The Grief Keeper

by Alexandra Villasante

  Chapter 23

  Indranie takes my temperature the next morning.

  “How are you feeling today?” she asks.

  I want to say that I feel like dying, the way Rey used to say to me, but I don’t. Feeling like this, it’s my job.

  “Okay. Sad.” She gives me a strained smile and makes notes in her file. I guess it’s my file. Everything they know about me is in that file. I wonder if I would recognize myself if I read it.

  Indranie gives me my three pills for the morning. She’ll leave tonight’s pills with Rey, who will make sure I take them. All these people taking care of me, making things as easy for me as possible. These are the same people giving me all this pain.

  Manny makes me walk around the reflecting pool with him once a day. We don’t talk—thank God he doesn’t make me talk. I don’t know if I would vomit up a mass of bloody, broken words, or if I would be terrified by how little I could say. He only makes me move my body, to get some of the stiffness out of it. It is the one part of my day that I look forward to without any mixed feelings, because the only thing I have to do is walk. Manny occasionally tells me the names of plants. I listen or I don’t—it makes no difference to him. Sometimes, he puts his hand on my shoulder and I flinch. I can’t help it. My first thought is always that a touch is going to hurt. But his touch doesn’t hurt the way Rey’s does. I haven’t told anyone about the touching. How being skin to skin with Rey transmits her grief and sadness right into my body as if they were my own. If Indranie knew, she’d stop the experiment.

  An hour before school ends, I eat something, then take a shower and brush my teeth. Olga helps me because she and Indranie are afraid to leave me in the bathroom by myself too long. They do not trust me behind a closed door. Now I understand how Rey felt, being watched all the time.

  When Olga leaves, I sit, my hair combed back, my thin face a mystery to me, practicing my smile in the mirror on Rey’s desk. I smile until it seems almost natural, almost genuine. Performing for Gabi is the hardest part of my day. She knows I’m sad because of the experiment, and that it’s my job to make Rey feel better. But I can’t let her see how much I’m hurting.

  There is a knock at the door, and I look at the clock. 3:00 p.m. Gabi is home. I put my smile on. “Come in!”

  But instead of Gabi, Mr. Warner opens the door.

  I stand up. “Rey isn’t here,” I say, keeping my voice even.

  “I know. She’s meeting with Dr. Vizzachero.”

  Mr. Warner motions for me to sit back down, and I do, turning the chair to face him as he sits on Rey’s bed. I’m ashamed that it is unmade. That my piyamas have been thrown on the floor.

  “I, ah. Wanted to see how you’re doing.” He was a gray ghost when I last saw him; now he has more color, and he doesn’t move like he’s in pain.

  “Why?” I ask him. I can see from his expression that it’s an unexpected question. But it’s truly what I want to know. Why does he want to see how I am doing? Does he ask all the people who work for him how they are doing? Maybe he does. Maybe he asks Manny and Olga how they’re doing. But still. I’ve only seen him once before. He hasn’t shown much interest in me.

  “Well, you are, of course, an, um . . .” I watch him struggle with the word, wondering if he’ll call me illegal—or a service dog like Pixie did. I guess we are illegal. We shouldn’t have to be here this way. But when you don’t have a good choice, you make a bad choice.

  “You and your sister have been through a lot, haven’t you?”

  I sigh heavily. “And even so, our asylum request was denied.” Bitterness rises in my stomach.

  “Indranie knows how to get you in front of an asylum judge, to get your case approved. Just a few more weeks and all this is over.” He waves a hand at this, and I assume he means me, burdened with his daughter’s grief.

  “I’m grateful for the chance you gave to me and my sister.” I’m careful with my words because I want him to believe me. But I don’t feel very grateful right now.

  “We were lucky to get you.”

  Get you. Detain you. Catch you. The only luck involved was the bad kind. Then it occurs to me, for the first time, that my bad luck is Mr. Warner’s good luck. I don’t know why I never saw it that way before, but it’s so obvious. The only reason Gabi and I have this chance at asylum is because Riley died and Mr. Warner’s company is involved in this experiment. La Suerte isn’t only Mala. She is two-faced. How beautiful and balanced, how terrible and cruel La Suerte is.

