“This doesn’t do him justice,” my mother had said, holding out a photograph of a dark-haired, laughing man. “He had such vigor, such life. You remind me of him sometimes.”
There was an unusual softness in her voice. No one could sound like that talking about someone they hated.
I remembered that I’d decided my memory under hypnosis was all a lie.
But my dreams all night long had been such a jumble. I’d escaped with Mom—no, “Mama” whoever that was—again and again, all night long. Gunfire still echoed in my ears; I could still smell smoke and spices, exotic and familiar, all at once.
Gunfire? Smoke? Spices?
I remembered a movie Lynne had made us all watch once, about medical students who had their hearts stopped temporarily, just to see what it was like. They all had visions that haunted them horribly and quite dramatically once they were restored to life. They couldn’t distinguish anymore between reality and dreams.
Maybe hypnosis did that too.
Why had I agreed to it in the first place? Just because we were bored, and Andrea was insistent, and Lynne said, “Oh, no, you’re not messing around with my brain,” and Courtney said … I didn’t even remember what excuse Courtney had given to avoid being the one hypnotized. I noticed we didn’t try to hypnotize anyone else but me.
Had my friends suspected I had some unknown memory lurking in my brain? Had I suspected it?
Lynne poked me in the ribs.
“Earth to Kira,” she said. “Dad asked you three times if you want bacon or sausage.”
I looked around the familiar sunlit room, feeling as if I’d been in a far different place.
“Um, neither” I said. “I’m not very hungry.”
“More for me, then,” Mr. Robertson said cheerily. I noticed he didn’t rush off to the kitchen to finish cooking. He perched on the arm of a chair. “What’d you all do last night after the boring grown-ups went to sleep?”
“We watched this really old movie,” Lynne said, “Dying Young.”
Mr. Robertson clutched his hand over his heart in mock dramatics.
“Oh, you are so cruel,” he said. “I remember when that was just out. Julia Roberts was in it, right? It couldn’t have been more than two or three years ago.”
Lynne tossed him the video box.
“Check it out,” she said. “Early 1990s. Read it and weep.”
“I guess your mother and I must have walked five miles each way through blinding snow to go see it,” he said. “Or was that how we got to school? I’m so old, I forget stuff like that now.”
“Very funny, Dad,” Lynne said, yawning. “Oh, yeah, and we hypnotized Kira.”
One of the most maddening aspects of having Lynne as a friend was that she told her parents things—just about everything, in fact.
“Did you try to get her to walk like a duck?” Mr. Robertson asked. “Did you convince her she was really a monkey swinging through the jungle? I remember my friends and me trying to hypnotize each other when we were kids, messing around. It never worked.”
“Well, it worked on Kira,” bigmouthed Lynne said. “She revealed this really incredible memory about—”
I panicked. I don’t know why. Why did it matter what Lynne told her dad?
“Oh, you actually believed me?” I said, too loudly. “I made all that up. Ha-ha!”
Lynne, Courtney and Andrea gave me stares only slightly less intense than those the night before. Even Mr. Robertson regarded me curiously. The house was so quiet, I could hear the clock ticking in the next room.
Finally, Lynne broke the spell.
“I didn’t know you were such a great actress,” Lynne said evenly. “Guess you’ll be starring in one of these movies someday.”
Lynne and I have been friends since kindergarten. She knew me too well.
She knew I had something to hide.
Three
AFTER BRUNCH—WHICH, I’LL ADMIT WE DIDN’T EAT UNTIL ONE o’clock—parents started arriving to pick us up. At least, Courtney’s and Andrea’s parents came. Mr. Robertson drove me home.
I sat in the backseat, only half listening to Lynne and Mr. Robertson debate about whose turn it was to mow their yard. I tried to remember when Mom had started assuming other people would drive me around. Everyone else took it for granted. After Courtney and Ashley left this afternoon, none of the Robertsons had said, Oh, Kira, why don’t you call your mom and see what’s keeping her? No, Mr. Robertson had just hollered, “All right, girls, load up the car. Or are famous actresses-to-be too good to carry their own sleeping bags?” The Robertsons were so used to driving me places that I didn’t even have to ask. They just showed up in front of my doorstep before school football games and sleep-over nights, before parades and all-county dances.
