Berkeley, California, 1985
"Purple today, Mikey. Today is a purple day." Stevie held up the hard candy ball just before pulling it out of the plastic wrapper and popping it into his mouth where it bulges out his cheek like a chipmunk with nuts. He always lets it gradually disintegrate until he just can't resist breaking it down with his teeth. Then he takes a second candy matching the color of the one he's eaten and shoves it deep down into his pocket. This has been our morning ritual since he was five. Six years now and he hasn't missed a day. Purple is…was… his favorite.
Had I known what that day was going to bring, I'd have smiled longer at him in response. I'd have appreciated the simple ritual that grounded him each morning. With the exception of his occasionally-blurted secret-revealing proclamations out of nowhere, those were his first words each day, spoken to me only. I was the first and only person he spoke to, ever.
Had I known, I would have tried to go through adolescence never feeling annoyed or burdened by my brother's unrelenting attachment to what represented his connection to life: me. As recently as a few days ago, I had moments of, I'm almost sixteen now. Shouldn't I be dating? Or at least making friends? I mean, at least learning how to make them? Instead, I would peacefully have resigned myself to the reality that I could not make friends, go for pizza, to a movie, to the beach… have a boyfriend at some point… without Stevie, since he'd scream bloody terror if I got more than ten feet away from him, ever. And then, let's say I did meet someone who was understanding and tolerant, what might Stevie end up blurting out about that person? My new boyfriend's painful childhood abuses or worse, a secret that uncovered something evil he'd done?
However, I didn't have a crystal ball and I did think all these things at regular intervals. That is, until I understood at least the true function this strange gift had in our life. Another thing I wish I'd known sooner. Maybe that day would have gone quite differently. Instead, I entered Hell.
Hell is not a place bad people go when they die. Hell is in the here and now, on Earth. Hell is the constant, soul-wrenching torment of feeling you could have done something differently. Had you only just cared enough, paid enough attention, you could have prevented the worst.
What was the terrible thing I did that sent me to Hell and has led to my standing in front of my own homemade link chart on the back wall of what was our – now my- bedroom closet, staring at the procession of newspaper clippings that trace every moment since that day? The answer will sound so crazy, you'll think I have some kind of persecution complex. That is, until I explain everything. The terrible thing I did: I gave into Stevie begging me to get money for the Dairy Whip truck.
Stevie and I had been on the lawn, tossing a ball around to break in the new glove my dad had gotten him for his eleventh birthday the week before. Grandma usually sat on the stoop, keeping an eye on us, but had run into the house to answer the phone. A friend of hers was waiting for a cancer diagnosis and Grandma was worried. Since I was sixteen soon, we both felt the time had long since passed when we needed constant supervision. It was my mom, really who wanted an adult nearby more often. Normally, Grandma being inside on the phone wouldn't have been a problem. Today wasn't normal. It was anything but.
I tossed the ball to Stevie, who stood at the edge of the lawn, wearing his new glove. He missed the catch and the ball went past the tree line at the edge of our yard, vanishing into the foliage of the house next door. Stevie shed the glove and dropped to his hands and knees, crawling toward the trees, like a crab, in his jeans and Spiderman t-shirt. In the distance, an airplane's engines rumbled, heading our direction. Then, suddenly, Stevie stopped and scrabbled to his feet. "It's coming!" he shouted. "Fire from the sky! Take cover!"
I trotted over to him. "Stevie, what is it?" I glanced up. Nothing but fluffy clouds and slanting afternoon sun, not too hot, just right in the dry air, interrupted only by the immanent small plane. Lately there'd been planes flying over our neighborhood advertising banners and sometimes they sounded really close.
Stevie's eyes rolled back in his head. "Take cover! Take cover! Fire from the sky!"
I grasped his shoulders and squeezed. I'd seen his eyes roll back that way before, the other few times he'd had his weird visions. Usually they were touched off by the presence of someone around him, but it was just the two of us. "Stevie, are you okay?"
Just then, the bells of the Dairy Whip ice cream truck recorded song sounded in the distance. Stevie's eyes rolled forward, back to normal. Now, his iron-rod one-pointedness shifted to the ice cream. "The truck is coming! Mikey, get money!"
I stood there a moment as the Dairy Whip's tinkling song grew louder. What was it about those recorded bells that had people salivating and running to catch the colorfully-painted truck before it passed by? Stevie was no exception. He got so excited each time, it was the one time he ever let me out of the invisible emotional radius he had me tethered to. As long as I was only gone long enough to get the money.
"Stevie, I can't leave you here. You just had one of your things."