  “I just wanted to thank you, actually.” He walks to the balcony door. “When Riley and Reyanne were little, we lived in a smaller home.” I can see his smile reflected in the glass of the doors. “The trouble the two of them would get into, you wouldn’t believe. One time, they saw searchlights in the sky . . .” He turns to me. “You know what that is?” I nod.

  “They used them in war, oh, a long time ago, to look for enemy planes and that kind of thing. Now they use them in Hollywood too, you know, for movie premieres.” He turns back to the window, and I wonder if he’s seeing those searchlights in his memory. “Riley spun a tall tale about those lights—that there was a movie premiere with famous actors and actresses just down the street. He convinced Reyanne to sneak out of the house and follow those searchlights. They climbed out a bathroom window and down a trellis.” I think of how easily Rey climbed the bushes to her balcony. It is something she’s always done. With her brother.

  “They followed the lights for three blocks until they found them.” His smile grows wider. I feel like I am seeing a part of Rey come alive that I didn’t know, but I recognize her, my image of her as a little girl, walking into the world unafraid, the way Gabi has always done. Younger sisters are never afraid. “You know what those lights were for?” He turns again to look at me, and there is real laughter on his face. “A supermarket opening! Ha! They’d escaped their nanny for a supermarket opening.” He comes back to the bed but doesn’t sit. “Reyanne would have been upset, but Riley was quick. My Lord, was that boy quick. He convinced her that a supermarket opening was even better than a movie premiere. He made her feel like it was the biggest adventure in the world. They walked up and down the aisles taking free samples of meatballs and I don’t even remember what else. We found them an hour later, full of food, and being given soda and lots of attention by the checkout girls. No amount of scolding and punishments could get the smiles off their faces.” He has a faraway look in his eyes.

  “I always remember the meatballs for some reason.” Suddenly, his eyes focus, and he looks at me as if it is the most important thing for me to understand. “I thought I was going to lose Reyanne. She’s so bullheaded—I thought she’d made up her mind to follow Riley the way she used to when they were little.”

  “She almost did,” I say, looking to the balcony doors.

  “Yeah. But now that you are doing this . . .” He gestures to the cuff on my leg. “Well, it seems like she might be okay.”

  I wonder at Mr. Warner’s grief. Why didn’t he find an illegal who he could convince to take his grief for him? He is a powerful businessman—he must be able to do it. Instead, he wears his grief like a stain.

  “Well, I wanted to thank you,” he repeats, turning to leave, “and let you know that we’ll do everything in our power to make sure your asylum request is approved.”

  “You mean, our asylum requests. Mine and Gabriela’s.”

  He looks confused. Maybe he doesn’t remember who Gabi is. “My sister. She’s—” She’s everything to me. “She’s like Rey, like Riley is to you.”

  He nods. “Yes. Indranie will take care of it. Everything will be fine,” he says with a grimace I think is supposed to be a smile, then he leaves with a small wave of his hand.

  A week ago, Gabi and I were watching TV with Rey and it seemed like any moment, something was going to happen. I just had to wait.

  Now everything is
happening. I’m draining away Rey’s grief and her father is thanking me. Dr. Deng says I’m good at this. I can withstand a lot of trauma. If Pablo were alive, he would call me un burro. A donkey, a stupid pack animal. After all, that’s what Pixie meant when she called me a service dog. An animal that does the work no person wants to do.

  But I know something that makes this grief bearable. It will end. In a few more weeks, I will take the cuff off, and Gabi and I will be safe. Indranie says we will go in front of an immigration judge, one who specializes in asylum. She knows him. He’ll do this for her. After that, I don’t yet know what safety looks like. I don’t know how long it will be before we can bring Mamá here and find a place to live. And after that, how long will it be until we feel that safety deep in our bones?

  When I ask Indranie these questions, she tells me not to worry.

