That night in the hotel room, as we readied for bed, I found myself studying Chika, thinking the worst: What if something goes wrong? What if this is the last night we can speak to her? Dr. Souweidane was clear: one misplacement of the catheter, and the girl we knew could be gone.

  “Mister Mitch, why are you looking at me?” Chika finally asked. I couldn’t say the truth: that I was trying to memorize her. That I was thinking we’d been blessed with the best possible child under the worst possible circumstances.

  Instead, I shrugged and mumbled, “Sorry.”

  She shook her head with her lips pursed, as if tasting those invisible lemons.

  “It’s OK,” she decided. “You can look.”

  The next morning, Chika was wheeled into an operating room with the sun barely visible in the New York sky. Janine and I found chairs in the waiting area and passed the time with lukewarm coffee and half-eaten snacks. We read. We checked our watches. We got up and walked around. The CED process was like planning a space voyage. Hours were spent with computer models to set the catheter’s path to the brain. Precision was critical. There was no hurrying.

  Finally, in the early afternoon, Dr. Souweidane emerged, relieved to report that so far it had gone smoothly. We were able to see Chika, who was sleeping in a rolling bed, a large patch of her hair shaved off above her forehead. A tube was sticking out of her cranium, bolted in place. We were told it would stay in for up to twelve hours while an antibody with radioactive iodine was slowly dripped through it, directly into the tumor.

  Given the potency of that agent, if we wanted to spend the night with Chika, they said, we would have to sleep behind a half wall lined with lead, to protect ourselves from radiation. We also had to wear small devices to monitor our exposure. We were warned not to get too close to her, and never for more than a few seconds. It felt like we were in a nuclear plant and Chika had gone radioactive.

  Although they encouraged us to sleep somewhere else, neither Janine nor I wanted to leave Chika on her own. She fights; we fight. So we slumped into the chairs behind the leaded walls and promised to tell each other if we started glowing. The night fell, and it lasted a long time.

  Four

  Courtesy of the author

  Bedtime at our orphanage is just after evening devotion. The children disperse and drag to their rooms. The youngest ones, weary from the day’s heat, are often asleep in the arms of the nannies. The older ones wander in circles, using any excuse to stay outside. There is little else to do. No television. No computers. No phones. When the city power goes out, which it does every night, we dwell in complete darkness until someone revs up the generator.

  I go from room to room and tell bedtime stories to each group, tales of princesses and unicorns for the younger children, tales of high schoolers with superpowers for the older ones. Afterward, I kiss each of them good night. Now and then, if the little girls ask for one, I will sing a song, and they grow quiet and attentive, an audience on their tummies. I read somewhere that the first music ever made might have been a lullaby. Anyhow, it helps them sleep.

  When Chika came to America, I asked if she wanted a lullaby before lights-out. She said OK, so I sang her one, and I repeated it the next night and the next. It became our little routine, my sitting on her bed just before she nodded off, stroking her head while singing the melody to “Brahms’ Lullaby.” I made up these lyrics:

  Lullaby and good night

  Go to sleep now, little Chika

  Lullaby and good night

  Off to beddy-bye you go

  Lullaby and good night

  Go to sleep now, my darling

  Lullaby and good night

  Off to dreamland you go.

  I doubted she was listening to the words. She would fall asleep, and that was good enough. But months later, Janine and I had to go out of town, and Chika stayed with friends of ours named Jeff and Patty. Late that night, I got a video message.

  “Chika wanted to say something to you,” Patty wrote.

  In a darkened bedroom, Chika, in her nightgown, looked into the lens and began to sing:

  “Lullaby and good night

  Go to sleep now, my darling

  Lullaby and good night

  Go to sleep like we do!”

  Then she added, “Good night, Mister Mitch!” and blew a kiss.

  To this day, I cry when I watch that.

  Me

  I should tell you where my notions of fatherhood come from, Chika.

