Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok Read Free Book Online Page B

uniformly tall, their heads hovering far above mine. I am lost in a forest of trunks. The babble of incomprehensible words around me forms a stream of sound that I wade through, ignorant and alone. I long for home, and Ma and Pa. How can the signs be in so many different languages?
    I walk to one of the huge bathrooms. The stall doors run all the way to the floor. I have a hard time figuring out how to flush the toilet. I try to check myself in the mirror but the mirrors are hung so high that I can only see the top of my head and a bit of my glasses. Beside me, a tall woman washes her hands efficiently, then strides toward the exit without a glance at the mirrors, which are exactly the right height for her. In fact, no one puts on lipstick or powder. I smell no perfume either.
    Did Sylvie really live here for much of her childhood? The one she had before I existed. She doesn’t often speak about her life in the Netherlands, but when she does, her skin flushes, her eyes soften. I know she loved it and longed to return. How could Ma and Pa have sent my own sister here? Had they planned to give me away too? Ma, who holds and pets me, but whose eyes follow Sylvie with so much yearning—Sylvie wriggling away whenever Ma had tried to wrap her arms around her until Ma stopped trying; Sylvie leaning against me every time we watched TV together; Sylvie holding my hand in the street. Even now, we always walk arm in arm. When Sylvie went away to college, I sobbed myself to sleep, counted the days until the too-short breaks when she came home again. That had always been Sylvie’s role, to go forth and have adventures. My job was to wait for her to return home safely. Now the country mouse has been forced into the great devouring world.
    In a daze, I stand on one of the automatic walkways and let the scenery pass me by. I am herded in the only possible direction by the planeload of passengers. We stand neatly in line at passport control, where the young military guy behind the counter glances through my passport before saying in crisp English, “Welcome to the Netherlands.”
    I can’t believe I’m in Europe when I’ve never really left New York. The enormous baggage hall is brightly lit with more than twenty different belts and I wait at the wrong one until I realize that I’m supposed to be in another section altogether. I half panic, rush to the right place. When I finally manage to collect my bags, which have all miraculously arrived, I wheel my things out the door below the green NOTHING TO DECLARE sign. I look so nervous that one of the customs officers asks, “Are you feeling all right?” before letting me through.
    I exit to find a wall of faces—a lot of white people in the Netherlands. I feel short and puny as the lanky Dutch hurry past me to embrace one another. I move forward, and suddenly spot three dark heads: two men and one woman. Must be my cousins Helena and Willem and their son, Lukas, none of whom I’ve ever met. They’re clad in black, which sends fear stabbing into my heart until I realize that they’re in mourning for Grandma, not Sylvie. The woman’s clothing seems fluttery and filled with lace.
    I step tentatively toward them. They are the only Chinese here but I am still unsure. The presence of the large, shaggy dude especially worries me—probably Lukas? He’s in his early thirties, unshaven, with long black hair that looks like he hacked it off himself. His eyes—brown, with a touch of cinnamon—are slightly swollen, like he’s been crying or beaten up by someone, and his clothes seem worn and sanded down, as if he’s been crawling through a desert. A permanent scowl appears etched into his spidery eyebrows and forehead. This is Sylvie’s childhood playmate? I heard he’s a photojournalist, and indeed he looks like he’s just ventured out of a war zone.
    The other man is older, probably in his fifties, long-limbed and sophisticated in his suit and tie, which even I can see is