Kira Kira

chapter 14

I WATCHED MY father walk away. I got up and ran behind him to the doorway of the bedroom, then hesitated. My mother was weeping as she knelt by the side of the bed and leaned over my sister. My father knelt in front of the bed and enveloped Lynn's head with his arms. It was light outside now, but nobody had bothered to turn off the lamp. I stared at the lamp. The lamp was on because Lynn had asked that I turn it on, but now she herself was gone. I couldn't comprehend it. I walked in slowly. My parents scarcely noticed me. My father moved to my mother and put his arms around her.

Lynn looked peaceful, even beautiful, but slightly off. Her eyes were not quite closed all the way, and her mouth hung open a bit. My mother suddenly got up and held a mirror to Lynn's nose, apparently hoping to see a fog of breath on the mirror. But the mirror stayed clear.

"Who was with her?" I said. My father's voice broke as he said, "Nobody."

That cut hard into me. I wished so badly that I had not gone out. I should have known better. I should have! I could not imagine what dying must have felt like for her. I had no idea whether it mattered or not to her that she had been alone at the exact moment she died. But I thought maybe it did matter.

Then there was a frenzy of activity as my parents got ready for the funeral. Though I had hardly slept, I couldn't sleep any more that day. The lack of sleep coupled with Lynnie's death made the world surreal. All day people came and went, and I kept hearing some of them call Lynn "the body." Finally, I shouted at one of them, "Stop calling her that!" After that everyone only whispered around me, but I couldn't hear what they were saying.

My mother didn't want to throw away anything that had existed while Lynn was still alive. Before Lynn's body was taken away, my mother had me cut my sister's fingernails and even her toenails and place them in an envelope. She asked me to gather Lynn's things that lay around the house. And she wanted me to make a pile of any newspapers I could find from before Lynn died, so she could always remember what was going on in the world when Lynn passed. In the afternoon I walked _r in the bathroom and found my mother examining hairs she found on the floor, so that she could save those hairs she determined to belong to Lynn. Finally, my mother had me go outside and search through our garbage. She wanted to make sure there was nothing regarding Lynn that she should save.

I went outside and took a bag out of our can. I poured the contents onto the driveway. I saw a neighbor watching, but I didn't care.

The sun was warm on my back. But instead of feeling like complaining, I felt my mother's fervor. I felt it was very important to find Lynnie items. There were maggots in the bag. They didn't bother me, because I had a mission. The first bag was full of treasures: a paper with a scribble I recognized as Lynn's; a newspaper from a week ago; and a pencil Lynn had chewed. I searched through three bags, full of such precious items.

Before they came for Lynn, I cut off a lock of my hair and placed it in the pocket of her pajamas. But I remembered she would wear something different than her pajamas for the cremation. So I tied the lock of my hair around her neck. Then when Lynn was gone, I lay on her bed and cried. After I cried awhile, I started to feel angry. I didn't understand why the doctor who came to make sure Lynn was dead was one of the same doctors who had been taking care of her. If he was such a good doctor, then why did she die? And I thought maybe the doctor was mistaken, my parents were mistaken, and now they had taken Lynn away when she still possessed a small spark of life in her. Miracles happen: Maybe she would open her eyes later! What if my mother had held the mirror wrong and had missed Lynn's feeble breath?

And yet I knew Lynn was dead. I could feel the place inside of me where she had resided. This place was empty

It was hard to stay angry when I felt so sad. I would rather have felt angry, but instead, all I could do was sob. Even though people had been coming over all day, the house seemed so lonely that I couldn't stand it.

The room grew somewhat dimmer. I didn't move as it grew dimmer still. Then, with a start, I hurried outside and ran to the alley in back of our house. Through a break between the buildings, I saw that the sun hung low over the horizon. I watched it until it started to hide between two trees in the distance. Then I climbed on a car and watched until only half of the sun was visible, and then a quarter, and then I felt a huge sickening panic inside of me and ran as hard as I could to a ladder I saw down the alley. I rushed up the ladder and climbed on the roof of somebody's garage. I saw the sun again, a quarter of it, and then a slice, and then it disappeared, the last time ever that the sun would set on a day my sister had lived.

