The Price of Silence (12 page)

“Sergeant Daniel, can you identify that blouse and how it came to be in police custody?”

“Yes. On April twenty-sixth, me and three of my men went to the defendant’s home with a search warrant. I found the shirt in the defendant’s closet. It had her laundry mark on the label at the back of the collar: ‘EP.’ ”

“Did you take all of the defendant’s clothing into police custody?”

“No.”

“Why did you take this blouse in particular?”

“We found it stuffed in a straw handbag at the back of the closet.”

“No further questions.”

Subj: Fairytales and fantasies
Date: 04-09-05 19:42:12 EST
From: Chinesecanary@BetterLateThan Never.com
To: [email protected]

The time when you were on the phone with your school for a long time—it was my next visit after Josh told me about Amy—I went to your bedroom and looked through your closet, the drawers of your bedside table. I wanted to find evidence of her. A photo, a stuffed toy, a pair of shoes, something that would tell me Amy had existed. I found nothing.

I went to Mapleton. The Catholic cemetery was near the railroad tracks, a five-minute walk from the train station. I found Amy’s tomb next to a white hydrangea bush, a small stone on the ground. Carved underneath a cross: Amy Celestina Howells, April 10, 1987–October 21, 1989.

Nothing else.

The stone was dirty, the corners covered in moss. No flowers, just the bush, which I decided you had planted for her. I sat down next to her grave and wondered what it’s like for the dead to hear the trains coming and going, footsteps on the path beside them, the sound of the wind in the trees. Do they like the company of the living world, or are the dead angry they have been taken away from jobs not completed? Cleaning out the attic, writing the report, finishing the coloring book, healing the sick child. Do they know who visits them, who doesn’t? Do they give good fortune to those who come, seek vengeance on those who stay away? I wish I knew.

The dirt on the stone told me no one visited Amy. I cleaned and crushed pages of my sketchbook into mourning flowers which I circled around her name. In the bottom of my pocket I found two candies— lemon and grape, covered in lint and bits of tobacco. I cleaned them as best I could and left them, one on each side of the dates, so that the beginning and the end are sweet.

The library was far, almost an hour’s walk from the cemetery. Curiosity carried me.

Why did you, who have been so kind and generous to me, not write anything on the tomb? Why don’t you bring new flowers every week?

When you lost her, was the grief too much to hold inside a few black lines? Is your heart so strong it can keep such pain to itself? These are the things I wondered as I walked.

The death announcement, I wanted to glean it for traces of your feelings. I had the death date, I asked for copies of the local newspaper from that week.

Looking for the death announcement, I found the article. Amy’s death brought shame on you, the way my birth brought shame on my mother.

EIGHT

Emma

ABOVE THE DOWNWARD slope of converted factories and warehouses, the Manhattan Bridge arched blue. Below, jade green in the sun, a swath of the East River. In front of the window I had just cleaned, a fist of paper towel still in my hand, I watched, listened as, on the lower level of the bridge, the train from Manhattan rumbled past the window. I wondered if this was the one An-ling was on, whether she was, at this moment, walking toward this studio.

I’d been waiting in the hot, light-drenched loft for more than an hour.

“I got lost,” An-ling offered, blinking at the brightness of the room from the doorway.In her wrinkled black T-shirt and jeans, she looked no older than Josh.A hot pink plastic satchel hung from a drooping shoulder.Her hair was dirty,uncombed. She looked sullen,put-out to be dragged all the way to Brooklyn from midtown and the Art Students League.

“I got off at the wrong stop.” Her hand clutched the door jamb. She didn’t want this place, a small Brooklyn loft in an area known as DUMBO, which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. I was the one insisting she take a look at it.At least she’d come.No commitment, no strings attached, I’d promised. Only a simple look at what could be hers for a while.The place belonged to a colleague of mine who had moved to Arizona but hadn’t decided whether to sell it or not. She was letting me have it until June for the price of the maintenance, which was affordable if I was careful. An-ling belonged here, in a clean, airy space filled with light, in a neighborhood of other artists. I saw her blooming here.

I took her arm and pulled her across the concrete floor on which the previous artists had marked their passage with rainbow streaks, swirls, sprinkles of paint. High above us, a patterned tin ceiling held spools of rust.

