Vanishing Girls (16 page)

“No, we won’t! They’ll send her right back, and you know what will happen to her then. I’m hiring a lawyer—whatever it takes to keep her here.”

“Karin, honestly, this is insane.”

“The alternative was insane. This is sane. Chali worked years to set this in motion.”

“But Chali’s gone.”

“Right. And we’re here. That’s how it worked out. Life sucks. Next?”

“You want her to join the sea of illegals living underground in this city? You know what happens to those kids when they grow up without papers: They’re paralyzed. Sometimes they’re deported. They live in fear.”

“We’ll find a way to work that out. Meanwhile, we’ll protect her.”

“I know you’re hurting, Karin. I realize today was your due date. But it’s just a coincidence that her plane ticket was for today.”

“Our due date. Meg was your baby, too.”

“Meg?”

I froze. He stared at me. It wasn’t often I couldn’t figure out what to say. And then I burst into tears, and he had to stop arguing with me. He pulled us together and we held each other for long minutes, until the kitchen door opened just a little and two faces peered in through a narrow crack: Ben’s below, Dathi’s above.

“May we help?” she started to say; but when she saw that she had interrupted something, she pulled Ben out and quickly shut the door.

“See?” I said. “She’s special. She’ll bring a whole new point of view into this family. She’ll help Ben learn not to be as self-absorbed as
all
our nieces and nephews.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely. You
know
I’m right.”

“Until she loses her original culture and becomes just as narcissistic as every other American kid we know.”

“Which won’t happen.”

“Which will happen. It’s inevitable.”

“Well,” I looked at him, lifting a hand to gently touch his face. “We can at least give it a chance, can’t we?”

He thought a moment, and when he said, “Where will she sleep?” I knew I had him.

“I was thinking: Now that you’ve got an assistant, and your business seems to be growing, don’t you want an office out of the house?”

His laugh was fast, like a shout. “Oh,
I get it
, I see
exactly
where you’re going with this.”

“Well, it doesn’t take a detective . . .” Our private joke:
to figure out the obvious
.

“For now, she can bunk in Ben’s room,” I said. “As soon as we find you an office, she can move into the spare room.”

T
hat night, while Mac was putting Ben to bed, I sat with Dathi in the quiet living room. Her eyes looked droopy; she had to be exhausted after such a long trip. And not just the flight itself, or the distance, but the breadth and depth and challenge of the many transformations she was being called upon to navigate all at once. I wasn’t sure if now was the time to give her the Christmas gifts Chali had readied for her; but if I waited, she would wonder why.

“Be right back,” I told her. Moments later, I returned with two brightly wrapped presents: a medium box, and a smaller lumpy package that was fairly heavy. I had no idea what was inside either one.

“Oh!” Dathi jumped back a few inches when I placed the gifts beside her on the couch.

“They’re for you. From your mother.”

She stared at them. I waited for some expression of surprise—joy or grief—but nothing came. Her face held still, so smooth and quiet I wanted to throw my arms around her, but held back.

“Open them,” I prodded her.

She carefully picked off the tape sealing the smaller box, peeling back the green and silver foil paper to reveal something metallic wrapped in heavy clear plastic. It looked like some kind of chain. She turned it over and her eyes lit up.

“A bicycle lock!” Her eyes flashed at me. Then she ripped the wrapping off the box. “And a helmet!” Her fingers shook as she pried open the stiff cardboard to get to the orange and blue striped helmet. Snapping open the clasp, she thrust it onto her head. “I am ready.”

“Dathi—are you sure you’re okay with being here? It’s not what you expected.”

“I will not be a burden to you,” she said quietly. “I promise.”

“You’re not a burden. Your mother mattered a lot to me.
You
matter a lot to me.”

“I will work and help you as much as I can.”

“Honestly, you don’t have to. Just be a kid for now.”

Her hands flew up to hide her eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I think perhaps I have jet lag.”

“Sure you do. You’re only human.”

She gathered herself, that helmet perched on her head, and suddenly she was no longer a little girl.

“Granny is gone. Mommy is gone. My uncle never liked me. I knew I would have to look out for myself the moment I saw the man from Mumbai put money next to Uncle’s teacup on the table. I knew what it meant; Granny had warned me. My karma changed that day. This was meant to be.”