I stood on the roof and watched the darkening sky. I heard my father calling out, "Katie! Katie!" I didn't answer; I didn't want to talk to anyone. His voice grew closer and then farther away. For some reason I felt panicked again and screamed, "Dad! Daddy!" His voice grew closer: "Katie! Katie!" He sounded panicked too. I hurried down the ladder and fell into his arms. I cried and cried, and he did not cry at all.

We walked quietly inside for another meal of sardines and rice.

Sammy ate calmly. My mother ate doggedly. My father ate politely. I didn't eat at all.

"Can I fill my water glass?" said Sammy.

"Yes," said my mother.

He got up, pulled his chair over to the sink, and filled his glass. He limped a little as he walked to the sink. Usually his ankle was fine, but every so often since his accident his ankle hurt. That smoky anger I had seen once before filled my father's face. He turned to me. I thought he was mad at me for some reason. Suddenly, he stood up. "That's enough, Katie," he said.

I wasn't sure what he meant, but I jumped to my feet.

"You're going to show me where you found the trap that hurt Sammy," he said. "Okay. Why?"

"Because if it's still there, I want to throw it away."

My mother stood up. 'You want to what?" "You heard me."

"You are taking that girl out over my dead body"

He seemed to consider this. Finally, he said, "No."

So once again I sat in a passenger seat and bumped across the fields toward where we'd held our picnic months earlier. The last time I'd been here, Lynn and I had eaten rice balls together.

An animal, maybe a coyote, scrambled across the field as we drove. I directed my father to where I thought we'd held our picnic. My father told me to wait in the car.

"Be careful, Dad," I said. "I know," he said.

I sat there as the sky turned black and the air grew brisk. I closed the windows and leaned against the glass, watching my dad, with a flashlight on now, searching through the trees and field, his face in the flashlight's glow grim and determined and, maybe, a little crazy about this thing that had hurt his son, this thing owned by a mean rich man who owned his dream house. He left my sight for a long time, and I got nervous and even started to feel sick to my stomach, but then his light flashed somewhere different from where I'd thought he was. I didn't know what good it would do if he did find the trap, but I felt glad anyway that he was looking. I liked being out here better than being at home. I felt scared to return to that house where Lynn no longer lived. I thought I would be so sad, I would die.

When he finally returned, he threw some things into the trunk and got in. If anything, he seemed angrier than before.

"What kind of man puts traps like that in a field? What is he trying to catch?"

"Squirrels?"

He looked at me. "Squirrels?!"

He started the car suddenly, and we lurched across the field toward Mr. Lyndon's house. My heart pounded as we bumped across the grass. I thought maybe my father wanted to yell at Mr. Lyndon. This terrified me. First of all, it was as if my father had turned into a different person. Where was my real father, who always looked before he leapt? Second of all, Mr. Lyndon was, well, he was Mr. Lyndon. You couldn't just go to his house to yell at him. And shouldn't we go home to take care of my mother and Sammy?

We reached the private road in front of the mansion, and my father kept driving. He stopped not far from the house and opened up our trunk and pulled out a two-by-four. He walked up the driveway to a red Cadillac and crashed the wood into the front windshield.

Glass exploded outward and sprinkled to the ground. I thought I saw someone peek out the windows at this madman who was my father. My father got in and we roared away.

I looked at him, but his face held no expression. Lynn once said our father was the most determined man in the world. I remembered once how she and I had seen someone act rude to our father. Later I asked her why our father didn't hit the rude man. Lynn said that he accepted rudeness and unfairness to himself, just as he accepted hard work. If he could have, he would have worked all the time and never slept. My father was the most generous man in the world. I knew that without Lynn telling me so. If Mr. Lyndon or any other man had come to our house feeling hungry, my father would have welcomed him and given him the best food in our kitchen— the freshest fish, the hottest rice, the sweetest pastries. He would have made us be polite. He would accept anything and anyone, so long as he could earn a living to help his family. But I saw that on this one day, for the first time since I'd known him, he could not accept the way his life was turning out.

