The Opposite of Everyone: A Novel (31 page)

So, Candace had a type. It was a little disconcerting.

I started clicking through the galleries, looking at all of Candace’s crazy pieces. Animals and people made of bits and broken ends. Interesting stuff.

Okay, so I was scared to meet my sister. Scared of who she’d be, and how we’d manage, when we were face to face. Scared her life had been preruined.

But if Candace, of all people, could dock someplace . . . I clicked back to the bio to look at her face.

Sure, it looked like she had some kind of serious eating disorder, but she was still alive. She was doing work that mattered to her. It mattered to other people, as well; there were a lot of
SOLD
tabs on the pieces in the gallery. She loved someone, and she’d been loved back, for almost a decade now. She’d even found a form of faith, judging by the red string tied on her left wrist in every picture.

Who would have thought it? Fucking Candace.

I closed the website, and I reached for the phone to dial Julian.

CHAPTER 13

I
am nineteen years old when Kai tells me the last story of hers that I will ever hear. I am almost asleep in my room in our basement apartment in Morningside. My door bangs open, and I jerk awake to see Kai framed in the doorway, backlit by dim lamplight from the den. Her face is a dark oval with a glowing red beauty mark: the ember of her Camel.

“What?” I say, groggy with near-sleep.

She takes a long tug off her cigarette, then lets smoke out into a backlit cloud around her head before she speaks.

This happened a long time ago, and it’s still happening now. Ganesha and his mother are playing by the river when a wealthy nobleman rides by. Parvati is quite beautiful, cooling her feet among the stones. Baby Ganesha paddles in the shallows by her, spraying water with his little elephant’s trunk. The droplets sparkle in her dark hair like jewels as she sets out fruit and crackers for their lunch.

The nobleman, Kubato, scoops her simple repast back into her basket, inviting the pair of them to dine in his home instead.

I sit up, scrubbing at my eyes. I am in no mood for stories, especially not this one. I don’t want to hear this mother-love tale with my army duffel bag already packed. It sits beside my footlocker and some cardboard boxes by the door. I am moving to Indiana with my friend William. We are leaving in the morning, early. Long before she’s usually up.

Wishing to impress her, Kubato orders a feast and calls all the nobles of the land to attend. They sit in rows at his fine tables, but Kubato seats Parvati and her son on a cushion beside him, on the dais. He hands Parvati a glass of fragrant wine.

“This wine,” Kubato says, “has waited for your lips for a hundred years in a gold casket lined with sweet wood. Every cup is worth a year’s wages.”

Parvati takes the goblet, but she does not drink. “I think it is too rich for me.”

So Ganesha reaches for the cup, and then he gulps the wine all down, greedy, with red droplets running down his cheeks. He smacks his lips, and he sends his long trunk all around the room, dipping into every goblet and pitcher. He sucks the wine into his trunk, then brings it to his mouth and has it all in one long swallow.

He looks up to his mother, and he says, “But I’m still hungry.”

Kai has been drinking wine herself all night. She is very, very drunk. If I didn’t know this story down to its last syllable, I might not follow, that’s how bad she’s slurring. I’ve heard “Baby Ganesha at the Feast” since I was a baby myself, though. I have no concrete memory of the first time, that’s how long this tale has been alive between us.

Kubato calls for his servants to bring out the feast platters, heaped with roasted lamb and vegetables. The rice is soft with new oil, yellow and fragrant with costly saffron.

The servants bring the platters to Parvati first, but she says, “Oh no, thank you. It’s too rich for me.”

Ganesha reaches for the platters, though, and takes them, every one. He tips them into his mouth, swallowing lamb shanks, bones and all, and bushels of roasted apples, and a hundred thousand turnips and onions, enough yellow rice to feed an army for a year. He even licks the grease from every platter until the bare silver shines.

Then he looks up at his mother, and he says, “But I’m still hungry.”

All afternoon, Kai has seen me packing in her peripheral vision. She told my left ear where to find the boxes. She offered her heavy thrift-store coat to the spot just past my shoulder. She asked my hairline to bring her the open jug of Burgundy from the cabinet under the sink. What she hasn’t done is look at me. What she hasn’t done is tell me not to go. I’m in no mood for a scoop of mystic bullshit from her now.

So the rich man, growing angry, is even more determined to impress her. He sends his other guests away, and then he brings, with his own hands, a single silver dish. Inside it, layers of delicate pastry are stuffed with nuts and honey.

He says, “This is the honey of the dark bees, who are striped in blue and have human hair. Their sting is instant death. A thousand men died to collect a jarful, drop by drop. Here. I’ve had it all made into this sweet for you.”