Meanwhile, my mother had a perfectly good car just sitting in our garage, unused.
I thought I could remember riding in that car. I sat beside Mom and couldn’t see over the dashboard, even with my car seat making me taller. We drove and drove and drove, cross-country, I guess. I could remember Mom reaching over occasionally to hand me Cheerios and juice boxes. I could remember arriving in Willistown, Mom saying, “Look at that steeple, look at that dome, look at all those Victorian houses….” The word “Victorian” stuck in my brain. It reminded me of something.
Mr. Robertson pulled up in front of our place, one of those Victorians Mom had admired all those years ago. Maple Street is full of them—it’s one of Willistown’s few claims to fame. The house we live in is a three-story monstrosity, painted pale blue, with turrets and a cupola and frilly gingerbread trim, all the way around the porch. A hundred years ago when it was built, just one family lived here. (Of course, they did have twelve kids.) Now the house is divided up into apartments. Mrs. Steele, who is both our landlady and Mom’s boss at the library, has the first floor; Mom and I have the second; and the third has been vacant for as long as I can remember.
“Call me after you talk to your mom,” Lynne said.
“Talk to her about what?” I asked, opening the car door.
“You know,” Lynne said.
“You two aren’t plotting anything, are you?” Mr. Robertson asked.
“Dad!” Lynne protested. “This is private.”
“Don’t mind me. I’m just the chauffeur,” Mr. Robertson said.
“There won’t be anything to talk about,” I said as I stepped out. I slid my arm through the straps of my sleeping bag and backpack and shut the door firmly behind me.
Stairs lead up the back of the house to our apartment. There’s a wide second-story porch at the top—if we wanted to be fancy, we could call it a balcony. When I reached the top of the stairs, I realized that Mom was sitting silently in an old wicker rocking chair on the porch, staring off into space. This was nothing new. Mom watched our backyard the way other people watched TV. And there’s nothing in our backyard. Grass, a willow tree, a lilac bush that wasn’t even in bloom yet. In a month or so there’d be a garden that Mom and Mrs. Steele would plant together, but right now it was early April, and the garden was just a rectangle of dead dirt.
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
Mom nodded at me—a greeting that did nothing but acknowledge my existence.
I opened the door to our apartment and shoved my backpack and sleeping bag inside. Then I pulled another wicker chair over beside Mom and sat down.
Mom rewarded me with the ghost of a smile.
If I went along with it, Mom would be delighted to have the two of us sit this way for hours, in silence, regarding the willow tree arcing below us.
I couldn’t take it. I looked out at the small wooden garage at the edge of our backyard.
“Mom,” I said, “will you let me drive our car when I turn sixteen this summer? After I take driver’s ed, I mean.”
Mom tilted her head thoughtfully.
“Certainly” she said. “If you have someplace far that you want to go.”
There was a lilt to her voice that I’d b
een hearing all my life. But now I heard it differently. Did my mother have an accent? Did she talk the way she talked because she was weird or because she was not speaking her native tongue? Strange, how I’d never wondered that before.
“Will the car even work anymore?” I asked impatiently. “It’s been sitting there—what? Ten years? Twelve?”
Mom waved her hands in front of her, just as impatiently.
“It is no matter,” she said. “If you need it, it will be there for you.”
That’s my mom. I’d just wanted to discuss my chance for wheels, and she was turning the conversation into some metaphysical meditation.
No, let’s be honest. I didn’t just want to discuss my chance for wheels.
