Refugees (22 page)

“I said also that the people who surround you can be your family.”

“Okay, okay,” Dawn admitted. “I guess, Louise and I share this doctor thing. We both want to help people to feel better.”

“Anything else?”

“She has no other children. She chose me for some reason. She feeds me and shelters me, like you said. But it's just not all there between us.” Dawn sighed. “Don't you have fights, trouble with your family?”

“Yes,” he said. “I fight with my brother. We had terrible fights over which cause was right—the Taliban or Massoud's Alliance or for no war at all. And I had never cared for a child before now. Responsibility, it scare me. What does a little girl need? How can I care for Bija as Maryam did? I am so lonely with family gone that I feel I might break.”

“Bija is in expert hands, Johar. Just give her love, and maybe a treat or two.”

“I made her a doll.”

“See? How could she not adore you?”

“Thanks.” Johar paused. “Do not give up on Dr. Garland.”

“It's too hard, Johar. I can't force us to be close.”

“But you need—” He paused. “Do you remember things of your birth mother?”

“No. I've logged on to search lists on the Internet and checked for women with the last name Sweet. Ever since you told me to think about her, I've been sort of meditating on it. I keep trying to picture us doing something together. Nothing—well maybe one thing came up. I had a memory
of riding in a car with her. It's a car ride at night, and there's snow, and I can't remember any other details, but for some reason, it gives me the creeps. It scares me, Johar. I don't know if I should even keep trying to remember.”

“You seem stuck in that time. When you're ready it will come out.”

Dawn felt as if she were almost there. She had come so far, but she needed just one more push for everything to become clear. She was like Winnie the Pooh in that old children's book, when he gets caught halfway out of the hole. It felt good to hear someone else say it. “Johar, you will be the coolest teacher.”

Despite the nasty exchange with Victor, her loneliness, and anxiety over Louise, Dawn's life in Manhattan improved. After her concert for the Chinese family she made a sign that read Songs for Families of Victims—Free and propped it on the insurance company stairs. She had many takers. Among them was a firefighter's wife who wanted Scottish music, then a young stockbroker who'd lost his fianc'e and requested their favorite song, “Here Comes the Sun.” After Dawn played it, she sat next to the man as grief shook through him. Without thinking, her hand reached out to touch his arm. Dawn listened as he spoke of his fianc'e—her mathematician's mind and her kayaking.

Another day, a commanding woman with graying dreadlocks requested a spiritual for her husband, a worker at Windows on the World restaurant. Dawn played “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The woman swayed and wept. Then she enveloped Dawn in her strong arms, saying, “My Ronald hears you in heaven, I bet he does.”

There were rivers of conversations with people, and Dawn felt herself expanding like a paper flower in water. People thanked her for comforting them. They hugged her and came back to hear more. She had always thought connecting with people took some magical skill. But it was more like exercise. You could start out small and work up to the harder stuff later, when your muscles were stronger. The distance between Dawn and other people was getting shorter. It felt awesome to cross that last length she had never before been able to negotiate. After each conversation, the muscled place between Dawn's ribs loosened, and when someone said, “Play me a song,” the corners of her mouth curved easily into a smile.

But the following week when a Pakistani woman asked for a song from her nation, Dawn came up empty-handed. The same thing happened the next day with a Lebanese man. The sheet music stores had songs from many countries, so why hadn't she seen music from the Middle East or Asia? People from all continents had perished in those towers, not just Americans. Dawn left frustrated.

Back at the apartment, she checked the Internet for music from the Middle East and Central Asia. There were pages and pages! She jotted down names, and that night she ventured into the world music section in the megastore on Union Square. Sure enough, there were rows of CDs from all around the globe. Dawn crammed her arms with Algerian rai, Hindi hip-hop, Turkish rock, North African raconteurs, and Egyptian ballads. She shelled out her last silvery mountain of quarters, then hurried back to Susie's.

Stretching on the futon and wiggling her toes to the music pulsing from Susie's stereo, Dawn imagined Afghanistan's ruby-colored peaks, crowded bazaars, and
arbors like the one that grew the Charikar grapes Johar had described. During the tumultuous rubab run, she remembered Johar's story of winding through mountain passes as he shielded Bija from snow. With the Indian bhangra, she pictured peacocks and smoky music clubs pulsing with Hindi trance and kids dancing. She picked up her flute and tooled along to the music. Often scales were in minor keys, weighted with grief like the days following the tragedy. Beats syncopated in odd ways; scales jumped in thirds, fourths. Many instruments were new to her: the Indian harmonium, the Afghan santur, the Middle Eastern oud. And the voices! Singers' voices coiled and quavered. She'd never heard such range. Dawn imitated and experimented until the sky grew light and she had written three new songs.

The next day at the site, a woman from Bangalore asked for a song. The only thing she had left from her brother was his tie clip. The woman opened her palm to reveal it, then pressed it closed. Dawn was all set to play the Indian bhangra, but the woman asked for American jazz. “Raj liked Charlie Mingus. Do you know any?”

“Sure.” Dawn played her version of “Love Chant” and Mingus' dreamy “Strollin'.” Later that afternoon, her composing efforts were rewarded when the Lebanese guy returned. Dawn belted out a Middle Eastern cha-cha-raga-rai. He closed his eyes and swung his head. When it was over, he asked to hear it four more times.

