Say the Word

by Julie Johnson

  “Lux, this isn’t your fault,” Fae told me.

  “I know that,” I muttered. “But these girls… They don’t have anybody.”

  Fae sighed. “We don’t know that for sure. And we can’t call the police. Vera and Roza might not be legal citizens…the last thing we’d want is to try to help and in the process accidentally get them deported.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Roza,” I called, approaching the little girl slowly. “Can you do me a favor, sweetie?”

  She nodded, licking the green ice cream residue from her lips and fingers as she finished off the cone.

  “Can you tell me where you and Vera live?”

  She stared at me blankly.

  “Do you know your address?” I tried again. “Your neighborhood? The name of your street?”

  “Don’t know,” she said, shaking her head remorsefully.

  “Could you bring me there?” I asked. “You…take me….home?” I did my best to mime the question with my hands, and watched as comprehension flared in Roza’s dark eyes. She nodded once, then reached out and grabbed hold of my left hand. Hopping down from her milk-crate throne, she turned and began walking, tugging me along after her.

  “Where are you going, Lux?” Fae hissed, keeping pace with us. “You don’t know where she’s taking you. It might be a bad neighborhood. You could get in trouble.”

  “I know,” I said, catching her eyes with mine. “That’s why you should stay here. If I don’t call you in an hour, you’ll know something’s up. Okay?”

  Fae was silent for a minute. “You’re serious about this?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding firmly. “I have to know that Vera is okay. If something happened to her…”

  “This is insane,” Fae grumbled.

  “That’s why you’re not coming,” I said.

  “That’s exactly why I am definitely coming.” She scoffed. “At least one of us with common sense should be going on this crazy escapade.”

  “I have common sense,” I muttered indignantly.

  “No, what you have is a soft heart and a heck of a lot of leftover southern charm. That whole ‘love thy neighbor’ bullshit really doesn’t apply to New York,” Fae explained. “Here, it’s more like ‘tolerate thy neighbor until they play their music too loud, then call the cops on their asses.’”

  I rolled my eyes, turned my feet forward, and followed after Roza in silence.

  ***

  Roza walked for five blocks, cutting across the Garment District and eventually leading us down onto a subway platform on 34th Street without speaking so much as another word. Fae and I looked at each other warily for a moment, indecision warring with concern for Vera’s wellbeing. I wasn’t about to force Fae to come with me, but it was too late for me to turn back at this point — I’d promised Roza that I’d help her.

  “I can’t let her go alone,” I whispered, tilting my head down at Roza. “She’s only like seven. It’s not safe.”

  Fae shrugged her shoulders in agreement and followed me onto the platform with a resigned sigh.

  Within minutes, the F line arrived and we were being whisked away southbound toward the lower east side. When the train screeched to a stop at East Broadway — the last stop in Manhattan before the tracks crossed over the East River into Brooklyn — Roza hopped off her seat and entwined her sticky fingers with mine once more.

  “Come,” she said, looking from me to Fae before tugging us toward the car exit.

  “If I die on this asinine adventure of yours before ever seeing John Mayer in concert, I swear to god I will haunt you until your dying day,” Fae told me, a simpering smile crossing her face.

  “No one’s dying,” I assured her.

  Roza led us out onto the street and walked with small yet determined strides down another three blocks, deeper into a neighborhood that was visibly poorer than the sections of Midtown I was accustomed to. Most of the restaurants and businesses we passed by were marked with colorful signs bearing intricate Asian characters, and while many different languages were spoken by the people on the streets, Fae and I were the only ones I heard speaking English. Before I’d made the move to New York, I’d spent months studying maps of the different neighborhoods and enclaves that made up the massive metropolis, but even without my cartographical obsessions I’d have known where we were — the sprawling bridges overhead were a dead giveaway.