"Please, Mikey! We'll miss it!" Stevie's hands were balled into fists. The tension gripping his nerves was palpable to me. The driver, a guy named Harold whose route our house was on, knew the two of us always met the truck and so I saw him wave briefly and begin slowing near our house. He always pulled right up to the curb and served us before moving on.
"He's almost here, Mikey!" Veins in my brother's temples now surfaced, like eerie snakes under his perspiring flesh.
Dammit. "All right. When he gets here, meet me at the truck, okay?" I released him and raced for the kitchen door steps. "I'll be right back!"
The change had already been set out on the kitchen counter. I grabbed it. I could hear Grandma's voice in the background. The lament in her voice told me that her friend had obviously gotten the cancer diagnosis and it was bad. Grandma's voice faded in the growing noise of the plane passing over our neighborhood.
Back outside, the noise was, for sensitive ears, thunderous. The Dairy Whip's song emanated from the truck at the curb, providing an eerie backdrop to the plane's engines. I expected to see Stevie at the curb by the truck, hands plastered to his ears to block out all the sounds. He wasn't there.
Harold, an older white guy in his sixties with graying hair puffing out from under the Dairy Whip cap made to look like the old fashioned hats worn by milk delivery men from earlier in the century, was at the window. "What can I get you?"
"Um, I don't know. My brother should have been here to tell you already."
"He's not here. I can wait a few seconds while you get him. I saw him over by the trees as I drove up the street."
"Okay, thanks." The truck's song tinkled on in the background, free now of the airplane's cacophonous engines. "Stevie!" I called and ran over to the spot where we'd been playing. Stevie's glove lay on the ground. Weird. I listened to hear if he was screaming nearby, due to my being a distance away from him, but all I could hear was the Dairy Whip truck. Now my heart felt like a fist had gripped it.
I ran back over where Harold was waiting at the window. There were no other kids on this street but us so I knew he'd need to move on. "I can't find him. I need to look."
"I'm sure he's just poking around in the yard next door. I saw him on hands and knees, looking for something."
With a wave I turned and jogged back over to the tree line, heart pounding. I could hear it in my ears, feel my blood forcing its way through my veins as if chased by terror. Harold was already around the corner and the truck's theme song loop was growing softer.
"Stevie!" I called out. Shielding my eyes from the afternoon sun, I peered around the small front yard of my parents' craftsman cottage.
No answer. The sunny day with its soft breeze and plethora of blooming flowers everywhere, on the bushes and trees of our and all the neighbors' yards belied the sudden darkness that shrouded my world.
I dropped to my knees and crawled through the border of trees that separated our small yard from the house next door. A narrow swath of dirt led to a back concrete walkway that serviced the back of the house. No one had lived here for a number of years, although the yard was always tended.
A profusion of rhododendrons to my left filled the back corner of the property. "Stevie?" I pulled the outermost branches aside and peered in. Nothing. Backing out I started down the pathway that skirted the house. Reaching a small doghouse side entrance, I tried the door but it was locked. "Stevie?" I called again. No answer.
I peered into the small sunset pattern of windows on the door, firmly locked against my tugs. The house was dark. Empty. I pressed my ear to one of the little squares of glass but only silence answered. I turned away and continued my way around the house. I'd only been gone a few seconds so he couldn't be farther away then here.
At the front porch, I dropped to my knees and peered through the lattice skirting behind the front shrubs in case Stevie had crawled under the house to escape the loud noises. "Stevie? Are you there? Please answer." My heart was racing now. He'd never run away from me so I knew that even though I was searching for him, if he wasn't answering my calls, he wouldn't be here. "Stevie!" I said louder, as if a higher volume would somehow cause him to produce himself. Nothing.
I dashed up the front porch steps and pounded on the door. Why I thought anyone would answer after years of the house sitting vacant was only my mounting panic. "Hello? Is anyone there? Stevie? Someone?" I pounded again and yanked in vain on the locked door before peering into the windows, similarly blocked by interior blinds.
A frustrated huff escaped me and I left the front porch and continued scrutinizing the perimeter of the house. I tried peering into any other windows low enough to reach, but the blinds were all drawn from inside, blocking any view to the inside. "Oh my God," I muttered to myself, over the crashing of my heart. "Stevie, where the hell did you go?"
Once I'd completed a circle of the house, I went back through the trees to look around our yard. Maybe Stevie freaked out while I was in the house and had taken cover under the front steps. Though I couldn't imagine why, seeing as he'd wanted ice cream so badly. I chided myself for not keeping the money in my pocket, even though in the past, it had fallen out and gotten lost and Grandma had since suggested keeping it on the counter.
"Stevie!" I called out again, this time crawling on hands and knees along the shrubs that lined our front porch. I clawed through every inch of the bushes several times and checked behind every tree in the yard. No Stevie.
