The Thread (3 page)

3

Kirin

Kirin lay in bed, listening to the darkness. A car went by in the street below; the fire escape outside his window creaked in the wind. But his parents’ bedroom was quiet, no sounds of either arguing or the fierce lovemaking that seemed to Kirin almost as angry as their fights. Maybe they had worn themselves out, maybe this would be the beginning of one of those long, quiet periods where they spoke to each other in subdued voices and acted almost like normal parents.

The fights always came back, sooner or later. Something would trigger them. It could be a disagreement over politics or religion; it could just as easily be what to have for dinner or what had actually happened on a certain day they each remembered differently. The beginning of the fight didn’t matter, because it always came back to Amir.

Kirin wondered sometimes why his parents stayed together, but he thought he knew the answer: without each other as targets for their rage, they would shrivel and shrink. Their anger at each other was their endless source of energy. Maybe it was the only thing that kept them both alive. Without it, they might turn to dust and blow away.

Turns out, folks,
commented the voice in his head,
if your mother is Kali, and she can’t find any demons to munch on, your father is her second-favorite dish. Keeps Lord Shiva kind of busy, always being gnawed on like that. He doesn’t have much time for his other god duties, but hey, he kind of likes it.

Staring up at nothing, he wondered, as he often did: What had his parents been like before Amir died? Nani always said they had been happy, madly in love with each other. They had run away together when they were just teenagers, without the permission of either Poppy’s devoutly Muslim family or Mum’s equally devout Hindu parents. Years before his own birth, his parents had come to America, leaving India behind forever. Poppy had been studying physics at the university; his mother was already pregnant. Nani would shake her little round head when she got to this part of the story. “Bad girl, your mummy was a bad little girl, Kirin. She ran away and broke her papa’s heart. But she was so happy. Once I came here too, once I saw her with your father, I knew she had done the right thing.”

He tried to imagine his parents young and joyful, doting on each other. He could never see it. Now, the only thing that tied them together was their dead son, stolen from them when he was not much more than a baby.
Amir
. After hearing that name spoken by his parents nearly every day of his entire life, spoken always in grief and anger, Kirin sometimes felt like he hated this brother he never knew. His brother’s death had broken something inside his parents, something essential. It had left them both damaged, but it had made Mum so desperate with pain that she seemed constantly on the edge of violence.
Folks at home, want to know the truth here? Little Kirin is scared of his own mother.

He thought it was just good luck, pure chance really, that his mother hadn’t killed his father during all the years that had gone by since Amir disappeared. Poppy never raised a hand against Mum, but his mother threw things, brandished knives, sometimes hit his father with whatever was handy. One day, Kirin believed, his mother would fly into one of her rages and go too far.

She’d be sorry later, but it would be too late then.
Won’t be much fun, folks, for little Kirin when Poppy’s lying dead and the police come to cart poor old Mum off to prison. He won’t have any parents at all then. We’re just hoping they can hold off until he’s out of the house, till he’s off at college.
The voice was trying to laugh, but Kirin didn’t really find anything funny about it.

If his brother Amir had lived, at least there would have been someone to listen to his parents’ arguments with him, someone he could have talked to about them. Someone who might have been aware of his existence, who would have seen him and heard him. Of course, if Amir had lived, maybe his parents would have never argued. They’d be people Kirin had never met, a happy, devoted couple who loved both their sons equally, a normal mom and dad like other people’s parents.

On that thought, he drifted into sleep.

• • •

Someone opened his door and came into his bedroom. The side of the bed sagged as the person sat down on the edge.

“Mum?” he asked. “What is it?”

The person leaned over and snapped on the light. It was a young man, a guy in his twenties with dark hair and dark eyes. He looked a little like Poppy. “Hey, kid,” he said.

Kirin pushed himself up on his elbows, his heart pounding. “Who are you?”

The guy smiled, a flash of white teeth against brown skin. “Your big brother. Amir.”

Kirin sagged back against his pillow. “Oh. I’m dreaming.”

“Something like that.” The dream Amir leaned forward and propped his arms on his knees. “See, here’s the thing. We’ve got to do something about Mum. She can’t go on like this.”

Kirin nodded. “I know.”

Then, in the way of dreams, he and Amir were no longer in his room. Instead, they were climbing up the stairs, flight after flight. “She’s going to kill Poppy, isn’t she?” Kirin asked his brother as they climbed. “That’s why we have to do something.”

They had reached the top floor now. “It’s not just that,” Amir said as he pulled open a heavy door. “Come on. I gotta show you something.”

Kirin saw a long dark hallway. He backed up, trying to get past Amir to the landing. “I don’t want to go down there.”

Amir laughed. “Who does? But you need to see this.” He put his hand on Kirin’s shoulder and pushed him forward. “Look.”