  My father was a good man. He lived to be eighty-eight. You met him once, when he was gray and stooped and confined to a wheelchair. But when he was younger, he looked a good deal like I do now, although his whiskers were thicker and he combed his hair back in the style of the day.

  His name was Ira, and he grew up in Brooklyn, a middle child, like me, between a sister and a brother. His father, my grandfather, was a Polish immigrant, a plumber, who taught his son to work with his hands only until he could work with his mind. My father went from high school to college to the air force to an accountant job. He was not one to wander.

  My grandfather was quiet, and my father would follow suit, and we, his children—my brother, sister, and me—grew up expecting the words that came from his mouth to matter. I can never recall the man going on about anything. He said what he had to say and was done with it. He had a deep, baritone voice (he once dreamed of being an opera singer), which made even his simple remarks sound serious. He was serious most of the time.

  My father was an early riser, fond of coffee and big band music and reading the newspaper, a patient, industrious, and impeccably groomed man. His suits were always pressed and his shirts were always tucked in, even on weekends. He made us scrambled eggs with salami, which we loved, and albacore tuna salad, which he mashed so diligently, it was as spreadable as butter. He never sought attention. He had no hobbies that took him away from us. No golf. No card games. He embraced the value system passed down to him, that a man provides for his family and his contentment is found in that.

  But there was, beneath his efficiencies, a warm, protective aura, a soul upon whom others could rely. When my mother’s father died of a heart attack—she was sixteen at the time—it was my father, only seventeen, who stepped in and took control of the household. Although they’d been dating less than a year, he cooked breakfast for my mother’s family, did chores in the afternoons, and became a dad to her young brother. That’s a lot of responsibility for someone still in high school, but if you knew my father, you would say it suited him. He was, from my earliest memories, the person others came to, for advice, or aid, or money. He did not flinch from these requests, but as the years passed I wondered if he ever missed not having a carefree, youthful stage. Sometimes life throws a saddle on you before you are ready to run. In any case, he never complained.

  I always felt safe around my father. I have a memory of swimming with him in a local lake when I was maybe six years old. We would go there on hot summer days, many families did, and I was paddling away to explore, the way children do.

  “Don’t go too far now,” my father said, but I kept going until it felt like I’d reached foreign waters. Suddenly, some older boys who were horsing around pointed at me and yelled, “Let’s get him!” I don’t know what motivated them, or how serious they were, but I remember feeling terrified, acutely aware of the distance I had drifted from my dad. I swam as I had never swum before, splashing wildly, gulping water, certain those older boys were going to grab my legs and pull me to some hidden underwater prison. As I reached my father, I hurled my arms around his midsection, gasping for air. When I peeked out, the boys had gone.

  My dad barely moved. He never asked what happened. But to this day, I can still feel his waist in my wet grip, and the comfort it gave me. For many years, that was my perception of fatherhood, a place where a child can find sanctuary. Perhaps this is why I took over the orphanage. Perhaps I’ve grown into my father that way.

  As I said, you met him once, Chika, when we took a trip to his small, one-story home in California. Remember? This was less than a year after my mother died, and he was diminished by her death more than I can explain, even beyond the strokes that robbed him of walking and clear speech. They had been married sixty-four years; he was heartbroken without her. I’d hoped that meeting you might lift his spirits.

  When we arrived, I said, “Chika, this is my daddy,” and you were hesitant, perhaps surprised that I had one. But you hugged him and called him “Pop Pop.” He noticed your flowered headband and said, weakly, “That’s very pretty.”

  Later, you sat on a couch across the room and joked with his nurses. You were being silly and noisy and he turned to me and said, “She’s very loud, no?” I tried to remind him of your backstory, your medical challenges, all the treatments we were trying. I’d shared this many times with him over the phone, but I never knew what he remembered. In the old days, my father always responded thoughtfully. Near the end, he mostly shrugged. Age is such a thief.

