Nora & Kettle (27 page)

50. I DO BELIEVE IN FAIRIES

KETTLE

Muffled shouting pounds on the inside of the door.

“I will not let you go!” a man shouts. A mangled scream follows.

I’m too late.

I push on the door, and it opens. Black-and-white tiles shine under a chandelier. A creak to my left pulls my focus and a large woman lingering in a doorway sniffs, her eyes held upwards. “He’s going to kill her,” she says with little emotion. It’s just fact—he will kill her.

I hear another thump, harder than my heartbeat but not stronger, and I race up the stairs that seem endless and towering. Stretching to the sky.

There’s some part of me that doesn’t want to go. Doesn’t want to see what’s in that room. I’ve never been so afraid… I think of the beatings, the blood, the shackles and suffering I’ve seen, and still… no. I have never been so afraid in my whole life.

“Stop! Please,” Nora’s small, wet-sounding voice comes from behind a dark, oily-looking door. Another noise like someone batting dirt from a rug and she screams, though it sounds like a scream beneath a mountain of cloth, like she’s buried.

I grab the handle, turn and push, finding it hard to get inside because something is blocking the door. “Nora,” I yell through the small gap.

I glance down and my throat tightens. Tears form, burning rings around my eyes, because the ‘thing’ blocking the door is Nora… and standing over her is a wild, furious man, holding what appears to be a hat rack snapped in half.

Oh Jesus.

I don’t have time to be gentle. I shove the door and Nora inward, put my head down and charge at the man. Christopher Deere—defender of civil rights and monster.

I drive him toward the desk, holding the wrist that’s still clutching the coat rack and smack it down on the tabletop. He won’t let it go, and I have to smack it several times before it clatters to the ground.

“Kettle,” Nora wheezes, pulling herself up to an almost sitting position. She holds her stomach, her face a frighteningly pale, gray color that terrifies me. She coughs, and I’m watching her instead of him. I am rewarded with a book to the side of the head.

I fall to the side and roll onto the floor, clambering up to my knees, but he’s already got a boot to my stomach. My insides compress, flooding with pain.

Nora screams, “Leave him alone!” and starts dragging herself toward us.

I put a hand up to stop her, but he slams his foot down on it. “Is this him?” He laughs. “Oh Nora, you really can pick them,” this cold, dark man with Nora’s eyes shouts as he laughs sardonically.

There is silence. Air moving in and out of the room like a lung. Something shiny and silver catches the corner of my eye. Another blow hits my ribs and pain flares. I grab at his legs but I can’t gain an advantage from the floor. 
     He grabs my collar and jerks me up so I’m hanging from my clothes, choking.

A metallic click like a lock sliding into place stops him dead. We hear a sliding sound and turn toward Nora at the same time.

A flash of white light.

I wait for the loud bang, for him to fall…

And then I am released.

He grunts. All his anger is pooled at the tip of a sharp, silver letter opener in his hand, poised ready to run me through. It drops to the floor, and I scramble away. I look up at Nora, who’s holding a large Polaroid camera to her chest. It seems to terrify her father.

“Kettle,” she manages in a crushed-to-pieces voice. “Run.” He takes a threatening step toward her and she bolts, with me following behind but slower as I try to block his path.

“Nora, stop!” he thunders, but she doesn’t listen. She grips the camera like it’s the most precious thing in the world and runs down the stairs.

Breathless, she shouts, “How will it look for you, Father?” as she takes the steps two, three at a time, a giddy, hysterical edge to her words as she laughs. “The great Christopher Deere caught beating one of the very people he’s been trying to defend.”

She skids on the carpeted stairs, grips the banister, and turns her face upward.
Slow down
, I think.

“Tell me where Frankie is or I’ll give this photo to every paper in the city,” she threatens, holding the heavy camera up to the light. She cracks open the back and peels the photo out, her eyes lighting up when she sees it. Swinging the camera back, she lobs it onto the landing. Her father jumps back as it smashes, the flashbulb sending splinters of glass everywhere.

She starts moving again. I’m a few steps away from her, but she’s moving too fast. Her father stays at the top, his face rippling with fear, glass dusting his expensive shoes.

