Reclaiming Lily (15 page)

Gloria pictured Joy caressing a newborn’s downy cheeks. Babies had revitalized stalled marriages, restored health to ailing grandparents. New life might resurrect in Joy a spirit of trust, of love.
A spirit I’ve smothered with my fear . . .

Dr. Davies broke from the knot of mumbling employees. In her experienced way, the doctor pressed her fingers against Gloria’s wrist. “You’ve been through a lot, Gloria. After they release us—”

“Release us?”

“Standard operating procedure for a tornado warning. We had two last week.”

“Yeah,” someone muttered. “What a waste of time.”

“We’ll do that sonogram when we’re cleared to return, and a couple of other tests.” The doctor nodded, as if convinced things were normal.

“But my daughter’s waiting . . .”

Andrew massaged her shoulders. “She’s in good hands, Gloria.”

Good hands. Gloria remembered Kai’s strong fingers, helping her up, Kai’s soothing words, bolstering her resolve. Kai, trained as a healer, would care for Joy. Gloria nodded agreement. Kai was the answer they had needed for a long, long time.

“You’re in good hands too.” Andrew draped his arm about her shoulder. “Let the doc take care of you . . . and our baby.”

Andrew’s tone soothed her nerves.
Thank you, Lord.

“Amen!” someone hollered. Others clapped. Gloria leaned against Andrew and nodded thanks for the folks’ congratulations. Yet she only had eyes for the upturned nose and tear-softened eyes of her man, who’d never asked anything of her except that she love him; who’d never done anything but trust God, before the gift of Joy, during the trials of Joy, and now.
Live for today. Live for this new life.

Gloria bowed her head.
God, let me trust like him. Let me believe in your perfect plan. For Joy. Andrew. Our baby
. Again she massaged her stomach. The idea that life blossomed there cascaded warmth to every cell. God had provided. He would provide again and again . . .

A door scraped open. Before them stood a man dressed in a janitor’s uniform. A walkie-talkie hung from a loop in his jeans.

“Storm’s done passed over.”

“Great.”

“Headed east.”

“I guess that means we gotta go back to work, huh?” The men standing under the No Smoking sign sucked a last nicotine hit. Someone mentioned a side trip to the restroom, but Gloria barely heard. The awful word
east
kept ringing in her ears.

East meant the juvenile center. East meant Joy. East meant Kai. There was not a blessed thing Gloria could do to stop another storm from threatening her daughter’s life.

10

With Joy’s help, Kai lugged a mattress issued by a detention center employee across cubicle city’s floor. Though lumpy and smelling of sweat, the mattress could shield them from missiles of glass . . . steel . . . bone? Kai tried to ignore a twinge of fear. Surely the fates would not lead her to Joy only to fling both of them into a storm . . . or let the storm fling them.

As Kai and Joy sat cross-legged, their mattress a backrest, employees whispered fearfully into cell phones and cursed about the ruined day. One man cracked vulgar jokes. With desks moved against walls, the sterile space strangely burst with behavior that ran the gamut of human emotions.
Not a place to have a meaningful conversation with my sister.

“Y’all need to settle.” With a booming voice, Mr. Moore, the officer in charge of emergency preparations, ordered people about. A radio of gigantic proportions was set by the door. Sneezing, Kai leaned against the mattress. Could a thing reeking of cigarettes, sweat, and dust truly protect them from a tornado?

“This is so stupid! We’re not in Kansas,” mumbled a woman seated nearby.

“What’s your beef?” countered another worker. “It’s better than a staff meeting.”

Mr. Moore knelt and fiddled with the radio, which crackled and moaned.

Kai monitored the histrionics of the grumbling south-wing employees. If tempers flared and a tornado blew in, this stuffy space would become unbearable . . . and potentially dangerous.

“How many times do we have to drag out these filthy things?”

“Every time, get it?” Mr. Moore fiddled with a walkie-talkie and burned the complainers with a stare. Kai didn’t blame him. People’s lives—including her Joy’s—were at stake. Emergency protocol demanded disciplined responses. She kneaded her knuckles and sat up straight, trying to set an example for the others.

“Lockup’s complete on the detainee floor.” Mr. Moore drowned out radio squawks. “Take your positions.”

