My mornings almost always begin in the same way. I spend an hour or so in what My Hero and I call the quiet room, reading and listening to music. I try to read nonfiction at this time, something good for the brain or soul or both. This week I’m deep in E.O. Wilson’s THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF THE EARTH which I bought after seeing him interviewed on Sixty Minutes. But this morning I can’t concentrate. I’ve been distracted by memories of the biology I took in high school and college and wondering how could I have found it so boring? Biology and boring are antonyms, I now realize. I know the answer to my question. Back in the day I was too busy trying to figure out who I was and what I’d wear to spend time memorizing the taxonomy of species or the eras, epochs and periods of our planet’s history.

I wanted to be an entertainer, I wanted to be a star on Broadway.

Last weekend MH and I saw the L.A. production of Sondheim’s Follies. Sitting in the audience, the lights dimming, I heard the throat clearing and rustle of the audience settling in, the sounds people make when they’re getting ready to enjoy themselves; and the clichéd butterflies started fluttering in my stomach. In that moment I was eighteen again, sitting in the Geary Theater watching Ethel Merman in Gypsy. In college I wanted to be an actress, trained to be an actress. Those biology fieldtrips to peer into life under rocks or catch butterflies were ludicrously irrelevant.

I got a C in Intro to Bio, and I didn’t have the talent to command center stage – not to mention the patience to train and study. I became a teacher and, in the end, it was a good choice for me. I was a natural in the profession and it gave me time to catch my breath and find my true vocation. But the older I get the more conscious I am of all the things I might have done. I think that if I could redesign the human organism (are you reading this, Dr. Wilson?) I’d extend the middle period of life by twenty or thirty years so a person like me would have time to  teach fifth graders, study the ecology of my garden, write novels and stand in a spotlight and break the audience’s heart with my interpretation of “Or Am I Losing My Mind?”.

A few scientists do, a dozen business people, but that’s about it. The United States doesn’t have a manned space program anymore in large part because the people don’t want it. Our unmanned program limps along, begging money every year as much to keep the lights on as anything else.

Instead of calling North America the “New World” it should have been labeled the “Last World.” No more worlds to conquer, seas to cross…. Too expensive, too dangerous, too cruel.

My ancestors crossed the ocean from England to Australia in the early Nineteenth century, stuck in steerage with about one chance in four of surviving the trip. Others came in the holds of ships, stacked like cargo far below the water line, leaving home with no hope of ever seeing a family face again. My forebears were businessmen and petty criminals looking for a good deal and a second chance, others were indentured or taken captive. And don’t forget the children carried in their bellies and on their backs, some buried on alien soil and then left behind because it had to be that way. Whether they traveled willingly or were coerced into coming to the New World, these were brave men and women who accepted risk and sacrifice as part of life.

Since our space program began roughly fifty years ago, men and women have given their lives because they believed in more New Worlds than this one. We acknowledge their sacrifice by rejecting the dream they risked their lives for. Hell of a tribute.

Today we move through our days with our eyes on the ground or a screen, our hands fingering keyboards and the coins in our pockets, counting them over and over like misers, worried that someone will take what we have.

Meanwhile the sky is full of diamonds we’re scared to reach and risk and sacrifice for.

I was an English major in college at a time when writers occupied an elevated position in everyone’s opinion. We were expected to genuflect before the altars of Earnest Hemingway, Norman Mailer and – can you believe it? – D.H. Lawrence.

Being an author has brought those altars crashing down. I know, now, that authors are just like teachers and accountants and everyone else.

It’s Tuesday evening now and here’s the thrilling recap of my week so far. I’ve washed and folded a ton of laundry. Brushed the dogs and watered the garden. Postponed paying the bills, sorted tax stuff, loaded and emptied the dishwasher a couple of times. I’ve worked lots of good hours on my new book, done some business for San Diego Writers Ink and played Bookworm for a couple of hours in fifteen minute segments. This afternoon, I happily paid off the student loan we’ve been carrying like a load of bricks for ten plus years, driving all over town in the process, watching my gas gauge slip inexorably into the west. I’ve texted my daughter-in-law a bunch of times, watched some TV and gone to Pilates. On the way back, I picked up the weekly box of locally grown produce we share with our oldest son.

In short, my life is more or less like yours except for the book writing and student loan part which, I will admit, has made me a little giddy.

And now I fix dinner. Tonight it’s leftover chicken with noodles, which is about as day-to-day ordinary as you can get.

Our hotel has gorgeous sheets and pillows that my head sinks into at the same time it’s supported very nicely at the perfect angle. There are blackout curtains on the big windows and try as I might (or might not), I can’t hear freeway surf.

Honestly? There’s not much to do in Ojai and that’s part of its charm. We visited Bart’s Books on West Matilija. Probably the best used book store I’ve ever been in and most of it is outdoors. Patios with chairs to lounge in, coffee if you get snoozy, and rank upon rank of bookshelves, one outdoor room merging into the next. And so much fiction, I was almost delirious and would have been sorely disappointed not to find at least one book by Drusilla Campbell. I was pleased to see BONE LAKE, BLOOD ORANGE and THE GOOD SISTER lined up side by side like siblings called to attention.

