Babur Singh sits on Neha and Manan’s blue velour couch and looks straight ahead at images of half-frozen, euphoric crowds whooping, jumping, and kissing one another amid a shower of confetti and cacophony of noisemakers. He stares hard at his friends’ television, so hard that eventually, he is looking at nothing at all.
It’s been six days since Purnima left him. Left them.
His daughter, Anjali, age six and a half, lies asleep on a reclining La-Z-Boy adjacent to the couch, her mouth half open and body curled in the fetal position. Her abdomen expands and contracts in steady intervals.
“This year, I’m going to cook more.” His voice is flat, but it is Babur’s feeble attempt at humor.
Neha gives Babur a sympathetic but encouraging smile. Manan walks to the kitchen, returning with three regular glasses and a bottle of store-brand sparkling wine. “To 2010! To health, wealth, and happiness!” he says, filling each glass to a frothy brim.
Neha shushes him, motioning toward the child.
“Sorry,” Manan mouths to Babur.
Babur shrugs at his friend, indicating no harm done. Anjali slumbers on, oblivious to the new decade. The adults clink their drinks.
Babur knocks his glass back, uncharacteristically, intending to gulp it in one go. He stops midway, coughing from the carbonation.
“Whoa, boss,” Manan cautions. “Take it easy.”
Yet that is exactly what Babur is prepared not to do. This year, with this responsibility of raising another human by himself, he needs to get things right.
Purnima’s departure is both expected, in that Babur was aware she wasn’t well and wasn’t improving, and unexpected, in that he didn’t believe she would or could actually leave. Through it all, his friends Neha and Manan have been nothing short of remarkable. Anjali’s school is on winter break, and Neha, without any fuss or acknowledgment of impact on her dissertation-writing schedule, has been watching Anjali while Babur is at work, and Manan drops in each evening with groceries or pizza and open ears.
This level of reliance, however, cannot be permanent.
Earlier that day, the initial shock and panic of being left having intermittently subsided, Babur drove to Walgreen’s. He purchased a black day planner, a calendar featuring US national parks, and a whiteboard.
The way to survive, he postulated, is to plan. He hasn’t worked out every detail, but he wants to routinize their lives, his and Anjali’s, diarize everything, and eliminate, to the greatest extent possible, the spontaneous.
Meals, for example, the kitchen being Purnima’s former realm, in line with arguably anachronistic cultural norms, will be rotated. He will establish a set menu according to the day of the week, with Fridays reserved for pizza, and leftovers, their lunch. In this way, Babur has to learn to cook only a half dozen or so dishes and can standardize a weekly shopping list. After school is trickier. There is no way Babur can reach home in time for Anjali’s 4:00 p.m. arrival. He either has to find a babysitter, which is expensive, or enroll her in day care, also expensive and with rigid pickup times that are impossible in traffic.
Babur drains the last of his glass, a bitter aftertaste lingering, and shares his vision of “high-efficiency living” with his friends.
“That’s brilliant, bhai,” Manan says of the meal rotation. “I hope you make enough for guests, because I’m dropping by if the food’s any good!”
When Babur describes his childcare quandary, Neha says, “Did you check the community center? They have after-school activities and it’s next to her elementary school. I hear it’s cheap, too.”
Babur makes a mental note that he later records in the “to-do” section of his planner.
“More?” Manan lifts up the half-full wine bottle.
“Oh, please no.” Babur holds up a hand in mock protest. “This was truly horrible.”
“Made in Yonkers,” muses Manan. “And only six bucks.”
Babur chuckles, appreciating Manan’s inability to pass up a deal. It is a short but genuine laugh, his first all week.
A few days later, Babur stops at the Kitchewan Community Center. He discovers he is late to enroll Anjali in almost everything, like a popular karate class, taught by an actual Japanese master, he is told, who, incidentally, also owns a hibachi restaurant in town. Apparently, community center activities are a life hack already familiar to a number of working parents.
Through polite persistence and indifference to appearing pathetic, Babur manages to elicit from the disengaged woman behind the counter that there’s an opening in a weekly swimming class.