Still sitting cross-legged, Kai tensed, ready to pull the mattress about her and her sister, as Mr. Moore had demonstrated. Joy huddled into Kai. Even mixed with cigarette smoke, the fruity smell of Joy’s shampoo helped mask the mattress odors. “Like, are detainees prisoners?” Joy asked.

So you are beginning to see the ramifications of your actions, dear one. Perhaps this ordeal will be worth it
. “We are fine.” Despite a sinking feeling that the twister might be spinning their way, Kai managed a smile. “The detainees are just children.” Kai lowered her head and fixed her gaze on Joy. “Like you. They are confused, hurt, and angry. But they are children.”

Whimpers mixed with curses and laughter as folks disobeyed Mr. Moore and milled about. Kai crossed her arms and tapped her foot.
Typical Americans. Again, I am different
.
So is Joy
.
Perhaps that is a way to reach her: through our common differences.

“Kai?” Joy’s whimper joined others in the room.

The right hand pulsed. Oh, it was a blessing and a burden to so intensely feel another’s pain. “What is it, Joy?” Kai asked in a soft voice.

“I’m . . . scared.”

As Mr. Moore shooed the last rovers into their mattress strongholds, Joy’s words soothed Kai’s hand.
I am glad she is afraid, for it shows she has emotions . . . and that she will trust me with them.
Yet there was no need for fear, at least according to Mr. Moore, who kept assuring them that he’d never seen a “real tornado” in his life. Kai let out a sigh and tried to smile. She laid her hand on Joy’s arm. “Listen to Mr. Moore. The man sounds like a tornado expert.”

“Have you ever seen one?” Glare from the overhead light fixtures illuminated Joy’s trembling nostrils. Fear: Kai had seen its many mutations . . . and had learned techniques to keep it from metastasizing to inhibit her work. She must busy this one—her dear, dear sister—with chitchat.

“No. My part—our part—of China has no such phenomena.”

Joy clasped her hands and pursed her lips, as if desperate to still fears . . . and satisfy curiosity. “What . . . what is it like there?”

Kai struggled to rein in elation. How long had she waited for this moment?

Radio static buzzed, instructive words droned, but Kai willed away the intrusions. For Joy’s sake, she must seize fate’s timetable . . . and get it right.

Kai shifted on the cracked mattress edge. How could she describe a country that had indiscriminately cut down trees, yet boasted the world’s most fragrant flowers? How could she describe her childhood’s blue velvet nights, when stars had winked at the Chang sisters and the moon man had slipped from his filmy-cloud home to say hello? How could she describe another night, innocence dying as she groveled at the gate of a neighbor, who tossed a flaccid turnip and two pencil-thin carrots into her face, then spit on her and slammed a heavy gate door?

Kai moistened her lips. She, fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, could not summon words to describe China. Yet this sister had waited seven years for an explanation. She must string together words to answer a logical question. Joy’s well-being might depend on it.

As if to remove the neighbor’s phlegm that had long ago stained her cheek, Kai wiped her face. “There is no way to explain China other than to say it is beautiful and ugly, generous and selfish, spacious and crowded. China possesses everything . . . and nothing. In my country, time has dragged for a century, has sped by in a day.”

“Will . . . will you take me sometime?”

A thousand flowers blossomed in Kai’s breast. Though she was leaning against a stinky mattress in a Texas jail, the spring Kai had so desperately awaited had come at last. Kai locked eyes with Joy. “Yes, Joy. Yes. If—”

An ear-splitting whistle froze Kai’s words. A crackling sound and a
whoosh, rumble, whoosh, rumble
swelled and tumbled closer, closer . . .

Kai threw her arms about Joy and pulled her close. She zeroed in on the part line of Joy’s hair, treasuring every silky strand, grinding her teeth in determination to protect this sister no matter what.

“At three fifteen Central Daylight Time, a tornado was spotted in the metropolitan Fort Worth area ten miles west of the intersection of I-35 West and 820.” Crackles interrupted a robotic radio voice. “It’s tracking east at thirty miles per hour.”

A chorus of whimpers, Joy’s among them, electrified the room. Someone screamed. Joy thrashed about, her elbow punching Kai in the ribs.

Though Kai winced in pain, though her teeth chattered and her brain raced, she begged calm to prevail and widened her eyes to battle a narrowing field of vision. To her best memory, they had not traveled on I-35. Perhaps there was no need to worry.

“On its present course, the tornado will impact the area east of Jacksboro Highway and 820—”

“Oh, Jesus!”

