So instead of walking back to the train, I cock my head and listen. The only sounds I hear are faraway sirens responding to faraway emergencies. And when I look around, I see that in the shadows of the New York night, it’s easy for a girl to hide. Doorways, parked cars, stacks of boxes. There’s nothing but hiding places. It’s one of the things this city does well. It may be the thing it does best. So I turn back and take a look. That’s all, just a look.
The warehouse is on a corner of a wide, busy boulevard and a side street that’s apparently so quiet there’s not even a traffic light, just a stop sign. A dumpster sits askew against the warehouse wall, battered and listing to one side like a damaged ship about to sink. Above it is a drainpipe fastened to the wall with brackets, and above that, a window. From across the street it looks easy enough, but when I cross and look closely, I see climbing it will be next to impossible. The brackets are rusty, and the wall itself is crumbling where the screws hold the brackets in place. Then there’s the window, with no discernible way of opening it.
It would be easy to get caught, easier still to fall and break my neck. But I ignore the fear, the feeling that is fear, and in my mind flashes thirteen-year-old Bela with a gun and the brave girls who live on my bookshelf.
I climb up on top of the dumpster, give the drainpipe a little tug, then hang my full weight from it. It stays firmly against the wall. I pray to the gods of gravity, the same ones who control my fate in gymnastics, to be merciful.
The pipe itself is about the same width as the balance beam, and although it’s vertical, it all feels familiar. I hoist myself up and brace my feet against the bricks, but by the time I’m ten feet over the dumpster, I feel a little play in the brackets, as if they might give way. I get a good grip and shift my feet to the pipe itself, pinching it between my boots. Shimmying is harder than climbing the other way, but in less than thirty seconds, I’m at the window.
Holding on tightly to the pipe, I swing my feet up to the windowsill and give the pane a kick, but nothing happens. I kick again, harder this time, and my boot disappears through the glass. For a moment, I hang there as still as can be, waiting for the burglar alarm to sound, waiting for the night clerk to come running, but all I hear is the traffic on the nearby boulevard.
My breath catches in my throat. It takes more effort than I expect to kick the rest of the glass away and swing my legs inside. Shards still clinging to their positions in the frame pierce through my jeans and bite into my flesh. I cover my face with my arms when I pass the rest of my body through, protected by the thick sleeves of the army jacket. As my feet land with a crunch on the floor, I feel a trickle of something wet run from my forehead down the bridge of my nose. It’s almost perfectly dark inside, but I rub the drop between my fingers and can tell from its viscosity that it’s blood.
My hands are shaking. Come to that, so are my arms. Even my knees seem like they’re about to buckle, so I lean against the wall for a minute. Calm down, I tell myself. Toughen up. It’s just a little blood. It’s just a little fear.
But it isn’t fear; in fact, it’s the opposite of fear. It’s the nausea I felt after smoking a cigarette once in Moscow and liking it. It’s the high I felt after Terrance kissed me. It’s the buzz of stolen champagne from embassy cocktail parties. It’s all that combined, together and at once. And so much more. It’s as if something new has crawled inside me, burrowed into me, where it’s making a little nest for itself in my belly, trying on my limbs to see if they’re a good fit.
*
This new thing, whatever it is, must have decided it likes the fit of me just fine, because in a moment, the shakes and nausea are gone. In a moment, it has taken possession of me and is steering me down the hallway. It’s very dark, almost no light at all, but some instinct—some instinct not mine, but belonging to this new something inhabiting my body—knows better than to use the small flashlight I keep on my keychain. The dark is where you work best, it says. It’s where you belong. In no time, I’m seeing with my fingers, seeing the way the blind see. The cinder-block walls are lined with smooth metal doors, and each door is marked with a plastic strip bearing a raised number.
I decipher the number 217, then 215, then 213. I feel for the lock and find it. It’s thick steel and very cold to the touch. Cautiously, I turn my flashlight on, narrowing the light to a small point with my hand. With the thumb of my other hand, I rotate the six wheels on the lock so that they read 121495. With a small tug, the lock slides apart.
I pause, listen, and am careful not to make a sound as I work the latch free and open the door. The smell inside rushes to greet me. It’s familiar, like the smell of every apartment we’ve ever had, the peculiar combination of smells a family gives and imparts like a stain on the things they own.
I close the door behind me and, confident that I’m now invisible to whoever else is in the building, drag the beam of my flashlight over the things that once made up my life: an old dresser I had when I was a kid, the matching bed frame and armoire from my parents’ bedroom set. Strange to break into a building and find your own memories living inside.
But what had he wanted me to find here? The light probes around a box with the word TOYS in faded Sharpie across the side. I open it and peer inside. There’s a collector’s edition Barbie whose hair I cut off at age five. There’s a blond-haired, blue-eyed doll who, when you pull the string, says in Arabic, “Hello, friend!” There are loose Legos and toy cars and a sparkly Hanukkah card I’d made for my parents that leaves silver glitter on my fingers.
I close the box of toys and move on to another, but all I can see in this one is old tax returns and VHS tapes and aquarium supplies for the guppies that lasted a week. Then, in the next box, among my old ballet slippers and school papers is a photo album.
Don’t, I tell myself. Don’t. But I do. I sit on another box and open it. A Polaroid of my mom, in army fatigues and the very jacket I’m wearing now, grins at me from a time before I was born. On the bottom of the Polaroid is printed Bosnia. In the next little plastic sleeve is a photo of me, as an infant, wrapped like a burrito in my mother’s arms. She’s wearing a hospital gown this time but giving the camera the same grin. Who took this picture? My dad wasn’t in her life yet. So my bio dad, whose name wasn’t even on my birth certificate? Not likely. I place my thumb by my mom’s face, stroke her cheek, touch her hair. My throat tightens, and the photo album slips off my knees to the floor.