Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) (34 page)

I swallowed a ridiculous wave of emotion.  "Sit down," I said roughly.

He sat on the bed with me and I made him give me his hands.  I uncapped the nail polish--the purple one--and started painting his nails.  He laughed and squirmed, with the result that the polish smudged more than I would have liked, but I thought it looked respectable, if blobby.  I blew on his nails.  He kept laughing--silent music--until I met his eyes and he wrinkled his nose at me.

This wasn't really what I had in mind.

"Yeah, but it looks awesome, doesn't it?"

You are so bizarre.

I kissed him to shut him up.  He couldn't even fight me, because his fingernails were wet.  He uncoiled under my mouth, helpless and wanting, the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen.  I held his waist in my hands when I thought he might collapse.  I wasn't sure I didn't want him to.  A hot flush crept up his neck, his jawline.  I did that to him.  I couldn't believe I did that to him.  I couldn't believe he wanted me.

"I don't know how you can stand to be with me," I told him.

I kissed the blush curling around his hairline.  I kissed his eyes when he closed them.  He put his arms around me, very obviously wanting to hold me, except he couldn't touch me with his hands.  If I were in his place I would have been frustrated.  I would have raged.

Sky eased back from my grasp. 
What do you mean?
he asked, frowning.

I took a moment.  "I dunno," I admitted.

Part of it was that my father had destroyed his family.  My father had taken his voice.  Sky never once expected me to behave like my father's progeny.  There were people I'd known all my life who didn't bother giving me the same credence.

Sky caught on.  He made to touch my hair before remembering his nails were wet.  He drew his hand back.  His face was soft, contemplative.  What was he thinking?  It was when his eyes were relaxed that I found it the most difficult to decipher his expression.  Usually Sky's eyes were the most expressive part of his whole body.

I touched the back of his smooth hand to get a reading.  Understanding.  Faint exasperation.  Patience.

If our positions were reversed, I thought, if Sky's dad had killed my mom, I couldn't have hated Sky.  For one, it wasn't like Sky was personally responsible.  And anyway, everything about Sky begged to be loved.  From his soft heart to his easy humor to his mellow smile, he was the kind of person who made you want to be a better person, just to impress him.  He even made you feel like you already were.  He halted time with his hands and chased away storms and shadows.  He calmed you down by loving you; it only made sense to reciprocate.

Sky went home at length to make lunch for his grandmother.  I swiped hand sanitizer on my fingernails, rubbing away the blue nail polish, replacing it with purple.  I heard the front door when Uncle Gabriel came home; I went out to see him.

"Looks good," Uncle Gabriel said, with a thumbs up.

"Uncle Gabe," I said.  "Can you do anything to keep Sky on the rez?"

Uncle Gabriel looked puzzled.  "Why would you think that I could?"

"What about his dad?" I asked.  "Have you found him yet?"

"I'll let you know," Uncle Gabriel said.

I had the idea that he was being evasive again.  I didn't want to get angry with him, so I packed my pockets with candy and went to visit Annie's grotto.

In the southeast of the forest there was this awesome grotto, a rock cave and a creek tucked under a thick, enormous weeping willow tree.  I didn't know how Annie had managed to hide the spot over the years, and half wondered whether it only existed when she wanted it to exist.  Even the beech trees grew closer together there, thirsty roots lapping up the cackling water, tall branches capturing sunlight in a green canopy.  Once Annie shared the grotto with Sky and the rest of us, it became something like our hideout.  The shade was a welcome respite from the heat wave outside.

What I liked best was hanging trinkets from the swinging willow branches.  Annie had already decorated the branches with handmade wind chimes; on one occasion I added my mother's beaded earrings and pretended I could hear her whispering with the wind.

"How do you feel?" I asked Annie, awkward.

Her veneer was perfect.  "Alright."

I said, "Ade'uke isa'awinna, ha?"

Annie's neck cricked when she looked at me.  Almost everyone on the reservation knew Shoshone, but unless you were sixty, it was rare to hear it spoken in conversation.  I didn't like that.  The language is the heart of any culture.  Fail to preserve one, the other dies.