In a charming wine bar we had a light dinner and dessert of broken chocolate, walnuts, cheese strips and sliced strawberries. Had to buy a couple of things to support the local economy, of course. The point of all this is to get enough of a break from routine and let our minds jump their ruts and wander in new directions.

Meanwhile, the dogs are guarding the homeland, watched over by Adriane. We’ll be home on Sunday. Just a few days away, a few miles up the road: when it comes to vacations the mini kind suit me best.

I have always burned the candle at both ends. I long ago lost the ability to sleep in late in the morning so if I go to bed after midnight, I still wake up at six a.m. I used to take naps in the afternoon, but those have gone the way of the long drowsy mornings. So right now, blathering away, I am virtually guaranteeing that I won’t be at my best tomorrow. But I don’t sleep well, tired or not. I almost dread bedtime because I know I might not do much more than doze. The other night, I had a long and complicated dream in which I had Dr. House wrapped around my finger. All his poison was neutralized by me. So there I was, wisecracking with television’s most annoying M.D. when I should have been deeply asleep. It’s no wonder I’d rather play Bookworm or Word Threads or Word Warp or whatever. I draw the line at Words With Friends. I played it for a year and never won a game, not a single game.

Diva the Doberman has just put her black head on my knee. She guards us all night long and doesn’t approve of late nights. I shall obey. Goodnight to all.

But for the next few days, I can wake up slowly and think about the day ahead.

Projects –

I have boxes of photos: children and grandchildren, holidays, old friends. A bunch of them go back to my grandfather’s family in Winterset, Iowa. I look closely at every face, hoping to see some trace of myself in those stern expressions. I got my name from my great-grandmother, Drusilla Newlon who got it from her grandmother, Drusilla Philbrick. Though I see nothing of myself in their pictures, I know I’m in there somewhere. I would not be me without them.

Letters. Mom saved all my correspondence from when I lived in Australia, London, Panama and D.C. I barely recognize myself in some of these letters but others bring the memories flooding back. Can a girl be literary, philosophical, bold and terrified and an airhead all at the same time?

I am also cleaning my office. What should I do about all the pens and pencils? I test every one and throw out more than I keep. All those shrieking chartreuse highlighters: dry as the Gobi. Goodbye tchotchkes off the top of the cubbies, into a storage box you go. Five years from now I’ll shop this box and remember why I loved that tiny ceramic pig with the blue glass eyes. Files and files labeled “Ideas.” I read each one and marvel at the way my handwriting has deteriorated, and am amazed by the places my imagination has taken me over the last twenty years. Those files get saved for sure.

All this backward-looking tires me out. I’m caught in webs of wondering that are denser and stickier than the ones I found in the closet I just rearranged. I wish I could talk to the Drusillas Newlon and Philbrick, to the Drusilla who hitched rides across Europe, to the one who came up with the idea for a book about a human zoo.

I need a rest from the past. I’ll escape and spend this rare and precious day of leisure and opportunity playing WordWarp and Bookworm.

Copyright © 2011 by Drusilla Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Chapter 6

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Django finally dragged himself up off the floor, dressed for school, and went downstairs to the kitchen, where Aunt Robin ate meals so she could use the dining room as her office.

“I didn’t know what you usually ate before school,” she said, sounding nervous. “Eggs? Or I could make pancakes.” She peered into a cupboard next to the refrigerator. “Oops, sorry, no pancake mix.”

Eggs. Pancakes. He didn’t care.

She broke three brown eggs into a bowl and beat them with a fork. “I’ll drive you this morning, but you’ll have to come home on the school bus. One of the home health care providers from Shady Hills is meeting me here to talk about taking care of Grannie after her back surgery.”

Django had never met his grandmother before yesterday. His mother had almost never mentioned her.

“How come we never see her?” He was seven or eight when he asked the question. His friends often talked about visiting grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and cousins. These proofs of an extended family had been bsent from Django’s life.

“We didn’t get along.”

“How come?”

She tapped her index finger on the tip of her nose and he knew she was deciding to tell him the truth or not.

“Doesn’t matter, Django, and it’s way too complicated to talk about on a hot day. Ask me again in the wintertime.”

But he forgot.

Aunt Robin served his eggs, and as he ate, he watched her wiping down the counter and putting the timer, the salt and pepper shakers, and a carafe of olive oil in a straight line along the top of the stove. She had a bookcase full of cookbooks. The only thing Django’s mother ever cooked was pasta and grilled cheese sandwiches. The rest of the time they ate in restaurants or either Mrs. Hancock or someone else—a caterer or a hired chef who made great food with low calories—fixed their meals. In the house where Django had grown up, the kitchen was large and brightly lit, shiny with stainless steel. Aunt Robin’s was dinky and dark and the appliances did not match. There was one window over the sink and old-fashioned track lights overhead. If Django had not known Robin Howard was his aunt, he never would have guessed it. She was like the kitchen. Something about her made him think of tight corners and not enough air. She wore her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back and tied with a black velvet bow, old-fashioned and boring. His mother had favored earrings that swung a little when she moved her head and sparkled in the light as her eyes did. He looked at his aunt’s earlobes and saw that they were not pierced. No rings on her fingers or bracelets.