Poppy stepped out of the shadows, He stuck a key in a door and opened it. Without a glance at Kirin and Amir, he went inside.

“What’s he doing?”

Amir pushed him again. “Go see.”

Kirin crept forward and looked in the door. He saw what his father was holding—

And he woke up, panting with fear.

He let out a slow breath, then another. He made himself think about something else, about the book he was reading, a book by Carl Jung, a guy who believed that dreams are our hidden selves talking to us.
What would Jung make of this?

The dream was just jumbled thoughts and images from the day, he told himself and pulled the blankets around his shoulders. He rolled over, tried to get comfortable.

The fire escape outside his window creaked, louder than usual, as though someone were out there. He shivered, the shadow of the nightmare’s fear falling over him again.
Yeah, right,
he told himself.
Amir’s out there on the fire escape, all grown up, come to show you Poppy up on the thirteenth floor.
He smiled and rolled over another time.
Just the wind
.

And then he heard another sound, shriller than the rusty creak of the old fire escape: a child crying somewhere.
Must be coming from the floor upstairs,
he thought sleepily,
some kid who had a bad dream too
.

Sleep washed over him—but the child’s voice cried, “Find me!” Kirin sat straight up in bed. The words were so clear they might have been in the room with him. He wasn’t dreaming this time, he was sure. The child sobbed, a long shuddering wail, and then again, Kirin heard: “Find me!”

The sound must be traveling through a heat vent or something. He dropped back against his pillow. “I can’t find you,” he muttered as he slid back into his dreams. “It’s too late. You’re already dead, Amir.”

His eyes flew open again.
I was dreaming
, he reassured himself.
The crying child is someone upstairs. Not Amir.

Think about something good
, he told himself, and instantly thought of Callie Broadstreet’s hair shining in the sun as she hurried to catch the school bus. Was she in bed two floors below him, her hair spread out on her pillow? He loved all the shades of color in her hair . . . but instead of Callie’s hair, he saw his mother holding a knife in her hand while milk spilled across the floor.

Suck it up, folks. You just gotta watch what’s playing. There’s no changing the channel on this television set.

He pulled the pillow over his head, trying to shut out his own thoughts as much as the sound of the child crying somewhere in the building. He made himself relax, but then another thought sprang into his head:
So if Mum is Kali in Nani’s story, and Poppy is Lord Shiva—who is the demon?
Somewhere out there was the person who had stolen Amir, someone faceless and dark.

But real. Not just a nightmare.

4

Callie

Outside in the night, the fire escape is rough with rust and icy cold beneath my bare feet. It creaks under my weight, and then a gust of wind makes it sway so much I almost lose my footing. My toes curl round the bars, while I clutch the railing with one hand. With the other hand, I make a loose fist around the thread so I won’t lose it as I climb, one step at a time, slowly and carefully. I don’t want to fall like I did the last time I was out here.

Growing up, I wasn’t allowed out on the fire escape. It was one of Mom’s safety rules she told me over and over. I was an obedient little kid, so the only other time I’ve been out here was the first night Dad came to my room. I wasn’t thinking that time, I just wanted to get away, but I was shaking so badly I stumbled and nearly fell all the way to the sidewalk three stories below. I managed to catch myself, but when I did, I cut my hand.

I ended up having to go to the ER for stitches and a tetanus shot. Mom and Dad both scolded and hung over me, just like normal parents. On the way home from the hospital, I tried to tell Mom what had really happened, tried to say what Dad had done, but it was like my voice didn’t make any noise. They both just kept fussing about the cut on my hand. It was the first time I knew that something could be two things at once—one thing on the outside and another hidden away on the inside—but it still didn’t seem possible to me. What had happened earlier that night seemed like a dream, a really creepy, disgusting dream.

But it wasn’t, of course, and here I am, three years later, back out on the fire escape. This time, though, I’m not shaking, or at least not very much, not like that other time. I’m climbing through the darkness with an invisible thread clutched in my hand, flight after flight on the creaking metal steps. I can’t help but wonder again if I’m dreaming.

Most of the windows I pass are dark. On some floors, I see a faint light shining through the curtains or hear the murmur of a television. Most everyone in the building must be sleeping, though. I wonder if any of them will hear me out here or see my shadow cross their windows, if they’ll call the police and I’ll have to explain to Mom and Dad what I’m doing.

But I keep climbing. I’m almost to the top now.

The top floor of our building, the thirteenth floor, is empty, nothing there but empty rooms and storage spaces the tenants rent for their luggage and boxes of Christmas decorations. I’m expecting the thread to lead me higher yet, up to the roof, but instead, it disappears inside the window on the thirteenth floor.