“That’s us!”

The room erupted with cries and thuds and moans. Kai felt her lips tighten.

“This is a very destructive tornado,” continued the mechanical radio voice. “Take necessary precautions immediately. Stay away from windows. Find the lowest part of—”

“God!” Joy shrieked.

Kai winced as pressure pummeled her eardrums. Oddly, sounds coming from outside the room had ceased. Nonetheless, Kai tightened her hold on Joy.

The mattress went sailing.

Kai scrambled, her fingers grazing their shield as it careened backward, flipped, hit the floor, bounced, and came to rest against a table leg. Desperate to reclaim it, Kai crawled forward.

“Take cover, I tell you!” Mr. Moore’s voice mingled with that of Radio Robot and gasps and sobs and cries.

The room seemed to wobble. The air became soup. The hand Kai had extended to snag the mattress froze. As she struggled to breathe, the room went dark.

Collective gasps and screams coiled about Kai’s throat. She forced herself to breathe slowly, basic protocol of emergency room triage.

Clarity returned as she realized that the tornado had claimed its first victim: the power supply. What would be next?

“Back up, you idiot!” Mr. Moore bellowed a command. “Get away from there!”

Kai swiveled her head.

A man skulked away from a plate-glass window. Kai succumbed to curiosity and let her gaze meander. What fascinated that man?

The sky was painted the color of wet green tea leaves. Telephone lines writhed, then popped, as if possessed by demons. Red-and-orange fireballs exploded into black ash. Insects swarmed in colossal dark clumps. Kai lunged forward and grabbed their mattress. Were these the end times that so fascinated her roommate Cheryl?

A rhythmic rumbling, like that of an approaching subway train, began to drown out the room’s hysteria, the radio, and Mr. Moore’s calls for calm.

Kai guided a trembling Joy into the head-to-chest position demonstrated earlier.

“Help me!” erupted from the mattress sandwich to their right.

“Stay calm!” yelled Mr. Moore, his voice anything but.

To shut out the cacophony of panic, Kai hummed into Joy’s ear and manipulated Joy’s frozen fingers so they interlaced about her head. As she burrowed with her sister under the mattress, she thumbed through memory files. Cheryl and her friends had linked the end times with wars and earthquakes. Not tornadoes.

“Oh, God! Oh . . . Kai!” Just enough light seeped around the mattress for Kai to see Joy’s face. Tears had dissolved the crude black liner ringing Joy’s eyes, had cleansed her cheeks of cheap blush. Remnants of purplish lipstick stained her chin and the corners of her mouth, giving her the look of a tragic young clown . . . or a child playing at dress-up.
Wherever she has been, whatever she has done, she is just a child.
Children must be comforted. Assured. Provided with better support than a nasty old mattress.

“I am here with you, Joy.” Kai infused calm into her voice as she had done on countless clinical occasions. Again, protocol . . . yet those occasions had not involved the sister she had devoted her life to find. Every sinew in her body tightened.
If the fates inflict pain on this one, I cannot go on.

Thrum-chug. Thrum-chug
.

“My cell’s dead!” someone shrieked.

“Avoid underpasses,” came from the radio. “Repeat. A tornado . . .”

“Would . . . you . . . pray for us, Kai?” Joy had begun to pant. Sweat bathed a complexion that had taken on a bloodless pallor.

Kai startled as if she had been slapped.
To whom would you have me pray?
The fates, which have proved so capricious that I am sickened to the point of nausea? Confucius? Buddha? Ones I have never accepted as gods?

The heat, the mattress smells, swears and sighs and gasps and pleas, siren blares and ghastly splits and crunches, the glazed look in Joy’s eyes, an eerie pressure that tugged at their mattress shield—it all funneled into a sucking fear that yanked at Kai’s insides. The fates bore down with an otherworldly force!

“Please, Kai, please!”

Kai closed her eyes. Called on her experience, her training, her hopes, her dreams. Yet the vortex intensified and drained her of all she had ever known, thought, believed.

“Oh, where are my parents? I’m so sorry! Like, I’m . . . I’m . . .”

Kai covered Joy’s trembling hands with her own and begged composure to return. Her training and determination were but useless puffs of wind. It was all puffs of wind compared to this indescribable force, whirling closer, closer . . . Kai’s head dropped to her chest.
To think I tried to conquer fate and actually thought I could save this child. . . .