“Don’t you ever wear jewelry?” he asked. “Your ears aren’t pierced.”

“Well, they used to be but they closed over.” She fingered her earlobe. “I’ve got a box full of earrings I never wear.”

“How come?” Django could not believe he was talking about earrings!

“Not my style, I guess.” She rinsed his plate and put it in the dishwasher.

“My mom had three hundred and ten pairs. I counted ’em once.”

His aunt nodded, some opinion apparently confirmed.

“Sometimes she’d get the Monopoly money and we’d play store with them.” He had been a little kid then, just six or seven.

“Hurry now. I’ve got a busy day.”

If he told her his mother had three heads and pointed ears, would she pay attention to him?

“How come I have to go to school? I won’t know anybody, and besides, it’s June already. No one learns anything this close to vacation.”

“I have things to do, Django. I can’t leave you here in the house alone.”

“Why not? I’m twelve years old.”

She smiled a little, and for a second he saw his mother in his aunt’s expression, and inside him something began to tear apart, a slow ripping pain in his chest.

“I don’t need a babysitter.” He managed to get the words out, although he was coming apart inside.

“I think I should be the judge of that, Django. Your mother was smoking in the toolshed behind the house when she was your age.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“She almost burned the place down. If you’re anything like her, you’re better off in school, where someone can keep an eye on you.”

Django stood up and pushed his chair into the table. The suggestion that he might be dumb enough to smoke had offended him; and even though he would have liked to know more about what happened to his mother on that occasion, he wanted to be anywhere but in the kitchen with his aunt. Even school in Arroyo would be better than this.

She touched his shoulder, stopping him. “I’m sorry, Django. That sounded mean, didn’t it? Really, I didn’t mean to be unkind.” She turned away, adding, “You’ll just have to be patient with me.”

Robin turned on the car radio to discourage conversation with her nephew. Though what she and Django would talk about, she had no idea. All they had in common was Caro, and barely that.

After graduating from San Diego State, Robin never had any doubt about what she wanted; and at that time, almost twenty years earlier, Arroyo was a perfect fit. It had been a small town on the move with a forward-looking city council and a town plan that assured her there would always be plenty of affluent residents in need of a good accountant. Like most things Robin did, the move was a measured decision based on research and facts. At the time, her mother still lived in Morro Bay, where she and Caro had grown up, and for a time she had thought she should go back there.

But in the end, climate made the decision for her. Arroyo was inland, thirty miles from San Diego, and its warm, dry climate agreed with her.

Caro had always wanted something that was out there, and right after high school she went looking for it while Robin put down roots in Arroyo and established her business. Caro and Jacky married on a beach somewhere in Australia and, of course, Robin was invited; but it was coming up on tax season and not a good time for her to be away. She sent her regrets and a small gift. She had no idea what to give a couple whose wedding was written up in People magazine.

Sometimes she wished she had rearranged her schedule and gone to Australia. Maybe then she and Caro would have kept their relationship alive. She might have met the man of her dreams in Australia. Maybe, but not likely. There had been men, some lovers, but no one she wanted to spend her life with. She had stopped looking years ago, stopped hoping too. She was resigned to her single life and contented in it. And why wouldn’t she be, when she had challenging and absorbing work, enough money, and a small circle of good friends? Her life was good. She didn’t let herself wonder why she and Caro had stopped being true sisters. It was something she would never understand. Caro had taken her secrets to the grave.

As she drove Django to school that morning, Robin did a mental scan of the busy day ahead. As an accountant she had several clients, including a firm of lawyers, Conway, Carroll, and Hyde, she would be visiting that morning. For some reason CC&H could not keep a bookkeeper more than a few months, and as a result their accounts were always a jumble. Her ability to make sense of them impressed the partners. They were opening a branch in Tampa and had asked her to go there for six months to organize the office. They didn’t seem to care that she was an accountant and what they needed was an office manager. Mr. Conway, the senior partner, insisted she was perfect for the job. She insisted right back that she was not, but he told her not to make a rash decision. “Think about it, think about it.” Well, she had thought about it for the last month and was no closer to saying she would go.

After a few hours with the lawyers’ accounts, she would run some personal errands and then spend the rest of the day in the office at Shady Hills Retirement Home, which was one of several retirement facilities in Southern California for which she kept the corporate books from her office at Shady Hills. She had to be home by three to interview the home health care provider, Willis Brock.

“What do you like to eat for dinner?” she asked Django. He murmured something that sounded like whatever, which was one of the obnoxious responses her friends with teenagers complained about. But Django wasn’t obnoxious. Robin had little experience with children, but she knew sweetness when she met it. And confusion and sorrow, such deep sorrow that if it were a lake it would be bottomless. “Shall I get pizza?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, of course not. You just had breakfast. But you’ll want dinner, I know.”

He sighed and slumped deeper in the car seat.

She almost stopped the car right then—her impulse to comfort Django was that strong. But as quickly as it came to her, it passed with the assumption that he would not want her comfort. If she tried to hug him he would probably push her away and then they would both be embarrassed.

Pausing at a stoplight, she lifted her hands from the steering wheel and saw that they had left moist smudge marks on the dark plastic.

