The Thread (22 page)

Her voice breaks, and I know she’s crying, but I can’t look at her. “I don’t know what to do now,” she says, her voice shaky with tears. “There’s nothing I can do to
fix
it. And I’m not sure I can bring myself to ever look at my brother again.”

I’m not angry with Aunt Mickey the way I am with Mom. I still haven’t been able to make sense of this new version of the truth, but I do know I don’t think it was her job to know what was going on with me. I don’t blame her for wanting to think the past was dead and buried, not alive and walking around inside her brother. But at the same time, I don’t want to look at her right now. I don’t have words to answer her. I can’t say,
It’s okay.

Because it’s not.

“Did you know Dad used to be called Ricky?” I say finally, because it’s the only thing that pops into my head.

“Ricky?” Her voice softens, as though she’s remembering. “Yeah, that was my name for him. From ‘Fredrick.’ I liked it because it rhymed with my own name. Mickey and Ricky. When we were kids, I used to make up stories about us, as though we were two heroes in an adventure.” When I look at her now, she’s smiling a little, even though she’s still crying. “I loved my brother.”

“Aunt Mickey?” I curl my fingers tighter around hers. “He’s still Ricky.” She turns toward me, and I meet her eyes. “Inside. He’s still Ricky somewhere inside. The brother you loved.”

She grips my hand so hard I wince. “Callie,” she asks, “can
you
forgive him?”

I don’t answer for a long moment. Instead, I turn my head and look out the window. Beyond the buildings, I catch flickering glimpses of the sky. It’s still that deep, expectant blue. I suck a long breath into the bright, empty room that’s waiting inside me, and then I answer Aunt Mickey.

“I can’t forgive Dad. But maybe I can forgive Ricky.”

25

Kirin

Kirin had butterflies in his stomach. There really were no other words to describe what he was feeling. He could picture them in there, a thousand fluttering bits of color.

As he thought that, for the first time since Callie told him she didn’t want to see him anymore, he had an idea for a painting. He opened the metal toolbox where he kept his oil paints, set up a canvas board, and grabbed a brush. Two hours later, he stepped back and looked at the picture he had made.

He had painted himself standing at a window, looking out at a surreal, sunlit scene. In the center of his body was a neat oval hole, and the hole was filled with wings. He had used vermillion and carmine, cerulean blue and cobalt, cadmium yellow and lemon yellows, indigo and violet, all the brightest oil paints for the butterfly wings. They made a kaleidoscope that gave the illusion of swirling. Beyond his painted self, outside the window and faraway on the green hills, was a bright spot of burnt sienna and umber—the tiny, far-distant image of Callie, her hair blowing in the wind.

“Looks kind of like a Magritte,” Mum said from behind. “Nice.”

He turned and grinned at her. “Yeah. I like it.”

“How did I miss seeing what a good artist you are?”

He shrugged, pleased, his face warm.

“It’s about time to go,” Mum said. “You going to wash the streak of blue off your face—or are you planning to go like that?”

• • •

Later, as they stood outside Safira and Lamar’s door, the butterflies in Kirin’s belly were in a frenzy. Poppy glanced sideways at him. “You going to make it, son? You’re looking a little peculiar.”

Kirin nodded, took a breath, squared his shoulders. “I’m fine,” he said, and then the door swung open into the apartment.

The rest of them were there already, all squeezed into Safira’s living room. Once Kirin and his family came in, the room was so crowded it was hard to know how they could all sit down. While people shifted around, trying to make room, Kirin glanced around the circle of faces, trying not to look at Callie too obviously.

“Your mother’s not here?” Mum asked Callie.

Callie made a face. “Nope. She wasn’t interested.” She slid over on the sofa, closer to her aunt, making room for Nani to sit next to her.

Richard gave Kirin a nod, Lamar was smiling shyly at the group, and Ayana was twirling in the middle of the circle of chairs, singing at the top of her lungs. For a moment, they all watched her, smiles on their faces. Then Safira got out some crayons and sat her daughter down on the floor in a corner of the room.

“You’ve had enough attention, baby. Sit here and be a quiet little girl now, okay?

Safira went back to her seat on the arm of Lamar’s chair. “Okay,” she said. “The food is keeping warm in the oven. There’s enchiladas and tacos,
carne asado
and
arroz con pollo
. It will all taste just as good in an hour, after we’ve talked.”

Once she had said that, an expectant silence fell over them, as each of them waited for someone else to begin. Kirin gazed down at his hands to keep himself from looking at Callie. When he heard her voice, he jumped.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll start.” She darted a glance at Kirin, then looked away. “I went to see my father yesterday. And I found out some things. Aunt Mickey will be able to explain more. But I can tell you part of it.” She turned toward Kirin’s parents. “My grandfather killed Amir. He was a terrible, sick man. We’ll need to tell the police, so that they know about all those other little girls. My own father was just a boy when his father took Amir.” She looked straight at Kirin now, her eyes steady. “Back then, he was called Ricky.”

