Klickitat (12 page)

“Animals have acute senses,” she said, “but if an animal has strong sight its ears are weak, or its sense of smell—humans have the best combination, if we just remember how to use them.”

She blindfolded me, so I would listen harder. She took off the blindfold and showed me how to use my wide-angle vision, to switch from only looking straight ahead to also see the edges, the far corners of the world around me.

“Look out at the river,” she said, pointing through a clearing in the trees. “Pretend it's a picture hanging on the wall, and push the frame out as far as you can, with your eyes.”

“Is that a fishing boat down there,” I said, “by the bridge?”

“No,” she said. “That's a barge.”

We stood there with our shoulders touching, looking out at the dark green river below, the pale blue sky
above, the square reddish barge plowing through the water. I don't know which one of us started singing the song:

Out of my window, looking through the night,

I can see the barges' flickering lights

Starboard shines green, and port is glowing red,

I can see the barges far ahead

Barges, I would love to go with you

I would love to sail the ocean blue

Barges, are there treasures in your hold?

Do you fight with pirates, brave and bold?

That was a song Mom used to sing to us, when we were little, when she was putting us to bed. Singing the song made me miss her, and I knew that Audra was thinking of her, too. She didn't say so. She just leaned against me, and it was a little sad, but it was also a sweet time with my sister, standing close, singing with her.

“Hearing that song makes me think of Mom,” I finally said.

“I know,” Audra said.

“I miss her.”

“Sometimes I do, too,” Audra said. “That's all right. We don't have to forget her, it's just that we can't go back to how things were. We've made our choice, and we're meant to go somewhere else.”

I didn't know what to say, so I only looked out at the river, feeling my sister's shoulder pressed against mine.

“The little girl who wrote that song,” Audra said, “she was a girl in a wheelchair, who had some disease or some kind of accident, and she'd sit at her window and watch the barges and imagine all these adventures she couldn't have herself.”

And then Audra sang again, a verse I'd never heard:

How my heart wants to sail away with you,

As you sail across the ocean blue

But I must stay beside my window clear,

As the barges sail away from here

Once it was dark we walked down out of the trees,
across the city, Audra half a block ahead and across the street so it wouldn't seem like we were together.

Henry wasn't under the house when we got there; he came back later, after I was already asleep.

SIXTEEN

The morning after I sang “Barges” with
Audra, I woke up and listened to her and Henry heading off to work.

Later, I slipped out again, into the day. Rain misted down. Rain is helpful, since people squint through it, they look at the ground, they hurry. They don't stand or stare at something or someone they don't understand, try to figure it out. A person will look at you and in an instant decide who you are, line you up next to a person they know or a certain kind of person, so it is easy enough to blend in, to look a certain way where people's eyes slide right over you without snagging or hooking.

In crowds or on the train I would even stand next
to a lady so it looked as if she was my mother. Or I'd stand next to a group of kids that were horsing around so I looked like one of them. I watched and listened and smiled and I knew how to make my face light up a little like I knew them.

But I only mixed in crowds of kids if I was far from my parents' house, since I didn't want anyone to recognize me, and so mostly I walked by myself as I headed toward the QFC, toward Henry, because that was next to my old school, my old neighborhood. He would finish work in half an hour, and I planned to wait, then follow him again, to talk to him, this time.

On the way, I passed my old street. I stood there, at the end of our block. It was the middle of the day, a time my parents wouldn't be home, and so I decided to walk past. I had my hood up, and I didn't walk like myself. I scuffed my shoes along, like a boy.

The house looked the same from outside. The round window in the front door, the antennas sticking up from the roof, Audra's dark footprints high up on the wall, where she kicked when she was swinging.

There was no one on the street. Slowly, kind of walking
backward to make sure no one was watching, I went down the driveway, around back. The cars were gone, all the windows were dark. I found the hidden key where it was always hidden, under the planter on the step of the back porch. You have to pull the back door toward you to get the key to turn, and I did that, then quietly pushed the door open.

And then, just like that, I was standing in our kitchen. It didn't smell right. The air felt sharper, cleaner, like chemicals. The kitchen looked the same, though, dirty breakfast dishes stacked in the sink. I walked through it, upstairs.

The smell was mostly coming out of Audra's room, where the door was open, and when I stepped inside, I realized that part of the smell was paint. All the walls were blue, now, the outlines of the hands painted over. The bed was pushed into the middle of the room, the mattress bare. The floor shone in the light from the window, like it had been scrubbed. The shelves were empty, the closet. I pulled open all the drawers and there was nothing in them.