“They once manufactured bolts and nails in this building,” I said. An-ling remained silent as I walked her along the brick wall covered in a thick crust of white paint.At the center window I watched her take in the view.

“The subway makes a lot of noise and you can barely see the river,” I said.“The ceiling is rusty; the shower leaks; the oven door doesn’t close properly and this floor is a mess and very hard on your feet.”I was taking my cue from Chinese mothers,who, according to An-ling,showered their newborns with insults— ugly,wicked,piglet,toad—to confuse the evil spirits.I pointed out defects to confuse An-ling into accepting.

She turned her back to the window and slid down to the floor. A hand, small, with tidy oval nails that reminded me of translucent shells, dug through the contents of her hot pink satchel.“I’m going native again.” She held up a box of hair dye, her sullenness replaced by a defiance I didn’t understand.

I sat down beside her.“Want my help?”

“How much does it cost?”

“My help? Nothing.”

“The place.” She was looking at the expanse of wall next to the cooking area. It was the only wall in shadow.“That’s the place to paint.Too much light flattens everything and you can’t see true color.A northern exposure is best.”

“We’ll put up blinds.”

She turned to me so that our faces were only inches apart.There was pride in her eyes. “If I accept, what will it cost?”

“I told you not to worry about rent. It belongs to a friend of mine. It will cost me practically nothing.”

She raised a sceptical eyebrow. “I’ll never be able to pay you back.”

“Payback will be to see you thrive, develop your talent, be happy.”

She inched closer. I could smell the oil paint on her, the cigarettes. “Why do you want to help me? What have I done for you that you’re so generous? What do you get out of this?”

“You’re a special young lady with a great deal of talent and I’d like to help foster that talent.”

“Maybe you are like the fox who can change into many forms. Ghosts ride on a fox. Demons take the shape of a fox.

After dark the fox can turn into a human to tempt you.You don’t act like the other people I know. I don’t know what to expect from you.”

“Why don’t you trust me? I’m your friend.”

“There’s a price to pay for everything we do, everything we accept from others. Maybe now you think there’s no price, but later it’ll show itself clear in your head, and I won’t be able to pay.”

What price had been asked of her in the past? She had received so little from life.“No price.”

“Have you done this before?”

“No.”

“You must know a lot of students who need help.”

“Look, you can’t put my intentions on trial, okay? If you don’t want the studio, fine, don’t take it.” I started to get up.

My sandal slipped on the floor and I fell back against the wall.The intensity of her distrust was unbearable.

“There’s only one me,” I said.“No shape-changing.”

Her eyes widened. “I remind you of someone. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you’re so good to me.”

She waited.What was the risk of telling her?

“Lady Teachers must always tell the truth.”

I hadn’t told Josh;how could I tell her? “There
is
someone you remind me of,but it’s only one of the reasons I like you.”

“From China?”

“No,American.White.You don’t look at all alike.That is, she died as a little girl, so I don’t know how she would have looked. Something about you brings her back. I can’t explain it better than that.”

“Who was she?”

“A friend’s child.”Amy’s death stayed inside me, as deep as the bones in her grave.“She was killed in a car accident, many years ago.”

An-ling’s cheek touched mine. “I’ve always wanted a sister. A little girl to play with.”

I fumbled to my feet. “What about the studio? Do you want it? I have to give an answer today.”

An-ling nodded.

“Wonderful!” I kissed the top of her head.

She caught my hands. “But wait! I must pay you back. I have no money now, but later when I am a better painter you can choose the best ones. It’s a deal?”

“A deal.” She let go of me. “You’re a tough woman to convince.What should we do to celebrate?”

“No celebration. It will bring bad luck.”

“Come on,An-ling.You’re in the United States now.Your evil spirits have no power here.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” She walked over to the wall in shadow and flattened her back against it. “Portrait of the artist as a young woman.”

Looking at her, at the happiness she now let play on her face, I understood that it wasn’t Amy that she brought back into my life. It was the memory of maternal love, all-enveloping, never-ending, which I had assumed was going to carry me across the countries of my life as lightly as a balloon.A love free of loss.A love I had vowed to keep hidden from my son.

