God Help the Child

~ ~ ~

A taxi was preferable because parking a Jaguar in that neighborhood was as dim-witted as it was risky. That Booker frequented this part of the city startled Bride. Why here? she wondered. There were music shops in unthreatening neighborhoods, places where tattooed men and young girls dressed like ghouls weren’t huddled on corners or squatting on curbs.

Once the driver stopped at the address she’d given him, and after he told her, “Sorry, lady. I can’t wait here for you,” Bride stepped quickly toward the door of Salvatore Ponti’s Pawn and Repair Palace. Inside it was clear that the word “Palace” was less a mistake than an insanity. Under dusty glass counters row after row of jewelry and watches crouched. A man, good-looking the way elderly men can be, moved down the counter toward her. His jeweler’s eyes swept all he could take in of his customer.

“Mr. Ponti?”

“Call me Sally, sweetheart. What can I do you for?”

Bride waved the overdue notice and explained she’d come to settle the bill and pick up whatever had been repaired. Sally examined the notice. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Thumb ring. Mouthpiece. They’re in back. Come on.”

Together they went into a back room where guitars and horns hung on the walls and all sorts of metal pieces covered the cloth of a table. The man working there looked up from his magnifying glass to examine Bride and then the notice. He went to a cupboard and removed a trumpet wrapped in purple cloth.

“He didn’t mention the pinkie ring,” said the repairman, “but I gave him one anyway. Picky guy, real picky.”

Bride took the horn thinking she didn’t even know Booker owned one or played it. Had she been interested she would have known that that was what caused the dark dimple on his upper lip. She handed Sally the amount owed.

“Nice, though, and smart for a country boy,” said the repairman.

“Country boy?” Bride frowned. “He’s not from the country. He lives here.”

“Oh, yeah? Told me he was from some hick town up north,” said Sally.

“Whiskey,” said the repairman.

“What are you talking about?” asked Bride.

“Funny, right? Who could forget a town called Whiskey? Nobody, that’s who.”

The men burst into snorts of laughter and started calling out other memorable names of towns: Intercourse, Pennsylvania; No Name, Colorado; Hell, Michigan; Elephant Butte, New Mexico; Pig, Kentucky; Tightwad, Missouri. Exhausted, finally, by their mutual amusement, they turned their attention back to the customer.

“Look here,” said Sally. “He gave us another address. A forward.” He flipped through his Rolodex. “Ha. Somebody named Olive. Q. Olive. Whiskey, California.”

“No street address?”

“Come on, honey. Who says they have streets in a town called Whiskey?” Sally was having a good time keeping himself amused as well as keeping the pretty black girl in his shop. “Deer tracks maybe,” he added.

Bride left the shop quickly, but realized just as quickly that there were no roaming cabs. She was forced to return and ask Sally to phone one for her.

Sofia

I ought to be sad. Daddy called my supervisor to say Mommy died. I asked for an advance to buy a ticket to fly out for the funeral, assuming my parole officer would let me. I remember every inch of the church where the funeral would be held. The wooden Bible holders on the backs of the pews, the greenish light from the window behind Reverend Walker’s head. And the smell — perfume, tobacco and something more. Godliness, perhaps. Clean, upright and very good for you like the dining room corner in Mommy’s house. The blue-and-white wallpaper I came to know better than my own face. Roses, lilacs, clematis all shades of blue against snowy white. I stood there, sometimes for two hours; a quiet scolding, a punishment for something I don’t remember now or even then. I wet my underwear? I played “wrestle” with a neighbor’s son? I couldn’t wait to get out of Mommy’s house and marry the first man who asked. Two years with him was the same — obedience, silence, a bigger blue-and-white corner. Teaching was the only pleasure I had.

I have to admit, though, that Mommy’s rules, her strict discipline helped me survive in Decagon. Until the first day of my release, that is, when I blew. Really blew. I beat up that black girl who testified against me. Beating her, kicking and punching her freed me up more than being paroled. I felt I was ripping blue-and-white wallpaper, returning slaps and running the devil Mommy knew so well out of my life.

I wonder what happened to her. Why she didn’t call the police. Her eyes, frozen with fear, delighted me then. The next morning with my face bloated from hours of sobbing, I opened the door. Thin streaks of blood were on the pavement and a pearl earring nearby. Maybe it belonged to her, maybe not. Anyway I kept it. It’s still in my wallet as what? A kind of remembrance? When I tend to my patients — put their teeth back in their mouths, rub their behinds, their thighs to limit bed sores, or when I sponge their lacy skin before lotioning it, in my mind I am putting the black girl back together, healing her, thanking her. For the release.

Sorry Mommy.