Parvati smiles and says, “I thank you, but this is too rich for me.”

Ganesha’s trunk curls round his mother, and he plucks the sweet from Kubato. He stuffs the whole thing in his mouth, pan and all, and swallows.

“Still hungry!” he cries. “Oh! I am so hungry!”

I sit in a resentful hunch in the bedclothes. I let her tell it to the headboard. I let her tell it to my packed underpants and her own coat.

The rich noble takes them through the kitchens, outside, to the silos behind his house, and he says, “Here are my storehouses, built to feed my kin when famine comes. I have enough grain and oil to feed my whole household for seven years. No matter how poor the harvest, those I love will be fat and fed.”

Ganesha rushes into it, wild, stuffing all the bags and jars and crates into his mouth, swallowing all that he sees, until there is not so much as a grain of rice left on the dirt floor.

“Still hungry!” Ganesha bellows.

Kubato is beginning to feel desperate, but his pride is so great, he says, “See this fertile field? I own it. I own every field, in all directions, all the rice and the grasslands where the lambs are grazing, and the forests full of game, and every river. I even own the sea and all the fish in it.”

So Ganesha opens his wide mouth—

“That’s not how it goes,” I tell my mother. She is stretching it out, adding another layer. Before Ganesha eats up all the storehouse grain, Kubato is supposed to cry and quail and beg Parvati to help him, lest he be forever ruined. Then Parvati takes the fruit and crackers from her basket, and feeds Ganesha a bite from her own hand. He is sated at once, and curls up in her arms and goes to sleep.

“Shh, I’m telling it,” Kai says, weaving in the doorway.

“I know this story,” I tell her. “Give Ganesha the cracker and let me go to bed.”

“He doesn’t get the cracker,” Kai says. Belligerent. “You don’t know every end of every story.”

So Ganesha opens his wide mouth, and begins to swallow up the farmlands and the forests, slurping up all the lakes and rivers, and when they are dry he begins to suck the salty brine out of the ocean, washing down all the fish and squid and kelp.

Even as he eats, he’s moaning, “Oh, I’m hungry. Oh, I’m hungry!”

“Give him the fucking cracker, Kai,” I tell her, throwing back the sheet and climbing out of bed. I stand before her, furious, in my camisole and underpants.

“Ganesha ate the whole world up, and all the people, up, he ate them,” Kai says. She’s lost the rhythm of it. “The rich man was all naked in space, floating, and he said, ‘You see that sun? That sun is my own mango. I could bite it open if I wanted to.’ ”

“That’s not even the same story,” I say, almost yelling now. “Hanuman tries to eat the sun like a mango, not Ganesha!” But she is talking over me.

“So Ganesha bit the sun in half and ate all halves, and still he’s hungry, and he ate Saturn.”

Now she’s just making shit up.

Tomorrow’s clothes are draped over my footboard. I grab the jeans. “Where’s Parvati, huh? She hasn’t even said the world was too rich, and Ganesha already ate it.” I sit on the edge of my single bed just long enough to yank my jeans on. “She didn’t even turn down a bite of the sun. Maybe the sun’s too buttery for her, huh? You skipped that. You’re drunk, and you lost Parvati.”

“Ganesha ate her ass already,” Kai says, and then laughs. A slurry, drunk laugh, while I root under the bed to find my clogs. She takes a fast, mad drag, then talks through smoke. “He ate up his own mother, and the rich guy says, ‘I don’t even care about that sun. Space is fulla planets, I’ll pick me out another.’ ”

I have my clogs on, and I shove past her, heading for the door.

“That’s not how it goes,” I mutter as I stomp out.

“Then Ganesha farted Saturn out, but he just re-ate it,” Kai says. She’s followed me into the den, and I hear her sloshing wine into a glass behind me.

I slam the door and walk off into the darkness. Out in the night, there’s bound to be a boy who’s waiting for me. There is always a boy waiting for me. Lots of them, actually, and all I have to do is choose. And be back by sunrise, so I can leave with William.

Kai is asleep when I get home. Or at least, her door is closed. Inside her room, it stays quiet. She sleeps through my leave-taking. She never got to give Ganesha that bite of fruit and cracker that sated him, that let him sleep. Now, she never will.

She will never say,
You didn’t know,
or
You were just a kid,
much less own up to her part in our downfall. I will never say,
If you live a life shaped like a loaded gun, your kid is going to come along and shoot it,
and then forgive her anyway. She will never get to yell or cry or hit me or beg for mercy.

Like all true stories, my mother’s ends midbeat. It has no moral, and no epilogue, and I don’t believe in reincarnation. Any bird that shits on me or sings outside my window now is only that: a bird.