“I’ll take it,” he says at once, ignoring his personal terror of water deeper than his calves. “I’ll take it,” he repeats.
“All right, what day?” says the woman behind the counter, not looking up from her computer screen. “I have Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons.”
Babur pauses for a moment, the image of his absent, disaffected wife looming in his mind like a taunt. “All of them. I’ll sign up for all of them,” he says.
The woman looks up from her computer at Babur. “Mister, you want to sign your kid up for the same exact class three times a week?”
“Yes. She won’t mind.”
“Does she really like swimming or something?”
“She will, I think. She hasn’t tried before.”
“Okay.” The woman shrugs.
Babur slips her a handwritten enrollment form completed in careful block letters.
His daughter, he thinks, will be different than him.
Where on earth is Chiara? This is the question plaguing Desiree Matthews on Monday morning as her bus, the royal-blue Kitchewan Circulator, lurches up to the parking lot of Hudson Memorial. Desiree, or Didi to most who know her, is racking her brain for clues or answers—something to make sense of her cousin’s disappearance—and nearly trips over her own shoelace while stepping off the bus. The almost-fall catapults her back to her physical here and now. “Shit,” she blurts, louder than she means to, grabbing hold of the bus’s royal-blue handrail.
“Watch your step, hon,” the bus driver says in a raspy smoker’s voice.
Didi forces a quick smile at the driver to confirm she’s okay, but it ends up coming out as more of a grimace when she realizes that’s the first word she’s said out loud today.
Outside, in the hospital parking lot, it’s warm but not hot, with the peak of summer already in decline. There’s a freshness in the air. The sky is palette-perfect blue with wisps of clouds. Birds chirp. The grass around the perimeter of the parking lot is green and dewy. All evidence of the weekend’s hammering of heavy rains and gusty winds from Tropical Storm Felicity looks erased. The calm after the storm. Everything is in order. Only nothing is.
Chiara’s missing. Officially, she’s been missing since last Wednesday. That’s five days, and the whole situation—her disappearance, a stabbing, the police investigation, their questions and implied accusations, not to mention the panicked calls from Philly—keeps getting muddier, and the worry lines on Didi’s forehead keep getting deeper. She didn’t think things like this happened in Kitchewan.
When she was younger, even as recently as before she moved here two years ago, she never imagined she’d be living and working in a town like this. A manicured-to-the-hilt riverside suburb where electric-car-charging stations outnumber public transport options, where even the hospital cafeteria sells organic apples, where municipal offices are landscaped with imported Japanese trees, where the police are most commonly seen assisting with pedestrian crossings rather than in hot pursuit. A white people’s enclave. She’s less than a hundred miles from Philly, but in a different universe entirely. Student Nurse Matthews, with her relaxed black hair, ochre-brown skin, and hefty scholarship to nursing school, reporting for duty—meant to be here, but not really.
Didi crouches down in the parking lot and lifts up the leg of her periwinkle scrubs. She double-ties the stray laces and takes a deep breath. It doesn’t feel right to be at the hospital today. Not with Chiara still missing.
Chiara Thompkins, known in the family as simply Kiki, is Didi’s baby cousin, eight years her junior, and her Aunty Maureen’s youngest. She’d been living, as far as Didi knew, in North Philadelphia, like most of the extended family. And then, last July, a little over a year ago, she showed up in Kitchewan with little warning or explanation. Just a text to Didi from an unfamiliar 610 number saying she needed “a short break” and was on a Greyhound arriving in White Plains in two and a half hours. She asked if she could crash with Didi for a few days, and Didi agreed on the spot, setting Kiki up with a makeshift bed on the lumpy beige couch in the condo she rented with a roommate named Lucinda, a pharmacology student whom she’d found on an online message board through school. Didi didn’t bother to check with Lucinda before taking Chiara in, reasoning that Lucinda hadn’t bothered to check with her before turning their garage into a marijuana nursery.
At the time, Didi assumed Chiara and her mother had gotten into an argument, the trivial but tempestuous kind she and her own mother would get into when she was in high school, and that it would soon blow over. She was also aware from her mother that Aunty Mo had been particularly testy ever since a diabetes flare-up and resulting knee problems put her on indefinite disability from work.