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Yes I would!” she yells, stomps her foot, sways, and then loses her balance. And I think,
now. Now I have never been so afraid in my entire life.

NORA

This seems almost funny. I must be bouncing around inside a shell. Because I hear the cracks, the sharp shattering of things, and I think,
This has all happened before and it can’t be me.

It’s fast. The fastest. My face is split black and white by the cool tiles seeping into my skin. I breathe out and try to decide whether I should breathe back in because it would be easier to sink. Join her down there.

KETTLE

I run, doing the same stupid thing that she just did, taking two steps at a time, not holding on. Bounding, breaking, my heart is breaking.
Why doesn’t she move? Why does she hug the floor like she wants to disappear beneath it?

I launch from the last step and skid to a halt beside her body, falling to my knees. Carefully, I run a hand down one of her arms. She doesn’t move.
Move.

Her father hasn’t moved either. He’s frozen in some sort of branched-out horror, his hands clenching the banister, his face giving away nothing. No expression at all. If he cared that he’s killed her, he doesn’t show it.

The large woman still stands in the doorway. She has taken to moaning and swaying back and forth in the space, like she’s trapped there. I eye her and then look up at Mr. Deere. “Don’t you move a goddamn inch!” I shout, my hand up. He says nothing. He is stone and soon, I forget he’s there. “Oh, Nora. Nora. Nora. Get up. You can’t stay here. Please don’t be dead,” I whisper, moving closer to where her face lies cheek to cheek with the tiles. “You have to come home. You have to come home with me.” My hands are shaking as I brush her hair from her ear. This can’t be happening.

So many feet, marching, turning, and kicking up splinters on the whitewashed floor.

“He’s under the bed,” the gruff voice I’ve learned how to avoid grunts. “He’s always hidin’ under the bed. I always find him though.”

Upside down, brown eyes blink at me. “This is Hiro Jackson? He’s only a little kid. How old is he?”

“Yessir, that’s him. Bout five, I think.”

Is that my name? Thick hands grab around my middle and drag me out like a possum under the porch. I kick and scratch like one too.

I’m scared. I’m always scared.

I don’t know what’s happening, but I give up quickly. Wherever they’re taking me, maybe it’s better than here. I relax in the large arms.

“Here’s the order,” the soldier holding me to his hip says, showing a piece of paper with black writing on it that starts off big and gets smaller and smaller like an eye test.

The man who’s been looking after me for two years peers at it for a second, tracing his finger along the larger words. Then his hands drop and he looks away from the paper and from me. “Don’t care. Just take him.”

Down the stairs, past the staring eyes of the other children.

I don’t get to say goodbye.

The soldier places me gently in the backseat of a large, black car. I shiver and pull my legs up to my chest and he sighs, giving me his jacket.

“Yeah, this one must be a spy,” he says, laughing. The other men laugh too, only for a second, and then they are quiet.

“All right, Hiro Jackson, time to take you to your new home.”

The car pulls away from the gray shingle house and I look out the window, thinking of clouds, and where she is, and why my name is Jackson.

“Nora. You have to come home with me.”

I’m so close to her face that my lips brush hers, scratched and perfect. A puff of warm air reaches my skin, and I shudder with relief. She’s alive.

NORA

Tiny splinters of words reach my ears.

A ghost of a kiss.

“Nor… rah… Nor… rah,” they whisper. Gentle fingers press into my shoulders and shake, nudging me to life. Reminding me to live. “Kite,” he whispers. I pull my legs up. I could be a kite. Wind punching me through, colors and shredded tails. I could fly away. Live in the sky…

Reel me in
.

The sharp corner of the Polaroid digs into my chest. Words scrape my lips like sand. “Tell me where she is,” I whisper, hoping someone can hear me.

Kettle reaches under me, his hands bumping things he shouldn’t be touching, but it doesn’t matter now. He rolls me over, sits me up, holds my face in his hands, and tilts it from side to side. Those dark blue eyes hold me together. I see an emotion I don’t recognize in them, a feeling I want to learn.

