Shard of Glass | Page 8

this island, I had learned, some much
older than others. Sometimes they noticed me, and sometimes they
seemed oblivious--but I never told anyone what I learned from them. I
felt like a voyeur whenever I looked through the glass; I was spying on

the innermost thoughts of people long dead.
The shard's beveled surface drank in even today's bright noon sun,
remaining opaque until I held it in front of my eyes. Down below me,
on one of the algae-slicked rocks, I saw a woman, her belly swollen
with pregnancy, laughing as her little son struggled to catch the crabs
that were scuttling away from him.
"Don't run so fast," she said. "You might slip and hurt yourself."
Surprise nearly made me put down the glass. I knew that voice. When I
looked closer, I recognized her face, too, although terror had done
much to hide her natural beauty. I began to push forward, struggling
through the strange sand that separated us. It was easier this time than it
had been in the cave, but I didn't stop to wonder why. I pushed until it
seemed I was sitting next to her, even though I was still vaguely aware
of my body perched on the wall.
She turned to me. "Hello," she said. "I've never had someone visit
before."
Somehow I had expected more venom. "You don't recognize me?" I
asked.
She looked at me more closely and then shook her head. "No, should
I?"
Of course she didn't recognize me, I realized. This was a different
memory.
"Do you know how you're going to die?" I asked.
She looked sad. "I'm dead, then? I thought I might be, but it's so happy
here. . . ." She looked away. "My son," she said quietly, "is he . . .
also. . ."
I put a phantom hand over hers and felt a jolt. "Not here," I said, "not
for you."

She turned to smile at me, but as she did so her image wavered and I
felt a sickening lurch. Suddenly, I was back in the sand again, but I had
no orientation--where was that woman's memory? Where was the glass?
I felt as though the sand was sucking me in one direction, and so I
struggled the other way. Then, before me, I saw my uncle's thinning
brown hair and wide-set brown eyes, indistinct and wavering like a
television getting a bad signal. He smiled.
"What are you doing here, Leah?" he asked. His words sounded
mangled and slurred, as though they had been repeated in a game of
Telephone. "Have you mastered the glass already, then? Or are you just
lost and unlucky?"
"Leave us alone!" I said in Japanese.
Then I realized my mistake.
Koichi pulled me off the ledge and I skinned my elbow on the road. I
lay blinking uncomprehendingly at the sky for a few moments before I
realized that I had escaped.
"Leah," Koichi said, kneeling beside me, "are you all right? What were
you doing?"
"Talking to a memory," I said.
I didn't tell my mother. For months afterwards, I tried to convince
myself that he wouldn't have recognized the Japanese, that there was no
way I could have destroyed our perfect haven with a stupid slip of the
tongue.
I should have known better.
They found us five months later, on a clear evening in what passed for
autumn here. Koichi came running into the kitchen where I was helping
his mother make dinner.
"Foreigners," he said, gasping, "they came in on the ferry. Said they

were looking for a little black girl and her mother."
I dropped the knife I was using to gut a fish.
"What did you tell them, Koichi?" his mother asked.
"I told them to look on the other side of the island," he said. "They
might just go away, right?"
Sato-san and I exchanged a glance. We both knew what this meant.
"We have to leave, Koichi," I said. "Tonight we hide, and then when
it's safe, we have to take the ferry."
My mother packed our meager belongings silently. She was ready for
this, I realized as I watched her. I had relaxed and fooled myself into
believing that we could live here forever, but wariness had never
entirely left her. She had never forgotten we were fugitives. I said
goodbye to the Sato-sans and Yuki, who cried even though we told him
that we were only going on a short trip.
"Where are you going to hide?" Koichi asked, just before we left.
"The cave. The cave with my bones."
He looked down, embarrassed. "Before . . . I didn't mean that," he said
softly.
"Yes, you did," I said.
Then I kissed him.
My mother and I huddled in the cave of bones that