  * * *

  Pixie is coming over today with Rey’s other friends for a picnic in the garden. Gabi and her friend Juliette are invited. It’s almost May and the weather is finally getting warmer. I can tell it’s warm because Gabi goes outside in T-shirts without her chaqueta. And Manny sweats as he works in the sunshine. But I do not feel warmth—or cold—for myself. I wonder if I’m too busy feeling other things to feel the heat of the sun. I am invited to the picnic, but I won’t go. The thought of being around Pixie and so many of Rey’s friends makes my stomach churn.

  The medicine Rey gives me every night—anti-sads, she calls them—helps with this in a way that surprises me. I still feel all the horrible feelings, the waves of anxiety and terror, the deep anguish. But I have almost no will. That’s what the pills do. “Without them,” Dr. Deng says, “you might do something stupid.”

  My routine also makes the grief bearable. Rey and I sleep in her bed. She says it’s so she can take care of me the way I took care of her when she was sick. When she is asleep, I grit my teeth and hold her hand. Dr. Deng says to do it while Rey is asleep, as that could make the transference easier. Easier but not better. Some part of my night is filled with the memories of Riley’s death. Sometimes, it is only the moment the paramedics pulled Rey away from her brother, slowed down, agonizing, every second seeming to take hours. Sometimes, it is the memory of Riley’s funeral, of Rey crying so loudly that everyone in the church stares and her mother tells her to be quiet. In the hours before the sun comes up, I cry quietly on my side of the bed, afraid to wake Rey, afraid she will ask me what’s wrong, afraid I’ll tell her.

  I wake in the morning exhausted, with a weight on my chest that I spend the rest of the day trying to lift. Rey is up and showered and dressed and, most important of all, happy. She gets my tray of breakfast from Olga—piled high with food despite how little I eat—and fixes pillows around me so I’m comfortable.

  “It’s going to get better soon,” she says, patting my hand awkwardly. To Rey, it must seem like the cuff hasn’t worked its magic on me yet, that it’s only a matter of time. “It took me a few days too. Before you know it, we’ll both be off the anti-sads and tearing it up.”

  “Cabal,” I say, adding “exactly” when she looks confused.

  “Cabal,” she repeats. “¡Puchica!” she adds for good measure.

  I stretch my lips into a smile.

  “Gabi taught me that one. Means damn, right?”

  “You’ll be translating for the UN in no time.”

  “What?”

  I rest my head on the pillow. “That’s what someone used to tell me. Mr. Rosen used to say I’d be translating for the UN in no time.”

  “Was this some kind of punishment for war crimes, or did you actually want to translate for the UN?”

  “Don’t be so disrespectful, Reyanne,” I say, in what I hope sounds a little like Indranie’s voice. “I always wanted to be a translator. I love words.”

  “Then that’s what you will be,” she says, as if saying so will make it true. “Are you sure you won’t come to the picnic?”

  “Yes. I’m just too tired.”

  “You have to meet Dave and Stitch when you’re up to it. They’re two of the oddest and best. And I want them to meet you. I’ve been talking their damn ears off about you.”

  I’m scared to think of her talking to her friends about me, telling them—what?

  “If I don’t produce you soon, they’ll think you’re one of my many hallucinations.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  “Oh, I used to swear I saw faces in the folds of clothes in my closet. Sometimes they were people. Sometimes they were fauns.”

  At my blank look, she says, “You know, like Narnia.”

  “Oh! Mr. Tumnus!”

  “I love me some Tumnus.” Rey laughs.

  “But why would they think I was one of your hallucinations?”

  She tips her head down, considering me. “It’s been a really long time since I’ve been excited about meeting someone new, you know?” she says, gripping my hand.

  It’s difficult to explain what happens when Rey holds my hand. I want it to feel good so much that for the first few seconds, it does—warm and safe, shivery. Then, my fingertips feel like they’re too hot, then too numb. A wave of nausea travels up my hand, my arm, all the way through my body. It’s that feeling when you’ve heard a whisper, a rumor of terrible news, the moment it begins to sink in that the world just became a barren place. And all this happens in an instant, while Rey is telling me how excited she is to be back at school, how much she wants me to meet her friends.