One good thing about Django’s appearance in her life was that the lawyers at CC&H would stop pestering her to go to Tampa. They were family men and would understand that she could not traipse across the country with a grieving twelve-year-old orphan in tow.

The three signal lights on Arroyo’s main street were out of synch. She had to stop at every one. At a few minutes before eight in the morning, the little town was just waking up. The Starbucks across from the Catholic church was already crowded, but in the next block most of the shops were still dark.

Django sat slumped, looking out the window. At the back his hair was a tangled mess. She had not realized that twelve-year-old boys had to be reminded to use a comb. He probably hadn’t brushed his teeth either.

“It’s going to seem pretty quiet in Arroyo. After living in Beverly Hills.” He grunted something. “I beg your pardon, Django? You’ll have to speak up so I can hear you.” She heard herself sounding prissy, like the maiden aunt she was. “Never mind. Maybe I need a hearing aid.” It was a joke but he did not laugh.

She thought about the Tampa job and wanted to be there or anywhere far from this sad, lost boy for whom she could not say or do anything right.

Tampa. She wished Mr. Conway would stop nagging her.

A month earlier Robin and her mother had been having lunch in La Jolla, at a new restaurant Robin had read about online. Over a shared creme brulee, she had mentioned the Tampa offer. Her mother jumped on the idea as if she’d won the lottery. Robin’s cool response prompted her to ask if she was afraid to leave Arroyo. Robin laughed at that, of course. There were many things she knew she would not like about Florida—humidity and reptiles were two that figured prominently—but it was the inconvenience that put her off going, the disruption of her comfortable and efficient routine. All very good reasons, but her mother said they weren’t reasons; they were excuses.

Django said, “You sigh a lot.”

“Really? I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Are you tired?”

“I always sleep soundly.”

“My mom took Ambien.”

“Did she?”

Robin caught herself in midsigh.

She supposed that before her time with this boy ended, whenever that was, she would learn a great deal about her sister. Earrings, sleeping pills: these were things she would have known if they had been close or even if they had seen each other just occasionally. But it had been many years since she had done more than speak to Caro briefly on the phone, and those conversations had always been awkward. It was as if Caro was afraid of what she would say if she didn’t hang up fast.

But Robin had never thought that Caro was angry with her. There was something unspoken between them that had nothing to do with Robin’s failure to attend the big wedding or even the marked differences in their personalities. After Caro and Jacky settled down in Beverly Hills, the time between phone calls had lengthened. In the last five years they’d spoken three or four times, no more.

And now she was gone and Robin was left with regret, a puzzle without a solution. And Django.

Aunt Robin dropped Django off in front of the school ten minutes before the first bell. Arroyo Elementary didn’t look any better or worse than he had expected. It was like all the public schools he had ever seen: flat roof, asphalt, cement, chain-link fencing, and stucco painted a color that wanted to be green.

“After school there’ll be someone, a bus monitor, I guess. She’ll tell you which bus goes by the house. Do you remember the address?”

His aunt was trying so hard to be nice. It would be easier if she just didn’t say or do anything.

“I’ll walk home after.” He wanted to explore Arroyo’s small downtown on the remote chance that he would find something interesting. Driving down the main street a few minutes ago, he’d seen a game store, and that might be worth investigating. He held up his phone. “I’ve got a GPS app. I won’t get lost.”

“Well, don’t dawdle around or I’ll worry.”

Django wondered if she really was concerned about him or if her face was made with a little knot between the eyebrows.

“I’ll be home after three. A man’s coming by for an interview, a home health care nurse. Grannie’s going to need some special help after her back surgery.”

He did not care the first time she told him and he still didn’t care.

“Django, don’t be too quick to criticize the children you meet at this school. You know what I mean? I know they won’t be like your friends from before, but maybe you’ll be surprised.”

She sounded hopeful and Django realized she had no clue what it was like to walk into a new classroom, come face-to-face with thirty strangers, every one defending some small bit of turf, every one looking for something wrong with him, something to laugh at, to judge. He might as well be a creature from Planet X. He had a sudden prick of sympathy for his aunt in her ignorance and felt an impulse to be kind.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll be cool.”

The sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Costello, a pretty, dark little woman, had been in the classroom for fourteen years and had met all kinds of children with every variety of name and attitude.

“Boys and girls,” she said, clapping her hands together, “we have a new student today. Will you stand up D-jango? Tell us something about yourself.”

D-jango.

He knew she was being nice, but he didn’t want to stand up. He slid down into the seat and fiddled with his pencil. Behind him, someone snorted. Mrs. Costello didn’t force the issue.

“Well, maybe you’d tell us about your interesting name. I’ve never had a student named D-jango.”

He thought about what his father would say.

Django Reinhardt was a great jazz guitarist. He was Hungarian,and Django’s a gypsy name. Django and Stéphane Grappelli played at the Hot Club of Paris.

Instead, he told the teacher, “You’re not saying it right. You don’t say the D. It’s just Jango.”

He heard a girl’s voice whisper, “Jinglejanglejingle bells.” Laughter.

