Little Girl Gone (12 page)

“Boy or girl?”

“Who?”

“Your friend. Outside.”

“I don’t have any friends.”

Linda considered this, and something that had been avid in her manner faded away. Dispirited, she lay back on the bed, licking the tips of her fingers, rubbing them on her bare thighs. She expelled a long breath and absently scratched at the eruptions of pimples along her jaw line.

Madora looked away and swept the trailer as she did every day.

After a while, Linda said, “I wonder what my sisters are doing right now.”

“You have sisters?”

“Three, and one brother. Saint Phillip. He had his own room because he was a boy. BFD. I was the oldest. I should have had my own fucking room, but I had to share with three little brats. God, I hated them.”

“Is that why you ran away?”

“It’s none of your business why I ran away.”

“I would have been glad to have a sister. If I had one I’d never run off and leave her.”

“You don’t know anything. You’re just a stupid fat girl.”

“I’m not stupid.”

Linda looked surprised. “Well, fuck me straight! The parrot can speak for herself.”

The sun had just dropped behind the canyon wall when Madora heard the squeal of the Tahoe’s brakes and the sound of the SUV’s big tires digging a trench in the gravel. Willis slammed the driver’s side door. She took a deep breath and leaned against the sink, her arms across her chest, her hands shoved up under her arms.

“What’s the matter with you?” he said when he saw her. “You look like an ice cream cone in that pink thing.”

She had taken a shower and washed her hair. The pink and white shift was the only thing in her closet that wasn’t wrinkled, and the color made her happy, bringing to her mind the smell and taste of a strawberry smoothie. Willis
opened the refrigerator door, took out a beer, and slammed the door shut, shaking the boxes of cereal that stood on top like books on a shelf.

He dragged a chair out from the table, opened the beer can, and drank. His Adam’s apple moved up and down as he chugged the whole thing without pausing for breath.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how it went?”

She didn’t have to. She had known as soon as he braked the Tahoe that whatever had happened during his interview, it wasn’t what Willis had hoped for.

“The counselor was a piece-of-shit twenty-year-old girl.” He leaned over the table and his brown eyes, darkening to near black around the pupils, were unfocused. He had been drinking before he came home. “She told me to go to community college, something about fulfilling requirements.”

“You told her you graduated from high school, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did, Madora. You think I’m an idiot? She said my grades were borderline and I’d have to make ’em up before the college would let me in.”

“But then it’ll be okay? Premed?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. And then when I’m about forty years old I have to take some test, the MCAT.”

“That’s the name?”

“It’ll say if I’m”—he made quotes with his fingers—“med school material.”

“Did you tell her you were a Marine medic? And about being a home health care provider?”

“They don’t care about any of that.”

“But it’s not fair. You’ll be a wonderful doctor. You should get letters from your clients. Like references.”

“Shut up, Madora, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He could say all the awful things he wanted. Her love was like a shield; the words bounced off without hurting her. She could not think about herself when he was obviously in pain, so angry and depressed. It was her job to lift his spirits when he couldn’t do it himself.

“I know you. I know how good you are.”

He set his elbows on the table and looked at her. Beneath their drooping lids, his eyes were almost crossed.

“You’ve had a lot to drink,” she said. “Do you want to lie down?”

He shook his head.

“It’s not the worst news in the world, Willis. I mean, it might mean you’ll spend more time in school, but in the end you’ll still be a doctor, right? And that’s what you want.”

“Just get me another beer and quit tryin’ to be a nurse.”

“Maybe that’s the answer, Willis.”

“What?”

“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to be a nurse than a doctor?”

“You want me to clean up after some bozo no better’n me ’cept he’s got an MD after his name? My father was a doctor, Madora, and if he could do it, I sure as hell can too.”

“You’ll be a wonderful doctor.” She knew this with all her heart.

“You bet I will.”

“You’ll show them.”

“I figured it out, drivin’ home. I’m not going to let some twenty-year-old college brat tell me what I can do. I’m going to the Caribbean. They got medical schools.” He straightened up, belched. “I’ll get into one of them, easy.”

