“Honey,” Barb groaned. “No, no, honey…”
She needed to jump in and she couldn’t even get her hand free. Barbara remained in the gypsy’s grip as she jerked off her chair, or half off, tottering into the NATO man’s cologne. The scent made her eyes prickle.
“The chaplain can handle it,” Kahlberg was saying. “He gets a lot of holy rolling at these things.”
“Mr. Paul.” Barbara touched a hand to the boy’s back, a white slab against the girl’s spangled upper body. “Baby, I’m sorry…”
The hundred-throated prayer around them drowned her out. Not that these strangers needed to hear about it anyway, the trouble Barb recalled, seeing her youngest boy in so nasty an embrace.
“Just a touch,” Paul might’ve said. “A-all she needs is a touch.”
The same as he’d said over his father, a week ago down by the Naples waterfront. But Barbara was thinking of other trouble, worse, back outside New York.
“C-can’t you feel it?” Paul might’ve said. “Can’t you just tell?”
There was also the reek of carpentry, another reminder of downtown. Every alleyway in the centro had some kind of construction going, and with that thought the mother staggered at last off her chair, away from Silky’s cologne. The change in perspective gave her a moment’s relief, she no longer saw her child as a rapist, but on second look Paul’s body-length embrace began to seem, if anything, even more of a nightmare. Barbara glanced at Maddalena, the only other person here who’d been present at Jay’s healing. What had she heard last time, and what did she think now?
The camerawoman was merely doing her job, swinging this way and that under the fluttering purple and lavender. Now she took in the pileup around the wheelchair, now the crowd’s reaction. And DiPio too, though he was a part of the pileup, didn’t seem to realize what the boy could be up to. The doctor showed more concern for the girl, saying something like Easy, please, and nudging the liaison man aside in order to reach towards Paul. When the black-and-white child straightened for a moment to undo the work belt, DiPio caught hold of one narrow shoulder; when Paul pulled free Barbara felt pride. They couldn’t stop her boy. A mother’s pride, fond and blushy, how about that, on top of fear on top of rage on top of guilt — all slashing back and forth under her breastbone, along with thoughts of the other kids, the boys in the hospital and the girls in the kitchen — how about that, a mother’s bedlam?
Around the cross-clutching over the wheelchair the dim tent had grown louder. The foreigners buzzed and the cameras went click, while the preacher had started bawling in mixed languages.
Guarda! Look! L’amore di Dio, sempre nuova! God’s love, forever new!
Well, maybe new, but certainly strange. Once Paul got his shoulder free, he wedged his small hips more deeply between the gypsy’s thighs. He actually pawed the girl. One hand worked around her waist, clutching her unresponsive body up into his, while the other traveled over shawl and neck to face. The doctor bent closer, his own odors tickling Barbara’s nose; his soap had a hint of rose. The more Paul manhandled the girl, the farther stretched the wrinkles on the old man’s face. Then DiPio’s voice started to rise, yet another strain of frenzy in the tent.
“E possibile?” he yelped. “Possibile?”
In Barbara’s hand the gypsy’s grip likewise revealed mixed emotions, shifting and sweating. Her sideways glance, however, revealed something more sophisticated. The eyes remained angular and warlike as ever, but they suggested a touch of amusement, like Somebody get a leash for this puppy. As Paul gripped her you couldn’t help but notice her young breasts, too, her sweetly tapered midsection, and Barbara had to wonder about the wheelchair’s decoration. What was the point of all this tasseled party drapery, all but leopard-skin? And how could the girl within find the fun in today’s muttering assault? Yet Paul did look a little like a puppy, at play across the gypsy’s body. A boy at a game, again. With the hand around the gypsy’s waist he searched for some spot between spine and wheelchair, pulling at her bohemian swaddling.
“Son,” Kahlberg stage-whispered, “you don’t know what you’re messing with.”
Talk about a boy playing a game… by now even the Lieutenant Major could see that whatever was going on, it wasn’t about sex. What kind of sex involved one partner taking hold of the other’s tongue?
“Mrs. Lulucita,” the liaison said, “aren’t you the parent in charge around here?”
“Mary, mother of God.”
“Never mind her. Think about the Siren on the rocks, the devil in a woman. Think about where that tongue has been—”
Or maybe that was what the officer said; Barbara tuned him out, looking instead to the chaplain. Interstate had been silenced with mouth open. One thin arm held a Bible overhead, and his un-sleeved elbow revealed what was either a fresh bruise or more purple shadow. DiPio meantime had clamped one hand around his neck-stuff, the crucifix and Mr. Christopher, and his stare looked likewise clenched. He was rooting for the miracle so openly that Barb had to look away. She had to avert her gaze from all three of these looming full-grown white guys, casting her eyes across the congregation, dun-brown to domino-black, layered in castoff exotic colors (fig-blue to mirror-silver) and quieted for the moment. But the scene the mother had to deal with remained right in front of her, the willowy boy with his hand sunk to the knuckle between the girl’s lips.
At least this time the love-bite hadn’t drawn blood.
Again the cripple’s hand fluttered in Barbara’s. Already Paul was withdrawing his fingers from her mouth, releasing her to an involuntary birdlike moan. And when the gypsy arched her upper body after his retreating spit-slick touch, it seemed natural, a spasm. Certainly she didn’t mean to show off her figure, curving up from where the boy’s other hand still cupped her spine.
“All, all she needed was s-someone to hold her.” Barb heard him clearly that time. “Couldn’t you just f-feel it?”
Mr. Paul let go altogether, sinking onto his haunches, folding backwards from between the girl’s legs. The quake victim collapsed too, dropping into her chair, and Barb found herself thrown into yet another brand of confusion. She suffered a letdown. She didn’t want the girl to collapse. She’d brought everyone out to the chapel, and she wanted something to come of it.
But then the gypsy gathered herself and stood. At that the reporters and the congregation went berserk — erupting, attacking — and Barbara and the others in charge were left looking stupid.
They were left helpless, as the crowd’s toy-store colors flared up everywhere, erupting, smothering. The mother was knocked onto all fours. The wheelchair somersaulted over her back, a stab in the back, an end to her dithering. How could she have been so stupid? How could she never have realized what Paul’s magic would mean for people like these? How many of their barrel-bottom tatters did they need to wave in her face, and how loudly did they need to raise their searching prayers? Now as she lay beside the altar’s riser, at first she couldn’t tell if she were seeing stars or only the dots and dashes that decorated their t-shirts and dashikis. Anyway the view from the floor called to mind something else as well, the slash and blot of cave paintings, lit by dancing torches. Stick-figures agitated the air and the noise wasn’t anything Barb recognized either. She couldn’t tell whether the mob was calling on God or her husband or, in some third or fourth language, somebody else again. She only understood the clang and rattle of chairs toppling over, the whisper of blood-dark tent-hangings spiralling down. The reporters were in it too, shouting and elbowing over her head, fighting for a decent camera angle on Paul and the gypsy.