Mrs. Costello said, “Well, I’ll be sure I get it right next time.” She picked up her roll book and began to call out the names of students.

A boy whispered behind Django—“Hey, Jinglebells”—and something hit him in the back of the head. An eraser.

Django knew Arroyo Elementary School was going to be just as bad as he’d feared.

At lunchtime Mrs. Costello appointed a short, stocky boy to be Django’s “buddy,” an honor the boy—Billy—didn’t seem to appreciate. His friends, Halby and Danny, thought it was hilarious when he and Django walked out of the classroom together. On the way to the lunchroom Billy pointed out the boys’ bathroom.

“If you’re smart, you’ll never go in there without protection. I know a kid went in to take a leak, lost all his teeth, and he’s still in the hospital.” He lowered his voice. “Coma.”

In the lunchroom Billy pointed Django toward the food line and then disappeared. Django chose a container of macaroni and cheese and one of chocolate pudding. He looked around the crowded and noisy room for somewhere to sit and saw Billy standing in a knot of boys. He recognized Halby and Danny but none of the others. Judging from their expressions and laughter, they knew him, however. Django could tell that they wanted him to walk over, giving them an opportunity to say or do something mean; but he wasn’t that stupid. He sat in a corner by himself, took one bite of the mac and cheese, and pushed it away. He wasn’t sure what it tasted like, but it sure wasn’t cheese. At least the pudding was sweet, but that was all it was.

At Country Day the cafeteria sold things like tuna subs and roast beef sandwiches and hamburgers and all-beef franks cooked on a grill right there where you could smell how good they were. And salads. Django figured he was probably the only boy at Arroyo Elementary who had ever eaten a salad for lunch.

Back in class he went to his desk and sat without first looking down and knew immediately that someone had put something on the seat. He acted like nothing had happened, though, not wanting to give Billy and his mutant friends the satisfaction of upsetting him. He smelled chocolate pudding.

Mrs. Costello announced a spelling bee and divided the class into ones and twos. The ones stood up by the blackboard and the twos were down at the other end of the room. Django was a two and had to walk past everyone. He knew what he must look like from the back with gluey, gummy brown pudding on the seat of his pants. He tried to act like it didn’t bother him, but everyone laughed when they saw the mess, and he heard one of the mutants say, “Jinglebells pooped his pants.”

At Country Day the teacher would have had the brains to figure out who put the pudding on Django’s chair and sent him to the headmaster; but all Mrs. Costello did was sigh and tell Django to go to the boys’ bathroom and clean himself up. He stood outside the room after she closed the door, remembering Billy’s warning words. Maybe Billy was lying to scare him, but after just a half day at Arroyo Elementary the story sounded plausible, except maybe the part about the coma. He thought about going into the teachers’ bathroom, but being found there would be an additional humiliation. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that Billy, Halby, and Danny wanted him to go into the bathroom; and in a moment at least one of them would show up. Django would end up getting dunked. Or worse.

There had been mean kids at Beverly Hills Country Day. Nasty kids, even boys and girls who cheated on tests and stole from the little kids just because they could get away with it. Django had stayed away from them and they had never shown any interest in him. The worst name anyone had ever called him was “brainiac,” and he didn’t really mind that because everyone knew he was the smartest kid in the class. He had never been afraid of getting beaten up and put in a coma.

His imagination told him just what would happen if he went into the boys’ bathroom. One of the mutants—probably his “buddy,” Billy—would follow him in, and then it would get nasty.  Although this scared Django, at the same time he realized something that surprised him. Part of him wanted to fight with Billy, wanted a chance to punch him, and then when he was down, kick him in the balls. Of course, the other half of Django knew he’d be the one getting punched and kicked.

Instead of going to the bathroom nearest his classroom, Django walked down to the end of the long open corridor—Mrs. Costello had called it the breezeway—with classrooms and sorry-ass, dried-out landscaping on either side, until he got to an area where he could tell by the decorations on the doors that the first- and second-grade classrooms were located. In the little boys’ bathroom the sinks were so low he could pee in them if he wanted to and it smelled really bad, like one of the public bathrooms in Griffith Park where the pervs hung out and his dad had told him never to go alone. He held his breath and grabbed wads of paper towels and rubbed the backside of his jeans until the pudding seemed to be gone. He went back to class.

Mrs. Costello looked at him accusingly when he stepped through the door. “Where were you, D-jango? You’ve been gone ten minutes.”

Django looked at the three snickering mutants, and he tried not to smile as he said, “Billy told me never to use the big boys’ bathroom.” It was sort of embarrassing to talk about bathroom stuff in front of everybody, but he didn’t care. He was enjoying himself for the first time all day. “He told me a boy got beat up in there and had to go to the hospital with a coma and he’s probably gonna die. Billy said I should go down to the little kids’ bathroom.”

“I never!” Billy cried.

Django widened his eyes and made a cross on his chest. “I didn’t want to get beat up, Mrs. Costello.”

“Sit down, D-jango. Django, I mean. And you, Billy, I’ll talk to you after school.”

As he walked to his place in the line of spelling-bee twos, Django flipped the mutants the bird. He didn’t look at them as he waited for his turn to spell, his heart beating like crazy. He’d have to be careful they didn’t catch him after school, but the risk was worth it. Besides, Django had decided, he was never coming back to Arroyo Elementary.