I turned and studied my mother’s face. She was staring out at the tree again. Her eyes were a dull, ordinary brown—the same color, come to think of it, as the lifeless garden. She had strong features and high cheekbones. One time Andrea had told me, “Hey, maybe that same bone structure will show up in your face when you get older. Lucky you!” But my bone structure wasn’t noticeable like my mom’s. Mom also had long, thick, steel gray hair, cut with bangs at the front—not the least bit fashionable even in decades-behind-the-times Willistown.
I thought about the debate Andrea and Lynne had had the night before and Lynne’s triumphant, “Can you honestly picture Kira’s mom as an abused woman?” I had never seen my mother hit another person; I had never seen her so much as disagree with anyone. But everything about her gave off an air of, Don’t mess with me. You’ll regret it.
I sighed.
“Mom, last night at the sleep-over we were goofing off, and Andrea said, ‘Why don’t we try hypnotizing someone?’ And then, somehow, we decided I should be the one, and—”
Mom positively stiffened.
“You were hypnotized? You let yourself be hypnotized? How?”
“With a—” I gulped, caught in the intensity of Mom’s stare. “Lynne found this antique pocket watch that had belonged to her great-grandfather. Andrea swung it in front of my face. And then, well, I guess I was in a trance. I remembered something.”
“What?” Mom said in a low, urgent voice.
This was the most interest my mother had ever shown in a conversation with me.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s a real memory,” I said. “It was like a dream or something. I was a really little kid and my, um, mama and I were escaping from something bad. We were someplace I’d never been before, and there was danger, and … It’s not real, is it, Mom?”
Mom didn’t answer.
“Mom?” I said again.
Mom seemed to be in a trance herself.
“So it will happen,” she said. “Unless …”
I thought my mom had her verb tenses confused.
“No, Mom, I want to know if this is something that did happen. In the past. Did I—did we—really escape from some other place? Not California?” I was dead certain, suddenly, that the place I’d seen under hypnosis was not California.
Mom seemed to snap out of her trance instantly.
“We came here from California,” she said insistently. “That is true. I would not lie to you.”
“But before that,” I said, remembering the scenarios Lynne had proposed: illegal immigration, war-torn foreign lands, a daring escape across some dangerous border. “Were we from someplace else first? Did I remember something that really happened?”
Mom looked straight into my eyes.
“Put it out of your mind,” she said. “Do not think about this again. Do not let yourself be hypnotized again.”
“But, Mom …”
Mom glanced around fearfully, as if whatever evil we—I?—had escaped from might be lurking in the willow tree. She stood up abruptly and went inside. I followed her.
“Mom, I need to know—”
Mom whirled around.
“No,” she spat out. “You do not need to know. You need—I need—for you not to know!”
“But I remember—”
“No, you do not remember. Not enough, thank God.”
“Enough for what?” I asked, thoroughly puzzled.
Mom scooped up my sleeping bag and dropped it in the laundry room. She slung the strap of my backpack over her shoulder and deposited it on the floor of my bedroom. I wouldn’t let myself feel guilty that she was cleaning up my mess. I was on her heels the whole way. Finally, on the threshold of her room, she turned to face me.
“When will you leave me alone?” she asked.
“When you answer my question,” I said daringly.
“Then I will have a shadow forever” Mom said with a sad smile. “Because your question is not to be answered.” She shook her head. “Kira, you are young. You do not know. You will have to believe me. Some memories are best forgotten.”
Her voice was soft, but with an edge to it. I took a step back, and my mother gave me a rueful smile, as if to say, See? I knew you couldn’t handle this.
Four
I TOLD LYNNE. OF COURSE I TOLD LYNNE. WHEN YOUR BEST FRIEND is a genius and your mother dumps a puzzle worthy of Einstein in your lap, you’d have to be an idiot not to ask your friend for help.
“I don’t get it,” Lynne said.
It was Monday afternoon now. We were back in the Robertsons’ family room, sprawled at either end of the couch. I had ridden the bus home with Lynne after school, just so I could talk to her in private. Both her parents were still at work. So was Mom, of course, but there was some unwritten law: I went to Lynne’s house when we wanted to talk. She came over to my house only when we wanted to study. Sometimes she spent the night when she had a big test coming up the next day. She claimed our apartment had a great atmosphere for thinking—not exactly the reputation I desired.
