Fire Raiser (28 page)

“—helpless old woman at Mass in our village church—a miracle she wasn’t burned alive! Why didn’t you tell me yesterday, when it happened? She’s my
mother
!”

As he passes, Natasha sees his hand clutch the crucifix at his throat. She remembers how she saw it aflame yesterday, while he was handling her. He repeats, “My
mother
!” and yells for his raincoat and his car keys.

Natasha is put into a car with three other girls, and two men she has never seen before drive them to an airport. They stay together, the four of them and their escort, through the ticket line and the security line and the boarding line. Natasha never even considers crying out for help. She heard and understood what the woman said the night of the trip across the Adriatic: she will be deported as an illegal alien if she is lucky, and thrown into jail as a whore if she is not. She has not been lucky so far.

From one airport to another, and yet another; Natasha spares only a tiny smile for the dreams she once had of world travel. Then, after a very long flight, the ten who were selected back in Italy are reunited. The ensuing drive is interrupted only by rare stops for food and the toilet. The men don’t bother to watch the girls anymore; the landscape is bleak and empty, and only a suicidal fool would attempt to escape now.

Natasha sleeps with her cheek pressed to the glass of the van window. When she wakes, the road signs are all in English and she realizes she is in the United States. She has heard that after September 11, American borders had become more difficult to cross. So much for that conceit.

When they cross a river, for the first time her interest sparks: a sign says it is the Mississippi, the river of Mark Twain. She feels foolish for being disappointed that there is so much industry along the river, so much concrete and steel. Did she really think to spot Huck Finn on a raft, or a fleet of white paddle-wheel steamboats? She confines herself to observing what is actually before her, and eventually a sign welcomes her to New Orleans.

The house is tall and narrow, painted mustard yellow with white trim. There is a wrought-iron fence, also painted white, all around the yard. It is at least six feet high, with spikes. The gate to the driveway squeals as a young boy shoulders it open.

Within, the house is simply vulgar. Natasha has a glimpse of a large front room with padded black leather furniture and chrome-and-glass tables, gold velvet curtains swagged back from panels of black lace coyly shading the windows. But up two flights of stairs, everything is hospital prim. She is given her own small room. Locked inside it, she finds clean clothes in the closet, fresh sheets on the bed, and books on the shelf.

Tired, alone for the first time in forever, nonetheless she cannot sleep. She selects a book with an interesting title and curls into the overstuffed armchair patterned with overblown roses. At last, eyelids drooping, she crawls into bed wearing a cotton nightgown from the chest of drawers. She sleeps until someone unlocks the door.

She doesn’t know how the man discerned her understanding of English; at first she thinks that because she is still half asleep she made some slip of expression or movement. But it remains that he tries no other language on her. He merely begins speaking in English, explains that she is one of the lucky few who will not be living down one flight on the floor reserved for working girls. He tells her that cooperation will be rewarded and defiance punished—then smiles and shrugs a little, as if to say,
I know you’re smart enough to have learned that already, but it’s part of the speech, something I tell all the girls
. He says that she has been chosen for a very special purpose, and that once it is fulfilled, she will be taken to a country of her choosing, given a job and an apartment and money for the rest of her life. He fastens around her wrist a bracelet made of dozens of tiny silver links and a small plain disk, and smiles. He has thin lips, and an excess of large white teeth.

“Have you any questions?”

She doesn’t move. She hardly dares to breathe.

“Come now, Natasha. I know you understand me.”

She says nothing. She doesn’t even blink.

He smiles again. “Enjoy the books,” he murmurs, and leaves her alone.

That’s when she sees it: the book she picked out the night before, left open and face-down on the arm of the easy chair. Of all the languages represented—German, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Greek—she had chosen one in English.

Dragon Ships
, by H. Elizabeth McClure.

With an intriguing title and a beguiling tale of a world a thousand years gone, a woman she has never heard of has betrayed her.

THERE IS NOTHING to do except read. She reads voraciously—only in English—and almost every day there are new books waiting beside her door. They’ve tried to trick her by including things in Russian and French, but she separates those out and puts them aside, taking only the English books.