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Reprinted with the permission of Grand Central Publishing.

Copyright © 2011 by Drusilla Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Chapter 5

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Willis left to deliver the baby to the attorney, and Madora walked across the dusty yard back to the trailer. On top of a plastic basket full of clean sheets, blankets, and towels, she carried a thermos of chicken noodle soup. At the curbside door of the trailer she put the basket down and returned to the house for soap and a bucket of warm water. Back and forth, Foo tagged along behind her, his stubby tail aquiver with interest. The curbside door was padlocked and Madora’s hands were sweaty with frustration before she got the combination right; it broke apart, and she opened the narrow door to a rush of close, unpleasant air. She jammed the door wide with a stick and brought everything in and set it on the table where Linda ate her meals. Foo watched outside, longing to be invited in, though he never had been.

Madora looked at the girl in the bed, at the mess of bloody sheets and towels Willis had left to be cleaned up. She had an impulse to turn around and walk out the door, lock up, and pretend there had never been a girl named Linda, no baby boy with deepwater blue eyes.

Madora had begged Willis to take Linda to the hospital, reminding him that she was only sixteen, a teenager with slim hips and a flat, boyish figure; but he had been confident, even cocky, about how easy it would be to deliver the baby in the trailer. To everything she said, he had the same reply: “Childbirth is easy. If it was hard, the human race would have died out by now.”

Perfectly still, Linda rested on her side facing the interior side of the trailer’s roll?up door. Her pale hair, darkened by sweat, lay against her neck and shoulders as if painted on. For a moment, Madora wondered if Willis had taken the baby and left her with a dead girl.

“Linda? You okay?” She was afraid to touch her.

Linda turned her head on the pillow. Purple shadows encircled her eyes, making her milk-?white face look almost clownish. A pulse ticked in one lid of her half-?shut eyes, rimmed red-?orange.

She tried to speak, but her words were barely discernable, a groggy, undifferentiated burr. It didn’t matter what she meant to say. Madora took the meaning. The girl’s pain and grief and fear, her shame, and even her rage came into Madora’s consciousness like the shock of a gunshot fired close to her head. She dropped to her knees beside the bed, trembling, and spoke without thinking.

“He’s beautiful.”

“A . . . boy?”

“Oh, God, Linda, I’m so sorry.” Willis had not even shown her the child. “He should have . . .”

Madora stopped herself from saying more. It felt dangerous to criticize Willis.

Linda gripped Madora’s wrist, digging her bitten nails between the tendons.

“It’s too late.” Madora shook her head. “He’s gone. Willis took him an hour ago.”

Linda’s eyes widened, as if it wasn’t enough to hear the words; she needed more light to see the truth on Madora’s face.

“I couldn’t stop him.” And she had not tried because she believed that the baby was better off with the lawyer’s clients than with Linda, a homeless girl, a panhandler.

Madora wouldn’t bother washing the sheets, just bundle them and put them in the trash; and if Willis said that was wasteful, he could try himself to get the blood out. She imagined how it would feel to speak so boldly to him. Then stopped herself. Even imagining was dangerous, for she might become so comfortable in her own opinions that one day she would forget and speak them aloud.

“I hurt . . .”

“You’ll be okay. When Willis gets back he’ll give you some more pain meds. And then you just have to heal.”

Linda dug into her wrist again. “Shower . . .”

Linda was never supposed to leave the trailer without Willis. He told Madora that a pregnant girl needed exercise, so he occasionally took Linda for walks up to the ridge overlooking Evers Canyon. Sometimes they even went for drives: Madora behind the wheel of the big Chevy Tahoe; and Linda, blindfolded for the first ten or fifteen miles, leaning against Willis in the backseat, her arm through his and her head on his shoulder. Willis toyed with Linda’s fair hair, twisting it around his index finger. Seeing them paired this way, Madora felt a stab of jealousy, though she knew there was nothing sexual between them. The single time she had let jealousy get the better of her good sense and mentioned sex, Willis was appalled and withdrew from her as if she had struck him. Later, when he could talk about his feelings, he told Madora that he was attached to Linda as a brother would be, and she believed him.

On the hikes and car trips that were Linda’s reward for being cooperative, she only once made trouble.

They had driven over the mountains into the Anza-?Borrego Desert to see the wildflowers that were bountiful after a wet winter and spring. Near the poppy preserve they had turned off the road and driven a few hundred feet to a roundabout where there were no other cars. Where a trail followed a wash, acres of orange-gold poppies bloomed on either side, interrupted here and there by pools of blue lupine. The air buzzed with the business of bees. Madora had thought for an instant of her father and the care with which he and Rachel had tended the gardens behind the house in Yuma, vegetables in the middle and flowers on all four sides. Lost for a moment in her memory, she had relaxed her grip on Linda’s hand; and when she did, the girl broke away from her and ran back toward the road, yelling for help, though the desert was as empty as a scoured pan. She was seven months pregnant then and unsteady on her feet, a toddler easy to catch; and Willis had laughed at her clumsy effort and let her get as far as the road before he ambled after her. But back in the car he was ominously silent as he bound her feet and hands with plastic zip ties.