He felt his eyes go wide as he met her gaze. “Your father?”

She nodded. All the things they couldn’t say to the others hung between them. “My father,” she repeated. “His father had abused him—sexually and physically—” She broke off, swallowed, and then continued. “I think he’d been abused for years when he was little. But then he got older. His father liked girls better—little girls.” She was telling Ricky’s story now, though the others didn’t know it. “So when Ricky—my dad—got older, his father went back to taking little girls.”

Her aunt made a choking noise and buried her face in her hands. Callie glanced at Mickey, but then she went on. “He made Ricky help him get little girls. At first, he didn’t keep them. But then, by mistake, Ricky took a little boy instead of a little girl.” Callie turned to Mum. She looked back at Callie, her gaze steady even while her eyes spilled over with tears.

“After—after his father had killed Amir,” Callie continued, still looking at Mum, “Ricky—my dad—found him, found where he was buried. He was the one who put Amir—his body—in a box and left him outside your door.” She stopped talking then and sighed, as though it were relief to have gotten everything said.

Her aunt raised her head from her hands. “My mother and I—we never knew that. We didn’t know what was happening. We never even guessed. But—but I knew that my father did terrible things to Ricky. They used to scare me, but my mother wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell her. So I—” She glanced at Callie. “I told the Baby Jesus in the Christmas créche my secrets, every year at Christmas. And I prayed God would somehow make things right.” She made a face. “But bad things kept happening in our house, even though we all pretended they weren’t. Pop would drug Ricky with Benadryl sometimes, keep him shut in his room. I knew Pop didn’t sleep with my mother, that he slept with Ricky until Ricky was a teenager. But I’d grown up with things being like that. They didn’t seem so weird then, not until I grew up and looked back. And then I wouldn’t let myself think just how bad it must have been.”

“But how could Grandma not know?” Callie asked. “She must have known
something
.”

Mickey shook her head. “I don’t know, Callie. I don’t know what she knew—and what she just didn’t
want
to know. Like me.”

“Oh.” Callie sounded as though she understood now. “Like Mom.”

“Will you tell your mother?” Mum asked Mickey.

“I don’t know. Will it change things, make things any better? It would only upset her.”

Richard raised a finger that was tipped with a long yellow nail, and then he waited, as though he were a kid with his hand raised in class. Safira gave him a tiny nod, and Richard cleared his throat. “Where possible, I believe the truth is what sets us free. No matter how terrible.”

Mum nodded. “I agree. Which means I also have something to say.” She took a breath, then turned to Safira. “I need to tell you something.”

Safira looked at her, waiting, her face calm.

Mum bit her lip, then said in a rush, “I saw Ayana that day in the park. I saw her standing there, smiling—and she looked so much like Amir. For just a moment, a terrible, crazy moment, I
wanted
her so badly. I wanted to pick her up and take her home with me. I wanted to pretend she was Amir, and that the last twenty-one years had never happened.” Poppy put his hand on hers, and she leaned against him for a moment, then straightened again. “I picked her up. Just for a moment. She felt so good in my arms, so solid and warm. So
just right
. And then I saw you, Safira, helping an old woman with her groceries, and I knew Ayana was yours, that I could never keep her. My eyes were so full of tears, I couldn’t see anything.” She paused, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and then went on. “A man was there. He said something like, ‘What are you doing with my baby?’ And then he grabbed her out of my arms. I didn’t see him, I was crying too much, and I felt like a fool, picking up someone else’s baby.” She looked from Safira to Lamar and back again to Safira. “I thought he was her father. I didn’t really see him, he was just the shape of a man. I didn’t know that— And then, when I saw on television—” She dashed the tears off her face with the back of her hand. “I thought I had cursed her. I’d cursed your baby. My father—when I left home without his permission, he cursed me. That curse—the curse I carry—I have always felt, somewhere inside me, that it killed my son. And now it had taken another child, someone else’s child. I should never have gone near her. I had no business going near her.” She closed her eyes. “I’m so very sorry.”

Nani reached to take Mum’s other hand, the one Poppy wasn’t holding. “Shashi,” she said. “My Shashi, I promise you, you carry no curse. Your father meant nothing, he was only hurt and angry. He was a stubborn old man, but he would never never curse you.”

Safira got to her feet. She went to the corner where Ayana was scribbling on a piece of paper with a red crayon, and she picked up her daughter. “Ayana,” she said softly, “I would like you to meet a very nice lady. Her name is Shashi. Doesn’t she have pretty hair? Will you sit in her lap and show her your pretty picture?”