~ ~ ~

The sun and the moon shared the horizon in a distant friendship, each unfazed by the other. Bride didn’t notice the light, how carnival it made the sky. The shaving brush and razor were packed in the trumpet case and stowed in the trunk. She thought about both until she became distracted by the music on the Jaguar’s radio. Nina Simone was too aggressive, making Bride think of something other than herself. She switched to soft jazz, more suitable for the car’s leather interior as well as a soothing background for the anxiety she needed to tamp down. She had never done anything this reckless. The reason for this tracking was not love, she knew; it was more hurt than anger that made her drive into unknown territory to locate the one person she once trusted, who made her feel safe, colonized somehow. Without him the world was more than confusing — shallow, cold, deliberately hostile. Like the atmosphere in her mother’s house where she never knew the right thing to do or say or remember what the rules were. Leave the spoon in the cereal bowl or place it next to the bowl; tie her shoelaces with a bow or a double knot; fold her socks down or pull them straight up to the calf? What were the rules and when did they change? When she soiled the bedsheet with her first menstrual blood, Sweetness slapped her and then pushed her into a tub of cold water. Her shock was alleviated by the satisfaction of being touched, handled by a mother who avoided physical contact whenever possible.

How could he? Why would he leave her stripped of all comfort, emotional security? Yes, her quick response to his exit was silly, stupid. Like the taunt of a third grader who had no clue about life.

He was part of the pain — not a savior at all, and now her life was in shambles because of him. The pieces of it that she had stitched together: personal glamour, control in an exciting even creative profession, sexual freedom and most of all a shield that protected her from any overly intense feeling, be it rage, embarrassment or love. Her response to physical attack was no less cowardly than her reaction to a sudden, unexplained breakup. The first produced tears; the second a flip “Yeah, so?” Being beaten up by Sofia was like Sweetness’s slap without the pleasure of being touched. Both confirmed her helplessness in the presence of confounding cruelty.

Too weak, too scared to defy Sweetness, or the landlord, or Sofia Huxley, there was nothing in the world left to do but stand up for herself finally and confront the first man she had bared her soul to, unaware that he was mocking her. It would take courage though, something that, being successful in her career, she thought she had plenty of. That and exotic beauty.

According to the men at Sally’s he was from a place called Whiskey. Maybe he had gone back there. Maybe not. He could be living with Miss Q. Olive, another woman he didn’t want, or he might have moved on. Whatever the case, Bride would track him, force him to explain why she didn’t deserve better treatment from him, and second, what did he mean by “not the woman”? Who? This here woman? This one driving a Jaguar in an oyster-white cashmere dress and boots of brushed rabbit fur the color of the moon? The beautiful one, according to everybody with two eyes, who runs a major department in a billion-dollar company? The one who was already imagining newer product lines — eyelashes, for example. In addition to breasts, every woman (his kind or not) wanted longer, thicker eyelashes. A woman could be cobra-thin and starving, but if she had grapefruit boobs and raccoon eyes, she was deliriously happy. Right. She would get right on it after this trip.

The highway became less and less crowded as she drove east and then north. Soon, she imagined, forests would edge the road watching her, as trees always did. In a few hours she would be in north valley country: logging camps, hamlets no older than she was, dirt roads as old as the Tribes. As long as she was on a state highway, she decided to look for a diner, eat and freshen up before driving into territory too sparse for comfort. A collection of signs on a single billboard advertised one brand of gas, four of food, two of lodging. Three miles on, Bride left the highway and turned in to the oasis. The diner she chose was spotless and empty. The smell of beer and tobacco was not recent, nor was the framed Confederate flag that nestled the official American one.

“Yeah?” The counter waitress’s eyes were wide and roving. Bride was used to that look, as well as the open mouth that accompanied it. It reminded her of the reception she got on the first days of school. Shock, as though she had three eyes.

“May I have a white omelet, no cheese?”

“White? You mean no eggs?”

“No. No yolks.”

Bride ate as much as she could of that redneck version of digestible food, then asked where the ladies’ room was. She left a five-dollar bill on the counter in case the waitress thought she was skipping. In the bathroom she confirmed that there was still reason to be alarmed by her hairless pudenda. Then standing at the mirror over the sink, she noticed the neckline of her cashmere dress was askew, slanting down so much her left shoulder was bare. Adjusting it, she saw that the shoulder slide was due neither to poor posture nor to a manufacturing flaw. The top of the dress sagged as if instead of a size 2 she had purchased a 4 and just now noticed the difference. But the dress had fit her perfectly when she started this trip. Perhaps, she thought, there was a defect in the cloth or the design; otherwise she was losing weight — fast. Not a problem. No such thing as too thin in her business. She would simply choose clothes more carefully. A scary memory of altered earlobes shook her but she dared not connect it to other alterations to her body.

While collecting the change and deciding on the tip, Bride asked directions to Whiskey.

