She passes by Jimmy Levine’s house. The kid who used to taunt Julia and Toni on their way to school.
“Didn’t you hear what I said, white trash, your mama’s a hooker and I bet you little bitches will do the same.”
Even though his words stung, Julia knew Jimmy Levine was as poor as they were and that his mother was out on the corner of Northcote and Seawell every night of the week, so Julia never said a thing back.
Up ahead, at the end of the street, is her old house. The last one she lived in with Toni and her mother. Their mother was addicted to fresh starts so there had been many other houses before this one. But the rundown Craftsman bungalow was their longest spell in one place.
She angles her car into a parallel parking spot and sits at the wheel, looking. The white picket fence surrounding the front yard has half its pickets missing. The little gate is off its hinges and hangs askew. Tall grass left to grow wild is littered with junk. Car tires. A rusty tricycle. A sagging trampoline. The house itself hasn’t changed much considering over twenty years has passed. The paint on the gables is still peeling. The shingles under the roof are still rotting. But the place looks different, diminished somehow, sadder, as if Julia had built it up in her mind to be something it wasn’t.
One of the front windows is boarded up with cardboard, the room she had shared with Toni, and for a moment Julia wonders if the place has been abandoned. Then a burst of laughter followed by a cry carries from the house out on to the street.
Julia gets out of the car. Walks the cracked concrete path up to the porch, sidestepping two overflowing trash bags and a dirty diaper, spread open and buzzing with flies. She reaches the front door. Hesitates. What the heck is she doing? She turns around, ready to retreat, but changes her mind and knocks firmly. She waits there for a long time.
The door is finally wrenched open by a woman barely out of her teens, drugstore blonde, jumbo hoop earrings, sticky-faced toddler perched on her hip.
“Hi,” says Julia.
The woman’s eyes narrow. “You with the repo men? I told them on the phone that I just missed the one payment on the washing machine and I plan to make that up next week.”
Julia shakes her head. “Oh, no. I’m not with any repossession agency. I used to live here.”
The woman looks Julia up and down. “You?”
Julia nods. “With my mother and sister.”
The child screeches and tugs on his mother’s left earring. Somewhere in a back room a baby screams then goes silent.
Julia pauses. “I was wondering if I could come in and take a look around.”
The woman’s face darkens. “You’re social services.”
“What?” says Julia, startled. “No. I’m a doctor. In the city. I help people.”
The toddler starts to cry. Tears run down his grubby little face.
The young woman thrusts out her chin. “Just because I’m young and poor doesn’t mean I beat my kids, lady.” She holds out the crying toddler. “He look beat up to you? See any black eyes on his face?”
Julia raises her hands in apology. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to take a look around. For old times’ sake. I meant no harm.”
A man appears behind the woman, dirty shirt to match the dirty stare, eating a sandwich. Fish.
“The baby needs fixing, Skye, if you can’t hear it,” he says.
“I know that,” says the woman. “I got ears.”
“Well, then,” he says, staring at Julia. “Better get to it.”
The woman steps back ready to close the door but Julia blocks it with her hand. The man stops chewing. The toddler goes silent. There’s a flash of concern on the young woman’s face. Julia looks back and forth between them. But she can’t bring herself to say it. That it was there, next to the door, right where the young woman is standing with the child on her hip, that Julia’s mother had died from a single shotgun blast right to the heart.
She lets her hand fall away.
“All the best for you and your family,” she says.
Then she gets in her car and drives away.
*
That night Julia Googles Turkey. It borders countries like Syria and Iraq and Iran, but Istanbul is far from those war-torn places and situated in the northwest side of the country close to Europe. Julia hasn’t done much traveling. She’s been too busy studying and building a career. Besides, as Leo had reminded her many times before, “doing fun” isn’t exactly her strong suit.
She logs on to her email and finds Toni’s last message, sent from some place in South Korea six months ago. There’s a selfie attached. Toni sitting atop a military tank in a park wearing flip-flops, a toe ring, and harem pants, most probably bought in some Southeast Asian market. Toni is grinning like an idiot. Korean locals stare up at her as they pass, this neo-punk chick with a septum piercing and crazy fuchsia hair, which she had, at that point in time, shaved along one side but left to grow long on the other.
Julia stares at the photograph and feels a lump in her throat. Toni, you idiot.
She hits reply to the ancient email and types, “People are worried. Let someone know where you are.”
After that, Julia goes on YouTube and finds a clip about Cheap Eats in Istanbul and falls asleep watching it.
6
At 3:03 a.m. the phone rings. Bishop’s claws dig through the covers into Julia’s thigh. It’s John Miller, the embassy advisor.
“She turned up, didn’t she?” sighs Julia, switching on the bedside light. “I’m so sorry she wasted your time.”
He pauses. “Do you have someone