She hesitated and then asked the obvious question. “Won’t that cost a lot? Where would we get the money to move there?”

“Let me worry about that,” he said and finished off his beer.

This new plan would involve airplane trips, and she could not guess what other expenses when she considered that on a Caribbean island a foreign language might be spoken and the laws would be different. In some foreign places Americans were not liked. She thought about living at the end of a road in a foreign country, stuck in some kind of hut, unable even to say good morning to her neighbors in words they would understand.

Willis mumbled something about going back to the trailer to watch a movie with Linda.

“Stay with me, Willis.” Madora was patient by nature and not given to jealousy, but tonight she did not want him to traipse back to the trailer for consolation. It was her job to make him feel better, but how could she do that if he passed out on Linda’s bed? She hated that he sometimes seemed to prefer Linda’s company to hers. Maybe if she were thinner, more like the girl she was when Willis found her on the porch at that party in Yuma…

She said, “Linda wants us to let her go.”

“I’m calling the shots, not her. Or you either.”

“Yes, but maybe we should be thinking—”

“I don’t want you thinking at all, Madora.”

The disastrous interview had been a heavy blow. If it helped him to be mean to her, she could take it. Although Willis still saw her as the same girl he’d rescued, Madora was not a fragile teenager anymore. Years with him had toughened her. She had grown a skin that did not bleed as easily as it once had.

Django’s questions about the trailer had been plaguing her all afternoon. She had something to say and it did not matter if Willis wanted to hear. And if he became angry, at least that would take his mind off medical school for a while.

“I’m worried someone might get curious about the trailer.”

His eyes snapped into focus. “Has someone been hanging around?”

“I’m just saying, what if a hiker or a mountain biker—”

He looked at her.

“We’d be in trouble, wouldn’t we?”

“If you keep your mouth shut, no one’s gonna get curious about a piece-of-shit trailer in the backyard. This place is a dump, Madora. Look around you. The trailer fits right in.”

He called their home a dump. She wanted to defend the little house, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.

He shoved past her and made his way to the back door, running his hand along the countertop to maintain balance. He pulled the door open, and Foo, who had been outside on the cement, nosing the door, rushed in and darted between his legs. Willis staggered and kicked out, cursing at the dog as he fell against the doorjamb, missed the outside step, and stumbled into the brick-and-board shelf in the carport. He tipped sideways and fell on the hawk-scarred rabbit’s cage, stabbing his hip on the pointed corner. With a yell of rage, he whirled and in one movement grabbed the cage between his hands and threw it hard into the cement floor.

Madora knelt beside the wire pen. She opened the door and lifted out the rabbit. Its torn ear had almost healed. The little creature might one day have been confident enough to leave the cage. But Willis had finished what the hawk could not. Madora looked at the rabbit’s open eyes and knew that it had died in fear.

T
he next morning, Madora cocooned the dead rabbit in a faded blue T-shirt, soft from many washings, and buried it under a cairn of river rocks in the trees behind the trailer. Afterwards she went about her chores in a plodding and dutiful way, trying not to let her mind wander back to the events of the night before. Her silence seemed to irritate Linda.

“What’s biting you? Did your boyfriend dump you?”

Madora stopped sweeping and stared at her.

“I
know
I heard you talking to him. Yesterday.”

“I wasn’t talking to anyone.”

“Cut the crap, Madora. The walls of this box are like paper.” She stretched languidly and then examined her feet. “Paint my toes today, okay? Willis brought me some pink polish. Kinda pretty.”

“I’m busy.”

“Willis says you have to do things for me. You’re supposed to keep me happy.”

“I don’t care if you’re happy or not.”

“Wow. What got into you? The little mouse got fangs all of a sudden.”

Madora tried not to respond to the baiting. She knew better than to do so, but Linda was clever. Even silent on her bed, she provoked Madora with a cheesy, knowing smile twitching the corner of her mouth. Madora jerked the table and chairs away from the wall and swept away the dust and hair and crumbs of food. She forced her movements into slow motion and hummed a tune in her head as if nothing troubled her, least of all Linda’s goading. It was not easy to do. As she worked she felt Linda watching her, reading her, looking for a weakness to exploit. Madora remembered that in school, girls like Linda were never popular, but they always had a parade of fawning acolytes who stayed on their good side out of fear.