“Ain’t all that far,” said the bug-eyed, smirking waitress. “A hundred miles, maybe one fifty. You’ll make it before dark.”

Is that what backwoods trash called “not far”? wondered Bride. One hundred and fifty miles? She gassed up, had the tires checked and followed the loop away from the oasis back onto the highway. Contrary to the waitress’s certainty, it was very dark by the time she saw the exit marked not by a number but a name — Whiskey Road.

At least it was paved, narrow and curvy but still paved. Perhaps that was the reason she trusted the high-beam headlights and accelerated. She never saw it coming. The automobile overshot a sharp bend in the road and crashed into what must have been the world’s first and biggest tree, which was circled by bushes hiding its lower trunk. Bride fought the air bag, moving so fast and in such panic she did not notice her foot caught and twisted in the space between the brake pedal and the buckled door, until trying to free it flattened her with pain. She managed to unbuckle the seat belt but nothing else helped. She lay there awkwardly on the driver’s seat, trying to ease her left foot out of the elegant rabbit-furred boot. Her efforts proved both painful and impossible. Stretching and twisting, she managed to get to her cellphone, but its face was blank except for the “no service” message. The likelihood of a passing car was dim in the dark but possible, so she pressed the car’s horn, desperate for the honk, to do more than frighten owls. It frightened nothing because it made no sound. There was nothing she could do but lie there the rest of the night, by turns afraid, angry, in pain, weepy. The moon was a toothless grin and even the stars, seen through the tree limb that had fallen like a throttling arm across the windshield, frightened her. The piece of sky she could glimpse was a dark carpet of gleaming knives pointed at her and aching to be released. She felt world-hurt — an awareness of malign forces changing her from a courageous adventurer into a fugitive.

The sun merely hinted at its rise, an apricot slice teasing the sky with a promise of revealing its whole self. Bride, whipped by body cramp and leg pain, felt a tingle of hope along with the dawn. A helmetless motorcyclist, a truck full of loggers, a serial rapist, a boy on a bike, a bear hunter — was there no one to lend a hand? While imagining who or what might rescue her, a small bone-white face appeared at the passenger’s side window. A girl, very young, carrying a black kitten, stared at her with the greenest eyes Bride had ever seen.

“Help me. Please. Help me.” Bride would have screamed but she didn’t have the strength.

The girl watched her for a long, long time, then turned away and disappeared.

“Oh, God,” Bride whispered. Was she hallucinating? If not, surely the girl had gone for help. Nobody, not the mentally disabled or the genetically violent, would leave her there. Would they? Suddenly, as they hadn’t in the dark, the surrounding trees coming alive in the dawn really scared her, and the silence was terrifying. She decided to turn on the ignition, shift into reverse and blast the Jaguar out of there — foot or no foot. Just as she turned the ignition key to the withering sound of a dead battery a man appeared. Bearded with long blond hair and slit black eyes. Rape? Murder? Bride trembled, watching him squint at her through the window. Then he left. What seemed to Bride like hours were only a few minutes before he returned with a saw and a crowbar. Swallowing and stiff with fear she watched him saw the branch from the hood then, taking a vise from his back pocket, pry and yank the door open. Bride’s scream of pain startled the green-eyed girl standing by who watched the scene with her mouth open. Carefully the man eased Bride’s foot from under the brake pedal and away from the car’s smashed door. His hair hung forward as he lifted her out of the car seat. Silently, asking no questions and offering no verbal comfort, he positioned her in his arms. With the emerald-eyed girl tagging along, he carried Bride half a mile down a sandy path leading to a warehouse-looking structure that might serve a killer as a house. Enclosed in his arms and in unrelenting pain, she said, “Don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me,” over and over before fainting.

—

“Why is her skin so black?”

“For the same reason yours is so white.”

“Oh. You mean like my kitten?”

“Right. Born that way.”

Bride sucked her teeth. What an easy conversation between mother and daughter. She was faking sleep, eavesdropping under a Navajo blanket, her ankle propped on a pillow, throbbing with pain in its furry boot. The rescuing man had brought Bride to this sort-of house, and instead of raping and torturing her, asked his wife to look after her while he took the truck. He wasn’t sure, he said, but there was a chance it wasn’t too early for the only doctor in the area to be found. He didn’t think it was just a sprain, the bearded man said. The ankle might be broken. Without phone service, he had no choice but to get in his truck and drive into the village for the doctor.

“My name is Evelyn,” said the wife. “My husband’s is Steve. Yours?”

“Bride. Just Bride.” For the first time her concocted name didn’t sound hip. It sounded Hollywoody, teenagey. That is until Evelyn motioned to the emerald-eyed girl. “Bride, this is Raisin. Actually we named her Rain because that is where we found her, but she prefers to call herself Raisin.”