“I’m not an unkind man, Linda.” In the rearview mirror Madora saw his dark eyes, drooping with grief. “I thought you’d like a little trip, a chance to see something beautiful. I guess I was wrong. I guess I don’t know you at all, Linda.”

Through the Tahoe’s tinted windows he stared out at the barren mountains as Madora drove up the Montezuma Grade.

“I took you off the streets. You were pregnant, hungry—”

Madora saw such pain and disappointment in his expression that she almost stopped the car. She wanted to slap Linda silly for making this good man unhappy, for being too stupid to realize that without him she would be lying dead somewhere.

Although it was against Willis’s rules, Madora knew it would be safe to take Linda into the house for a shower. She was too weak to run away. Willis had said he’d be working an extra shift at Shady Hills Retirement Home when he finished his business with the attorney and not to expect him before six or seven that night.

Madora handed her a clean sheet. “Wrap this around yourself and then stand next to me. I’ll help you walk.” She folded a cotton dish towel and tied it as a blindfold.

By the time they reached the house, Linda was bleeding. Maybe from inside, maybe the stitches. Madora didn’t know about such things. A trail of blood followed them into the bathroom.

“Stand in the shower, lean against the side, but don’t turn on the water.”

It might not be safe for her to shower if she was bleeding. Possibly she shouldn’t even be standing.

“You’re not going to pass out, are you? I can’t carry you back to the trailer, and if Willis—”

“I . . . can . . . Okay.”

Once upon a time in another life Madora had fallen out of a tree and torn a gash in her forearm. A doctor with a tiny anchor tattooed between his index and middle fingers had stitched it up and told her to keep it dry. That night her mother had covered it with a plastic bag so she could take a shower. A plastic bag didn’t seem feasible under the circumstances, but Linda had to be cleaned up; Madora knew that. And the stitches should probably be kept dry. She was in the realm of guesswork now, going on instinct enhanced by her desire—her need—to help Linda because she owed it to the baby to care for his mother. She felt connected to the girl now, as if through the boy they were related.

She ran back to the trailer and got one of the sanitary napkins Willis had left there. In the kitchen she tore a clean plastic bag from a roll and cut two long strips about ten inches wide, not an easy thing to do until she figured out a way to pull the plastic against the sharp edge of the scissors. In the bathroom Linda stood in the shower stall, resting her forehead against one metal side. Madora handed her the napkin.

“Put this between your legs,” she said and then helped Linda cover the pad with the plastic strip and tie it to another strip that went around her waist. “Now put your hand over the pad and don’t let it move. You gotta keep the stitches dry.”

Showering was a slow process, turning the water on and off, filling the bucket, gently soaping the girl’s long legs and rinsing away the blood and sweat and other fluids from her thighs, sponging beneath her arms and under her small breasts.

“Can you bend over a little? I’ll wash your hair.”

Linda was fair-?haired but her baby was dark. His hair might fall out and grow back blond. Somewhere Madora had learned this often happened. His new parents might not want a blond baby. They would be disappointed. Her stomach tightened. She could not bear that his new parents—Whoever they were—would be anything but thrilled by him. She wanted them to love him in the way she wanted to be loved herself. Completely, without qualifications, forever and ever.

She dried Linda carefully and gave her another napkin to stanch the blood and a pair of her own panties, which hung on the girl like bloomers. She hoped the stitches were still good, prayed the bleeding would not go on and on. She could clean up the blood on the floor and shower stall, but Willis would be suspicious if he saw torn stitches. He would guess that Linda had been out of the trailer. She hadn’t seen much, just the inside of the shower. Not enough to identify where she was being held.

That evening while Willis showered and changed, Madora stood at the stove stirring the Dennison’s chili, listening to the drum of water against the sides of the shower, dreading that Willis would see a drop of blood she’d missed or a long silver-?blond hair caught in the drain. The shower sounds stopped and she heard the whir of the hair dryer. A few minutes later Willis came into the kitchen wearing a pale blue shirt that looked beautiful against his olive skin. He wore his hair long and loose, held back by a bandana around his forehead. After five years, his beauty still struck her as hard as it had that first night. He was a buzz-?cut Marine back then, a Marine medic she mistook for her guardian angel. When he took her hand, she had asked him, “Did Daddy send you?” And he answered that he had, though later he said it didn’t happen that way.

“You were so out of it, Madora. You couldn’t put two words together.”

“I like that shirt,” she said, handing him a beer from the refrigerator. She waited for him to tell her where he’d bought it, but he didn’t want to talk, and as always, she took her cues from him. She laid a spoon and paper napkin on a plastic mat, a souvenir of Arizona with a photograph of a lightning storm over the Grand Canyon. He sat down and crumbled a handful of saltine crackers into the chili bowl.

“Some avocado or something’d be nice here. You got any cheese?”

“We’re out of everything. I can go to the market tonight.” There was a used-?book store in Arroyo that stayed open until ten. On the rare occasions when she went into town alone, she liked to stop there and browse through old magazines; but it had been many weeks since Willis let her use the car alone, and she was not sure how to approach the subject with him.