That's when I ran inside to get my grandmother. "Stevie's gone." My voice fell out in a panicked tumble. "We were playing catch… I ran in to get the money… when I came out, he was gone."
Grandma rose immediately. "Charlotte, I have to go. Something's happened." She hung up and picked the receiver back up again. "I'm calling the police," she said, "and then your parents."
"I'll take my bike and see if I can find him. Maybe he's walking around somewhere." Why I thought this could only, again, be due to panic. Stevie never went beyond the bounds of the psychic tether that connected him to me. So, even as I yanked my bike away from the wall beside the garage and jumped onto it, pedaling furiously down the short driveway onto the street, I knew I wouldn't find him.
The next hour was a fruitless riding around, ringing doorbells and asking anyone out walking their dog or jogging if they'd seen an eleven year old boy, with dark hair who was half-Japanese and who seemed mentally more like four or five years old. -That's how I'd come to describe Stevie on the rare occasion I needed to. I hated terms like mentally handicapped or retarded. They were so wrong somehow. Especially since from the very first words Stevie had ever spoken, he revealed knowledge of family history he could never have known at the age of four. To try and pigeon hole my little brother was a cruel disservice.
"He looks just like me, only a little shorter," I said each time to the person answering the door or watering their lawn. I automatically held my hand, palm down at nose level to indicate where the top of Stevie's head came to. As if being as specific as possible would somehow make him magically have been seen by anyone I asked. Of course, no one had seen him. I knew they wouldn't have. He'd disappeared in a matter of seconds, a boy who would have screamed loudly enough to be heard over the cacophony of both jet and ice cream truck, and no one heard him.
When I got back to my house an hour later, a police cruiser sat in the driveway, along with my parents' car, a light blue Volkswagen Beetle they'd been nursing along since my dad got it back when they were first married, in the space between earning their PhDs, my dad in history and conflict resolution and my mom a double in Asian and Asian American Studies.
Going through the front door, I could hear my mom's voice, a high pitched keening of panic, followed by my father's deeper worried-but-attempting-to-be-soothing tone. Our kitchen and living room were one large room and that's where the voices were coming from. Mom and Dad stood there with Grandma. A uniformed officer stood with them, also trying to distract my mother from her panic by interjecting questions in a calm tone.
As soon as Mom saw me she lunged at me and grabbed my shoulders and yanked me to her. "How could you go out now?" she shrieked. "How dare you!" She clutched me close. She was trembling so violently, the raw emotion radiating around me, mixed with my own guilt froze me. My body became like a stick, arms at my sides. Or maybe it was that Mom was gripping me so hard, she was pinning my arms down, as if to immobilize me so I could never leave her sight again. Then she crushed me into an embrace.
"I wanted to find Stevie," I murmured, against her shoulder.
She held me away from her so I could look into her face. I'd never seen her eyes so red, and rimmed in lines, as was her usually smooth forehead. "Don't go out there again, Michael, you hear me?"
"Yes, Mom."
My father's hands intercepted her grip, gently but firmly pulling her away. "This isn't Michael's fault. Let's concentrate on helping the police find Stevie."
"Who said it's his fault, Daniel? Did I say that? It's her fault!" She pointed at Grandma whose pale face had gone many shades paler since I'd told her Stevie was gone. "You were supposed to be watching them! Where were you? Talking to one of your biddy friends on the phone again?"
Dad grasped Mom's shoulder but she shrugged his hand violently away. "Miya, please. This isn't helping. We need to answer the officer's questions to help us find Stevie."
"Fine." Mom glared at both him and Grandma and then turned to the police. I saw Grandma lower herself heavily into one of the rattan chairs at the kitchen table as if Mom's anger and blame were physical weights.
In a less nightmarish situation, I know my mom would never have said something like that. She did like her mother-in-law who lived with us and she definitely appreciated the interminable hours of babysitting and housekeeping Grandma had done over the years while she and my dad scrambled to keep up with the book writing and publishing their jobs required in addition to teaching. But in this moment, I could only stand mute, still immobilized by my own guilt.
The uniformed officer was holding a pad and pen. I looked at him now, as everyone and everything seemed to be transforming into some kind of eerie film on a screen with me as a passive observer. Dark hair, brown eyes. Youngish, like in his twenties, or maybe thirties, I guessed although when you're sixteen, everyone over twenty-five looks kind of old. The nametag on his jacket glinted in the light. J. Petersen. He asked Mom and Dad for a detailed description of Stevie and Dad gave him the most recent photo of Stevie, opening his birthday present of the baseball glove, from the refrigerator door where a magnet advertising a local plumbing service had held it down.