“Thank you, Raisin. You saved my life. Really.” Bride, grateful for another vanity name, let a tear sting its way down her cheek. Evelyn gave her one of her husband’s plaid, lumberjack shirts after helping her undress.

“Can I fix you some breakfast? Oatmeal?” she asked. “Or some warm bread and butter. You must have been trapped in there all night.”

Bride declined, sweetly, she hoped. She just wanted to take a nap.

Evelyn tucked the blanket around her guest, mindful of the propped-up leg, and did not trouble to whisper the black or white kitten conversation as she moved toward the sink. She was a tall woman with unfashionable hips and a long chestnut braid swinging down her back. She reminded Bride of someone she had seen in the movies, not a recent one but something made in the forties or fifties when film stars had distinguishing faces unlike now, when hairstyles alone separated one star from another. But she could not put a name to the memory — actress or film. Little Raisin, on the other hand, resembled no one Bride had ever seen — milk-white skin, ebony hair, neon eyes, undetermined age. What had Evelyn said? “That is where we found her”? In the rain.

Steve and Evelyn’s house seemed to be a converted studio or machine shop: one large space, containing table, chairs, sink, wood-burning cook stove and the scratchy couch Bride lay on. Against a wall stood a loom with small baskets of yarn nearby. Above was a skylight that needed a good power-cleaning. All over the room, light, unaided by electricity, moved like water — a shadow here could be gone in an instant, a shaft hitting a copper pot might take minutes to dissolve. An open door to the rear revealed a room where two beds, one of rope, another of iron, stood. Something meaty, like chicken, roasted in the oven while Evelyn and the girl chopped mushrooms and green peppers at the rough home-made table. Without warning they began to sing some dumb old hippie song.

“This land is your land, this land is my land…”

Bride quickly dashed a bright memory of Sweetness humming some blues song while washing panty hose in the sink, little Lula Ann hiding behind the door to hear her. How nice it would have been if mother and daughter could have sung together. Embracing that dream, she did fall into a deep sleep, only to be awakened around noon by booming male voices. Steve, accompanied by a very old, rumpled doctor, clumped into the house.

“This is Walt,” said Steve. He stood near the couch, showing something close to a smile.

“Dr. Muskie,” said the doctor. “Walter Muskie, MD, PhD, LLD, DDT, OMB.”

Steve laughed. “He’s joking.”

“Hello,” said Bride, looking back and forth from her foot to the doctor’s face. “I hope it’s not too bad.”

“We’ll see,” answered Dr. Muskie.

Bride sucked air through clenched teeth as the doctor sliced through her elegant white boot. Expertly and without empathy he examined her ankle and announced it fractured at the least and unfixable here in Steve’s house — she needed to go to the clinic for an X-ray, cast and so on. All he could do, or would do, is clean and bind it so its swell wouldn’t worsen.

Bride refused to go. She was suddenly so hungry it made her angry. She wanted to bathe and then eat before being driven to another tacky rural clinic. Meantime she asked Dr. Muskie for painkillers.

“No,” said Steve. “No way. First things first. Besides, we don’t have all day.”

Steve carried her to his truck, squeezed her between himself and the doctor and took off. Two hours later as the two of them drove back from the clinic she had to admit the splint had eased her pain, as had the pills. Whiskey Clinic was across the street from a post office on the first floor of a charming sea-blue clapboard house, which also contained a barbershop. Windows on the second floor advertised used clothes. Quaint, thought Bride, expecting to be helped into an equally quaint examination room. To her surprise the equipment was as cutting edge as her plastic surgeon’s.

Dr. Muskie smiled at her astonishment. “Loggers are like soldiers,” he said. “They have the worst wounds and need the best and quickest care.”

After examining the screen-shot from a sonogram, Dr. Muskie told her she would live but she would probably need a month at the least to heal — maybe six weeks. “Syndesmosis,” he said to his uncomprehending patient. “Between the fibula and the tibia. Maybe surgery — probably not, if you do what I say.”

He put her ankle in a splint, saying he would give her a cast when the swelling decreased. And she would have to come back to his office for it.

An hour later she was back in the truck sitting next to a silent Steve with her left leg sticking as straight under the dashboard as the splint allowed. After being carried back to the house, Bride found that her earlier hunger had dissipated as the awareness of being unwashed and sour-smelling overwhelmed her.

“I’d like to take a bath, please,” she said.

“We don’t have a bathroom,” said Evelyn. “I can sponge you for now. When your ankle is ready, I’ll heat water for the washtub.”

Slop jar, outhouse toilet, metal washtub, broke-down scratchy couch for a month? Bride started to cry, and they let her while Rain and Evelyn went on preparing a meal.