  Roza and Vera lived in Two Bridges, a neighborhood comprised mostly of low-income public housing tenements and best known for its location, sandwiched between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge overpasses on the southern tip of Manhattan. It was a well-known immigrant borough and the poverty here was apparent, from the cracked sidewalks and the lack of greenery to the graffiti-sprayed buildings and the heavily-lined faces of the residents. Taking it all in, I felt guilty for ever complaining about my own tiny apartment here in the city, or my money woes as a child.

  Though my family had been poor, there was a difference between growing up below the poverty line in a city like New York versus somewhere like Jackson. In Georgia, I’d always had neighbors to lend a helping hand, appearing unexpectedly at our door with “extra” casseroles they couldn’t possibly finish, or pies they’d “accidentally” baked by following a double recipe. There’d been no lack of nature or room to breathe as a child, and Jamie and I had both relished the freedom of the outdoors. Here, though, I couldn’t imagine Roza ever finding a space to call her own, or a minute to breathe. She probably shared a room at the very least with Vera — but I’d heard stories of entire families sharing a single space in buildings like this.

  Fae and I traded apprehensive glances as Roza came to a stop in front of an ancient brick walkup.

  “Home,” Roza told us, pointing up at the third story window.

  “Rozafa!” The woman’s voice cut through the air like a whip, and Roza turned instantly toward the sound. A string of rapid Albanian followed, and we watched as Roza’s cheeks flushed in response to whatever was said. A small round woman stood on the street corner, her hands planted on her hips as she glared at the seven-year-old. She was flanked on either side by a small group of women, all of whom were staring at Fae and me with varying looks of unwelcome.

  I’d bet my last bag of Cool Ranch Doritos that this was Roza and Vera’s mother.

  Roza walked over to the woman, who immediately grabbed hold of her shoulders and shook her hard enough to set her teeth rattling. “Mama!” Roza squealed unhappily.

  I opened my mouth to protest and started forward, but Fae’s hand clamped down like a vise on my arm and held me in place.

  “Don’t,” Fae advised quietly. “Their turf, their rules.” My mouth snapped closed and I cast a glance at her. Apparently, Fae was taking our street confrontation very seriously; that, or she was living out some Outsiders-themed fantasy leftover from her grade-school days.

  “Whatever you say, Ponyboy,” I whispered, barely containing my laughter.

  Fae’s lips twisted up into an amused smirk. “Chill out, Sodapop.”

  The five women, who ranged in age from a teenager around Vera’s age to a stooped elderly woman who was likely a centenarian, stared at us impassively.

  “I’m Lux,” I called in what I hoped was a nonthreatening tone. “A friend of Roza’s.”

  None of them responded — either they didn’t speak English, or they really didn’t care what I had to say.

  “I just want to know if Vera is okay,” I told them. “I was worried.”

  At the sound of Vera’s name, their faces changed. The woman at the front of the pack who I assumed was her mother instantly crumpled, her face shuttering of all expression and her shoulders stooping in defeat. The other women had similar reactions — some looked fearful, casting their gazes around the street at the passerby, while others just looked saddened by the mention of her name.

  I felt my stomach clench at their reactions, and Fae squeezed my arm lightly in support. We both knew it wasn’t a good si
gn — it meant that Vera was in some kind of serious trouble.

  “Can we help?” I asked, locking eyes with the girls’ mother. Her own turned from sorrowful to steely as they held my gaze.

  “Go,” she spat at me. “Go away.”

  “But—”

  “We don’t need your help.” The words were spoken in broken English, but their meaning was inescapable. We were sticking our noses into their business, and they didn’t like it.

  “Time to go, Lux,” Fae whispered. “There’s nothing more we can do here. We tried.”

  “I’m sorry,” I called, backing away a step. “We didn’t mean to intrude on family matters.”

  “Go,” the woman repeated, turning on her heel and walking away. Roza waved sadly at me before following her mother and the rest of the women into the building and out of sight.

  “What the hell just happened?” Fae asked, turning a dumbfounded stare on me.

  “I have no idea,” I told her, equally confused.

  “What now?”

  “I guess we go hom—” I began to answer her, but my words were interrupted by a tentative voice.