"Nuu niam pia watukinna," Annie admitted. 
I miss my mother.

"Be'nnen agan'iyunde kee idehi niwene mitukkaano?" 
But why couldn't you admit that in English?

Annie waved a dismissive hand.  "Mitukkaano kee nian nasungkwa'anna tukummahanningkunna." 
English was not made with my feelings in mind.

It was fun when the four of us were out there at once.  Aubrey and I generally argued over books--or at least he told me what books he liked, and I told him they sucked, and he said, "I respect your opinion very much," which was about the closest thing to arguing Aubrey was familiar with.  Sky taught me sign language, but slowly.  The finger alphabet confused me.  Who the hell had the bright idea to make A and E practically the same letter?  I think all four of us were dreading the end of summer, because we stayed out later and later those days, until at one point I woke up in the cave with candles lit to combat the darkness, Sky sleeping with his head on my chest.  That was my favorite.

One night, after I walked Sky home, Mrs. Looks Over came rushing out of her house in her bathrobe.  I was too stunned to do much of anything when she beelined over to me, her harsh eyes screwed up with authority.

"I have heard that you are a tattoo artist," she said magnanimously.

What?  "I, uh."

"I request a yellow rose," Mrs. Looks Over said.

"
What?
" I choked.

She wouldn't let up.  She followed me back to my house, where Uncle Gabriel and Rosa leapt out of their sofa seats to greet her, because you should always treat your elders like they're the biggest celebrities on the planet.  She sat down on the sofa and Rosa passed her a bowl full of blue popcorn.  She ate from the bowl with dignity.  I went into my room and cleaned a pair of needles with rubbing alcohol.  I got out my ink sticks, yellow and green and white.  I carried needles and ink out into the sitting room and Uncle Gabriel stared at me like I'd lost my mind.

"She's the one who asked for it!" I protested.

"Catherine," Uncle Gabriel began.  "Are you...quite alright?"

Mrs. Looks Over huffed.  "Do you mean to suggest that I am not in control of my faculties?  I've always wanted a tattoo!"

"But I don't want to hurt you," I said lamely.

She eyed me keenly.  "I should think I have tolerated worse pain."

There was nothing I could do.  Normally when I inked my own tattoos I didn't bother with stencils, because I trusted myself to get it right the first time.  I doubted Mrs. Looks Over trusted me that much; so I went into my room to get a piece of paper for the preview.  When I came back Uncle Gabriel had gone into the kitchen with the popcorn bowl, probably refilling it.  Mrs. Looks Over watched me expectantly, her eyes cunning and scary.

"Um," I said.

"I would prefer it on my arm," Mrs. Looks Over informed me.  "The same place as Skylar's will do."

She shook off her bathrobe, rolling back her nightgown's sleeve.  Her arm looked skinny and frail, blanketed in heavy brown wrinkles.  I don't meant to sound like a jerk, but I wasn't sure how I'd get the tattoo to come out uniform without sagging the way the rest of her skin did.  She let me take her wrist, and I turned it over in inspection.  Her emotions jumped through me.  They were like nothing I'd ever felt before: calm but turbulent, shaken but unshakable.  What was that about?  I recoiled, discomfited.

"Fool boy," Mrs. Looks Over chastised.  "What on earth is taking you so long?"

"Would you like tea, Catherine?" Rosa asked in her tiny voice.

"Not at this hour," Mrs. Looks Over declared.  "The bladder's the first thing to go."

Why the hell are old people always so frank?

Rosa got up and went into the kitchen after Uncle Gabriel.  Being alone with Mrs. Looks Over scared me, until I reminded myself that this woman was Sky's grandmother and had helped bring him into the world.  I felt a surge of affection toward her I can't put in words.  Somehow I loved her already, or a part of her, at least.

I showed Mrs. Looks Over the preview drawing.  She nodded curtly.  "That will suffice."

I rubbed her arm down with cotton, worrying.  I decided I'd try and follow the way her skin fell, maybe make the tattoo as small as possible.  While I was cleaning her arm, she spoke up.