Later, after the family finished eating, Bride tried to overcome her embarrassment and accepted a basin of cold water to rinse her face and armpits. Then she roused herself enough to smile and take the plate Evelyn held before her. Quail, as it turned out, not chicken, with thick mushroom gravy. Following the meal, Bride felt more than embarrassed; she was ashamed — crying every minute, petulant, childish and unwilling to help herself or accept aid gracefully from others. Here she was among people living the barest life, putting themselves out for her without hesitation, asking nothing in return. Yet, as was often the case, her gratitude and embarrassment were short-lived. They were treating her like a stray cat or a dog with a broken leg that they felt sorry for. Sullen and picking at her fingernails, she asked Evelyn whether she had a nail file or any nail polish. Evelyn grinned and held up her own hands without speaking. Point taken — Evelyn’s hands were less for holding the stem of a wineglass and more for chopping kindling and wringing the necks of chickens. Who are these people, wondered Bride, and where did they come from? They hadn’t asked her where she was from or where she was going. They simply tended her, fed her, arranged for her car to be towed for repair. It was too hard, too strange for her to understand the kind of care they offered — free, without judgment or even a passing interest in who she was or where she was going. She wondered on occasion if they were planning something. Something bad. But the days passed with boredom unbroken. Steve and Evelyn occasionally spent time after supper sitting outside singing songs by the Beatles or Simon and Garfunkel — Steve strumming his guitar, Evelyn joining him in tuneless soprano. Their laughter tinkling between wrong lines and missed notes.

In the following weeks of more visits to the clinic, leg exercises and waiting for the Jaguar to be repaired, Bride learned that her hosts were in their fifties. Steve had graduated from Reed College, Evelyn from Ohio State. With constant bursts of laughter they described how they met. First in India (Bride saw the light of pleasant memories shining in the looks they exchanged), then London, again in Berlin. Finally in Mexico they agreed to stop meeting that way (Steve touched Evelyn’s cheek with his knuckle) so they got married in Tijuana and “moved to California to live a real life.”

Bride’s envy watching them was infantile but she couldn’t stop herself. “By ‘real’ you mean poor?” She smiled to hide the sneer.

“What does ‘poor’ mean? No television?” Steve raised his eyebrows.

“It means no money,” said Bride.

“Same thing,” he answered. “No money, no television.”

“Means no washing machine, no fridge, no bathroom, no money!”

“Money get you out of that Jaguar? Money save your ass?”

Bride blinked but was smart enough to say nothing. What did she know anyway about good for its own sake, or love without things?

She stayed with them for six difficult weeks, waiting until she could walk and her car was repaired. Apparently the single automobile-repair place had to send away for hinges or a completely new door for the Jaguar. Sleeping in a house of such deep darkness at night felt to Bride like being in a coffin. Outside the sky would be loaded with more stars than she had ever seen before. But in here under a filthy skylight and no electricity she had a problem sleeping.

Finally Dr. Muskie returned to remove her cast and give her a removable foot brace so she could limp about. She glimpsed the disgusting skin that had been hidden underneath the cast and shivered. Even more than having the cast removed, the best thing was Evelyn, true to her word, pouring pail after pail of hot water into a zinc tub. Then she handed Bride a sponge, a towel and a bar of hard-to-lather brown soap. After weeks of bird-washing Bride sank into the water with gratitude, prolonging the soaping until the water had cooled completely. It was when she stood to dry herself that she discovered that her chest was flat. Completely flat, with only the nipples to prove it was not her back. Her shock was so great she plopped back down into the dirty water, holding the towel over her chest like a shield.

I must be sick, dying, she thought. She plastered the wet towel above the place where her breasts had once upon a time announced themselves and risen to the lips of moaning lovers. Fighting panic she called out to Evelyn.

“Please, do you have something I can wear?”

“Sure,” said Evelyn, and after a few minutes brought Bride a T-shirt and a pair of her own jeans. She said nothing about Bride’s chest or the wet towel. She simply left her to get dressed in private. When Bride called her back saying the jeans were too large to stay on her hips, Evelyn exchanged them for a pair of Rain’s, which fit Bride perfectly. When did I get so small? she wondered.

She meant to lie down just for a minute, to quiet the terror, collect her thoughts and figure out what was happening to her shrinking body, but without any drowsiness or warning she fell asleep. There out of that dark void sprang a vivid, fully felt dream. Booker’s hand was moving between her thighs, and when her arms flew up and closed over his back he extracted his fingers, and slid between her legs what they called the pride and wealth of nations. She started to whisper or moan but his lips were pressing hers. She wrapped her legs around his rocking hips as though to slow them or help them or keep them there. Bride woke up moist and humming. Yet when she touched the place where her breasts used to be the humming changed to sobs. That’s when she understood that the body changes began not simply after he left, but because he left.