Besides, Didi has always had a soft spot for Chiara. She’s the youngest among her cousins and she seemed to have been left to fend for herself, even as a child, her aunt more focused on catching and keeping a man than on raising her fifth-born. Didi remembers going over to her Aunty Mo’s house in her youth and finding a younger Chiara, hair unkempt, clothes mismatched, playing some version of patty-cake against a yellowing living room wall, or balancing on a stool to heat a saucepan of canned beans on the stove. “She’s fine like that,” Tenesha, Chiara’s older sister and Didi’s cousin and age mate, would say, noticing Didi’s concern. “She doesn’t need babying.”
In fact, when Didi initially called her aunty to let her know Chiara was with her, that she was safe, that she could stay with her for a while if her aunt didn’t mind, her aunt’s response was surprisingly cool. “Go ahead,” she’d said, “if you can manage her. That girl’s a handful these days. She acts out, talks back, and is real sour all the time. She knows I’m not myself with my knee and all those meds the doctors have me on. But still, she’s not even trying to behave in front of your uncle Roderick.” Didi had wanted to interject that Roderick, Aunty Mo’s most recent husband, was no relation to her. “Send her on home when you get tired”—a pause—“’cause you will get tired.”
Only Didi didn’t. She hadn’t been aware of how lonely she’d felt before her cousin arrived. She kept long hours between her nursing-school classes and shifts at the hospital; she hadn’t made an effort to make friends in New York, keeping to herself at school and on shift; and her dating life was nonexistent. It was nice coming home to Chiara: making one-pot dinners from recipes that her cousin would clip from months-old housekeeping magazines Didi brought home from hospital waiting rooms, or sprawling on the couch, Chiara’s makeshift bed, and watching cringe-worthy but binge-worthy episodes of something pretending to be reality on Bravo. They argued, to be sure, but over inconsequential things, like how Chiara didn’t wash her dirty dishes; or how she didn’t ask Didi before borrowing her favorite sweater; how she had a habit of falling asleep with the lights on and running up their electricity bill; and most often, how Chiara would accuse Didi of playing favorites when Didi would try to mediate spats between Chiara and Lucinda about who was eating whose groceries or who was hogging the TV remote. In the beginning, Didi asked about Philly fairly often, but she’d noticed her cousin’s frame would tense up and her bottom lip would quiver, so she’d stopped. Besides, she liked having Chiara in Kitchewan, and Chiara seemed to like being there.
In fact, last August, a month into Chiara’s stay, Didi had nonchalantly suggested that her cousin enroll in Kitchewan High, depositing paperwork she’d printed out from the school district website for her cousin to fill in. Didi’s deliberate casualness was her way of telling her fiercely proud cousin that she could stay with her for as long as she liked without telling her. Chiara had responded in kind: shrugging in the moment but filling in the forms that very evening.
Things had been going well up until two and a half weeks ago, when Didi had come home from work to Lucinda screaming. When she’d walked in, Lucinda was calling Chiara a dirty, mortherf’ing liar and a thief. “She’s been swiping my dope,” she’d told Didi. Before she could censor herself, Didi said, “Kiki, did you accidentally . . . borrow some of Lucinda’s stuff?” Her words seemed to have stoked a bonfire within Lucinda. “It wasn’t an accident, Desiree. She’s a freeloader and a thief!” Didi had tried to intervene, but things escalated quickly. “She needs to get out of this house! I need her out of this damn house! Get out!” Lucinda had shrieked, then flung Kiki’s backpack out the door. Kiki grabbed an armful of her belongings and ran out, snatching her backpack as she headed down the street. When Didi chased after her, she pushed Didi off, telling her to go away. Didi knew from Kiki’s childhood that she needed space when she got upset, so she’d let her go, figuring she’d come back, then they’d talk and sort things out. But she didn’t come back. And Didi had called what felt like a thousand times. She’d also sent volumes of texts to make sure she was okay. She’d gotten some delayed responses from Chiara as recently as a week ago. She confirmed she was fine but shared little else. Didi guessed the delay was her cousin’s not-so-subtle way of letting her know she blamed Didi for not standing up for her with Lucinda, for possibly even siding with Lucinda, which Didi hadn’t. But she could see how to Chiara, it might look that way.