I crouch on the metal landing and press my face against the dirty glass. There’s a light gleaming inside, but it’s far away, and the window is too cloudy for me to see more than a vague gold circle. I’m suddenly more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, even that last time I was out here on the fire escape. I let go of the thread and wrap my fingers around the window frame. I wait a moment, breathe in, breathe out.

This a different kind of fear than any I’ve ever felt. It’s like ice flowing through me; it’s like the coldest winter air that freezes you to the bone even while it makes you feel more alive than you’ve ever been. My heart pounds, my breath hisses between my teeth, and my eyes water from whatever it is that I’m feeling: something that might be terror, that might be joy.

I lift the glass.

It opens so easily, I almost fall inside. I catch myself on the windowsill and peer inside, listening, straining my eyes through the darkness. There’s a faint humming noise, far away, and that bright circle of light shining in the darkness. My heart is beating so hard I feel it in my mouth, and I can barely breathe now. It would be easy to lift my leg over the windowsill and climb inside. But I can’t. I can’t make myself move. I’m too scared. The ice inside me has frozen solid.

And then, slowly, the light fades away into the darkness, as though it were never there, as though I imagined it all along. The only sound I hear now is the traffic noises over on 61st Street, a dog barking, and then the
whoop-whoop-whoop
of a car alarm down the block. I let out the breath I’ve been holding and crouch back on my heels. After a moment, I grope through the air, trying to feel the thread again.

I can’t find it.

It’s not there anymore.

There I am, out on the fire escape at the top of our building in the middle of the night, all alone and shivering. The darkness inside the open window seems to whisper, the way an empty seashell does when you hold it to your ear, but that’s the only noise. The thought of all those dark empty rooms in there makes me shake harder; very slowly, very quietly, I push the window down until it’s shut again. And then I tiptoe down the stairs, back to my room, where I crawl into my bed.

I lie staring up into the darkness, the way I do so many nights.

But I’m not crying this time. And I realize my soul isn’t hidden away down some hole deep inside me either. Instead, I’m feeling something different.

I try to think what this feeling is. It feels familiar, like something I used to feel when I was little that I haven’t felt in a long time.

And then I remember what this feeling is.

I feel surprised. And something else too: I feel curious.

And that’s interesting.

• • •

When I wake up the next morning, I still feel the same way, both surprised and curious. The clock by my bed tells me it’s still too early to get ready for school, but I decide to get up anyway. As I pull on my jeans and a sweater, I’m thinking about the funny way I feel. I hadn’t realized until now how
boring
my life has been. The very thought makes me smile a little, as though I’ve told myself a little joke, as though me and myself are friends again, the way we used to be when I was small.

Really, though, there’s no other word that describes my life. All the hiding-inside-myself business, all the trying so hard to be invisible—it’s all
boring
. School is boring. It’s boring not having any friends or being able to talk to teachers. Mom is boring. I’m boring. Even Dad is boring when you think about it. He never says anything new; it’s always the same, night after night. Nothing takes me by surprise anymore. Everything is so predictable.

I remember again that strange light gleaming in the shadows of the thirteenth floor. Whatever it was, it was
interesting
.

I hear Mom go in the shower, which means Dad will still be sleeping. And then I do something I haven’t done in years. I tiptoe down the hall to the living room where the computer is, and then I go online to find the Etymology Dictionary that used to be one of my favorite sites back when I was eleven and twelve, when I thought the entire world was full of interesting things, and words were some of the most interesting things of all. I haven’t felt like that in years, but I sit down now in the chair by the desk and look up the word “surprise.”

“Surprise,” I learn, comes from the same word root as “prehensile” (to grasp, to seize), like a monkey’s tail. I picture myself clinging to the fire escape with a prehensile tail, and that thought makes me smile too. Two smiles in one morning is pretty much unheard of in my life these days, so I stop to consider that for a moment—and then I type the word “curious.”

Its word roots are different from what I expected: “curious” comes from the Latin
cura
, which had to do with wholeness and healing and protection. It’s even related to the word “conjure” (like a magic spell of defense). That’s interesting too. Because I really wish I had some kind of magical protection I could wrap around me, something that could keep me safe and whole no matter what.

The sound of Mom turning off the shower, the bump and jump of the pipes, vibrates the kitchen wall, and now I hear Dad moving around their bedroom. Must be he’s going to work today. I was hoping he would be even sicker, so sick that he would lie in his own bed all night where he belongs.

I close the site and grab my backpack from the floor. “I’m leaving early,” I shout, and then I escape. Outside, I stand next to Kirin Ahmed on the sidewalk, waiting for the bus. I don’t glance at Kirin, though. I’m too busy thinking about the words
curious
and
surprise
, and then I think about the thread and the golden light.

I’m still thinking about them that afternoon, during art class, as we wrap colored string between nails stuck in boards painted black. It’s a form of art the teacher calls filography, and I’m fascinated by the pictures she shows us, swooping shapes made all of bright threads, like birds’ wings and angels, like strands of light strung against darkness.