Stay still, she thought; her brain was wobbly but she would straighten it, go about as if everything was normal. No one must know and no one must see. Her conversation and activity must be routine, like an after-bath washing of hair. Limping to the kitchen sink she poured water from the standing pitcher into a bowl, soaped then rinsed her hair. As she looked around for a dry towel Evelyn came in.

“Ooh, Bride,” she said, smiling. “You got too much hair for a dish towel. Come on, let’s sit outside and we can dry it in sunlight and fresh air.”

“Okay, sure,” said Bride. Acting normal was important, she thought. It might even restore the body changes — or halt them. She followed Evelyn to a rusty iron bench sitting in the yard bathed in bright platinum light. Next to it was a side table where a tin of marijuana and a bottle of unlabeled liquor sat. Toweling Bride’s hair, Evelyn chatted away in typical beauty-parlor mode. How happy living here under stars with a perfect man made her, how much she had learned traveling, housekeeping without modern amenities, which she called trash-ready junk since none of it lasted, and how Rain had improved their lives.

When Bride asked her when and where Rain came from, Evelyn sat down and poured some of the liquor into a cup.

“It took a while to get the whole story,” she said. Bride listened intently. Anything. Anything to stop thinking first about how her body was changing and second how to make sure no one noticed. When Evelyn handed her the T-shirt as she stepped out of the tub, Evelyn didn’t notice or say a word. Bride had spectacular breasts when rescued from the Jaguar; she had them in Whiskey Clinic. Now they were gone, like a botched mastectomy that left nipples intact. Nothing hurt; her organs worked as usual except for a strangely delayed menstrual period. So what kind of illness was she suffering? One that was both visible and invisible. Him, she thought. His curse.

“Want some?” Evelyn pointed to the tin box.

“Yeah, okay.” She watched Evelyn’s expertise and took the result with gratitude. She coughed with the first toke, but none thereafter.

They were silently smoking for a while until Bride said, “Tell me what you meant by finding her in the rain.”

“We did. Steve and I were driving home from some protest, I forget what, and saw this little girl, sopping wet on a brick doorstep. We had an old Volkswagen back then and he slowed down, then put on the brakes. Both of us thought she was lost or her door key was. He parked, got out and went to see what was the matter. First he asked her name.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. Not a word. Drenched as she was, she turned her head away when Steve squatted down in front of her, but wow! when he touched her on her shoulder she jumped up and ran splashing off in wet tennis shoes. So he just got back in the car so we could continue our drive home. But then rain started really coming down — so hard we had trouble seeing through the windshield. So we called it quits and parked near a diner. Bruno’s, it was called. Anyway, rather than wait in the car we went inside, more for shelter than for the coffee we ordered.”

“So you lost her?”

“Then, yes.” Evelyn, having exhausted the joint, replenished her cup and sipped from it.

“Did she come back?”

“No, but when the rain let up and we left the diner, I spotted her hunched up next to a Dumpster in the alley behind the building.”

“Jesus,” said Bride, shuddering as though it were she herself in that alley.

“It was Steve who decided not to leave her there. I wasn’t so sure it was any of our business but he just went over and grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder. She was screaming, ‘Kidnap! Kidnap!’ but not too loud. I don’t think she wanted attention, especially from pigs, I mean cops. We pushed her into the backseat, got in and locked the doors.”

“Did she quiet down?”

“Oh no. She kept hollering ‘Let me out,’ and kicking the back of our seats. I tried to talk to her in a soft voice so she wouldn’t be frightened of us. I said, ‘You’re soaking wet, honey.’ She said, ‘It’s raining, bitch.’ I asked her if her mother knew she was sitting outside in the rain and she said, ‘Yeah, so?’ I didn’t know what to do with that answer. Then she started cursing — nastier words in a little kid’s mouth you couldn’t imagine.”

“Really?”

“Steve and I looked at each other and without talking we decided what to do — get her dry, cleaned and fed, then try to find out where she belonged.”

“You said she was about six when you found her?” asked Bride.

“I guess. I don’t really know. She never said and I doubt she knows. Her baby teeth were gone when we took her. And so far she has never had a period and her chest is flat as a skateboard.”

Bride shot up. Just the mention of a flat chest yanked her back to her problem. Had her ankle not prohibited it, she would have run, rocketed away from the scary suspicion that she was changing back into a little black girl.

One night and a day later Bride had calmed down a little. Since no one had noticed or commented on the changes in her body, how flat the T-shirt hung on her chest, the unpierced earlobes. Only she knew about unshaved but absent armpit and pubic hair. So all of this might be a hallucination, like the vivid dreams she was having when she managed to fall asleep. Or were they? Twice at night she woke to find Rain standing over her or squatting nearby — not threatening, just looking. But when she spoke to the girl, she seemed to disappear.

