not so angry that he wouldn’t spin it to make us look good: Paula’s pro bono exemplifies our firm’s commitment to giving back. Oakleigh was still talking. “He said that’s why you missed my deposition, so I dug your card out of my purse—­”

  “Why do the police want to talk to you, Oakleigh?” I asked.

  “My ex—­my almost ex. I mean, my husband. He’s in the hospital, or he was earlier this morning. He thinks I tried to kill him. He told the police I did, anyway.”

  I blinked, nonplussed. Julian had perked up at the word police and was looking at me with his eyebrows up and questioning. I took a beat to formulate a careful question.

  “Why would your husband think that?” I got the tone right. Calm and nonjudgmental.

  Oakleigh made an angry huffing noise and said, “Oh, it’s his own damn fault. He’s been sneaking back into the house and doing things. Doing awful things, and now I’m missing spin class! But most of his clothes were still here, so—­look, it’s really kind of complicated. And I don’t know when the police will get here. Can you please come over?”

  “The police want to talk to you at home?” I asked.

  Julian stood up, eyes very wide now, watching me like I was a movie with a twist. It was cute, so I shook my head at him, wry and wise, like this kind of thing was happening to me every other minute.

  “Yes, I told you. They said they’d be by this afternoon, which in retrospect is super unspecific,” Oakleigh said.

  I wasn’t alarmed. If Oakleigh had taken a shot at Clark or put bleach in his margarita, the police would not call and set up a polite appointment. They’d show with no warning, to see her fresh reactions. They would haul her ass in and ask stern questions in a box. This sounded to me like a dumb-­ass domestic squabble—­something any good divorce attorney could handle. On the other hand, getting Oakleigh Winkley back in our firm’s fold would be a coup. It would go a long way toward making things right with my partners, and I wanted that.

  “Can you hold? I need to see if I can move my two o’clock,” I told Oakleigh. I hit the phone’s mute button without waiting for an answer.

  “You have to go?” Julian said.

  “I do,” I said, with genuine regret. I’d gone stiff when he hugged me, then bounded backward and away at the first opportunity. I didn’t want our time to end on that note.

  “Oh, no! But we didn’t even get to Hana yet.” He kept bringing up Hana, but there was nothing to discuss. Birdwine would find her for me. He had to, and that was all. “I don’t have a shift at work until tomorrow. Can’t I wait here until you’re done?”

  I felt an immediate internal balk. I couldn’t give this kid free run of my loft. It seemed more intimate and invasive than the patting. He would make nice with my cat and go through all my closets. Not that I would blame him. If he left me alone at his place, I would surely rifle through his drawers. We were curious about each other.

  If he were five years younger, I’d give him forty dollars and drop him off at the mall or the movies until I was done with grown-­up business. I wasn’t sure that would fly with someone in his early twenties.

  I said, “You could come with me.”

  “Really? To a police interview?” he said, his voice rising with excitement.

  “Why not?” I said. Now he was practically bouncing on the stool, and what the hell. I hadn’t checked the calendar. It might well be Bring Your Puppy to Work Day. “You’d need to keep your mouth shut, but it won’t take long, and I could take you out to dinner, after.”

  “Yeah. Cool,” he said.

  I found myself smiling, and I realized I actually wanted him to come. Part of it was injured pride. When we first met, I’d been shaking in the center of a full-­blown panic attack. Today I’d started out scared into pure bitchdom, then ended stiff and almost weepy. I wanted him to see me more myself. I took the phone off mute.

  “I can clear my afternoon,” I told Oakleigh, walking over to my office area. “But understand me: If I take this on, then I’m your lawyer, period. You ditch the new guy, and my firm handles your divorce.”

  “Fine,” she said, so relieved she sounded downright eager.

  “I’ll bring a contract over. You need to sign before you tell me any more about what you did or didn’t do.” I swirled the mouse to wake up my computer.

  “Okay, wonderful. Hurry, please. The policeman said—­”

  I overrode her. “And I’ll need a retainer.” I started our standard client contract printing.

  There was an awkward pause. “Well, but, my funds are limited. Clark’s being so unreasonable.” I let my own bored silence speak for me; this point wasn’t negotiable. “I could swing maybe twenty-­five thousand? Is that enough? Just to start?”