  As we watched you joking around, I mentioned that you’d been here six months already.

  “I had no idea how much effort this took,” I said.

  He coughed and straightened in his wheelchair. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. Then, in a thin voice, he said, “That’s what having kids is.”

  When my father died, Chika, I felt rudderless in this world, with a deep, anguished yearning for a comfort no longer there. I missed him more than I even imagined I would, and my brother and sister told me the same thing. He was a man more appreciated once he was gone, no longer doing all those things you took for granted.

  They say as you age you become more and more like your parents. And perhaps that is true. If so, if I ever offered you security the way my dad offered it to me, then I am glad. I know I tried. I remember times when you and I were walking and, without prompting, you reached out and took my hand, your little fingers sliding into mine. I would like to tell you how that felt, but it is too big for words.

  I can only say that it made me feel like a father, and nearly all of what I learned about that role, I learned from the man who raised me, and the rest I learned from you. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the day we buried him was the day you came back to me. I think about that a lot.

  * * *

  By the way, I mentioned those headbands. You had many of them. Pastels, polka dots, each with a large flower clip, which we positioned over the left side of your forehead to cover the bald spot where the doctors had shaved you. You discovered that bald spot quite accidentally, the day after your CED procedure at Sloan Kettering.

  Dr. Souweidane told us things had gone well. The radioactive agent had distributed widely into the tumor. Now we just had to wait for its effect. Miss Janine and I were collapsed in the hospital chairs. You needed to use the bathroom. Miss Janine rose slowly and guided you in, still half-asleep.

  Suddenly, I heard a scream.

  “HEY! What happened to my HAIR?”

  We’d forgotten about the mirror.

  “HEY!” you kept yelling, “HEY, GUYS!”

  You weren’t angry as much as bemused. You rubbed your scalp and said it felt funny. We gave you a wool cap and you liked that just fine and you wore it with your hospital pajamas until we found those flowered headbands, which you liked even more. For the next few months, that was your look whenever we went out. You wore one, two, or three flowers on that headband, along with frilly tops, colorful tights, a furry coat, and flashing shoes. No one even knew about the bald patch. Such a dazzling little package you were.

  Us

  It is two months before I see Chika again. I sort through photographs. I watch videos. But the mornings come and go and there are no visits, just digital reminders of her face and voice.

  As I write more pages, I consider the obvious: that her appearances are purely my imagination. But if that is true, why can’t I summon her at will? When I try, it’s as fruitless as summoning a dream.

  October passes. November nears an end. Thanksgiving arrives, a three-day tradition in our family, and on Thursday morning, several of my cousins knock on the front door early, ready to begin preparing the food. Still in my bedclothes, I let them in, then head down to my office for the last moments of privacy before our house is packed.

  I put away some papers. I close down the computer.

  “Where are you going, Mister Mitch?”

  Chika is leaning against the bookcase, in a long pink sleeping shirt, blue tights, and rabbit slippers. Her knees are pulled up and wrapped by her arms.

  Good morning, beautiful girl.

  “Where are you going?”

  No good morning?

  “Good morning, Mister Mitch.”

  I was going upstairs.

  “Why?”

  Because there are people up there. And more coming. It’s Thanksgiving.

  “When you eat orange potatoes?”

  Sweet potatoes. Yes.

  She thinks for a moment.

  “We can hide.”

  From the family?

  “Yeah.”

  But I like them.

  “You can hide from people you like.”

  Why would you do that?

  “So they can find you!” Her little mouth falls open and her eyes go wide in disbelief. “Don’t you want people to FIND YOU?”

  I laugh, because her tone is so familiar. When she was alive, Chika was often aghast if you didn’t follow her logic. I remember one morning when she sat at my desk, drawing doodles and singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Suddenly, she stopped and banged the paper.

  “Now you sing it,” she insisted.

  Me?

  “Yeah. You sing it.”

  How do the words go?