"What are your intentions with my boy?"

I ground the yellow ink stick in a tin dish.  "Uh," I said, my favorite word lately.

"You are aware, of course," Mrs. Looks Over said, "that he cannot verbally consent to anything which you may propose."

Flustered, I accidentally snapped the ink stick in half.  "I don't think I'm gonna propose anything."

"Hmph."

I observed her warily.  "Do you
really
want a tattoo, Mrs. Looks Over?"

"Did I not tell you as much?  I don't throw about words willy-nilly the way you youngsters do these days!"

There was nothing more I could do, then, except give her the damn tattoo.  When I was satisfied that her arm was clean, I pressed the first of the needles to her skin.  She didn't so much as flinch.  Tattooing isn't at all like drawing.  Basically you're poking thousands of tiny dots into somebody's skin and hoping they look like they're connected.  A lot of people can't handle it, I guess.  And your arm gets tired when you're the one holding the needle, but if you stop too long, you run the risk of blotting.

Uncle Gabriel came into the sitting room and grabbed his jacket off the coat rack.  "I'm going to walk Rosa home," he told me.  I heard the door shut behind them.

Twenty minutes into the tattoo, I wasn't even halfway finished.  Mrs. Looks Over was the ideal customer:  She sat so still I might have mistaken her for that wood relief of Pocatello outside the tribal council building.  I swapped out needles for the green one, ready to ink in the rose's stem.  Mrs. Looks Over sighed.

"You okay?" I asked, skittish.

"I wanted to determine what sort of a boy you were," Mrs. Looks Over told me.  "I'm certainly no fool.  I know very well who your father was."

Caliban tapped on my sitting room window.  Turns out I was imagining him.

"Do you remember Skylar at all?" Mrs. Looks Over asked.  "Before his father took him from the reservation?  You would have been a very small child."

I started working on the curly rose leaves.  I bent my head over Mrs. Look Over's arm.  "Only that we were in a Christmas play together once."

"So you recall that, do you?" she appraised.

"Yeah.  I've got a good memory."  But I didn't know why that was.  "Ma'am."

Mrs. Looks Over breathed bitterly through her teeth.  "His own grandmother, powerless to help him..."

Did that mean she didn't speak sign language?  "You can't hear his voice?"

Mrs. Looks Over narrowed her eyes at me.

I swapped needles again, cleaning my hands with the rubbing alcohol.  "When his mouth wrinkles," I said, "he's telling you he disagrees with you, but he doesn't want to hurt your feelings.  When his eyebrows start acting schizophrenic, it's because he's doing or thinking something impulsive.  Sometimes there's a line on his forehead.  That's when you should take him the most seriously."

Mrs. Looks Over said nothing, until half an hour later, when her tattoo was finished--and sore.  The skin around the yellow rose sheened bright red, ready to flake.  I bandaged her up and she rolled her sleeve down, tugging her bathrobe over her shoulders.  I couldn't believe she'd asked me for a tattoo.  I couldn't believe I'd given her one.  She stood up, and I asked her, awkwardly, whether I could walk her home.  The reservation can look scary at night, especially when the houses are unlit.

"You aren't at all as I expected you to be," Mrs. Looks Over said.

My hair fell over my eye.  It wasn't entirely accidental.  I blew it away in a puff of air.  "Maybe you shouldn't expect things from people."

For the first time, Mrs. Looks Over looked confused.

" 'Cause you limit them," I said.  "What they can and can't achieve.  Even if you know a person pretty well, don't expect anything from them.  Just love 'em as they are.  Or don't love 'em.  It's on you."

"I don't believe that makes any sense."

"You don't love somebody conditionally," I said.  "Do you?  Like, you don't stop loving your son just because he pisses you off?"

"No, that's absurd."

"There you go, then."

"I see..."

She consented to let me walk her home.  I grabbed a flashlight and we left the house together, her arm around mine.  I couldn't get over how tiny she was.  Honest to God, her head was closer to my elbow than my shoulder.  If I ever happened to get her in the same room as Annie, I'd probably feel like a giant.