My things were still in my room. My old books, some
of my clothes that I had almost forgotten, the orange blanket on my bed. First I opened the drawer, took out the knife Audra had left for me, put it in my pocket. Next I found the yellow notebook, in its hidden spot, tight in the bookshelf. I pulled it out, my hands trembling; I opened it up, paged through to find the new writing:

Suddenly we came upon a series of low

subterranean tunnels that looked like beaver

holes, or the work of foxes—through

whose narrow and winding ways we had

to literally crawl! Our bodies are so fluid
,

they can hardly be called bodies, they are

made for where we are, and your body is

changing. You are a special girl and will

learn to camouflage your body, but also

your mind and spirit so a person looking

directly at you will not see you. Your sister

can see you, is watching you, your body
,

mind, and spirit. The tunnels drift underground

like clouds in the sky, they travel

and cross each other. Will sisters travel
,

cross each other? Hello again, calling

you! If you're caught in a situation with

wet shirt or denims, you can still warm

yourself by stuffing your shirt and pants

with leaves, grass, moss, fir branches. You

can also fashion emergency clothing items

from materials such as bark, rushes, and

cattail stalks
.

I slapped the notebook shut, put it under my arm. I didn't want any of the other things in my room; I didn't miss them at all except for sleeping in my bed, just a little, and to be able to walk right across the hall to the bathroom, whenever I wanted to, having a toilet instead of a bucket with a tight snapped lid.

I crossed the hall, sat down on the toilet. The sound of me peeing was loud in the house. Above the sink in the holder were only two toothbrushes, blue and green, my parents'. Mine and Audra's had been put somewhere else, or thrown away.

After I finished, I sat there for a moment, and all at once heard a noise, a car outside. I stood to one side
of the window, careful not to show myself. What would it mean, if Mom or Dad came home, found me there? Could I settle back in? Would I want to? I couldn't leave Audra, and Henry, who needed me; it wasn't as if we could have asked Mom and Dad, anyway, as if they'd let us go. We had made our choice.

The car passed, it wasn't our car—I could see the driveway and it was empty. I washed my hands, turned the water on and off again, then walked out past my parents' room. The door was open and inside it was all the same. The desk and a new computer, the same books on the bedside tables, my dad's asthma inhaler. If I was Audra I would have broken the computer screen, but I did not. Instead, I lay down on their bed for a moment, rolling my head onto one pillow, then the other, smelling how they smelled, so I would remember.

Downstairs again, in the kitchen, I took a pen from the cup next to the phone. I wrote a little letter, in my yellow notebook, then tore it loose:

I want you to know that we are

together and we're doing fine.

We're happy. Don't worry about

us, and don't try to find us. You

couldn't find us because we've

moved far away to a place you

couldn't think of or guess. Thank

you for all your help in helping

us grow up.

Yours sincerely,

Vivian

Once I finished it, I realized that I couldn't just leave it there on the counter, since they'd know I had been there, and when. They'd know that I couldn't be too far away. So I found an envelope in the drawer and wrote the address of our house on it, and then I found a stamp. Only I couldn't put it in the mail slot because it wouldn't have a postmark on it and still they'd know how close I'd been. I slid the letter into my yellow notebook and then I went downstairs, into the basement.

When I turned on the radio switches, the lights came on in the tiny windows and the red needles bounced and settled. I put on the headset and had to close it down to make it
smaller because it was adjusted for Dad's head. It made me miss him, sitting there in his chair with his old wool shirt on the back of the chair. The shirt smelled like him, its arms hanging down like they might lift up to hug me.

On a yellow pad of paper he'd written our names:

On the other side of the piece of paper, he had written:

Iceland says it is natural for girls

to wander. Of course she believes a

lot of things that are difficult to

believe.

In his logbook I found Iceland's call sign and I turned the dials even though as I did it I knew that would make the antennas on the rooftop turn and a person outside could see it and know that there was another person inside.

“CQ, TF8GX,” I said. “CQ, Iceland. It's me, Vivian.” I held the soft headset tight around my ears, but all I heard was static. I waited, but that did not change. I wondered how many people might be out there, listening to me, not answering. I wondered how many people were trying to talk to me, all at once.

And then I heard something else, cutting through that static. A ringing. I pulled the headset down and then I recognized it and I picked up my pack and ran up the stairs, back into the kitchen.

It was the telephone, and I reached out and almost answered it because I was used to answering it. I remembered, and pulled my hand back before I did. The answering machine played a message I couldn't hear, and then there was a beep. All I could hear was someone breathing, very softly, and then suddenly a voice, so loud in the kitchen.

“What are you doing in there?” a man said. “No, don't pick up the phone, Vivian. I know you're listening. I can see you standing in the kitchen.”

I spun around, looking out the windows.

“You won't see me,” the man said.

It was Henry, I realized. The voice was Henry's.

“As soon as I hang up,” he said, “delete this message. Then go outside, lock the door, and return the key to its hiding place. Meet me at the corner of 33rd and Klickitat.”

“Okay,” I said, startled by my voice, knowing he couldn't hear it.

“Now delete this.”

There was a click, and then I pushed the
DELETE
button so the light stopped blinking. I checked it and double-checked it, my fingers shaking.

I went out the back door, where the key was still in the lock. I locked the door, then put the key back in its hiding place. As I walked around past the garage, I slid my yellow notebook inside my shirt.

Henry stood where he said he'd be. He wasn't looking in my direction, but I could tell he was watching me coming.