But was it really possible to so blithely accept such shattering change? Maybe it was, for Dathi; I didn’t know her well enough yet to judge. She struck you as the kind of kid who could grow up to be a world leader, she was just so together. I cringed each time I thought of the fate that had awaited her on the other side of that plane ticket. And I was starting to understand what Chali had meant by karma: it was a force that arrived on its own, like a hurricane, and your job was to bend to its winds because there was no stopping it. Your grace, your survival, was in your flexibility.

B
y Monday morning, we had found a spare room in an apartment on our block that Mac rented as a workspace on a month-to-month basis starting immediately, so his home office could be turned into a bedroom for Dathi. Billy came over to help Mac move into his new office while Dathi and I set up her new room.

I had left a message with the Indian Consulate first thing that morning, and jumped when the phone rang, leaving Dathi alone to arrange her clothes in the dresser we had salvaged from the basement.

As carefully as I could, I explained the situation to the consulate representative who had returned my call. I was passed on to someone else, who passed me along again, but finally a friendly woman told me that if I filed the right paperwork in just the right way, we would be eligible to open adoption proceedings. It would require an immigration lawyer here, a custody lawyer in India, a death certificate for Chali, a notarized letter from Uncle Ishat, and a six-month waiting period for other “interested parties”—long-lost relatives—to file a counterclaim. Dathi would have to go before an immigration judge. It would be a lengthy, expensive, complicated process.

“Are you sure you’re prepared for this?” the woman asked me.

“Yes.” I didn’t hesitate.

Later, over lunch at the kitchen table, I recounted the conversation to Mac and Billy.

“Go, Karin.” Billy chuckled. “You’re actually doing this. I admit it: I admire your courage.”

Mac glanced at him when he said that, but he didn’t argue, which told me his own attitude was continuing to shift on the matter of Dathi. I felt like a runner who had passed the halfway mark, though in reality it was just the beginning.

As we ate our sandwiches, Dathi told us about her best friend from school, Oja, whom she had left behind. Oja also came from a poor family, Dathi explained, but her father was still alive and so they were able to live together—both parents and Oja, who was also an only child—and managed to scrape together her tuition. Dathi’s gaze rested a moment in her hands, folded in her lap, when she told us about her friend. “Oja will miss me,” she said quietly. “I was unable to say good-bye to her, but I know she will understand.”

“She
will
understand,” I reassured her.

She smiled, trying to reassure herself that it was true.

After a while, Ben lured Dathi away to play with him in the living room.

Billy glanced at the doorway, to make sure the kids weren’t listening, and then looked at us. “Seems Abby did
not
know her parents were killed. Someone told her up at the hospital. They said she cried.”

“When?” I asked.

“Just this morning, right before I came over here.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.”

“In front of the kids?”

I glanced through the open door at Dathi and Ben. He was sitting on her lap on the couch and she was reading a picture book to him. “So Abby doesn’t know what happened that night.”

“Not necessarily. We don’t know what she knows, but she’s not a happy camper.”

“Definitely not,” I agreed.

“We had to let Tony Neng go,” Billy said, looking defeated. “Don’t have enough to hold him. He hired himself a pricey lawyer. They’ve got a court date pending while they do discovery. Man, this case is going nowhere fast.
Both
cases—stuck. Patrick Scott swears he was an innocent bystander to the murder on Nevins . . . speaking of which, we still haven’t ID’d that last dead hooker.” He glanced at his watch, stood up, and cleared his dishes to the sink. “Didn’t realize it was this late. Told Dash I’d be back by two.”

“Innocent bystander.
Right
.” Mac pushed back his chair and followed Billy out. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Take over the case, how about that?”

“I wish.” Mac snorted cynical laughter. “It’d be a lot more interesting than the crap I’m always scraping up for people’s divorces.”

“I’ll trade you any day.”

We followed Billy to the front door. “I mean it,” Mac said. “If I can help you out somehow, let me know.” Implicit in the offer, of course, was that he was still there if Billy was hit by another PTSD episode. We both were.