“An-ling, I want to celebrate.”

“This new home is enough for me.” Her expression turned serious, concentrated, as though she were taking the measure of me. “I will pay you back with a secret.” She held up her wrists, quickly unhooked the beaded bracelets.They fell to the floor with a soft swish. An-ling turned her palms upward, offered me the view of two clean scars on her wrists.

“A stupid moment. I’m happy now I did not go deep.”

Her confession moved me. “I’m happy too. Promise me you will never try it again. Please!”

She buttoned the bracelets back on.“You will stay with me sometimes here? We’ll cook together and eat and then you will sit in the corner in a big chair, reading while I paint. Say you will. Please!”

“I have a family, An-ling.”

She turned slowly, taking in the expanse of the room.

“Sometimes at night I think I’m underwater and no one can see me or hear me and I’ll drown.”

“I’m here.” I held her.“We’ll buy a guest futon.”

At the sight of An-ling’s scarred wrists, my mind spiraled back to a mid-June morning, eight months after Amy died. Tom was back at work. Lucy, the woman he had hired to help me, was in the basement doing a load of laundry. She was supposed to watch me, but she preferred dealing with the housework.

After the laundry, Lucy ironed, and I had given her enough shirts to keep her in the basement for a long time. While the water was running in the bathtub, I opened the medicine chest where Tom kept a box of old-fashioned razorblades to pare down his corns. I unwrapped a new blade and thought of all the blood I was going to lose, how Tom was going to hate the mess, how Lucy might be proud of her clean-up job. I undressed and lowered myself into the bathtub.Turning my left wrist, I followed the meanderings of my veins until they disappeared in the cushion of my palm. I ran the razor across the white skin, just below the hand.A shallow cut, a trial run. Blood beaded in a line, started to drip.The last time I had taken a bath—Amy had been dead only a few days—Tom had lowered me into the tub, washed me with great care. I had lain there wishing he’d let go of me, let me slip down underwater. A rivulet of menstrual blood twisted out from between my legs. I watched it float, fade into the water and vowed to myself I would never get pregnant again.Tom plugged me up with a sponge while I howled.

Now I looked at my bloodied wrist. My period.A wave of panic overwhelmed me.When was the last time? Not last month.Two months? Three? How long had it been? God, how long? I wrapped my wrist in a towel, scrambled out of the bathtub, showered it down to remove any trace of blood.Tom’s blade, cleaned, dried,went into its box. My suicide? Postponed.

Five drugstore pregnancy tests later, I accepted the truth.

I was pregnant.

I had only three clear thoughts: I do not deserve the joy of another baby. I will suffer her death. Then I will kill myself. Such is the solipsism of grief.

Three days before my appointment with the abortion clinic, I dreamed of Amy as she was the morning she died, dressed in a yellow T-shirt,blue shorts, a pink barrette clipped in her hair. She curled inside me, a two-year-old fetus.Then she was gone, replaced by a baby whose face and sex I couldn’t make out. I woke up feeling the baby’s weight pushing against the wall of my uterus. Only a two-month fetus, not more than a cluster of cells,and yet her weight stayed with me throughout the day and when night came again I lay in bed, imagining this new baby pushing itself out of me, crawling, still attached to me, up the hill of my stomach, to reach my breast.The baby sucks while I clean her, cover her with my nightgown, hold her.With that image I fell asleep.

The next morning I took the train to Grand Central Station and walked the eleven blocks to the best of God’s NewYork mansions—St.Patrick’s Cathedral,my grandmother’s favorite. I knelt in the front pew and listened to the silence,waited for the comfort of belief to envelop me like the blanket Nonna used to fold over me when we went to sleep at night.

I could feel Nonna’s presence in that church,watching me, waiting to see if I measured up, if I would disappoint her. She never got over the trauma of being dragged to America, away from her village, her parents and friends. She never overcame the shame of not giving birth to a son, of having a rebellious, bawdy woman for her only child.Nonna was stern,unforgiving, and yet she opened her home to her renegade daughter and a bastard grandchild.She took me into her bed,scolded me,fed me, made sure I went out into the world scrubbed to a sheen and wearing clean, pressed clothes. She was, in her words, the whalebones of my life’s corset.