  She exhaled hard, then made the same face she’s making now, pure childish exasperation. “You don’t watch MARY POPPINS BEFORE?” she screamed. “Are you CRAZY?”

  Sorry, I said, hiding a laugh.

  “You just have to watch it again,” she mumbled, returning to her drawing. “No problem.”

  That wasn’t anger, by the way, more like experiencing life at such full intensity, she couldn’t help but holler. At moments like those, I felt as if I were hanging onto Chika’s magic carpet, with no idea where her mind was flying.

  “You can hide with me here,” she says now, pulling her knees closer. “We could get under a blanket.”

  Then what?

  “Then they come look for you. And when they say, ‘Where is Mister Mitch?’ you jump out and say, ‘Here I am!’ And they say, ‘Oh. Look. It’s him!’”

  Will they see you, too?

  She smacks her lips. “No, no, no. They don’t see me.”

  How come?

  She doesn’t answer.

  Instead she says, “I’m going to Haiti.” She pulls a blanket from the couch, drapes it over her head, and vanishes.

  After six months in America, we take Chika home for Christmas. The holiday is a big deal at the mission, laden with traditions: a Nativity play; stockings hung in the dormitory; a once-a-year meal of goat, fried plantains and pikliz, a spicy pickled cabbage dish.

  She is giddy with excitement. The night before, she crawls on the bed and tickles me until I beg her to stop. Then she asks what’s going to happen, step by step.

  As I go through it, her eyes drift away. She doesn’t look like she did when she left Haiti. She’s lost hair. She’s lost teeth. The operations. The steroids. I ask if she is scared to be going back.

  “A little scared,” she says, making a small space between two fingers. “I’m crying happy tears.”

  She has never used that phrase before. Happy tears. I wonder where she gets such insight.

  The next morning, for the big day, she wears white tights and sneakers, with a lime-green hoodie over a sleeveless top. We board the plane and she glues to the window. Many of the passengers are Haitian, and she occasionally spins and says, “Hey. They are talking like me!”

  As soon as we land in Port-au-Prince, she runs up the jetway, all but leaving me behind. The airport band starts playing, banjo, accordion, guitar, bongo drums, and she dances in the hallway, shaking and twirling in a way that proves she is home, because only home could liberate such joy.

  Alain meets us in baggage claim. We load in his vehicle, and Chika hides behind his seat as we drive through the mission gates. The kids have been informed of her return and they are chanting “Chika! Chika!” as we pull in. Alain looks back in amazement and says, “Do you hear this?”

  “Don’t look at me, Mister Alain!” she squeals. “Look at something else!”

  When the car door opens, there is a massive rush and the nannies are shouting and the little kids are jumping and there are so many hands around her, lifting her up, as her face is smacked with kisses. When they finally put her down, she wiggles her little black shoes in the dirt. Then she pulls off the hoodie and runs to the swing set, jumps on a swing, and pushes herself higher, as the other kids gather and watch. If I could freeze any moment and give it to her as a gift, it might be this one, flying over the happy expressions of her brothers and sisters as they marvel at her return. I rub my eyes. Happy tears.

  You

  There’s a support beam in our kitchen that runs floor to ceiling. At some point we decided to make it the family growth chart. We measured our nieces’ and nephews’ heights on their birthdays, then scribbled the year in pencil.

  When you first arrived, Chika, we lined you up, too, and drew a mark where the top of your head met the plaster. We let you write CHIKA. And every few months, you wanted a new measurement. Your pencil marks remain to this day.

  A child is like a little ball of time unfurling. But your time advanced on two levels, for as you grew, your Invader could grow, too, which made the passing months our friend and our enemy. You got taller. Your hair filled out. You lost baby teeth and collected monies from the Tooth Fairy. You learned capital letters and small letters. Your English improved greatly. If I spoke to you in Creole, you would roll your eyes and say, “Mister Mitch, we are in America now.”