The ten girls have their meals together. After the first few days, nobody bothers to talk to Natasha. She still has not uttered a single word, a single sound. She has not yet conceded that she must communicate with anyone—not even the tall, elegant man who knows that she knows English.

At the top of the house, at the very back, there is a little balcony. It is the only place where fresh air is to be had. The window of her room is sealed shut, though sunlight enters freely through clear panes of glass. The balcony, with its wrought-iron chair and soft cushions, is hers for a half hour every day. She is left alone. The balcony is enclosed in chicken wire; she assumes that at some point in the past, someone jumped. From what she can see of the brick walkway below, escape could not have been the result—but then, perhaps it was not meant to be.

In a room down the hall are two stationary bicycles and two treadmills. The first few moments of the daily hour in the little gymnasium are a scramble for the bikes; no one likes the treadmills. After a few days, a sign-up sheet is posted that makes sure everyone has a fair turn.

In June she undergoes the procedure for the first time. She knows enough to know what they are trying to do. It is not a success; she bleeds as usual two weeks later. In July they try again. This time she doesn’t bleed on schedule. She feels . . . odd. Not sick to her stomach, not dizzy, not any of the signs she has heard about. Just . . . odd. They begin to watch her. Three other girls are also being watched. By the last week in August, they have bled again.

Natasha has not.

SHE WAKES TO A DIM roaring sound that comes closer and closer as the minutes pass and she lies there in bed, trying to understand the noise. Gradually, as a composer might layer instruments and phrases beneath and on top of each other to create an ever-more-complex piece, other noises are added: the creaking and banging of wood, the scraping and whining of metal, the rasping of concrete and the smashing of glass. The lashing of the rain seems almost calm by comparison. The air becomes dense, thick, almost too heavy to breathe. It smells strange—as if it has escaped from some deep fetid hole in the earth. It is tremendously hot; she realizes there is no more muted whoosh of air conditioning, and the lazy rotations of the ceiling fan have stopped.

She gets out of bed in the darkness, makes her way to the window, parts the curtains. She watches for a long while as the rain beats against the glass. Slowly there comes a little light, and she can see beyond the window. The world is painted in grays and browns, as if the air itself has been bruised.

“Stand away!”

She spins around as the tall man shouts at her from the doorway. For the first time he does not seem in control of everything; he is barely controlling himself, she thinks, for his hands look a little trembly and his face is flushed.

“Natasha!” he snaps. “Move back!”

She pretends not to understand. It is the same game they have played for months now. He strides over and hauls her away by one elbow. He pushes her onto the bed and she is suddenly, irrationally terrified. The fear seeps through her like poison, hot and shivering through her belly and thighs. But he turns for the closet, pulls out clothing, and throws it at her. She doesn’t move because she truly can’t.

He grasps her shoulders in his big, thick fingers. “Dress yourself. Keep away from the window. I know you understand, so do as I tell you.
Now!
Or I’ll leave you here!”

But he won’t. She knows that. Everyone has been far too careful of her, now that she is pregnant. She will not be abandoned. The fear washes out of her. She takes off her nightgown—she has long since shed modesty, there have been too many people who have seen her too intimately naked—and pulls on a shirt and jeans. As he hovers in her doorway, calling orders down the hall, she sits on her bed to pull on socks and shoes. The wind and the rain shriek, and her window explodes inward.

BY LATE AFTERNOON, the worst has passed. But then the water begins to rise.

It is slow and inexorable and it is worrying these men who thought that a few broken windows would be the extent of the damage. There has been argument all afternoon among them as they sit in the horrid gold-curtained room. Some want to load up the cars and the van, find safe ground, wait out the storm. Others scoff, saying that the levees will hold—and if they leave here, how will they keep track of their whores?

“I paid good money for these bitches—of
both
sexes,” one man snarls. “I’m not losing a single damn one of them!”

