Emma Choi

The summer my sister went to war I started digging a hole in our backyard. 

Before she left, Annie hugged me real hard and said in her quiet way, Jenna, if you ever need me I’ll be right here. She stomped on the ground with her new brown boots. Okay?

In the ground? I asked her.

No, she said, on the other side. 

I stood watching her on the porch, gnats spazzing around my hair, as the car grumbled off into the distance. As soon as the curve of the cornfield swallowed her up, I took off and ran to the shed, taking the biggest, shiniest, sharpest shovel we had and hauling it over to one of Daddy’s off-rotation fields. It took me a while to pick a spot because what if I went to far left and ended up in China or too right and ended up in Paris or even worse I dug right under her and she fell through the big, dark, long tunnel into the nowhere beyond? I decided to dig in smack-dab middle. I was two feet deep by the time Daddy came back with the empty car.



It was hard at first. My arms weren't strong enough and I kept hitting rocks and things right under the topsoil. It made me feel stupid, the way each day’s work barely left a dent in the invincible dirt. One day Marcus Smith came over to see if I wanted to go to the creek and I said I couldn’t, sorry, but I had something real important to do and he asked me what? and so I had to show him the hole because Momma always says it’s important to always make the guest happy when you’re the host, even if you don’t like it. Besides, I knew Marcus was the good sort and wouldn’t rat me or the hole out to anyone. 


Once school started again I had to find ways to keep up the digging so I did exactly what Momma was always telling me to do and prioritized. Instead of fifth grade choir and running club I came straight home after school and went out to my field and dug dug dug, telling Momma and Daddy and Lola that I was just going out on walks to think about things just like old men were always doing on TV. But after a couple of months Principal Molkins called in Momma and Daddy because she was worried because as a fifth grader I was supposed to be even more involved in school activities and the opposite was becoming true. Sitting there in that big chair with Momma and Daddy and Principal Molkins looking all expectant like that I couldn’t hold it inside. I did a bad thing. I told them about the hole. 

They didn’t react like I thought they would. I thought they’d be angry, that they’d take away all my digging things and send me to my room. But instead they all softened. I think Momma almost cried. 


Baby, said Daddy, that’s not gonna bring her home. 


Well obviously, I said. I’ll be the one bringing her home. 


No, I mean that it doesn’t exactly work like that, he said, rubbing his shiny head.


She said that she’d just be right here, I replied, stomping my foot on the ground. On the other side. 


That’s when Momma started to cry for real. Daddy took her into his arms and I was sad that she was crying but I was also confused because she was acting like it was a sad thing and not the good thing that it was. They tried to tell me that it wasn’t possible, showing me maps and charts and numbers but I didn’t pay attention to any of them. I knew what Annie had meant. They would all thank me when I brought her home. 


But I guess Principal Molkins told somebody else about the hole who told somebody else who told somebody else, too, because soon strange cars were showing up in our driveway and people with recorders and cameras and microphones started coming up to our doorstep asking about it, asking for me, asking about what had happened and why I was doing it and then soon everyone knew about the hole. The neighbors started bringing casseroles. My teachers started looking at me weird. The kids at school started calling me Mole Girl or Burrow Brat and I didn’t like that at all. Everyone said things about me when they didn’t even know the first thing about anything. They called me sad, cute, funny, strange, when really I was none of those things and all I was was tired of people trying to meddle. But I could tell that all of the noise was just making Momma and Daddy and Lola and Friday even sadder so I decided to only dig while they were sleeping so they wouldn’t have to know that it all was still going on.


Sometimes when I was digging there in the dark I would think about what I would do once I reached her. Would it be night when I came up on the other side? And if it was night would she be sleeping? And if she was sleeping could I crawl into bed with her like I used to and could we sleep side-by-side until the sun rolled back over the sand and we could climb back into my hole and slide all the way back home where Momma and Daddy and Lola and Friday would be waiting and hug us all real tight and say you did it Jenna! You brought Annie back! and people would finally have something real to talk about.


Sometimes I would sit in my hole thinking that nice thought and look all the way up through the tube of the hole at the circle it cut out of space, watching the stars scrape against the sky, the moon move across its shape, and fall asleep still sitting down there, the taste of wet earth heavy on my tongue. 


Marcus would sit with me some nights and lower down batteries for my flashlight with a rope. He would lie on his stomach at the edge of the hole and we would talk up and down at each other while I dug and he stared into the middle of the world.


Do you really think you’ll find her? He asked me once, his face hanging down from the lip of the hole.


Duh, I responded, sinking my shovel back into the dirt. 


But what if you don’t? He asked, letting his arms dangle in the dark.


I will, I said, and that was the end of that. 


By day two hundred sixty eight I could start to hear noise on the other side of the hole. By day three hundred two I started to feel something like sunlight trying to get through. On day three hundred forty two I was doing my homework in the kitchen when I heard the sound of tires on gravel and some men in sunglasses stepped out of a shiny car to come up to speak to Momma who was sitting on her rocker on the porch braiding Lola’s hair. When they all looked at me I knew the trouble was about to get deep. 


One was named Morrison. The other was called Smith. They wore black suits and black glasses and worked for the government. 


We all sat on one side of the kitchen table as they sat at the other, explaining to us that the hole had reached “dangerous proportions” and it was “imperative” that we “desist construction” or else “further action” would have to be “taken”. Nothing they said sounded like real life. Their voices were like ice. And of course Momma and Daddy didn’t know I was still doing the digging so they asked the men what on earth were they talking about and the men told them that the hole was getting to a point they couldn’t understand and they needed to know it wasn’t anything it wasn’t supposed to be before I did even one more thing. And then Momma and Daddy were looking at me and the men were looking at me and I was shrinking, shrinking, shrinking until I was tiny sitting in my gigantic chair. 