I picked at a piece of fuzz coming out of the couch’s rough weave. “You’re a lot of help,” I said, slumping farther into the couch.
“Well, you haven’t given me a lot to go on,” Lynne said. “Just a bunch of mysterious double-talk from your mom. She really won’t say anything else?”
I shook my head.
“And you really don’t remember anything else?”
“I’ve tried,” I said. “I racked my brain all weekend. But it’s like taking a test—the harder I try to remember, the further away the answer seems.”
“Hmm,” Lynne said.
“Oh, sorry I forgot. You never have trouble with answers on tests,” I said.
She kicked me gently.
“Shut up! I do so! I know just what you mean. When you’re thinking, ‘I have to remember the capital of Paraguay, I have to remember the capital of Paraguay,’ you don’t have a prayer of remembering anything. But if you think about something else, the answer just jumps into your mind. Asunción.”
“Show off,” I said. “I haven’t known the capital of Paraguay since fourth grade.”
Fourth grade was Mrs. Beltzer’s class. I could picture the blue social studies books we’d used, the flag that tilted at the front of the room, the school buses rumbling outside the window. Those details came to me so clearly; it didn’t seem fair that the memory I really wanted was so wispy.
“Maybe I should try hypnosis again,” I said hesitantly. Mom had forbidden it. But how else was I going to find out any answers?
“I don’t know,” Lynne said. “I did a little research, and it sounds like it’s not something to mess around with.” She pointed to a stack of books on the coffee table. I had a feeling they represented every bit of hypnosis research material available at the Willistown Public Library.
“Geez, what are you going to do?” I asked. “Write a report?”
“No, no” Lynne said soothingly. “I was just curious. A lot of that’s really flaky. New Age-type stuff. But with serious hypnosis—like what psychiatrists use—there’s a lot of controversy about false memories. Like a therapist asks a hypnotized patient about child abuse, and then the patient wakes up convinced that she was molested when she was seven. Even thou
gh it’s not the least bit true.”
“Maybe something like that happened with me” I said. “What did you guys tell me to think?”
I was suddenly angry. Here I’d been agonizing for two days about some stupid memory that my so-called friends had planted in my mind as a big joke.
Except Mom had acted like it was true. And dangerous.
Lynne was shaking her head defensively. Her long brown hair whipped in her eyes.
“All Andrea said was, ‘Tell us something we don’t know,’” she said. “And then you started talking about darkness and evil. Really, Andrea just wanted to know if you had a crush on John Mizer from your geometry class. She never expected … trauma.”
I did have a crush on John Mizer—sort of—but there was no way I was going to admit it now.
“That wasn’t fair” I said sulkily.
“No,” Lynne agreed. “All of these books say it’s unethical to try to get information from people under hypnosis without their explicit permission. But we didn’t know that Friday night.”
I shivered. Cold. It was so cold in that room with Mama. Waiting.
“Wait!” I shouted. “I remember—”
“What?” Lynne asked excitedly.
The memory was gone.
“Nothing,” I said. “This is hopeless.” I slumped back into the couch.
“Not really,” Lynne said. She opened a notebook and wrote something in her usual, deliberate cursive. I waited. Then she ripped out the page and handed it to me. “Here’s what you need to do.”
It was one of Lynne’s lists. She’s famous for them. I read it aloud.
“‘One: Find Kira’s birth certificate. Two: Find Kira’s mom’s birth certificate. Three: Find Kira’s parents’ marriage certificate. Four: Find immigration and naturalization papers, if any. Five: Find other documents, if necessary. Six: Seek out other living relatives, if any. Seven: Confront Kira’s mom with known facts.’ Should I read her her rights first?” I asked sarcastically.
Lynne glanced at the list.
“Okay, okay, maybe that last one’s a little harsh. I didn’t mean it that way. But you deserve to know the truth about your own past.”