Helpless, idle. It became clear to Bride why boredom was so fought against. Without distraction or physical activity, the mind shuffled pointless, scattered recollections around and around. Focused worry would have been an improvement over disconnected, rags of thought. Minus the limited coherence of a dream, her mind moved from the condition of her fingernails to the time she walked into a lamppost, from judging a celebrity’s gown to the state of her own teeth. She was stuck in a place so primitive it didn’t even have a radio while watching a couple going about their daily chores — gardening, cleaning, cooking, weaving, mowing grass, chopping wood, canning. There was no one to talk to, at least not about anything she was interested in. Her determined refusal to think about Booker invariably collapsed. What if she couldn’t find him? What if he’s not with Mr. or Ms. Olive? Nothing would be right if the hunt she was on failed. And if it succeeded what would she do or say? Except for Sylvia, Inc., and Brooklyn, she felt she had been scorned and rejected by everybody all her life. Booker was the one person she was able to confront — which was the same as confronting herself, standing up for herself. Wasn’t she worth something? Anything?

She missed Brooklyn whom she thought of as her only true friend: loyal, funny, generous. Who else would drive miles to find her after that bloody horror at a cheap motel then take such good care of her? It wasn’t fair, she thought, to leave her in the dark as to where she was. Of course she couldn’t tell her friend the reason for her flight. Brooklyn would have tried to dissuade her, or worse, taunt and laugh at her. Persuade her how ill-advised and reckless the idea was. Nevertheless, the right thing to do was to contact her.

Since she couldn’t call, Bride decided to drop her a note. When asked, Evelyn said she didn’t have any stationery but she offered Bride a sheet of the tablet paper used to teach Rain to write. Evelyn promised she would get Steve to mail it.

Bride was expert at company memos but not personal letters. What should she say?

I’m okay, so far…?

Sorry to leave without telling…?

I have to do this on my own because…?

When she put down the pencil she examined her fingernails.

Usually the sound of Evelyn’s weaving at the loom soothed her, but this day the click, knock, click, knock of the shuttle and pedal was extremely irritating. Whatever road her thoughts traveled, the possibility of shame waited at the end. Suppose Booker wasn’t living in a town called Whiskey. And if he was, what then? What if he was with another woman? What did she have to say to him anyhow, besides “I hate you for what you did” or “Please come back to me”? Maybe she could find a way to hurt him, really hurt him. Muddled as her thoughts were, they coalesced around one necessity — an unrelenting need to confront him, regardless of the outcome. Annoyed and irritated by the “what-ifs” and the sound of Evelyn’s loom, she decided to hobble outside. She opened the door and called, “Rain, Rain.”

The girl was lying in the grass watching a trail of ants going about their civilized business.

“What?” Rain looked up.

“Want to go for a walk?”

“What for?” By the tone of her voice it was clear the ants were far more interesting than Bride’s company.

“I don’t know,” said Bride.

That answer seemed to please. She jumped up smiling and brushing her shorts. “Okay, if you wanna.”

The quiet between them was easy at first as each appeared to be deep in her own thoughts. Bride limping, Rain skipping or dawdling along the verge of bushes and grass. Half a mile down the road Rain’s husky voice broke the silence.

“They stole me.”

“Who? You mean Steve and Evelyn?” Bride stopped and watched Rain scratch the back of her calf. “They said they found you, sitting in the rain.”

“Yep.”

“So why did you say ‘stole’?”

“Because I didn’t ask them to take me and they didn’t ask if I wanted to go.”

“Then why did you?”

“I was wet, freezing too. Evelyn gave me a blanket and a box of raisins to eat.”

“Are you sorry they took you?” I guess not, thought Bride — otherwise you would have run away.

“Oh, no. Never. This is the best place. Besides there’s no place else to go.” Rain yawned and rubbed her nose.

“You mean you don’t have a home?”

“I used to but my mother lives there.”

“So you ran away.”

“No I didn’t. She threw me out. Said ‘Get the fuck out.’ So I did.”

“Why? Why would she do that?” Why would anybody do that to a child? Bride wondered. Even Sweetness, who for years couldn’t bear to look at or touch her, never threw her out.

“Because I bit him.”

“Bit who?”

“Some guy. A regular. One of the ones she let do it to me. Oh, look. Blueberries!” Rain was searching through roadside bushes.

“Wait a minute,” Bride said. “Do what to you?”

“He stuck his pee thing in my mouth and I bit it. So she apologized to him, gave back his twenty-dollar bill and made me stand outside.” The berries were bitter, not the wild sweet stuff she expected. “She wouldn’t let me back in. I kept pounding on the door. She opened it once to throw me my sweater.” Rain spit the last bit of blueberry into the dirt.

As Bride imagined the scene her stomach fluttered. How could anybody do that to a child, any child, and one’s own? “If you saw your mother again what would you say to her?”