I’m working with a bright purple string, wrapping it back and forth between the nails I pressed into the board, but my mind is on last night. The string seems coarse between my fingers, almost fuzzy, though it’s more slender than most string; the teacher says it’s a kind of thick thread used for quilting. I want it to be smooth, almost slippery, like wire or nylon . . .

Like the thread in the darkness.

Kirin Ahmed is sitting across the table from me, and I notice him cut his finger on the string he’s winding back and forth. I realize that last night’s thread wasn’t sharp, not like wire or nylon at all, not even like an ordinary thread when it’s strung tight. It was soft. It felt gentle against my skin.

Face it, Callie. It was imaginary.

But if I were going to imagine something, why would I imagine an invisible
thread
? We didn’t start our string artwork until today, so why would I have been thinking about threads?

I’m frowning, staring into space, thinking about threads and coincidences, wondering if maybe I’d seen another class’s art projects displayed in the hall yesterday, something that made me dream the whole thing . . . and then I notice Kirin Ahmed is sucking the blood from his finger and looking at me.

“Cool pattern.” He nods at my board. “Like a spider web.”

“Yeah.” I duck my head, trying to drop back into invisibility.

But Kirin is still looking at me, like he definitely sees me, though I can’t think why. We’ve lived in the same building for years now—but I can’t remember that we’ve ever really spoken to each other before.

“Did you know spider webs are stronger than steel?” he blurts. “I mean if you could make steel as thin as a spider web, a spider web would be stronger.”

“Mm.” I keep my eyes fixed on my strings.

“Spider web is made of protein. Did you know that?”

I have to admit that I’m feeling it again—curiosity—so I glance up at Kirin to see if I can tell why he suddenly wants to tell me about spider webs. His brown face looks darker than usual, and the tips of his ears are dusky red. His eyes meet mine—they’re dark brown, but with streaks of green, I notice now, like moss on a tree—but I look away quickly, back at my purple strings spun like a web across the board.

I don’t look up at him again. I’m not that curious.

But that afternoon, as I get off the bus and walk down the sidewalk in the winter gloom, I’m feeling it again, that little curl of wonder inside me. As I walk past the homeless guy with the umbrella, I look up at our apartment building, my gaze climbing up the battered bricks until they reach the thirteenth floor, and I realize something important in my life has changed.

I’m not stupid, don’t worry. I know nothing is likely to change either Dad or Mom. That would be too much to hope for.

But something has shifted inside
me
. I don’t want to hide in that tiny little hole I’ve made for myself anymore. I’m too interested to see if something else will happen I didn’t expect. If something new will take me by surprise.

And then something does take me surprise. The homeless guy, who’s never spoken to me before, looks up at me, shakes back his tangled hair, and says, “There’s a thread
on you.”

I stop walking. “What?”

He carefully sets his umbrella to one side and lurches to his feet. The wave of odor that rolls off him is way past body odor, more like something rotten, but with a sick kind of sweetness to it. I manage to keep my hand from flying up to shield my nose, but I can’t help but take a step back from him.

His filthy hand reaches out to me. “Look.” He picks something off my shoulder, a long purple thread that dangles from his fingers, swaying gently in the breeze. It’s just a piece of the string from my art project.

The man lets it go, watching as the wind blows it down the street, a swirling purple S that disappears between two garbage cans. He turns back to me.

“The wind bloweth where it listeth,” he says. “And the thread is always unwinding.”

He’s talking nonsense, of course. Mom says he has schizophrenia, that his mental disorder makes him use words strangely, that he sees and hears things that aren’t real. Last Sunday, when were coming back from church, Dad complained about him always sitting outside our building, but Mom just shook her head. “It’s just Richard, Fred. We’ve known him forever. He’s harmless.” And then her forehead puckered up, because Mom worries about everything except what’s right under her nose. “I hate to see how bad his schizophrenia has become, though. I wish we could do something to help him.”

“Well, I never liked the guy,” Dad muttered. “Even when he wasn’t as crazy as he is now.”

Harmless
, I remind myself now as the man looms
over me.

“Are your teeth on edge?” he asks me. “Mine are.”

I look up at him, not understanding.

He nods. “My father must have eaten a lot of sour grapes,” he says and settles back cross-legged on his piece of cardboard.

It’s a Bible verse he’s talking about, I realize, something I’ve heard at church plenty of times about the fathers eating sour grapes and the children’s teeth being set on edge.
So what is that supposed to mean?
He’s pulled the umbrella over his head now and is just staring into space as though I’m not there anymore, muttering words I can’t understand. I feel like I should do something more—say goodbye, give him some money, something. What’s the proper etiquette for talking to a crazy homeless guy? “So, yeah,” I say. “Bye then.”