Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kit
It was the loveliest August day. The southern wind that blew through the Herzog yard brought wisps of scent from every other blooming, voluptuous garden that hugged the edges of Gravers Lane.
This was how Kit would always remember summer.
The swing that Terry built for her swayed gently, the scent of charred meat on the grill, and freshly cut vegetables that Sally had grown being prepared in the kitchen.
The breeze was warm and reassuring, and shadows were yet to settle over the flat grassy lawn.
Kit laid out her blanket and set down her bottle of water, which started to sweat and left a wet patch on the fabric.
Every summer before today, she waited for Sabrina’s shadow announcing her arrival as she stood at the edge of Kit’s favorite picnic blanket.
They’d l ie next to each other, talk all day, scroll their phones, listen to music, and laugh.
Today it was Ryo’s shadow that blocked the sun as she watched the bees fight over the dahlias’ nectar.
Kit’s body was finally back on Philadelphia time. She had never been to a place as far as Tokyo, had never been in love with someone who returned the same feeling, and had never felt so distant from her best friend, Sabrina.
“Air smells different here,” Ryo said. It had already been four days since he had arrived in Philadelphia with his father, and she couldn’t get used to the sight of him in her hometown, in her house.
The dense earth beneath the blanket absorbed the soft thud of him sitting beside her.
Something about him being there gave him a different shape—she couldn’t quite understand it.
When they walked up to Germantown Avenue for a frozen yogurt, he looked different among the white Americans on the high street.
He didn’t look as tall, his skin a shade or two darker than the boys from high school.
His accent jarred a little. It sounded different, the nuance of how he’d say things.
Hey, man…Mr. Herzog , he never said “sir,” like the boys she’d grown up with.
The bold confidence he had with adults she had marveled at in Tokyo felt strange here.
She saw Terry bristle and Sally watch him carefully as her mouth curled up in an unnatural smile.
But when these thoughts started to creep into her mind, Kit pushed them away quickly and kissed him urgently when they were alone.
The kisses would make these niggling feelings go away, she told herself.
“You’re nervous about me meeting your friends?”
“Well, things are a bit weird right now with Sabrina and me so…”
“I’m sure you’ll be okay. You guys have been friends forever, right?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“I’m going to check in on Dad and your folks.”
She watched him jump up, light on his feet, and run up the steps.
Kit walked into the kitchen to help her mother set up the table outside and heard Sally talking to someone at the front door.
“I don’t think you have the right house.” Kit stood in the hallway and listened. Sally’s voice was strained, and she rubbed her neck with her fingers.
“Hey, Mom, what’s going on? Is Sabrina here? I told her to stop by to meet Ryo.”
Nobody answered.
A small, thin Asian woman was standing before her mother.
She clutched a piece of paper, torn from a yellow legal pad with faded, tiny, illegible handwriting.
Kit’s eyes rested on the woman’s hands, which were small and bony, neat, compact fine fingers and short nails.
Her nailbeds were pale and bitten around the edges.
These were working hands, she could see from the creased, roughness of her skin.
This woman’s hands reminded her of Patrice, the janitor at CHA, who always smiled and closed the door quietly whenever she found Kit crying by the bathroom stalls.
“Nothing, love, you can go back out.”
“No, I come to see her,” the thin woman said quickly.
“Me?” Kit asked. Fear started to circle around her. She didn’t know where it came from.
The woman’s eyes bulged, taking in every part of Kit’s face.
Kit felt herself color up from the neck and wanted to hide from these prying eyes.
“This is Katherine…adopted in 1998…yes?”
Kit looked up at Sally again, her father had appeared, and she stepped back into the crook of his arm that was stretched out and leaning against the doorframe.
“How can I help you, Miss…”
“Mimi, my name Mimi Truang,” she said in a clipped voice that reminded Kit of Mrs. Chen. “I want to meet your Katherine, I have question for you. For her.”
Her mother was thinking of what to say; she could hear the cogs in Sally’s brain slowly rotating.
How to answer this woman’s direct questions—what did she want?
Kit glanced back at the garden and felt grateful that Ryo was busy with his father at the bottom of the garden, that he didn’t have to see this.
“Ms…. Mimi. You look distressed, can I bring you a glass of water?” Sally offered.
Mimi’s brow was wet, a film of dampness over her. The pores on her skin were visible, speckled almost, and Kit’s eyes moved back down to her hands again. She felt her father’s arm behind her, the cotton fabric of his T-shirt against her bare shoulder. She leaned back further, away from the woman.
“Yes, please, Madame. Water.” Mimi looked around the boot room. Kit thought the woman might want to sit down. But nobody said anything. This strange woman with a piece of crumbled paper in her hand, where Kit could make out the “ath” in Katherine and “zog” in Herzog.
Nobody said a word as Sally entered the kitchen and began to run the tap.
Kit heard the water running; her mother cooled the water first before filling a glass.
When Sally returned, her hand shook as she handed over the plastic tumbler, which was only three-quarters full.
Water splashed onto the toe of Mimi’s right sneaker.
Kit stared at the soak mark on the blue fabric of her shoe.
Mimi drank down the water, her eyes closed tight as she drank, and Kit wondered what she would do next. She took a deep gulp of air and spoke again, her words clipped and unsure.
