I’ve Been Looking

by Anna Zucker

The first time I lost her was in the flowers. I was eight and she was four, and we still lived in the Ukraine. We were playing hide-and-seek in a field of tall grass and wildflowers. It was our favorite game. But Lily was too good at it. It was her turn to hide, but I failed to find her. I kept looking until it got dark, but I had to go home and tell my parents I had lost Lily. Mama wailed when I said it, but Papa grabbed my arm, and we ran back to the fields to find her. We brought lanterns and searched for hours, hoping for a glimpse of her stringy brown hair, her enormous gray eyes. We didn’t find her until she popped out of the weeds; that’s how good she was at hide-and-seek.

The second time I lost her was because of the potatoes. I was ten and she was six, and we lived on 7th Street in New York. Papa sent us out to buy a sack of potatoes from the market on 9th Street. First, we went to the river, even though we weren’t allowed. We loved the water. Lily liked to watch her reflection; she thought of it as a friend who she always wanted to meet, hiding down there below the surface. After the river it was late, and when I ran back to the market, I realized Lily had disappeared. We weren’t playing hide-and-seek this time. I weaved through the crowd all day looking for her, but she was gone. I returned home without the potatoes and without my sister.

I knew she wasn’t gone forever, so I’ve been trying to find her ever since. Something isn’t lost for good until you stop looking for it. By now Mama and Papa are long gone and left me our apartment to live in, the only home I’ve ever known in America. Sometimes it gets lonely, but mostly I just look for Lily.

As soon as I was old enough to carry a pile of dirty dishes, Papa sent me to work at a restaurant a few blocks from our house. I work at the same restaurant. It was just a few blocks from our house then, and it still is today. I’ve done just about everything there is to do there by now. I started out bussing tables and taking out the trash. Later I became a hostess, waitress, cashier, dishwasher and cook; I’ve poured water, scrubbed toilets and mopped floors. I’ve even stood outside in the freezing days of many Februarys just to hand out menus. Now I don’t do anything too difficult because my hands hurt too much.

In the morning I wake up in the full-size mahogany bed that my parents used to sleep in. I get out of bed and walk into the bathroom to take my bath. As soon as I see the discolored tub, I close my eyes and see Lily and me splashing in the porcelain basin, shrieking, giggling and pulling each other’s hair. When I open my eyes I think I see some movement, but it is simply the dancing shadows cast by the tree branches outside my bathroom window. Sighing, I turn on the water.

After my morning rituals I go outside to look for Lily, stopping in the lobby of my building to unlock my wire cart. Pushing it as I walk helps me stay balanced, and when I find Lily I think she might like to ride in it. Every day I search a different neighborhood. Today I am looking in the East Village, where I lost her. I walk down my block past St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church, where I go every Sunday. As I walk, I push my cart, I look and I ask, “Lily?”

Today as I walk down Avenue B I come to a small community garden, my favorite place to look for Lily. Luckily there are many like this hidden throughout the city. In the garden I weave through the mazes of trees, bushes, shrubs, plants of all sizes and flowers of all colors. I ask, “Lily?” and think maybe, just maybe, she will pop out from the greenery once again.

After my search, and just before I go home to change for work, I stop at a deli selling plants outside and load up my cart with them. I bring them home, add them to the room full of plants, water them, and then get ready to go to work. These days they don’t expect me to do much. Although the staff has changed since I’ve been there, they always take good care of me. Most nights I end up staring out the window in case my little sister walks by.

* * *

Sometime ago I read an article in the newspaper about a man using the Internet to reconnect with an old friend. It was very complicated, but what I did understand was that I could use the Internet to find Lily. That day, when I was outside, I stopped to ask a kind young woman where I could find the Internet. The young woman was sweet and politely explained that I could find it at the New York Public Library. The next day I decided to search Fifth Avenue for Lily so that I could stop by the library.

I pushed my cart into the library and asked a young man working there where I could find the Internet, and how I could find someone on it. He showed me the computer and opened the Internet to what he called “Google” and said I just had to type in what I was looking for, and then use a “mouse,” which was not a real mouse, to click on the button that said “Search.”

I couldn’t believe it. How long had this been here while I’d been out in the streets calling for Lily?

I took a few deep breaths and carefully typed into the box on Google: “LILY.” My hands usually tremble a bit, but now I could barely stop shaking the “mouse” to click on “Search.” I anxiously waited for Lily to appear, but she was not there. I called for help. The young man came back.

“Where’s Lily?” I asked.

“Click on the blue words. They will take you to websites so you can find what you’re looking for,” he told me.

I spent the next several hours clicking on every blue “LILY” there was. It just brought me to more and more screens, none of them containing Lily. I thought that maybe I was typing too small. I thought that if I could only type “LILY” big enough so that my word would project out of the computer, out of New York, out of America, and out of the Earth so that from space my word would be seen in large block letters, so that someone out there could answer, or at least know that I’m looking.

I left that day with my head in a whirl.

* * *

After I get home from work, I look through some photos that are brown and frayed around the edges. Papa took the photos with a camera he bought when we first came to America. There’s one of Mama, Lily and me watering a plant in our kitchen. I remember Lily and I fought over who got to water it that day, and Mama made us both hold the watering can at the same time. After Lily disappeared, Papa stopped taking photos.

I climb into bed, silent as tears stream from my eyes, and I drift off to sleep. I think tomorrow I will look for Lily near the water.

* * *

The old woman walked alongside the river, hunched over with stray silvery wisps of hair escaping from her headscarf. The morning was cloudy and cold; the water seemed to blend in with the gray sky, the horizon indiscernible. Suddenly she spotted a little girl with gray eyes and stringy brown hair. The old woman stopped. The little girl stopped. The old woman’s eyes glistened as she stared at the small child, staring back at her.

“Lily?” she whispered in a gasping voice. “Lily? Is it you?”

The old woman wailed and bent down farther, clutching the little girl tightly to her chest.

“Lily! Oh I’ve been looking for you, I’ve been looking, I never once stopped looking!”

The little girl struggled free and, having felt the old woman’s bursting heart against her own, slowly shook her head.

As the child walked away, she glanced back to see the old woman still crouching, still mumbling, alone.