  “I just want you to like them,” she finishes, thankfully letting go of my hand.

  I take a moment before replying, closing my eyes, adjusting as the sick feeling dissipates.

  “I hope they like me,” I say.

  “They will like you. They have to. Pixie already talks about you all the time.”

  I open my eyes. I wish I could raise a single eyebrow like Gabi. “All the time?”

  “She says you’re cute. That’s a very high compliment for Pixie. She likes to pretend she’s all surface.”

  “I think there’s lots of deep stuff going on in Pixie,” I say.

  “Right?” Rey smiles. “I’ll come back after the picnic. Tell you all the gossip.” She stands and kisses my forehead, like I’m her little sister.

  I hate it.

  And I can’t keep the disappointment from my face. Rey’s smile slips. “What’s wrong?”

  I know I’m good with words. That’s why I don’t understand how they can fail me so completely now. I’m not your little sister, Rey, I don’t want to be kissed that way. You’re the first thing I think of when I wake up, even before I think of Gabi. That terrifies and thrills me.

  But it isn’t just words that I’m losing control of, it’s my own feelings. Every time Rey looks at me, my heart and mind whisper together that maybe this is more than friendship. It’s a tragedy that I can feel so many of her emotions and not know if any of them are for me.

  “Nothing. I’m just tired.” I close my eyes, pretending to fall asleep.

  Chapter 24

  I sit in the kitchen watching Olga pack a big basket with food while Gabi eats her after-school snack. I make myself smile and ask questions to show Gabi that I’m fine and that she can be happy.

  “Juliette is trying to get her mom to let us see this movie . . .” Gabi says, talking faster and faster. Her English is improving every day now that she’s in school. “Where the grandparents are zombies, I think? And she said they try to kill the grandkids, but they aren’t really their grandparents.”

  I try to follow. “So, the zombies dress like the grandparents? Like Caperucita Roja?” I can’t imagine a zombie movie based on Red Riding Hood, but anything is possible.

  Gabi shakes her head. “No, they aren’t really grandparents. They’re serial killers.”

  “What kind of thing is a cereal killer?” I ask. “Cereales that w
ill kill you?”

  Gabi laughs at me, and I notice that she is wearing her motorcycle boots. Again.

  “No, serial, as in many. A serial killer is a person who kills a lot of people,” she says simply, stomping around the kitchen looking for more chocolate chip cookies. I can’t decide if I should be telling her to wear a different pair of shoes, or that Olga doesn’t like us to wear shoes in the house. Or should I tell her that she can’t see a movie about serial killers? I am so tired. I cannot be her mamá today. I can barely be her sister.

  “I don’t like you watching movies like this,” I say feebly.

  “Relax.” She pouts at me, and I almost smile. “We probably won’t see that movie anyway.”

  “Isn’t she having a party?” I can’t keep all of Gabi’s things straight in my mind. She has 4-H—the club for animals—in the afternoons. She goes to the library with Juliette—I wave to Mrs. Guinto when she is dropped off. And Indranie has already taken Gabi to buy a birthday present for Juliette. I remember they showed me, but I don’t remember what it was.

  “That’s tomorrow night. Remember? Saturday? You said it was okay. Mr. Guinto is going to—”

  “Yes. Okay,” I say, turning my grimace into a smile. I don’t remember. And when I try to, my head hurts more.

  Manny brings Juliette into the kitchen, and the two girls squeal and laugh so much that Olga scolds them to go outside if they have to be so loud.

  I watch Gabi sweep Juliette out to the garden.

  “You’re not going to the picnic?” Olga asks.

  “No. Not today.”

  “If not today, when will you go, nena?”

  “I won’t.”

  Olga turns her head to one side like a curious bird watching a worm. “Estás muy flaca.”

  “I’m not skinny,” I say, putting my hand on my stomach. I think of Mrs. Rosen and her “puppy fat.” Even she would not find any puppy fat on me now.