  “Excuse me?”

  Fae and I turned our heads to find the youngest from the group of Albanian women hovering unsurely several feet from us. She looked ready to bolt at any moment, her eyes restlessly scanning the neighborhood for an unknown threat.

  “You speak English?” I asked her.

  “A little,” she confirmed in a whisper. “You…you want to talk about Vera, yes?”

  I nodded.

  “I will tell you what I know, but…” Her fearful gaze met mine and held for one fleeting moment. “Not here. Meet me at this address. Tomorrow, three o’clock. Come alone.” With that, she shoved a small piece of paper into my hand and was gone, vanishing into the building before I could even process her words or formulate a response.

  “Well, Alice, you’ve done it now,” Fae said, linking one arm through mine and guiding me back toward the subway entrance.

  “Done what?” I asked distractedly, my mind reeling as I studied the address on the paper in my hand.

  “Stumbled down the rabbit hole.”

  “Did you just call me Alice?”

  “Yes, Alice. As in, Wonderland.” Fae shook her head. “Bit of advice? Don’t drink the tea. And definitely don’t take directions from a cat.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Then

  I pushed the wheelchair faster as we maneuvered down the sidewalk, hoping we wouldn’t be spotted by a nurse peering out one of the windows.

  “What’s the hurry, sis?” Jamie asked.

  I winced as the chair went over a particularly big bump and jostled Jamie, but I didn’t slow down.

  “Seriously, what’s going on?” His voice was curious, but still largely unconcerned. He was always up for an adventure.

  “I’m breaking you out of here,” I said, smiling widely as I wheeled the chair around a bend and the beat up old pickup came into view. Sebastian saw us in the rearview and hopped out, leaving the truck idling by the curb as he jogged around to meet us.

  “Are you serious?” Jamie asked, his voice excited. He’d been complaining for weeks about his incarceration — his word, not mine — and begging for more time outside the hospital walls. Initially he’d been satisfied with our afternoon walks, when Bash and I would push him around the grounds for an hour or so, but he’d quickly grown bored with them. He wanted to feel alive again — and that’s exactly what we hoped to achieve with today’s plan.

  “Just for the afternoon,” I told him, wishing I were taking him away from this place permanently. He’d been moved from the hospital about a month ago to the adjacent rehabilitation building, where he could recuperate from his surgery and do daily strength building exercises with a physical therapist. He wasn’t walking yet — that wouldn’t come for months — but the hospital staff were optimistic he’d get there eventually. For now, he was confined to a wheelchair if he wanted to get around, which he liked about as much as the hospital food he was forced to consume every day.

  “You’ll get in trouble,” Jamie warned. “Loretta will be pissed.”

  “Loretta loves me,” I told him. “I baked her a cake for her birthday last week and I agreed to babysit her kids next weekend so she and her husband can have a romantic night out.”

  Jamie winced in sympathy. Loretta’s twin boys were well-known terrors — two miniature, six-year-old Tasmanian devils in human-suits. Last week on bring-your-kid-to-work day, apparently they’d ripped apart the nurse’s station and had wheelchair races down the hallways of the ICU. Needless to say, volunteering to babysit them put Loretta in my debt for far more than a stolen afternoon off hospital property.

  “Jamie, my man!” Sebastian yelled, a happy smile on his face as he leaned down to initiate some kind of bizarre man-hug, backslapping ritual with Jamie. Boys were so weird. “You ready to bust out of here?” Bash asked.

  “Depends,” Jamie said. “Are we going to Vegas for some action on the strip?”

  “Ew,” I replied.

  “Not today,” Sebastian told him, grinning. “Don’t think we’d get there and back before the night shift starts.”

  “Can we go to the track and bet on some ponies?” Jamie asked. “Oh! Or can we cover all the trees on Amber’s property in toilet paper? I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  “I’d be surprisingly okay with that,” I muttered darkly.

  Sebastian cast an amused glance my way, before steering Jamie’s chair closer to the truck bed. He pulled down the gate and turned to my twin, suddenly all business.