Rain grinned. “Nothing. I’d chop her head off.”

“Oh, Rain. You don’t mean that.”

“Yes I do. I used to think about it a lot. How it would look — her eyes, her mouth, the blood shooting out of her neck. Made me feel good just thinking about it.”

A smooth ridge of rock jutted parallel to the road. Bride took Rain’s hand and led her gently to the stone. They both sat down. Neither saw the doe and her fawn standing among the trees on the other side of the road. The doe watching the pair of humans was as still as the tree she stood next to. The fawn nestled her flank.

“Tell me,” said Bride. “Tell me.”

At the sound of Bride’s voice, mother and child fled.

“Come on, Rain.” Bride put her hand on Rain’s knee. “Tell me.”

And she did, her emerald eyes sometimes sparkling wide other times narrowed to dark olive slits as she described the savvy, the perfect memory, the courage needed for street life. You had to find out where the public toilets were, she said; how to avoid children’s services, police, how to escape drunks, dope heads. But knowing where sleep was safe was the most important thing. It took time and she had to learn what kinds of people would give you money and what for, and remember the back doors of which food pantries or restaurants had kind and generous servers. The biggest problem was finding food and storing it for later. She deliberately made no friends of any kind — young or old, stable or wandering nuts. Anybody could turn you in or hurt you. Corner hookers were the nicest and the ones who warned her about dangers in their trade — guys who didn’t pay, cops who did before arresting them, men who hurt them for fun. Rain said she didn’t need reminding because once when some really old guy hurt her so bad she bled, her mother slapped him and screamed, “Get out!” then she douched her with a yellow powder. Men scared her, Rain confessed, and made her feel sick. She had been waiting on some steps at the Salvation Army truck stop when it began to rain. A lady on the truck might give her a coat or shoes this time like other times when she had slipped her food. That’s when Evelyn and Steve came along, and when he touched her she thought of the men who came to her mother’s house, so she had to run off, miss the food lady and hide.

Rain giggled on occasion as she described her homeless life, relishing her smarts, her escapes, while Bride fought against the danger of tears for anyone other than herself. Listening to this tough little girl who wasted no time on self-pity, she felt a companionship that was surprisingly free of envy. Like the closeness of schoolgirls.

Rain

She’s gone, my black lady. That time I saw her stuck in the car her eyes scared me at first. Silky, my cat, has eyes like that. But it wasn’t long before I began to like her a lot. She’s so pretty. Sometimes I used to just look at her when she was sleeping. Today her car came back with a busted-up door of another color. Before she left she gave me a shaving brush. Steve has a beard and doesn’t want it so I use it to brush my cat’s fur. I feel sad now she’s gone. I don’t know who I can talk to. Evelyn is real good to me and so is Steve but they frown or look away if I say stuff about how it was in my mother’s house or if I start to tell them how smart I was when I was thrown out. Anyway I don’t want to kill them like I used to when I first got here. But then I wanted to kill everybody — until they brought me a kitten. She’s a cat now and I tell her everything. My black lady listens to me tell how it was. Steve won’t let me talk about it. Neither will Evelyn. They think I can read but I can’t, well maybe a little — signs and stuff. Evelyn is trying to teach me. She calls it home-schooling. I call it home-drooling and home-fooling. We’re a fake family — okay but fake. Evelyn is a good substitute mother but I’d rather have a sister like my black lady. I don’t have a daddy, I mean I don’t know who he is because he didn’t live in my mother’s house but Steve is always here unless he’s doing some day work somewhere. My black lady is nice but tough too. When we started walking back home after I told her everything about my life before Evelyn and Steve, a truck with big boys in it passed us. One of them hollered “Hey, Rain. Who’s your mammy?” My black lady didn’t turn around but I stuck out my tongue and thumbed my nose at him. One of them was Regis, a boy I know because he comes to our house sometimes with his father to give us firewood or baskets of corn. The driver, an older boy, turned the truck around so they could come after us. Regis pointed a shotgun just like Steve’s at us. My black lady saw him and threw her arm in front of my face. The birdshot messed up her hand and arm. We fell, both of us, her on top of me. I saw Regis duck down as the truck gunned its engine and shot off. What could I do but help her up and hold on to her bloody arm as we hurried back to our house as fast as her ankle would let her. Steve picked the tiny pellets out of her hand and arm, saying he was going to warn Regis’s father. Evelyn washed the blood off my black lady’s skin and poured iodine all over her hand. My black lady made a hurt face but she didn’t cry. My heart was beating fast because nobody had done that before. I mean Steve and Evelyn took me in and all but nobody put their own self in danger to save me. Save my life. But that’s what my black lady did without even thinking about it.

She’s gone now but who knows maybe I’ll see her again sometime.

I miss my black lady.