I approached Petersen, gently but firmly pushing past my parents. "I'm sure someone grabbed him," I told him. "That's an important thing to know."
He cleared his throat. "Did you see someone nearby?"
My mind flew to that moment, to Stevie's outburst. I'd thought we were alone but someone had to have been there, just hidden nearby. A person grabbing him away was the only explanation since he wouldn't have gone of his own accord. Horridly, in retrospect, I saw now Stevie's fire from the sky outburst probably was him channeling again. But I couldn't tell the police that. They'd dismiss me as crazy. "No. I didn't see anyone."
He nodded. "We'll keep an eye out for anyone suspicious. But we've found that many times a child your brother's age will go off on their own for a while then come home."
His words touched off a wave of panic. "Not Stevie," I said. "He's different. He's not eleven in his mind." I tapped my head for emphasis. "And…he would never just go away from me. If I get more than, say, ten or eleven feet from him, he starts screaming. Really loud. We can't even go to regular school because of it. So, someone had to be hiding nearby and grabbed him when I went into the house. I was only gone for a few seconds, so it had to have happened quickly, with a strong person who picked him up and ran, a hand over his mouth."
Behind me I heard Mom sob.
Petersen's face had stiffened as I spoke. "You seem to have it all figured out," he said.
I wasn't sure how to respond. I'd seen that look before from grown-ups when I explained how Stevie was. No one really believed me. "I don't know. I just know my brother and when I run over the possibilities in my head, that's the only thing that fits." I didn't add that I'd had years to understand him and no one else could possibly know him as I did.
Petersen nodded again. "All right. That gives us a definite direction. I will report to a detective who will be in charge of the search. The first forty-eight hours are crucial." He started to turn.
"Officer," I said, my heart pounding.
"Yes?"
"That house next door. It's not been lived in for a long time but based on the time span this afternoon…with Stevie… it seems the only place he could have gone was there. I looked around myself and didn't see anyone but that doesn't mean‒"
"Did you knock on the door?"
"Yes. There are two doors, one on the side. Then I looked in all the windows but it's dark in there and the blinds are pulled in most spots. The doors are locked, of course."
"I see. I'll double check it for you and I'll try to locate the owner, see what I can do."
"Thank you." This time, I let him leave when he turned. No time wasted. He walked out, closing the door behind him.
"It is my fault, not Grandma's," I said when he'd gone.
Dad approached me and squeezed my arms, his hands now where Mom's had been earlier but not with her frantic grasp. "Michael, listen to me. You did nothing wrong. Kids should be able to play on the lawn. The police will find him. Do you understand?"
His face with its dark beard and heavy sideburns blurred. "Someone took him," I said, but could barely whisper for the lump in my throat.
Dad looked at me. I don't think he heard me. "The police will find him," he said again.
I swallowed hard and backed out from under my dad's hands. "They need to find who took him. He didn't wander off. That's important. Do you understand?"
"I do, Michael." Dad gave a slight nod in the direction of Mom and Grandma and then gave me a stop saying that now look with his eyes.
I got the message and didn't speak again.
I wanted to go back out and ride around but I didn't want my mom to freak out again, so I went to my room and paced, peering out the window every so often to see if Officer Petersen had returned with Stevie.
In the meantime, my mom had called her father and I saw him pull up. I went downstairs to greet Jiji, whose presence was a welcome relief to keep my mother calmer. I stayed with them a few minutes then went back up to my and Stevie's room. Other peoples' presence at the moment felt unbearable, even Jiji's, and he was my favorite person in the world.
Finally, I saw the police cruiser pull back up at our house and raced down the stairs to the front hall where my dad had already opened the front door. I knew when I looked at Petersen's face that he hadn't found Stevie. That, and the fact that Stevie wasn't with him. "Did you find out about next door?" I asked before anyone else could speak to him.
"I did. The owner is elderly, suffering from dementia in a nursing home, apparently. I called the place where he is and his family has given strict orders that he not be disturbed."
"This is about a missing child," I said, my voice edged hard. "Maybe the detective can try. They'll have to let him speak to the man."
"I'll ask him. Try not to worry. I know it's easy to say. We are busy looking and there's a hotline set up."
"Thank you, Officer," my dad said.
"You're welcome. If he doesn't turn up by tomorrow, a detective will be in touch to coordinate a larger search."
Tears streamed down my mom's cheeks. "Okay."
"It's best if you stay home, in case he comes back," Petersen added.
As soon as he left, Mom grasped my arm. "Please, stay here, Michael. I know you'll want to go back out and look but I just can't have you not be here. Okay?"
The desperate pain in her eyes made me simply nod.
~