  “As fun as that might be,” Sebastian said, a wry grin twitching the corners of his lips up. “I’ve got something else in mind that I think you’ll enjoy — even if it doesn’t involve illegal gambling or vandalism.”

  Jamie made a regretful tsk sound but otherwise refrained from commenting.

  “But first, we have to get you up here,” Sebastian told him, nodding his head back toward the truck bed. “If I lift you onto the edge, think you can scoot yourself backwards?”

  “Do you see these guns?” Jamie asked, flexing a pathetically underdeveloped bicep. “I’m a champion. I can do it.”

  I rolled my eyes, but my amusement faded and my heart flipped in my chest as I watched Sebastian with Jamie. He was so patient with my brother — his hands were gentle but not coddling, his smile was one of understanding rather than pity, and his tone was caring without being condescending. Bash had a unique ability to put Jamie at ease, and it allowed my twin to keep his pride even while accepting help.

  I was trying really, really hard not to fall head over heels in love with the boy, but damned if he didn’t make it the toughest thing I’d ever done in my life.

  Ten minutes later, Jamie’s wheelchair had been strapped down to the truck bed. Its wheels were locked in place with two separate ropes, and another strap looped around Jamie’s waist to hold him securely when the truck began to move. I hopped up to stand beside his chair, and turned to watch as Sebastian slammed the gate closed behind me.

  “You feeling up for some speed?” Sebastian asked, leaning against the cab and grinning at us.

  “Bring it,” Jamie challenged, an answering grin crossing his face.

  Bash winked at me playfully before running around to the front seat and hopping in. He’d opened the cab’s back window so we could talk, and he looked over his shoulder at me as he started the engine. “You ready to fly, Freckles?” he asked, leaning close to the window.

  I held my arms aloft by my sides and flapped them up and down in a caricature of a bird. “Make me forget the ground exists,” I whispered, tilting my head forward through the small opening and kissing him lightly on the cheek.

  “Will you two get ahold of yourselves so we can get this show on the road?” Jamie yelled over his shoulder at us. “I’d like to actually leave the hospital parking lot at some point.”

  I grinned and moved away from the windo
w, landing a light punch on Jamie’s arm in retaliation. Sebastian laughed as he maneuvered the truck out of the parking lot and onto the main road. I settled in facing Jamie with my back pressed against the cool metal carriage, and we chatted as we rode through town. We got a few strange looks from people out walking — it wasn’t every day that Jacksonians saw a boy in a wheelchair strapped down to the back of a truck bed like a bizarre, macabre parade float — but most passerby recognized us and smiled or waved.

  Within minutes we’d traveled out of the town proper and were cruising down the back roads. The unpaved, dirt paths on the outskirts of Jackson were lined with towering waxy-leafed magnolia trees that blossomed in the springtime and showered the earth in pale pink petals as the seasons waned. The winding network of densely-forested roads provided local teenagers with an arena for every pastime — from parking for some private time with your special someone to dirt-biking and drag racing.

  Turning onto a straightaway, Sebastian yelled that it was time. As the cab picked up speed, I wound one hand through the straps attached to the truck bed for support, and grabbed hold of Jamie’s chair with the other. He smiled in anticipation — a look I hadn’t seen on my brother’s face in so long, it took me a minute to recognize it.

  What most people don’t realize is that cancer takes more than just flesh and blood — it sucks the spontaneity out of life. Because when someone you love is sick — when their very future is uncertain — it’s hard to look forward to much of anything. Facing the world with a smile becomes the ultimate act of resilience.

  It was late March now, and the early blooming trees had just begun to open their petals. They were beautiful, to be sure, but they couldn’t hold my attention. My eyes were trained on my brother’s face, which bore an expression of sheer, unadulterated joy as we barreled down the road, red dirt flying up in a cloud behind our tires, the radio cranked high to a classic Journey song, and the magnolia blossoms turning to a smeared pink tunnel as we pushed past sixty miles per hour.