“I hear when Willis yells at you. I hear you outside, walking around at night like a ghost or something.” Linda laughed. “You don’t have any secrets around me, Madora.”

“You’re a liar. I don’t believe anything you say.”

Linda retreated into silence for a few more minutes. Then, “Paint my toenails and I won’t tell him you’ve got a boyfriend.”

Madora weighed the bargain, the chance that Linda was telling the truth. Not that she had a boyfriend, but she might have heard Django’s voice. If Linda was as knowing as she claimed, it was unlikely she would have kept her secrets. It would have been irresistible to blow the whistle on Madora.

“Tell him anything you want. I’m not your maid.”

“More like a slave.”

“Look who’s talking, Linda.” Madora’s cheeks burned and she felt her blood pumping in her neck. “I’m the one who’s gonna walk out of the trailer in a minute. I’m the one who knows the combination lock.”

“So? How come you don’t leave him, then? If you’re so free, why don’t you get a life?”

“I have a life and I don’t want to leave.”

“Sure you do, Madora.” For a change, Linda spoke without malice. “You just don’t know it yet.”

Madora did not know how to reply. She turned her back on Linda and wet a rag from a water bottle to wipe down the sticky tabletop.

“You were laughing yesterday. I don’t hear you laugh hardly at all.”

“I talk to myself. I talk to Foo. He makes me laugh.”

“Maybe.” Linda chewed on her fingernails. “Just so you know, I’m listening.”

Madora dropped the rag into a plastic bag and tied off the top. “You’ll be gone soon.”

The mood in the trailer sparked. Linda shifted on the bed, sitting straighter.

“Did Willis say that?” It gratified Madora to hear Linda’s voice break with uncertainty. “Has he told you when?”

“Of course. He tells me everything.”

Linda dropped back on the pillows. “You are such a bullshitter.” She made a burbling, insulting sound with her lips, but her laugh was unconvincing.

Some days Madora’s chores took all day to accomplish. And then there were days like this one, when she was finished by eight thirty a.m. and left with the day gaping ahead of her. She couldn’t forget what Linda had said about being free to leave; and to prove that she could come and go as she pleased, she and Foo headed out behind the Great Dane and across the dry stream. A hundred yards up the side of the canyon through the rocks and chaparral there was a trail she had explored once before in the first week she and Willis had lived in the house on Red Rock Road, a time when she felt enthusiastic and hopeful about making a home there and wanted to know all the canyon’s secrets.

Only wide enough for one person at a time, the trail scalloped the north-facing points and coves of the canyon, making its way in the direction of the county road. The first time Madora hiked it, she had been stopped by a six-foot rattlesnake as big around as her arm, lying stretched out across the trail sunning itself. She went no farther and hurried home. That evening she told Willis, and he forbade her to explore the canyon without him. His warning of rabid coyotes and cougars in the rough folds of the hills warmed her and proved how deeply he cared for her safety. She wondered now, as she made her way through the scrub with Foo bouncing ahead of her, if he had other motives for restricting her. She tried not to think about what those might be. Instead, she distracted herself with thoughts of Django, and when those were not enough, she worried about snakes and scorpions and mountain lions; but so
little happened in her life that did not concern Willis or Linda that, in the end, every thought circled back to them.

Meanwhile, fearless with youthful energy, Foo dashed ahead of her on the slowly rising trail, scrambling in the gravel and rock, his muscular shoulders heaving as he made his way up the steep incline. Every few minutes, he ran breathlessly back to her, his small eyes almost crossed, his mouth pulled back, showing all his teeth. Smiling.

Sweat stung Madora’s eyes as the path grew steeper, and she stopped to drink from her water bottle. The view of Evers Canyon lay wide before her. She saw the house and trailer and, marked by cottonwoods and sycamores, the curve of the dry streambed through the canyon bottom. There was a house against the opposite canyon side with a car parked out in front. Closer to the county road, a mobile home squatted in a clearing at the end of a long dirt track.