He said, “I’ll bring stuff home tomorrow. Make me a list but not too long. I’m running short.”

“Did the lawyer pay you?”

“You think I drove all the way to Carlsbad for my health?”

She ducked her head.

“I’m going to medical school. You forget that? It’s going to cost plenty. We need to save every penny.”

“I know that, Willis.”

“Sure you do. You’re a good girl, Madora.” He pushed his chair back and pulled her down onto his lap. “You took care of things for me. I knew I could trust you.”

She laid her head against his shoulder and inhaled the musky scent of his aftershave.

“I couldn’t get along without you, Madora. You know that, don’t you? You’re like the air I breathe.”

The scent and the caress of his voice spread a soft warmth through her.

“Let’s go in the other room, okay?” He lifted her into his arms. She waited for him to say something about the weight she’d gained, but he held her as easily as he would a child. “I don’t think I can go another minute without a piece of you, little girl.”

“What about—?”

“Her? Forget about her. That one’s not going anywhere.”

It was almost midnight when Madora slipped from bed and pulled on a cotton shift. Holding her sandals, she closed the bedroom door against the sound of Willis’s soft snores and went into the kitchen. As she passed through the living room, Foo jumped off the couch and romped toward her, one ear flopping lopsidedly, his backend twisting in anticipation of his delayed dinner. Madora poured kibble into his bowl and put it down for him. She turned on the carport light and went outside to check on the animals in the menagerie. When she reached in to give the hawk-?shocked rabbit a handful of pellets, the terrorized creature cringed against the far end of the cage.

She walked behind the house and let herself into the trailer. Foo obediently lay on the ground by the cinder-?block steps. The interior of the trailer was inky, and Madora used a flashlight to see her way to Linda’s bedside.

The girl lay on her back, her clean hair tangled on the pillow. Sleeping soundly thanks to the pills Willis had given her when he got home from work. Faint lines etched her forehead, and Madora was touched by a wistful sadness. A girl of sixteen should have a silky, unfurrowed brow. As she slept, she seemed to chew on something and dreams danced beneath her swollen eyelids. Imagining that she dreamed of pain and of the baby she had never seen, Madora’s sorrow grew to an ache that spread through her body.

Poor unlucky girl. Madora knew what it meant to be young and lost, frightened of everything and pretending to fear nothing.

She filled a plastic water bottle from the jug on the table and placed it where Linda could reach it. She locked the trailer again and walked back to the house, meaning to return to bed; but she was wide-?awake and taut with emotion. At such a time she would have liked to have a TV, but theirs had stopped working months ago; and though Willis said he would fix it or buy a new one, he did not like to be reminded. A radio would have been company, but reception at the head of Evers Canyon was all static.

The night was long, the day ahead even longer.

She looked in on Willis. He slept soundly, needing his sleep more than she did. He had another full day ahead of him, a few hours at Shady Hills Retirement and then visits to the private clients who doted on him and told him he had a healer’s touch and should be a doctor, not simply a home care provider.

The house smelled of the day’s heat and chili and dog. She couldn’t draw a full breath and went back outside. Overhead, the moon was only a sliver; but far from city lights, stars illuminated the landscape enough to see by. Madora walked around the front of the house and leaned against the Tahoe, thinking of nothing much. Her mind was empty, a bucket under a spigot waiting to be filled.

Red Rock Road came to a dead end marked by a pair of posts and a reflecting sign of a vehicle with a red line drawn through it. Starlight dusted the miles of wilderness that lay beyond, turning rock and soil and scrub to pewter. Madora made a soft kissing sound, and Foo followed her up the trail to the rock that water and erosion had carved a seat in. Standing on his hind legs, Foo pestered to be lifted, and she arranged herself so she could hold him on her lap.

Behind the trailer, an owl lifted out of a sycamore near the creek and cast a shadow along the trail as it flew silently into a scrub oak near Madora. The night was full of hunters.

Linda was sixteen, younger than Madora had been when Willis rescued her. She was seventeen when she left Yuma with him; and if he was sometimes strange, if there were parts of him as tightly padlocked as the trailer, she accepted these things because his quirks and eccentricities were the price she paid for being loved and for being sure that at the end of the day he would always come home to her. He needed her as much as she did him; he had made that clear on a day she tried not to remember but could not forget.

In a motel in Yreka, he sat on the edge of the bed and pressed a pistol against his ear, a pistol she did not know he owned. There had been a job he wanted, orderly in a hospital, good pay and more responsibility than an aide; but something went wrong and he got drunk and came home raving and crying. He made her swear she would never leave him, and she had done so willingly. How could he doubt her? He said he’d die without her; without her he wouldn’t want to live. And in response she said that she was nothing without him either. He had rescued her.

Since that night nothing had changed until today when she held Linda’s small boy, and they looked into each other’s eyes. She had seen all that he was meant to be and do, the wealth of opportunities that lay before him; and he had looked into her heart brimming with love and known her in a way no one else ever had, not even Willis. There had been a click of recognition between them; and because of it, she was different than she had been twenty-?four hours ago.

Chapter 6 of Little Girl Gone will be posted January 24!

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Reprinted with the permission of Grand Central Publishing.