He takes the photo still pressed to my chest, stares at it, and then shouts up to my father, who is spilled concrete, splattered all over the landing. Unable to move. Kettle’s voice rumbles and fills the space. “Where is Frankie?” He waves the photo back and forth in the air and then stills. The image is a scar on paper. Christopher Deere about to stab a Japanese boy with a letter opener. It’s clear. My hands were so steady in that moment. I could almost laugh, if my ribs weren’t pinching my lungs.

A number and a street name tumble from the sky, slide under my flattened body and lift me up.

I will get up.

I’m a miracle about to happen. I’m a star that refuses to die.

Leaning heavily on Kettle, I get to my feet, slipping on the splash of red marking the pristine tiles.

I glare up at my father. “If the address doesn’t check out, you’ll regret it,” I say firmly, my bones made of steel, my leg dripping blood.

He nods. Nothing else. He doesn’t try to stop me. Doesn’t threaten me.

It’s over.

Kettle’s arm wraps around my waist as he half drags me across the threshold, across the common area, and into the cool, autumn air, the sun hitting us with pale gold light. I stop on the step, straighten my clothes, and smile.

“I’m okay, Kettle,” I say, turning to his warm, copper-colored face.

He looks down at my leg and then back to my face. I’m radiating something new. I’m a solar flare. I’m heat and determination. He releases me, a hand hovering at my back, just in case.

“You’re better than okay,” he says, smiling, pushing my heart in at funny angles until it hurts to breathe. “You’re a King.”

I’m a King.

I wear his crown. Wear the blue of his eyes, the kindness in his voice. I want more. More words, more time, more light shining on dark places. I want
him
.

It should, but this change growing between us doesn’t throw me off balance. It doesn’t take up space that should be Frankie’s. It opens me up and anchors me. It sinks roots to the ground and stretches up to reach the sun. It is good. Nourishing and pure. It is things I never thought I could have.

I take his hand, hold it tight, and together, we step down and away from the brownstone. I picture my father standing, static on the landing just once, and then he becomes fire-cracked clay, an ornament easily broken. In my mind, he will be frozen that way forever and my brain flicks his image to the side, toppling his wooden likeness as if he were the chess piece. All the power he had over me… gone.

My bones crack, my skin splits, my leg drags behind me, but the pain seems to shatter and shed from my body the further away we get and the closer we become, until it evaporates into the clouds. I look up and watch the bad parts of me shrinking to dots in the wide blue.

We’re going home.

Together, we write words across the sky in giant, messy script, full of mistakes and crossed-out letters. And I am filled with hope as I watch them dance and clash and poke at my fears, because although I know I can do this on my own, now I am sure I don’t have to.

Frankie, we’re coming.

Acknowledgements

This book is primarily about love and survival. So I want to thank the people who taught me about these two things. The way they work together. How they are inextricably linked in times of adversity.

Love comes in many forms as everyone knows. Romantic love, love of family, of friends, and of oneself. To me, it is the backbone of getting through, the thing that holds us up when the world is trying to pull us down to the dirt. And even if we do fall, I think it somehow stops the dirt from clinging.

My inspiration for this novel came from two people who survived some of the most appalling conditions during their internment during World War Two, my grandparents, John (Grandad) and Jeanne (Nanna).

During the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, they were thrown into two separate internment camps in Singapore. Grandad was beaten severely, starved and forbidden from seeing his wife and baby. Nanna, still nursing her young infant at the time, was forced to eat rodents and insects just to survive. They were just nineteen, newly married and in love, facing conditions no one should ever have to face.

But they got through, and if you asked Nana how, her answer, in her very vibrant and animated way of speaking, was love, the hope she would see Grandad again, and that they would get out, make a life for themselves, and never look back on the muddy, razor wire-surrounded grounds of those camps again.

They did get out. They had another child (my father) and went on to live fulfilling lives—ones full of love, grandchildren, color, and laughter. But they were shortened lives, which makes me even more thankful that they shared their stories with me.

There isn’t much I would wish for in this world, but to have them back, to have had more time with them than I did, would be my biggest one.

For surviving, for your love, hope, and beautiful souls, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I wouldn’t be here without you.