Ayana looked at Mum gravely for a moment—and then she held out her arms to her. Mum sucked back a sob. “That’s a beautiful picture, Ayana,” she said softly as she settled the little girl in her lap.

Ayana twisted around to look up at her. “You crying?”

Mum sniffed, laughed. “Just a little.”

“Boo-boo?”

Mum wrapped her arms loosely around the little girl. “Not anymore, Ayana.” She looked up at Safira. “Thank you.”

Safira leaned down and kissed Mum’s cheek. “I do not know how you bore what you did,” she said. “I do not think I could have been so strong, to wait so very long, never knowing. And I too must tell you something. You saw my child before she was stolen. And I saw your child.”

While she told the story about seeing the boy who took the baby on Christmas Day, about how she never told what she had seen, Kirin thought about all the threads that joined this small group of people. They were woven together in a pattern he couldn’t understand, couldn’t quite see. But he was certain the pattern was there, somewhere, despite all the twisting threads.

Thread.
He looked at Callie—and found her already looking at him. Her eyes darted away, and her cheeks turned pink. When she immediately glanced back at him again, Kirin couldn’t help but grin at her. She made a face at him, and his grin grew wider.

“Is that all, Callie?” Safira’s voice was gentle. “Have we told all the stories we can tell one another?”

Callie shook her head. “No. There’s a little more.” She looked at Safira, then at her aunt beside her. “I think my dad really didn’t mean to hurt Ayana. I know it sounds stupid, after what he did to her—but I think he really did think she was Amir, that he was hiding her from his father. I know it’s crazy. But he didn’t mean to harm her.”

Mickey made a tiny noise, as though she were biting back something bigger she refused to release, and then she said, “Callie, your father has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I talked to the psychiatrist at the prison earlier today. She said your mother won’t believe it. I’m sure Grandma won’t believe it either when I tell her. But the psychiatrist thinks your father was hallucinating last winter. That it was his hallucinations, his delusions that made him do what he did.”

Callie frowned. “Will that mean he won’t have to go to prison? For ‘reason of insanity’ or something?”

Mickey shook her head. “I don’t know for sure. No one knows until he goes to trial. But whatever happens with your father, Callie, he is never going to hurt you again. I promise you.”

“I just—I don’t want to have to live with him again.”

“You won’t,” Mickey said. “If he doesn’t go to prison, he’ll have to spend a good long time in a psychiatric hospital. By the time he gets out, if he can get better, you won’t be living with your mother anymore. You’ll be grown up, out on your own.”

Kirin watched the emotions flicker across Callie’s face. “It’s all so weird,” she said finally. “The way it all happened.” She glanced at him again, then looked away quickly. “Like a story.”

Richard grunted. “Life is always a story we tell ourselves. I’m thinking you tried to give me your father’s story, didn’t you, girl?”

Callie nodded. “I thought—well, I thought you were Ricky. I thought you were the one who had left Amir’s body outside the Ahmeds’ apartment. I thought it was your father who killed Amir.” She started to say something more, but then she must have remembered that the rest of the group wouldn’t understand, only Kirin.

Kirin saw his mother’s puzzled frown and the questions in Poppy’s eyes. Safira’s knowing eyes met his, and she smiled. Richard gave a guffaw that reminded Kirin of Goofy the cartoon character.

“Don’t blame you,” Richard said. “My story was enough like your dad’s. My father didn’t kill anyone. He just killed my heart. He killed my mother’s heart. Over and over, he killed us with his words and his hands, but we just kept coming back for more, like dogs that still love the masters that beat them.” He tipped his head back and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, they gleamed bright above his beard. “At least that was the story I told myself for years. I’ve been learning, though—whatever story we tell ourselves, that’s the one we live.” He turned to Callie. “Which story do you think you’ll be tellin’ now, Callie girl? You get to choose.”

Callie looked at Richard for a long moment, and then she nodded. “No more rusty hooks.”

And what does
that
mean?
Kirin wondered. He was suddenly restless. Squashed between Poppy and Richard, he had no room to stretch out his legs or move his elbows. And it seemed to him that it was past time for dinner.

But Callie looked as though she still had something more to say. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t understand how—how it all works. I mean the big picture, bigger than us. I guess I mean, well—God. I just don’t understand how it works.”

Mum smiled at her. “No one does, Callie.”

Callie returned her smile. “Oh, I know. But I mean—well, take Kali.”

Mum nodded gravely. “Yes. Take Kali.”

“How can she be God? An aspect of God or whatever? She’s so
angry
.” She looked down at her lap, and Kirin knew what she was thinking. She was remembering the night when she grew tall and powerful and nearly killed her father.