“And what happens when the police come by again?” another man asks. “There was a mandatory evacuation order that you ignored—”

“They’ll probably be tired, and needin’ a little relaxation. I’ve had twenty houses in nine cities in four countries, and all cops are the same. You pay them, mostly in freebies—” He gestures with his cigar to the nearest cluster of girls. “—and they protect you. The ones who want money, unless they got a sick mother or they’re saving up for a new boat, their buddies call ’em queers. So the payoffs usually don’t cost a thing.”

“I get it,” another man says impatiently. “But why worry about escapes? They don’t speak no English. They got no ID—”

“Because it disrespects me! If these little whores even begin to think they could get away from me—” He glares across the room and the whores shudder.

At irregular intervals the argument continues. Natasha is puzzled, not sure why the tall man, who seems to her so much in authority, does not simply give the order that will load them all into cars and take them away from here. There are things she does not know, of course, and they are unlikely to tell her, so she gives a mental shrug and curls deeper into the corner chair. The other nine special girls are talking quietly with each other, inspecting their fingernails, fiddling with their silver bracelets. They take no notice of the whores. These cluster together, clinging to each other. They sit in dull-eyed silence, and flinch at sudden noises.

It is dreadfully hot and humid. She wishes she had something to read, something to take her mind and imagination far away from here. She has read so much in the last months that she is beginning to think in English. She wonders idly how many words she will mispronounce for never having heard them aloud. She should have indicated weeks ago that she wanted a dictionary—

“
Scheiss!
” The tall man is on his feet, pointing at the water seeping from the hallway rug onto the hardwood floor.

There is no more discussion.

The tall man fixes his gaze on Natasha and is about to say something when there is a pounding at the door and someone yells, “Anybody in there? Department of Wildlife and Fisheries—we’ve got boats, come on!”

One of the men begins to laugh, a high note of frenzy in his voice as he says, “Wildlife? By damn, now
that’s
funny!”

The door is kicked open. Water gushes in. Three young black men slog their way into the house. Their faces are tense, but their voices are kind and reassuring. Soon Natasha is crowded onto the porch. The house next door, lacking so lofty a stance, is awash to the windows.

Someone is lifting her in his arms. She is told, “It’s okay,
chère
, you be safe in no time.” She is put into a boat that reminds her a little of the
scafisti
in Italy. The tall man is arguing with someone wearing a green nylon jacket with some kind of logo on the breast. His pale eyes widen as the motor is gunned and the little rubber boat chugs off down the river that was once a street.

Natasha watches him until she can see him no more. Very quietly, she laughs.

THE SHELTER is in a home more or less undamaged by the hurricane. There is bottled water, sandwiches, cookies. And cots. Natasha eats, lies down, sleeps for many hours. She wakes up smiling.

“Yes, honey, you’re safe now,” murmurs a soft voice, and she opens her eyes to see a caring coffee-brown face. “Your friend Marika says your name is Natasha. That’s awful pretty. My name’s Poppy.”

There is something watchful about the dark eyes that puts her on the alert. But in the next moment she realizes there is nothing malignant about this woman, nothing that wants to take and own and use. There is concern, curiosity. And some sort of knowledge that she can’t identify. Best to stay silent.

“Miz Bellew?”

Poppy turns her head. “Miz Lachaille,” she acknowledges as a young, weary-looking white woman approaches.

“This the little girl you were lookin’ for?”

Natasha feels her blood freeze solid in her veins.

“This one and these other poor children. You know what the one of them said about that house they were in, don’t you?”

The second woman nods, her lips compressing into a thin line of disgust. “Don’t take much English to communicate
that
. Will y’all be takin’ them with you?”

“I hope to do that, yes, if they want to come. Virginia’s a long ways—but I can’t imagine they’d mind being as far from here as they can get.”

“Amen to that. Well, let me know when you decide to head out—we’ll load up some food for your trip.”

“Thank you so very kindly, Miz Lachaille.” When the woman has gone, Poppy says softly, “Child, I’ll be honest with you. I did come lookin’ for you in particular. Sensed you halfway across New Orleans. You don’t know why, I’m sure. But you have nothing to fear anymore. I can help you. Do you believe me?”