  “Fine,” I said, like I was doing her a favor. Money was so relative. In Oakleigh’s mind, a mere twenty-­five thousand lying around spare was tantamount to being broke. I wondered what Julian would make of that. I started an intern form printing, too, while I had my work files open. I’d need to hire Julian for today if he was going to sit in on a client meeting. “I’m on my way. And Oakleigh, if they beat me there? Be sweet, offer coffee or tea, but stall the interview. Tell them I’m coming.” If anyone could turn a simple domestic into something serious, it was Oakleigh Winkley, swanning about all privileged and unsupervised with cops.

  “Just hurry,” she said, and we hung up.

  I got the forms and went to the door, where my jacket and shoes were waiting, glad that I’d gone full-­court bitch this morning, after all. I could be ready to walk in three minutes. Julian followed me.

  “It should be interesting,” I told him as I got back into uniform. “At the very least, we’ll learn the proper shade of nail polish for a police interview.”

  He smiled, a little bit uncertain. Well, he hadn’t spent quality time with Oakleigh Winkley. An hour with her, and he would get the joke.

  “I’m glad. I was so interested in the pictures, you know, I got distracted,” he said.

  “From?” I said, smoothing down my skirt.

  “Hana,” Julian said, like it was obvious.

  I shot him an irked look. “I told you. Birdwine—­”

  “Is finding her, I know,” Julian said. “That’s great, but then, what happens after that?”

  I was grabbing my bag, turning toward the door, but his question froze me in my tracks. Everything after find her was a blank, and her present was distorted by the lens of my own past. Thoughts of Hana sent me back in time, back to when I’d been the lost girl.

  I found that I could not imagine an after. How could I? Hana was suspended in the now, like Schrödinger’s cat. She was both alive and dead, safe and scared, hungry and well fed, sleeping easy and crying in the dark. I’d been blind to even the idea of Hana’s future. I’d only seen her teetering in an uncertain present.

  Julian’s simple question set me reeling, and I understood that Hana and I, we were not the same. I’d been a Gotmama, a loved girl with a lifeline. When my mother was taken, it was only off to jail. I’d had total faith that Kai would come for me. What faith could Hana have, once Kai was dead and gone? Hana was stuck wherever Kai had left her, with whatever brain-­addled arrangement Kai had made—­or failed to make.

  Hana didn’t know that I existed, much less that I was looking for her. She didn’t know that anyone was looking. Hana wasn’t like me. She was like Candace, Shar, Karice—­every lost girl in the world who felt herself unvalued and unsought. She had no way to know that somewhere in the world, right now, her name was being called.

  CHAPTE
R 7

  A long time ago, this happened, and it’s happening now. Raktabija, the Red Seed Demon, arose against the Earth. He came to burn it and warm his great red feet among the cinders.

  The armies of the Earth rose up, swords lifted to protect their mother. They ran at him, and they cut him in a thousand places, all at once. The Red Seed fell, and the army cheered.

  But even as the armies celebrated, the Red Seed’s blood was soaking into the earth, and the earth is such a fertile mother. From every place even a drop had touched down, another Raktabija sprang up, full grown, swords drawn, so that the thousand cuts became a thousand demons. The armies of the Earth fell back, with a host of Red Seeds now assailing them.

  They fought so bravely, all Earth’s sons, but it did no good. Each time they cut a demon down, the blood would spatter. Each drop would spawn another from the soil, and another, and another, until the armies of the Earth were outnumbered. Their bodies lay in heaps upon the ground, and soon they would all be destroyed.

  It was then that Kali came. She came not because she had been called by men; all human beings call out to their gods, and very few get answers. Kali came because the heart of Earth herself was groaning.

  The demons were afraid when they saw Kali, until they realized she had no swords. Only bells. How they laughed and pointed, to see a champion so armed. She had tiny bells tinging on her fingers, larger ones chiming on her wrists and ankles, and great, deep bells roaring as they hung in a cinch around her waist.

  They laughed, but they did not laugh long. Kali began dancing to the music of her bells, and as she danced, she let her long tongue unfurl from her mouth. It snapped like a whip, keeping time. It whirled like a dervish. Her tongue did its own dance to the tintinnabulation of the bells, and it was redder and faster than all the legion of the Great Red Seed.

  The armies of the Earth rallied, and began to cut the demons down. Kali danced among them, whipping and whirling her red tongue, lapping blood from the air before it could fall. She licked up every drop, so by the time each demon died, he was a husk, as empty and transparent as a plastic bag. The drained bodies of the Red Seed were so light, so empty, that they flurried in the air as Kali’s feet danced through them. Earth’s armies reaped and mowed, and Kali drank and drank, until all the Great Red Seed was only dandelion fluff, riding the winds in swirls and eddies.