Time runs in only one direction, and I run with it, driving toward my little sister.

The foster mother, Mrs. Beale, lives on a narrow road clustered with tiny 1950s ranch homes. They are square and evenly placed, like rows of teeth. I look for the house that holds Hana. I am not a coward, but I’d pay my own hourly rate to have Birdwine here to back my play—double that for Julian. He is a people person and a natural smiler. Ye gods and little fishes, how he’s worn me down and won me over. He’s bounced and wept and hugged his way into the middle of my life, until his physical proximity is a pleasure as invisible as Henry’s. He will do the same with Hana, I have little doubt. But not today. Today, I am going alone, into a situation that does not play to my strengths.

Hana’s therapist thinks that this is how we should begin, given that Hana thought she was an only child a week ago. Julian and I can empathize with that; we do not want to overwhelm her. It’s me instead of Julian because I knew the mother she lost. Also, her first decade on the earth looked a lot like my own freewheeling, Kai-centric childhood. Dr. Patel says Hana is open to meeting us. She’s only been with Mrs. Beale for a few months, and she’s been grieving. She’s not deeply embedded where she is.

I am to be warm but not pushy, Dr. Patel told me on the phone. Be polite. Be interested. Don’t initiate physical contact. Engage the kid, and let her come to me.

This is my preferred approach in any case; I’m a cat person. But it’s good to have my instincts confirmed, and it was good for Julian to hear all this. He may yet need an intensive ten-steps-leading-up-to-hugging workshop before we phase him in.

I see the house, number 115, ahead on the right. This redbrick saltine box with black shutters and white trim is the closest thing Hana has to home territory. She has a room here, at any rate. She has a door, and the right to close it behind her. There’s a bright coat of fresh paint working hard to spruce up the sagging porch.

Three people are sitting on the porch swing, Hana between two adults. She doesn’t look much different from the picture taken back in the winter. I’ve never met the other two, but age and ethnicity tell me Dr. Patel is to Hana’s left, and Mrs. Beale is on the right.

Hana is slumped in a podgy little hunch. Her hands are clasped in her lap, and her legs are crossed at the ankles. Her feet do not touch the ground.

Her expression is blank and demure, but this girl and I, we have the same shape mouth. I recognize the way she’s set it, like she’s got a ball of mutiny in there, and she is rolling it around to get a thorough taste. She’s not half as placid as she looks. My spine prickles.

She glances at the car and then back at her hands, fast. I can feel my own mouth reshaping itself to match hers. This expression feels familiar. I know this face. I wore it exclusively for weeks, when I first arrived at the group home. I was half girl, half crustacean, impenetrable. It doesn’t bode well.

Early days,
I tell myself. No one has said this will be easy.

My hands are hot and sweaty on the wheel. I turn the car off, and I blow on my palms to cool them. I’ve faced down rabid lawyers, angry judges, juries predisposed to hate me, and stayed as bland and warm as fresh boiled custard. Hell, I’ve faced down crazy-ass Clark Winkley and a gun. Yet now my hands are wringing wet and shaking. I rub them fast down my jeans; no spooky black suits today. I’m wearing flats and my favorite shirt, a pumpkin-colored knit thing that is pilled and soft with age. My hair is tethered in a loose braid, and I’ve painted on a friendly rose-pink mouth.

Dr. Patel stands up when my engine cuts out. She’s younger than I would have guessed based on the calm, low voice. She has a long, earnest ponytail, and her body language says she isn’t anxious. That’s going to be useful. Mrs. Beale looks like central casting sent over a white gramma type. She is generically kindly looking, from her soft gray bun to her brown orthopedic shoes. She puts a bracing hand on Hana’s shoulder as I get out, and I like her for it.

Hana stays seated, staring intensely at her hands, which have begun to twist and squeeze each other as I come up the walk.

Mrs. Beale stands, pulling Hana with her. Hana scowls, her gaze still down. She’s in a yellow dress, sprigged with flowers, and the color’s not doing her olive complexion any favors. She slouches, poking out her rounded tummy. She’s close to outgrowing this dress. The skirt is well above the knee, and her legs are skinny with knobby knees.

As I reach the stairs, Mrs. Beale steps forward with a hand out, about to speak, but as she focuses on my face she stops. She looks puzzled for half a heartbeat, then she visibly blanches and recoils.

“Holy shit!” she says.

Shocking, coming out of that mouth. It is a sweet and elderly little mouth, crumpling in on itself, with her coral lipstick leaking into the wrinkles. The therapist and I both do a double take.

Hana stares up at Mrs. Beale, too, then follows her stunned line of sight to me.