When she’d first left, Didi hadn’t worried. Not too much, anyway. Chiara had a habit of giving the silent treatment, and it hadn’t been unusual for her to stay away from her mother’s house for a few nights in a pointed sulk when she felt offended, or hurt, or embarrassed. In this case, Didi had no doubt she was all three. But when a couple of days turned into a week, and a week turned into two, she’d grown concerned. When this happened in Philly, Chiara had relatives (like Didi’s parents) to stay with, and people in the neighborhood who would report back her whereabouts to Aunty Mo. Here, they don’t have any family, apart from each other; Didi has yet to meet any of Chiara’s friends from school, and she doesn’t know her neighbors from a bar of soap. What’s more, as of five days ago, Chiara’s cell phone has been turned off, and the police are involved and talking about a stabbing. Things seem different, serious. Chiara’s never been caught up in anything serious before.
Didi walks across the parking lot toward the double glass doors at the main entrance to the hospital. She pauses to scan her reflection before opening the door. Looks have hardly been on her mind these past few days. In fact, she got dressed in the dark this morning, since the power on her street hasn’t come back on after the storm, and although it was after sunrise, her bedroom and the bathroom receive little natural light. But she has to keep up appearances; she doesn’t need people at the hospital knowing her business. She smooths down her frizzing hair and wipes at her shiny makeup-less cheek.
The hospital hallway is chilled and fluorescent. The smell of antiseptic assaults Didi’s nose and empty stomach like a sucker punch and triggers the closed loop of questions that have been playing in her head: Is this her fault? Could she have stopped Lucinda from throwing Chiara out? Should she have quietly paid Lucinda for the weed she claimed Chiara stole from her? Would she still be missing? Did Chiara stab that white boy like the police are saying? How can they know until they find her? When will they find her? Would this have happened if she was still living with Didi and Lucinda? Is this her fault?
Didi walks to the elevator bank and presses the button. She waits, stealing a glance at her watch. She’s nearly half an hour late, which would normally drive her into a frenzy. But today, she’s too dazed. Going through the motions but not there.
When the door to the center elevator opens, Didi walks straight toward—and into—the chest of a rounded middle-aged white man in brown slacks and a short-sleeved button-down shirt.
“I’m so sorry,” Didi begins with a start. She’s caught off guard by the run-in and the hoarseness of her voice.
“Desiree Matthews?” the man says, startled. “What are—”
“Detective,” she interrupts, “are you looking for me?” Her throat constricts and the knots in her stomach tighten. The detective is one of the two police officers checking in with Didi about Chiara. One is called Rhodes and the other Bridges. She remembers that when they told her their names, they paused, as if expecting a chuckle. Maybe she’d have played along under different circumstances.
The detective says, “I—uh—no. You, uh, work here, Miss Matthews? I thought you were a student.” He squints, and Didi notices his skin is ruddy and there are beads of perspiration on his forehead, dotting his receding hairline. He swipes at them with the back of his hand.
She stiffens. She’s tired of talking to the police. She’s lost count of how many times they’ve called and showed up at her condo. Nothing they’ve been asking makes any sense—or is useful in helping to find Chiara. They also don’t ask her anything straight, like they’re hiding what they’re after, and in return assume she’s hiding something, too. Right now, for instance, the detective is looking at her with his eyes scrunched up as if he’s catching her in a lie. She purses her lips into a tight smile and says, “I’m a nursing student at Milbank,” referring to the local nursing school, and motioning to her scrubs. “I do my practical training here.”
Rhodes and Bridges first appeared at her front door uninvited and unexpected five days ago. At that point, Didi hadn’t seen Chiara since her argument with Lucinda over two weeks earlier, and heard from her only in sporadic texts. At the door, Lucinda had thrown Didi a glare like a dagger and muttered, “Don’t let them in,” her eyes darting to the weed nursery in the garage. Then, more loudly, for the apparent benefit of the police, Lucinda announced over her shoulder, “I told them she doesn’t live here,” and walked away.