The men put up yellow tape around the hole and orange cones around the tape and kept nodding their heads as Momma and Daddy apologized to them all the way out. As the door closed Momma and Daddy turned around to look back down at me. 


I got grounded. They walked me to the bus stop and then they walked me back home. I didn’t leave the house without someone watching me and I definitely didn’t get anywhere near the hole. 


At night I would lie awake on top of my covers watching the moon move through my window panes and I would say sorry, Annie, sorry, sorry. Sorry that I couldn’t do it. Sorry that you’re waiting for me and I don’t know how to get to you. During the worst times I started to doubt that I’d even heard her right, that a hole through the world could even work, that I would ever see my sister again.


And then one night I was washing up the dishes when I saw a car, silhouetted by the sunset, coming down the road. 


Momma! I called and she got up and went out to the porch to see who it was. We watched, me inside and her out, as the black car kept coming closer. At first I was scared because I thought it was the government men again but as it got closer I saw the man was wearing khaki and not black. Carefully, I put down the sponge and started creeping towards the back door. I heard the car door open and close as I creaked open the screen door. I waited for Momma to call my name and when she didn’t I took off running towards the hole. I grabbed the shovel I’d hidden behind a tree and ran through the cones, through the warning tape, and into the hole. I scaled down the rope I’d hung down into the hole, going down for hours and hours as fast as I could go, ignoring the little fires my bones set with their rubbing against each other, until finally I was at the bottom and I could see a little piece of sun shining through. I took my shovel and started jabbing the sharp edge into the rocks again and again and again and again until finally, the rocks broke loose and the sunlight was everywhere and all around. 


I lifted myself out of the hole and sat on the edge. The brightness hurt to look at. I sat still for a while, covering my eyes, my heart banging noisily around in my chest.


I opened my eyes and there she was, her face all smiling and her arms out and wide and her eyes bright and sparkling and she swooped down and collected all of me in one giant hug. 


Hey, baby, she said in her quiet way, you found me.


I didn’t know I was crying until she wiped the wet off of my cheek with her sleeve.


I did what you said, I told her, I just kept digging.


You did, didn’t you? Annie kept smiling. It was the best thing. 


We sat there in the sun for a long time, watching people walk back and forth, our legs dangling into the hole, talking about everything that had happened to both of us. I told her about Marcus and Momma and Daddy and Lola and Friday and school and all of the people who came to our house and all of the people who thought we were wrong. She told me about her drills and her friends and her tents and the dogs she’d met and all the new foods she’d tried and the places she’d walked through and the people she’d met. She just kept talking and talking and talking until I was worried that she’d run out of words to say to Momma and Daddy because her words are their favorite stuff in the world and I didn’t want to take all of them for myself. I told her this and she stopped, looked up into the sky, and closed her eyes. She kept doing it so I copied her. I watched the pink glow behind my eyelids. I felt her put her arm around my shoulders. 

She pressed her cheek against my head, leaning into me. 


Baby, she said, and I opened my eyes to find her looking at some spot at the edge of the sky. I can’t come with you.


Why not? I asked. I started to stand up, but she held me down to stay sitting beside her.


That’s when Annie looked at me. Her eyes were brown and clear and big. 

I’ll see you in just a few more, okay? She looked at me hard, her forehead creased in the way that it does whenever she has to do something hard. She pulled me into her chest again. 


I thought about the time in second grade when we were riding our bikes and I flew over my handlebars and landed on the hard concrete. When I looked down I saw my arm bent at a funny angle. And then suddenly Annie was there crouching beside me, calling for help. I could tell she was scared by the way her eyes got bigger when she looked at my arm, but before I could even cry she reached out to hover her hands over my bad arm. As we waited for Momma and Daddy to come, she closed her eyes as if to heal me, her forehead creased and her breath slow. And for a minute I did feel healed. For a minute nothing hurt and all there was was her and me and the sound of the wind in the trees and her hands almost touching me—the space in-between. 


Looking at Annie, I knew then that there was nothing I could say and nothing I could do to make her change her mind. So instead of yelling and screaming and using everything I had done to come find her, telling her about all the arm aches and the lost afternoons and the lies to Momma and Daddy and the names I’d collected and the moons I’d lost and the stars I’d never see again, I just closed my eyes. I let my sister hold me because I knew what she needed wasn’t home. It was this, it was the just being, the just breathing that she needed most. 

Annie held me for a couple more minutes as the sun fell all around us.


Thanks for coming to see me, she said. Give love to Momma and Daddy and Lola and Friday for me.


She kissed me one more time on my head. Her eyes were wet. She helped me back into the hole and watched as I sunk back into the black.


It was dark outside when I came back out on the other side of the hole. All the lights were on in the house — seven squares of yellow in the black. As I pulled myself onto solid ground I made out Marcus standing up from his stump. 

He looked at me, his hands hanging at his sides. 

I saw her, I said, but she’s not coming back.

He just kept looking at me. It wasn’t like how he’d looked at me before. It was like he already knew. In the distance I heard the porch door slam, the sound of accumulated quiet voices, Friday howling low. Somehow, I knew the black car was still in the driveway. 

As I walked back to the house with Marcus I think some part of me knew that the impossible thing had arrived at our doorstep. But I didn’t hide from it or try to run away. I just kept walking towards it, towards every impossible thing, because I had seen my sister and I would never doubt again.

Emma Choi

Emma Choi

Fiction

Spring 2020

The Dig