“No. But you could lower your voice. She’ll hear you.”
“Maybe she should hear it? Maybe she should know.”
“Quiet. I’m warning you . . . quiet.”
But at dinner, they would be holding hands again, a brief intermission from whatever had fueled their fiery exchange this time. “Would you like more glazed carrots, Isla?” one of them would ask with a straight face. They were so good at it. So good at recovering from their battle wounds to make it home to me.
Earlier that week, I had woken up to find Dad absent from breakfast. Mom looked puffy, her eyes saggy. She played along and talked to me and Moni for a while, answered my questions, but said nothing if Dad was mentioned. She eventually excused herself.
She didn’t notice me follow her, a shadow behind her as she went up to their room and planted her face into the bed, heavily breathing and motionless. I left, not wanting to see her face when she got up. Not wanting to see her reaction to finding out I had watched her. Instead, I waited outside the rest of the day.
Dad came back to the cabin later that evening. But happy was not the word I would use to describe Mom right then. Relieved. She seemed like a woman who had gotten off an amusement park ride she had been somehow talked into. It was over and she was pleased to never have to go on it again.
I wonder what she would have done had she been warned about what was to happen that week. That her family would never be the same. That a girl would enter their lives and there would be no going back.
I sometimes wished her away.
In the weeks that followed, I would lie in bed and wish her away. I would wish that she never existed. That I never saw her face and followed her into the woods. That she belonged to another family, and they would come and take her away.
When we returned home with her, I would hear them at night. Mom and Dad in the big bed that used to be full of such light and embraces, where I was tucked in, safe and treasured.
Where mornings were spent under those cream blankets. Dad’s hair stuck up in the front and flat in the back. I was their little “squish” in between, tucked in as we hugged and lazily rolled around. My legs kicking up excitedly, not wanting it to ever end. Until there was the mention of bacon and french toast by Mom, a whisper, a promise in my ear and I would bolt up. We hardly stayed home on weekends. There was always some festival, restaurant, bookstore, or coffee shop to visit, the three of us in a constant burst of affection and laughter.
We had been inside our own snow globe, a molded and carved scene of brilliance.
Only then did I pause at this idea. The glass in the globe cracked.
Did I remember it the right way? Was the morning light in their room as bright as I envisioned? Was the french toast as sweet as it tasted in my memory? Or was it all a little duller in reality, embroidered by things I had seen on TV or read about?
And then I would be brought back to what it had become. The girl now inside with us. Their whispers at night.
“Do you think she knows? Do you think she’ll ever remember?”
CHAPTER 9
ISLA
1995
I would slip into the girl’s room whenever I could, bringing her some of my dolls and books. I didn’t know if she even liked them or knew what to do with them. I would sometimes color on the floor with her, showing her how to clutch the fat red crayon in her small hand. When she grew bored of that, I would cut shapes out of construction paper. Her eyes would remain focused on the shears as they opened and closed, little colored pieces of paper falling to the floor like confetti.
Occasionally I thought she smiled at me, the corners of her mouth barely moving upward. Her thick matte eyelashes mimicked my dolls, blinking in a random pattern. I would pat her arm, whisper soothingly, copying what I saw Moni do with her.
For whatever reason, Moni was so natural with the girl. She would gently brush her hair, singing a Korean lullaby. The notes were so familiar to my ears as she had sung the very same ones to me. She would fold her ever so cautiously into bed, as though she were a paper doll that could be crushed easily. Her words were cooing in nature, a constant reassurance she would be okay.
“Goodness, goodness,” she would say in Korean.
The barrier of words and language was nothing for Moni and the girl. Their connection went deeper than that, requiring nothing but compassion.
Most meals, Moni would be the one to feed her. Each spoonful, each bite, was so patiently inserted into her mouth. A small wipe there. A light caress of the cheek there. The girl seemed nearly in a trance with Moni, a willing subject that would do whatever she asked.
When Mom was home to feed her, it would be transactional. Like a slot machine she fed coins into, motorized and monotonous. She would barely look at her with each spoonful, as though she were afraid to make eye contact, or the very sight of her was too much.
One night Mom bathed her, since Moni had gone to a Korean church fundraiser. The splash each time Mom dipped the washcloth in the water and cleaned a part of the girl’s body was oddly soothing. I took the yellow duck and placed it on the girl’s chest as she lay back in the water. She touched it with one finger and pushed it, watching it float and then go idle toward Mom. Their eyes met when she suddenly reached out and touched Mom’s arm.
Mom jerked upward, as if she had been electrocuted. She stared down at the little hand on her forearm. Quickly, she peeled it off and kept washing her, as if nothing had happened. Later, I would see her tracing the very spot the girl had touched her, rubbing it slightly as if it had imprinted and left a burn.
On weekends, when Dad wasn’t giving a lecture or going back to campus for a meeting, he would give most of his attention to the girl. Bringing home cream-filled doughnuts or peanut butter cookies was his attempt at getting her to talk. He would take whatever treat he had bought and bring it to her room. The girl, sitting in a small blue wooden chair—part of a tea party set that used to be mine—would wait expectantly. Dad would sit in the pink one, his long legs awkwardly jutting out, giving him the appearance of a marionette. I would watch from the doorway as he slid the goods across the table. She would take only a moment to examine it before bringing it toward her mouth with both hands.
“I’m Patrick. What’s your name?”
The girl would take a bite and look back at him.
“Do you have a name?”
Chewing.
“Does your mommy have a name?”
More chewing and then licking her fingers.
“Do you know where your mommy is? Your daddy?”
I could always see the patience eventually fall off his face, the more questions he asked and empty voids he got in return. Frustration clung to him, and maybe even a shade of irritation.
“You’re pushing her too much,” I heard Mom say before dinner, the plates hitting the table a little too hard. Had they skin, it would have bruised.
“Well one of us has to try talking to her,” Dad said in a brusque tone as he took his plate and retreated to the office.