After Billy was gone, and Mac had also left to join Star, I went to the kitchen to clean up.

“Karin?” Dathi came up behind me so quietly my heart jumped. I turned off the faucet and faced her, expecting her to insist on finishing the dishes, as she had before. But this time, that was not what she wanted.

“Yes?”

“Who is Abby?”

My pulse galloped; so she
had
overheard.

“A girl from the neighborhood.”

“And her parents were also killed? That man, Mr.—”

“Billy?”

“Yes. Billy. I heard him say Abby didn’t know her parents were killed. Is it usual for parents to be killed here in America? No one told me about
my
mother, either, until I found out for myself.”

I dried my hands on a dish towel and reached out to push away a frazzle of hair that had strayed over one of her eyes. “No, it isn’t usual for parents to get killed here. It’s very
un
usual. It’s relatively safe here.”

“Then why?”

“Abby’s parents, you mean?”

“Yes, and Mommy. How can that be?”

“That’s what Billy’s trying to figure out.”

“Were they killed together?”

“No. Separately, on different days, in different places, and in different ways.”

Dathi nodded slowly, thinking that over. “But it’s very strange, even so.”

“I agree about that.”

“How old is Abby?”

“Eleven.”

“Then I must meet her.”

I hesitated a moment before answering. “Sure, but she’s in the hospital right now.”

“Was she injured when her parents were killed?”

“Not exactly, but sort of.”

Dathi didn’t challenge the ambiguity of my answer, and she didn’t ask me anything else. She sat alone at the kitchen table, thinking, while I finished the dishes.

Later that night, long after I’d thought Dathi had fallen asleep, I heard sobs coming from her new room. I stood quietly outside the door, listening. It was another reminder that I really had no idea what I had gotten us both into. But still, hadn’t I done the right thing for her, considering the alternative? I stayed focused on that: I had saved Dathi from a human trafficker who was probably going to sell her into a network of child prostitution so vast it was unlikely she would ever have been heard from again. I had to believe I was doing the right thing by her; the alternative was too treacherous a prospect.

D
athi lucked into an available sixth-grade spot at what was supposed to be a good public middle school in Park Slope, a short bus ride away. On her first day, I dropped her in the office, where the principal met her and promised to send her home with a supply list at the end of the day. I left the building feeling hopeful. But as young students flooded into the main entrance, sophisticated beyond their years in skinny jeans, short metallic jackets, Day-Glo sneakers, nostril rings, eyeliner, and bright green hair, my optimism began to dissolve. Dathi would not fit easily into this trendy crowd.

When I returned with Ben at three o’clock, she came out the side entrance in a river of other sixth graders, her jacket unzipped in the cold, clutching an old backpack of Mac’s to her front. She looked mildly traumatized. I was about to reach out to give her a hug when she glanced at me sharply before her eyes flitted away. I held still. A girl ran up behind her and tugged her ponytail.

“Bye Dathi, see you tomorrow!
Remember
.”

“Remember what?” I asked her as she jostled through the crowd to the corner. Our bus stop was directly across the street.

“
Shh
.” She wouldn’t look at me. Then I noticed that almost none of the other kids had been met by adults: she was embarrassed. I held my silence to spare her further shame until we were nearly at the bus stop.

“Is everything okay?” I whispered when no other kids were around.

She nodded, and whispered back: “May we shop for a few new clothes, please?”

“Is that what that girl was telling you to do?”

“No. I promised to meet her on Facebook later.”

“Oh. I guess that would be okay. We can shop first, then make you a page.” The idea made me queasy, though. Twelve-year-olds on Facebook? Was that normal?

“Karin”—she kept her voice a low whisper—“I am already on Facebook. Everyone is.”

I didn’t know what to think, so kept my mouth shut for now.

We got off the bus at the Atlantic Center and shopped our way through Old Navy and Target for a few new outfits that would help her blend in better at school, and also picked up some supplies. At home, she packed her new purple tie-dye backpack with everything she needed. Meanwhile, she logged onto her Facebook page and merged it with a new one on the U.S. domain. Dathi, just like that, was off and running. I let her use my laptop again after dinner; two hours sped by before I suggested that it was time for bed.