After that a woman appeared whose daughter had been a financial trader—and a flute player. “You remind me so much of her,” the woman said. Requesting song after song, she mopped her eyes with a sodden lump of Kleenex and exclaimed, “Giselle and I had a tiff on September tenth. We
hadn't resolved it before…God, I feel so empty. If only we had been able to talk one more time. What a nightmare.”

Dawn's response was in her music—the moody Grieg. As she sailed into its spectral waves her recent argument with Louise flooded in—how they too hadn't resolved things. If Louise died before they spoke again, Dawn would feel empty too.

When the song was over, the woman continued, “Giselle's boss was pressuring her to move for her job. I didn't want to hear it. We were so close, you see. I think I sounded angry, but I just wanted her to stay.” The woman's shoulders shook in another wave of sobs. Her blond hair was perfectly coiffed. She was model thin and wore an impeccable suit with matching pumps. Such perfect visual order clashed against the vigor of her grief.

Dawn leaned in toward her. “Come back if it helps.” The woman nodded, stood unsteadily, and straightened her skirt. As she walked away a scent of roses drifted up, and Dawn wondered why that and the
click-clack
of the woman's heels rattled her.

A reedy girl in a denim jacket was lingering by the stairs. She must have heard the last strains of Grieg, thought Dawn. The girl lifted her sunglasses, then quickly slipped them back when their eyes met. “This may sound silly,” said the girl, stepping forward.

“Try me,” said Dawn.

“So you play for victims' families?” The girl pointed to Dawn's sign.

“That's right. Something to acknowledge the life of the person they lost. Anything they want.” Dawn tried to see through the girl's dark glasses to her eyes, but the green
plastic was too opaque. She looked about nineteen. “Was there something specific?”

Denim girl giggled nervously. “Can you play the theme from
Dawson's Creek
?”

“Dawson's Creek?”
Dawn never watched TV unless she was stuck in bed with the flu. “I'm not sure I know it.”

“Oh.” The girl started to tramp away. “It doesn't matter.”

“Wait!” Dawn called, “Hum a few bars.”

Walking back abruptly, the girl began to hum. Dawn picked up her flute and copied, missing a few notes. The girl hummed it again. This time when Dawn played it, Denim girl nodded eagerly. “That's it,” she exclaimed.

“Who's it for?” Dawn invited the girl to sit with her on the stairs. “It helps me get into the song.”

“It's for my stepsister. I didn't know her well.” The young woman crossed her arms over her jacket and curled her body over as if to protect it.

Dawn played the song three times.
It's pretty for a TV song,
she thought as she turned toward the site, where drizzle tamped down smoke drifting up from the rubble.

“That was nice.” The girl pulled on a lock of hair. “My dad said my stepsister loved her new job in the World Trade Center. She got the bank job right out of college. Dad said she was watching
Dawson's Creek
when they called to say she was hired, and that's why she liked the song. You know, I didn't like her, but I didn't want her to die.” The girl began to tremble.

Dawn reached out, clasped the girl's hands in hers, and felt the warmth of her own hands firm around the girl's chapped ones.

“I thought she was mean,” the girl went on. “Like when
my dad first took me to his new house and she was staring at me like ‘This is my house and you're not part of it.' ” Tears slid down her face. “Me and my stepsister, we never talked,” mumbled the girl. “But one time on my birthday she gave me a shirt that she sewed herself. It wasn't my style, but it surprised me.” The girl's breathing came in jerks. “I wasn't very nice to her, but I didn't want her crushed down there!” The breaths became sobs. Dawn wrapped her arms around the girl's puny shoulders and felt the girl lean into the hug, felt her muscles unfold.

Dawn thought of Louise, and not just about the flights away or about all the times Louise had shut herself in her office. “There is someone in my family like your stepsister,” Dawn began, “someone I hated. She gave me things too.” Dawn recalled the wooden flute Louise had carried back from Louisiana and the star mobile from Texas. “Even though she doesn't give me what I need, I think she tries.”

“Really?” The girl removed her glasses and looked at Dawn with reddened eyes.

Dawn took her hands again and thought of all the times Louise talked of work. “She's a rescue doctor and loves her job too,” Dawn mused. “One time she told me about a boy who'd been caught in a riptide. She said that everyone assumed he had drowned and that it seemed to take forever to resuscitate him, but she did. He opened his eyes in her arms, and she called him a little fighter. There's one about an earthquake too. She told me that she found an injured girl's teddy bear among the fallen beams, just before she set the girl's ribs in the brace. She said she was glad to be able to give the kid something to hug during the procedure.”

“She sounds like a good rescue person,” the girl said. “And you hated her?”

“I hated her,” Dawn whispered, and swore she felt the pumping of blood inside. She felt it pump to her toes, all the way to her fingers, and out into the world as her hands warmed the girl's chilly hands. Dawn had another odd sensation, that she—Dawn Sweet
—was
Louise, that they shared some uncanny bond. That she
herself
was the doctor, the healer, and the formerly hated.

The girl sat up, stretched, and said simply, “Thanks. You've helped.”

That night Dawn made a call. “Hi, Louise. Um, I wanted to call and say hi.”

“Good to hear from you, Dawn.”

“Hey, I'm sorry we got into it the other day.”

“Me too. It's unfortunate.”

A rush of feelings—missing San Francisco, the ocean, and even missing Louise—washed over Dawn. “I didn't mean to put down your doctoring,” she said. “It's different from how I would think of it. But I haven't been doing it for years like you, and everyone's entitled to their own approach.”