The officers explained they were looking for a Chiara Thompkins, did she know where they could find her? Didi had tried her best to convey neutrality and conceal her distrust, answering that Chiara Thompkins was her cousin and she used to live there temporarily. “We need to get in touch with Chiara Thompkins,” one of them said firmly. “Let’s speak at the station.”
At the station, during her voluntary-but-not-quite conversation with the police, Didi provided Chiara’s cell and her aunty’s landline in Philly. She added, only because she felt she had to, “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Chiara . . .” She didn’t tell them her aunty’s phone is unplugged more often than it’s not. Let them figure that out.She reminded them they still hadn’t told her what this was about. They answered by asking about Chiara’s mental state and her “history of violence.” “What exactly are you trying to ask?” she had responded with an edge in her voice. But they spoke in circles and half-formed thoughts, like they were sussing out how much—and in this case, how little—Didi knew. Eventually, they told her Chiara was a suspect in the stabbing of a high school student, a boy. A white boy, from what Didi gathered, and also assumed given it’s Kitchewan. They rushed to explain that they came by because Didi’s home address is the one on file as Chiara’s address with the high school.
“Chiara didn’t stab anybody. That’s not possible,” Didi had told them. Because it wasn’t. Kiki has her flaws—moody in the mornings; messy even though being neat had been a condition of her staying on Didi and Lucinda’s couch for the “few days” that bled into a year; in denial about being afraid of the dark; potentially dumb enough to swipe and sell crazy Lucinda’s weed, even though Didi had warned her not to touch Lucinda’s shit. But she’s not violent.
“We have a statement from the boy who was stabbed, and there’s another eyewitness,” one of the policemen had countered.
“This is a mistake. Maybe”—she paused for a breath to calm herself before she continued—“you’re confusing her with someone else.”
“That’s unlikely. We have a description.” If they’re going to make me say it, I will.
“Well, what’s the description? That she’s Black?” She hadn’t raised her voice—much—but her eyes shone with anger.
“Miss Matthews, there’s no need to get heated, or to imply things that”—a pause—“aren’t there.” And that’s how they do it. That’s how they tell you you’re the unreasonable one.
That was last week on Wednesday.
Since then, the police had come to see her in person two more times and called her a handful of others, asking a series of random questions about when Chiara came to Kitchewan, when she enrolled in school, how she enrolled. To Didi, they were fishing.
In the doorframe of the elevator, the detective opens his mouth like he’s starting to say something but then stops short.
Didi holds the door of the elevator open and asks, “Detective, what is it? Did you find Chiara?”
“The thing is, I can’t reach the mother and the father,” the detective says.
“Stepfather,” Didi corrects.
“Right.”
There’s an elderly white couple waiting for the elevator, so Didi and the detective step away from it and into the hospital lobby.
“We have something I’d like to, uh, discuss about your cousin.”
Impatience flashes across Didi’s face. This sounds no different than when she’d spoken to the detective and his partner before. They ask to discuss something and then pepper her with indirect questions brimming with alternate meaning, providing only cryptic responses to any of her questions. Before she can edit herself, Didi crosses her arms and says, “Is it about the investigation? I saw the article in the newspaper the other day. It’s not fair what they’re saying about Chiara. She wasn’t a menace. She didn’t have behavioral problems at school. And why is everyone asking about how she got into Kitchewan High? It’s a public school. Those two boys are making a fool of you, of everyone—”
“Miss Matthews, it’s—it’s not that.”
Didi stares at the detective and feels a shiver course down her back, whether from the air-conditioning or the detective’s uncharacteristically subdued tone. She lifts her eyebrows in anticipation.
The detective clears his throat and lowers his voice. “You see, Miss Matthews, I think we, uh, found her. Only thing is, we need some help . . .”
Didi’s eyes widen and she scans the detective’s face for more, but he deliberately avoids her gaze and doesn’t complete his thought.
Before she can say anything, he says, “Can we?” and indicates the stairs.
Didi nods absently. She follows him, but as she moves, her insides contract as if in warning.
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