I watched our small town pass by. We drove right past where we should have turned to go home. We didn't stop until we were in the next town. Then my father pulled over and lay back against his car seat. I didn't move. He was my father, but I was not sure whether he was sane. Since Lynn had been sick, he'd been grumpier, but I'd never seen anything like tonight.

He studied me.

"Hungry?" he said.

"Uh-huh."

"Yeah, I know you are."

Our car suddenly filled with light, and then a sheriff's car pulled in front of us. The sheriff got out and slowly walked over. He shone a flashlight at us. My father rolled down the window.

"Going for a ride?" said the sheriff.

My father hesitated. I saw that he suddenly couldn't think. I felt a protective surge. I'd never felt before that I had to protect my father. But now I needed to protect him against this man. The only thing I could think to say was, "We're on our way to eat tacos!"

"Tacos?" said the sheriff. He looked confused. 'You mean at Pepe's?"

'Yes, sir," I said, though I had never heard of Pepe's. As a matter of fact, I'd eaten tacos only once, years earlier in a restaurant in Illinois. I have no idea why I came up with tacos.

The sheriff studied my father. "We just had an incident at Mr. Lyndon's house."

"Oh?" said my father.

"Someone busted up his Caddy"

"Oh."

The sheriff shone the light on me. "They think the perpetrator drove a light blue Ford." Our Oldsmobile was gray, light gray. The sheriff moved his light over the outside of our gray car. My father leaned out and said, "I've always been an Oldsmobile man."

The sheriff leaned in with his light shining on me. I smiled, but he could tell I'd been crying. "Something the matter?" he said.

"My sister died," I said. I let out a sob.

He turned off the light. He seemed to think. The night had grown cool, and when he breathed through his mouth, mist filled the air in front of his face. He switched on the flashlight again and pointed it at my father. He turned it off again. He straightened up and nodded at my father. "Better get her some tacos."

We drove off in a new direction and stopped at a small Mexican restaurant called Pepe's. I didn't say anything, but I felt pretty surprised at this new turn of events. I had loved tacos the one time I ate them. But it was weird to eat them now, in my saddest moment.

The floor of the restaurant was made of brick-colored tiles, and all the tables were covered with pretty blue-and-white tile. Ponchos and sombreros hung on the walls. A singer crooned in Spanish from the record player. The atmosphere was festive. A waiter approached us and said, "Dinner for two, amigo?"

The night didn't seem real. My sister was dead, and I was about to eat tacos. I ordered five of them. In Illinois, I had eaten one. Now I ate all five of my tacos while my father watched, impressed and then maybe a little worried. "You don't want to get indigestion," he said.

When we got home, my mother was sewing a hem in the kitchen. She was fixing my black dress that I knew I would be wearing to the funeral.

"I was worried," she said.

"Katie ate five tacos," said my dad. "That takes time."

He and my mother both looked at my stomach as if expecting to see it explode. When it didn't explode, my mother raised her eyes to my father. She said the thing she liked to say when she wanted to remind him that he could not afford any sort of unusual behavior. "You've got a long day tomorrow."

He and my mother left the kitchen. She didn't ask me to wash the dishes. And she didn't do them herself. I had never known my mother to go to sleep with a sink full of dirty dishes. And I never washed them myself unless I'd been nagged. But that night I thought I should. I cleaned the counters and even took a mop to the floor. I wasn't sure what sponge to use for the counters. It seemed to me that my mother used a different sponge depending on what she was doing. But there was only one sponge at the sink. An array of bottles and jars of cleaning fluids sat under the sink. But there were no more sponges. I could imagine my mother getting annoyed if I used the wrong sponge. If Lynn were here, she would have been able to tell me what sponge I should have used, she would have been able to tell me what I should do next. I did not know what to do without her to tell me. I lowered my head to the kitchen table and cried. Finally I wet a dishtowel and used that to clean the counters, the table, and even the chair seats. It was late when I finished. I sat at our table and did not know what to do next.

Later on I lay in bed and saw the happy little moth, still alive, flitting from the night-light up the wall and back to the night-light. And it occurred to me what I had seen in Lynn's eyes the night before: She was wishing she were that moth. Maybe that was the last thing she ever wished.