Tula’s chest shuddered, and she couldn’t help herself. Urine dribbled down her leg as she began crying, but silently, keeping her weakness to herself as she sensed the giant walk up behind her, the gun in his hand that was soon a silver reflection on the black water, the man on the surface huge, the size of a tree.
“Get down on your knees, child,” said a voice in Tula’s head, and Tula obeyed instantly, overwhelmed with relief, because it wasn’t a man’s voice. It was the Maiden. The Maiden had returned to her in her moment of need, and Tula knew everything would be okay now.
Get down on your knees, the Maiden counseled, and pray.
Behind Tula, as she whispered a prayer, the giant stood in silence. A minute passed. Then two minutes, then three.
In the water’s reflection, Tula could see that Squires was pointing the pistol only inches from the back of her head. Occasionally, he would lower it, but then he would raise the pistol again. But Tula was no longer frightened.
Once again, she felt a serene immunity from fear. The amulets she clutched in her hand provided strength. What happened would happen. She was with God and she was content. The Maiden would not allow her to suffer pain, and, ultimately, Tula would be reunited with her mother, her father and family again, which was something the girl wanted more than anything she had ever wanted in her life.
Be at peace, child. I am with you always, the Maiden said, speaking as softly as the muted light inside the girl’s head.
For another minute, Tula waited, her head bowed. She felt so confident and content that she decided to help the man along by saying, “If this is what you must do, then I forgive you. If it is God’s will, then you are doing the right thing. Don’t be afraid.”
Tula waited for so long in silence that she had resumed praying before the man spoke to her, “It’s what I have to do. I don’t have a damn choice, and it’s your own fault. You’ll tell the police what you saw and they’ll arrest me. Even though I didn’t kill that girl, they’ll charge me with murder. Do you understand?”
His voice wasn’t so empty of emotion now. It gave the girl hope, but she was inexplicably disappointed, too. She had felt so peaceful and free kneeling there, waiting for it to end.
Tula considered turning to look at the man but decided against it. Looking into the barrel of the silver gun might bring her fear back, and she didn’t want that to happen. She didn’t want to risk crying or losing control of her bladder again.
“I understand,” she said to Squires. “I’m sorry I saw what I saw. I didn’t mean to be in the tree watching you, but I was.”
Tula glanced at the water’s mirror surface and saw that Squires was leaning toward her now. Then she felt the barrel of the gun bump the back of her head as the man said, “You told me yourself you don’t lie. Even if you promised me you wouldn’t tell the cops, I wouldn’t believe you. Do you understand now why I have to do this? Unless you promise me-I mean, really promise me-and mean it.”
The man’s voice was shaking, and Tula knew he was going to pull the trigger. She closed her eyes, pressing her chin to her fingers, as she replied, “I can’t promise you, I’m sorry. If the police ask me, I will have to tell them the truth. I won’t lie to you and I won’t lie to them. It’s because of another promise I have made.”
In Tula’s ear, she heard a metallic Click-Click and she knew that the man had pulled back the revolver’s hammer. On her cheeks, she felt tears streaming, but she wasn’t afraid. She was ready for what happened next.
What happened next was, in the high cypress limbs above them, there was a squawking, cracking sound. Then the fluttering of wings as a bird tumbled from the tree canopy and thudded hard on the ground nearby. Tula looked up, surprised. Then she was on her feet and running toward it without even thinking, tucking the jade amulet and silver medallion into her T-shirt as she sprinted.
“It’s a baby egret!” she cried, kneeling over a thrashing bird that looked naked because its feathers hadn’t come in yet. “I think it broke its wing.”
Carefully, the girl cupped the fledgling in her hands, using her thumb to try to steady the bird’s weak neck. And she stood, saying over her shoulder to Squires, “That must be her mother up there. See her?”
Tula motioned to a snowy egret that was hovering overhead, its yellow feet extended as if to land, excited by the peeping noises the baby bird was making.
“Yes,” Tula said, “its wing is broken. At the convent, we took care of many sick animals. We can help this bird, I think.” Then she looked at Squires, adding, “I can’t stand it anymore. I have to go to the bathroom now.”
Then she stopped because of what she saw.
Harris Squires was sitting on the ground. He was rocking and crying, his hands locked around his knees, making a soft moaning sound in his misery. If the gun was somewhere on the ground nearby, Tula didn’t see it.
The scene was even stranger to Tula because, the way the man was sitting, slope-shouldered and huge, reminded her of a bear she had seen begging for peanuts at the zoo in Guatemala City.
The bear had struck the girl as being very sad, an animal as repulsed with itself as it was humiliated by its captivity. The scene was even stronger in Tula’s mind because her father had taken her to the zoo the day before he was murdered.
Slowly, the girl walked toward Squires. She was embarrassed for him and sad in the same way that she had felt sad for the bear. She placed the little bird a safe distance away, in case the big man moved, and then hesitated before touching her fingers to Squires’s shoulder.
Tula patted the man gently as she might have patted the bear, given a chance. And then said to him kindly, “I must go behind a tree and use the bathroom. I can’t stand it anymore. Please. But promise me something. It’s important. Promise me you won’t look. I know that you have seen me without clothes. But I don’t want a man ever to see me that way again. Do you promise?”
Rocking and sobbing, the giant nodded his head.
Tula said to Squires, “My mother had a little doll like this. She wore it pinned to her blouse. Even the same color, bright orange and green, instead of blue like most of them. They’re called worry dolls in English. At night, you tell your worries to the doll and put it under your pillow. The next morning, all your worries are gone.”
The girl sniffed the doll, knowing it couldn’t be her mother’s-not way out here, so far from where a woman could get work cleaning houses or mopping floors in a restaurant-but, then, Tula had to wonder, because the odor of raw cotton was so familiar.
Maybe it seemed familiar because everything else inside this man’s trailer was so foreign.
Squires had started the generator, and they were inside the RV that smelled sour and stale like the ashes of a cold cooking fire. Tula had found the doll, only an inch tall, mounted on a brooch pin in a strange room where there was a camera, lights on tripods and a bed with a strange black leather contraption hanging from the ceiling.
The doll was on a table piled with photos of naked women. The women were frozen in poses so obscene that Tula had looked away, preferring to focus on the miniature Guatemalan doll in traditional Mayan dress.
The photos were of Mexican women, judging from their features, but a few Guatemalan women, too. Tula didn’t linger over details and closed the door to the room behind her, feeling as if the ugliness of that space might follow her.
Squires was sitting in a recliner, looking dazed, eyes staring straight ahead as he drank from a pint bottle of tequila. He had found the revolver, which was now lying in his lap, and Tula sensed that he was rethinking what had happened out there in the cypress grove. She had witnessed his breakdown and he would begin hating her for it soon, the girl feared, if she didn’t get his mind on something else.