I wonder what she’s thinking or feeling right now. Or if she feels anything at all. I wish I could go to the lake and just touch the water, but I’m also terrified of it. Would her mother try to swallow me into the depths and drown me again, right there and then? Are we in a cease-fire? Would Anda know I was there? Maybe nothing would happen. But as long as I’m trapped in the hospital, none of these thoughts matter.
I search for news about Isle Royale. But I find zero search results about a girl hiding on Menagerie Island. There’s plenty of stuff about how I hid there for longer than they thought a kid could manage, and how the Park Service is going to ensure that this never, ever happens again. There’s even an article about how Mr. Selkirk, a park volunteer, died trying to save the capsized passengers of the boat that sank. But not a word that he left a daughter behind.
I’m surrounded by endings, but even Anda knew she wasn’t capable of finishing this story for me. Not the easy way. Not the wrong way.
It had to be me.
It took a few days to decide what to do. While my lungs continued to clear out the muck from being near-drowned, I thought and thought. It felt like a jail term in my hospital room, knowing what I had to do but resisting. I thought about Anda, and how she could have done what was easy for her and obvious, but didn’t. She didn’t let me live just so I could keep hiding. Years of fear made it hard to even lift my stupid finger to the red buzzer tethered to my hospital bed rail. But I finally did it.
The nurse’s voice commed in. My finger was still shaking from pressing the button.
“Yes? May I help you?”
I swallowed and forced the words out. “I need to speak to the social worker.”
I remember him walking into the room an hour later. I’d never had a guy social worker, and I’d never had a Black social worker either. I didn’t even understand who he was at first. He looked for a place to sit down and I ignored him, adjusting the plastic oxygen tubing prongs in my nose. It was annoying as hell, but kept me from gasping all the time.
“I understand you wanted to talk to me?” He straightened out his plaid tie and sat by my bedside while I finished looping the tubing over my ears.
“Uh. Who are you?”
“The hospital social worker. I’ve been assigned to you.”
“What happened to Pam?” I asked warily.
“Vacation. I’m covering.” He extended his hand. “Jim Barton.”
I didn’t shake it. “You’re a guy,” I said, only realizing too late how stupid that sounded.
“Yeah. That happens sometimes.” He smiled at me, but not too brightly. He took his hand back and picked up a pen. “So how can I help?”
I clamped my mouth shut. I was a little too freaked, and the idea of telling a guy, a stranger—I just couldn’t do it. After a half hour of silence (this guy played chicken really well), I realized Pam wasn’t going to magically show up. If I wanted to make things happen, I’d have to talk.
“I don’t want to live with my uncle again,” I blurted out. Even if it was only going to be for another few months until I turned eighteen, there was no way. Jim nodded and waited. And finally, it all came out. I told him everything. Even the parts about how I felt like I was confessing, though I’d done nothing wrong. He wrote it all down. He tried to keep a straight face. A professional face, even as he scanned the burns on my arms that I confessed were my own. But once in a while, I saw a flash of anger. I’ve never been more relieved to see an angry person in my life.
Someone was upset about what had happened to me. Someone, not Anda, finally knew.
He called CPS. The police got involved. The ball was rolling.
Living in the center of this juggernaut, my world will be pretty rocky for a while. But it won’t be the world I knew before Isle Royale. Never again.
Jim comes in on a Sunday to tell me that my dad is on his way.
“Really?” I ask, blank-faced.
“Well, he was here before. Apparently, he stayed with you while you were unconscious in the ICU. He had to go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska to make arrangements for a transfer to the U.S. Looks like you two may be moving to Omaha. He said he’d be back tomorrow.”
“Tell him not to bother. He hasn’t been my guardian for years.”
“But—”
“He didn’t even call me. I’ve been awake for three days.”
“Hector—”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
He gives me a knowing look. It’s a friendly look, but still. “The doctors say you may be able to leave the hospital in a few days. Can’t stay here forever. You have to go with your dad. He’s not your uncle, right?”
“I don’t want to. Look, most of the time, I took care of myself anyway. I wrote the checks for the bills. I bought the groceries. I held down a job and kept up a B-plus average in high school. Can’t I just…live by myself?”
I wait for the no. I don’t even know why I asked, since there’s no way, but Jim started jotting down a few things.
“You have no support system. No other family around. I can’t promise anything, but let me look into it.” When I give him a surprised look, he continues. “There may a slim chance you could become an emancipated minor. But don’t get your hopes up.”
An emancipated minor? How could I have not known about this? Oh, of course. I was too busy focusing on actual physical escape to even consider talking to a lawyer. And my social worker never mentioned it existed.
After a lot of calls, my mother is willing to wire some money to get me started. It turns out, my mother has been trying for years to get my contact information, but my father kept blocking her. The fucker. Soon after, she invites me to come and visit Seoul for a while, but I say no. I can’t move to another country when I can’t even handle living in the one I’m already in. But we speak on the phone once. I cry the whole time, like a kid, because she’s so happy to finally speak to me. It’s amazing how much Korean I still remember.
Na-neun neo-reul sa-rang-hae. Na-neun ne-ga geu-rip-go bo-go-sip-gu-na. Na-ui sa-rang-seu-reo-un a-deu-ra.
I love you. I miss you and wish to see you. My beloved son.
Jim starts the paperwork for emancipation and says a judge will have to get involved. It’s all starting to happen, even before my dad arrives in two days.
“You’ll have to tell him,” Jim warns me.
“I’ll send him a letter.”
It’s going to be an epic letter, let me tell you.
...
Anda haunts my now non-medicated dreams every night. I see her standing in her fluttering white nightgown, up to her calves in lake water. She’s beautiful, and terrible, staring out at the surface of the lake and beyond. She never says a word to me. I think it’s because she’s waiting for me to say something first. After all, she had dealt the last hand.
I’m still alive. So is my uncle.
Nothing changed.