I had no idea what to do with this child. I had seen the look on her face as Goulay tried to take her away from the Carpenters. But a dog will bond even with a cruel owner, one who beats it and starves it.
We walked on. Luz began to lag. I slowed even more. She hung on to the case with grim determination. I had no idea what nine-year-olds talked about.
“What’s in there, then? Gold and jewels?”
“Stuff.”
“We can buy you more stuff. More clothes.”
“Not just clothes.”
Of course. Books. “You know what one of my favorite books used to be? The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Have you read that?”
On an adult, her expression would have meant, Don’t tell me you love me if you don’t mean it. I plowed on, glad I didn’t have to lie. “I’ve read all of them.”
“There are seven!”
“Yes. I’ve read them all. But I think The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is my favorite. Or maybe Prince Caspian.” A bloody thirty-two-year-old Norwegian discussing 1950s English novels with a nine-year-old Mexican girl in backwoods Arkansas.
The absurdity of the situation didn’t seem to bother her. “I like it best when they have supper with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver,” she said. Safety, warmth, food. Tenderness. Every child should have them. “And I like it when Edmund is in the sleigh in the snow with the White Witch eating Turkish delight.” She swang the suitcase to one hand, then changed her mind and tried the other.
“You want me to carry that for a bit?”
“Okay. Just for a bit.”
All her worldly possessions. It weighed about eight pounds. Not much, but eight pounds more than I wanted to carry.
“I like it too that Edmund was good in the end and that his sisters and brother were nice to him.” She frowned. “But I don’t know what Turkish delight is. Aba doesn’t know, either. She said maybe it’s kind of like chocolate.”
“Real Turkish delight is soft and squashy and sweet. It comes in round boxes. The pieces are pale yellow or pink cubes, and all dusted with powdered sugar.”
“Is it nice?”
Being in the rig, being out of sight, and getting my ribs taped would be nice. “It’s a bit perfumey, like eating roses. Sickly. I’ll buy you some if you like, then you can tell me.”
“Aba doesn’t like me to eat sweet things.” A slitted, sideways glance.
Aud Torvingen, White Witch. “Did you know that they made a film based on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?”
She gave me that look that said I was speaking Urdu again, and I remembered she didn’t go to school, where children are exposed to other children talking about cartoons and movies and gross-out videos.
“So what books do you have in here?” She shook her head and flushed, which I hadn’t seen her do before. “Must be a heavy one.”
She actually hung her head. I imagined her poring over a book of knowledge in tiny type with black-and-white illustrations that was forty years out of date and smelled of mildew, imagined her agony of indecision when it came time to pack her things: she would have wanted it so, but known it was stealing.
“I could buy you encyclopedias, too. New ones.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re better.” But that wasn’t what she meant. She stumbled, but pulled away when I tried to help her.
“How far is it?”
“Another two miles.”
She nodded wearily.
“I could carry you, if you like.” Even if she didn’t like. We were already conspicuous; I wanted to be back at the trailer before dark.
“Like a baby!” Enough energy for scorn.
“Aslan carried Lucy.”
“You’re not a lion.”
“No, but I can talk, not like a horse or a car.”
She considered that. “Okay. But piggyback.”
“Of course.” I shifted the Glock to the front of my waistband and squatted. My knee was visibly swollen. She climbed onto my back. “Wrap your legs tightly because I need one hand for—No!” I pulled her legs down a little. “No,” I said again, more softly, “not there.”
We set off again, her arms around my neck tightly enough to choke. If Mike’s weight hadn’t reopened the wound, hers probably wouldn’t. After a while she relaxed. A little while after that, the pain in my knee notched up from burning to searing.
Now that she wasn’t walking, Luz was more talkative. She talked about Button a lot.
“He’s okay. Not as smart as me but he’s good, I mean he’s good when he can be. When Aba tells him, Don’t leave the yard, he doesn’t leave the yard on purpose, he just forgets. So it’s my job to remind him.”
“But he has tantrums.” I was getting very thirsty.
“When he’s upset. Because he doesn’t always understand things.”
“Does he ever hit you?”
“On purpose? No! But once when I was little he was wiggling about and I tried to hold his hands and he knocked one of my teeth out. But it was just a baby tooth so it was okay. It was falling out already.”
“Does anyone else ever hit you?”
“Like who?”
“Like anyone. Like Aba, or Mr. Carpenter.”
“Why would they hit me?”
“Sometimes adults hit children when they’re not good.”
“I’m always good.”
“Always?”
She squirmed. “Mostly.”
“And what do they do when they find out you haven’t been good?”
She squirmed again. “Make me say more prayers.”
“Prayers are boring,” I said.
“Sometimes.”
“Always.”
“No, sometimes they’re nice. They make me feel…” Her arms tightened a bit while she thought about it. “Like someone’s looking after me the same way I look after Button.”
“Don’t Aba and Mr. Carpenter look after you?”
“Aba does. Mr. Carpenter…” I felt her shrug. “He does things like drive the truck and cut the wood and do the farm stuff, and he takes us swimming sometimes, and Aba leans on his arm when we go to church. But…”
She didn’t have the vocabulary, in Spanish or English, to talk about the inability to deal with the outside world, with strangers and hard moral choices. Jud Carpenter seemed like a good man who belonged in a simpler time. “But he didn’t stop that woman from taking you away.”
“He wanted to. Aba stopped him. But I’m going back, aren’t I, so I guess Brother Jerry was right. God works in mysterious ways.” Brother Jerry? “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s not far now.”
My neck hurt, my ribs hurt, I was beginning to imagine I could hear the bones in my knee grinding together, but more than that I didn’t want to see her face when we got in the rig and I drove her away. I walked on, right foot left foot.
“Aud.” That perfect pronunciation. “Aud? There is something wrong, isn’t there? Am I too heavy? We could leave my stuff here and get Mr. Carpenter to come back for it in the truck, later.”
“Luz, would you like to live somewhere else? I mean, live in a big city where you could have everything you wanted, watch TV and read books and talk Spanish and play with other girls?” Would I have left the care of my mother, such as it was, if a stranger had asked?
“Could Button and Aba come, too?”
“Luz, do you remember your life before Aba, when you lived in another country?”
“No.”
“You don’t remember a big church with pretty-colored glass, or your mother and brother and sister? Where everyone talked Spanish?”