“My baby, many years ago, she go from under my chair, in airport. Only one year old, Madame. I look, and gone. She very small small.”
Kit found it hard to swallow. She looked back again and saw through the living room window that Ryo and his father were standing on the deck outside, out of earshot.
“Nobody help me at the airport, Madame, Sir. I alone. I try, I cry, nobody come. My baby Ngan. Her name Ngan. Gone.”
Kit said the name in her head. She willed her mouth to stay rigid, not giving away her attempt to put her mouth around the unfamiliar sound. Ng-an. The an was sharp, staccato.
She stared back at Mimi, whose eyes flickered back and forth from Sally’s face to hers.
“I fly back my Vietnam, but I sleeping, Madame, I sleeping because they give me the medicine, and I cannot do anything. My Ngan, she gone…” When she said My Ngan , she raised her hand toward Kit. Kit immediately turned her face away and looked to the ground.
The only sound in the room was the birdsong that came in through the open windows. A car drove past on the road outside their driveway.
Sally cleared her throat. “This is truly terrible, Miss…. Mimi, really, I cannot imagine. But…”
“So I come…” Mimi spoke faster; there was a breathless urgency as her chest rose up and down quickly.
“I come from my Vietnam, so many years gone now. I ask my madame in my Vietnam, she help me to find my child here in Philadelphia. I try to find the children, my baby.” Again, her hand was held out again toward Kit.
She moved further back into her father’s arms.
“This is all terrible, Mimi. What a terrible thing to have happened. But I can’t see how we can help.”
Mimi opened her mouth to speak again, but nothing came out.
Her eyes only looked at Kit, and for the first time, Kit stared back at her.
There was a familiarity to her face she couldn’t place, and she began to shake.
A car pulled up outside, and she recognized the green top of Dave’s Jeep Cherokee.
She recognized the music, the Rolling Stones .
The music was cut off. Sabrina’s voice drifted in, riding along the breeze that blew in through the screen window.
“I’ll take the dish. You get the door.” A familiarity between them Kit hadn’t heard before.
···
They walked up the steps from the driveway, and as Sabrina moved to push the doorbell, her eyes fixed on Kit’s, then glanced at Sally, and then to the back of Mimi’s head.
Sabrina stopped. Their eyes locked, and Kit felt herself trying to warn Sabrina: Run.
Kit glanced back at Mimi, and for a moment, she saw the same eyes that were a round, large, deep dark brown and that creased into their cheekbones when Sabrina smiled, it took over her whole face, she imagined Mimi’s would too, and the square line of their jaws that rounded at the cheeks were identical, and even the way the hair fell with waves around their temples.
Only Mimi looked tired, exhausted, beaten up even.
Kit’s eyes returned to Mimi, who turned toward the door, and in a moment, everyone in the room stood still.
Sabrina looked at Mimi through the screen door that separated her from everyone inside.
Kit watched as they stared at each other. One sees the other in their future, and the other recognizes a ghost from their past.
The sound of a bowl smashing on the ground, the loud crashing of the china that shattered into shards as if it were one of their lives that had been picked up and thrown upon the ground pulled Kit out of this moment that had unfurled in slow motion before her.
Sabrina crouched down and saw a small cut appear on her hand.
“Rina…” Dave said in a whisper.
“Ngan…” Mimi’s breath was heavy, her deep sigh vibrated through the room.
It was a breath full of fear, relief, sorrow, and bitterness, with only the smallest edge of sweet joy at its periphery.
Mimi’s piece of paper fell to the ground, and Kit moved forward and released herself from the shield of Terry’s arm.
But in her best friend, she saw only terror. Sally had rushed to get a towel for Sabrina. Kit watched Sabrina turn to Dave, reaching out to him to hold his hand and then she took the car keys from his fingers.
“Rina!” Kit said louder than she wanted to.
But Sabrina didn’t look back, she rushed down the stairs back to the driveway, tripped over the final one and almost flew headfirst into the ground, but she steadied herself.
She slammed the door to Dave’s car. The Jeep reversed suddenly, and Kit heard Dave shout out to Sabrina.
The tires crunched across the driveway. The screen door slammed again and Mimi rushed out to follow Sabrina.
The plastic tumbler fell from her hand. A pool of water started to soak the yellow paper she had been holding.
Kit picked it up to see a series of names, hers included, with crosses through them and writing in a language she didn’t understand.
There was no Sabrina Chen on the list. She felt her mother’s arm around her shoulder, and she leaned back into the warmth of her body.
It was hot, but she wanted more. There was a cold rush going through her. She wanted to shiver.
“Oh, my sweet girl,” Sally said as she stroked her daughter’s hair, and Kit felt herself shaking.
What had just happened? Her brain had not caught up with the fear and relief she had felt in these eternal minutes.
They stretched out like a torturous slow-motion video where her life’s dreams hovered over the ground, ready to shatter, and were saved just before impact.
But Sabrina…what did this mean for Sabrina?
Was this woman her mother? Kit saw Mimi Truang’s face in her friend’s.
Anybody could see that Mimi Truang was Sabrina’s mother.
And her thoughts went to her friend, mangled with the relief and guilt she felt that this was not how her search ended, but where Sabrina’s world as she knew it fell apart.