Lone Star (18 page)

Janna, from a family of eight. Sounded almost like my name. Janna, Hannah. She was six. Her card said: “She really wants to live in another place.” Perfect. Like me.

Daniela liked pizza. Well, who doesn't? And how did Daniela know anything about pizza? And if she knew about pizza, how come we've been fed nothing but cabbage the last three days? I bet it would be pickled pizza, I thought, and laughed out loud, incurring a glare from Chloe and a disapproving blink from the reverend.

“Please, can we sponsor a girl?” I asked Chloe. “Look at this
cute one. Marina. She is eight. She loves ice cream. She wants to help people. She wants to be close to Jesus. Please pray for her.”

“Hannah, you and I are not sponsoring her. My parents are. And they want a boy.”

“Tell them you couldn't find a good one. Look here. Valeria is eight. She doesn't know what she wants to be but she wants to go to Livu Waterpark.”

The reverend told me that if I wanted to, I could also sponsor a child. I got absentmindedly excited. “Oh yeah? What would I have to do?”

But I didn't hear his answer. Because I found a girl.

Zhenya. She was nine years old. Her favorite story was Lazarus being raised from the dead. She wanted two things: to go to Russia and to help her grandmother. When she grew up she wanted to be a policewoman. She asked you to pray that no one beat her up.

I turned away from Chloe and the reverend. I stood up and walked to the window for a few moments. The street was drizzly with rain, windy, wretched. My back was still to them when I asked the reverend to repeat what it would take to sponsor a child. “How much every month?”

“Sixty dollars. With extra around the holidays. Or extra simply if you have extra. But the minimum is sixty. You pay the Dallas company, not us. They wire the money to us. That way you don't have to worry about converting into latu. Of course you can always invite your sponsored child to the United States for a visit. For many of them it's a trip of a lifetime, as you can imagine. And then, if you wish, your parents can sponsor them to come live with you. You can be their host family. Almost like your American foster care, but with foreign children . . .”

I stopped listening. “When can I see her?” I stared at the picture of Zhenya's wan little face.

“Hannah, you don't have sixty dollars a month!” Chloe said behind my back. Always the naysayer. “You're going to college.
You have no money for books. You don't have money for a whole Latvian.”

“I'll make money,” I said. “And if you and I both sponsor her, it'll be only thirty dollars a month.” I whirled around. “What do you say?”

“That you're not helping me find a boy is what I say. Why are you getting so hung up on the girls?”

“Not plural. One girl in particular. Reverend, can we see her?”

“Who?”

I handed him Zhenya's folder.

He shook his head. “She's not with us anymore.”

“Where is she?” I didn't want to hear his answer. I was so disappointed.

“I don't know. Sometimes they vanish. We pray it's because everything is better at home. Usually they return to us after a few weeks.”

I took the folder from him, almost snatched it, stared at Zhenya's white face, her severe, uneven bangs. Why did he still have her folder if she had vanished?

“You're right, we should transfer her folder out of the current file. May I have it, please?”

I didn't give it back. “Can't you call her house? Make sure? Find out?”

“No one has a telephone.”

“Can we go to her house?”

“Hannah!” This was Chloe, raising her voice. “We are not going to somebody's house. Geez. Give the reverend back his folder and then sit down and help me. Look at these boys. Which one, you think?”

I didn't want to help her anymore. I would have helped her, if she helped me. But I had come with her, and she was ungrateful. If the reverend hadn't fed me, I would've starved. And now she shouted me down when I expressed the slightest interest in something that was important to me instead of fawning, as always, about something that was important to her.

The reverend was staring at me too, so I sat down and tuned out. Uh-huh, I said. Yeah, him. And him too. I didn't care. Zhenya was the only child I saw in front of my eyes, her squeezed-together face, her motley hair. The rest didn't matter.

Chloe

How she wished Mason had come with her. Or Blake. Or even her mother! Leave it to Hannah to make Chloe wish for her mother on her first overseas trip.

Chloe didn't understand why Hannah would become so difficult when the smallest thing was asked of her. She was sitting and sulking because a girl whose face she glimpsed for thirty seconds and whose bio she just read was no longer at the orphanage. Thirty seconds. And Hannah couldn't understand why Chloe didn't just drop everything and run to this girl's house! Yes, her story was poignant. But the ten boy stories in Chloe's lap were no less bitter.

Maksim, age seven. His favorite Bible story was when Jesus healed the blind.

Reverend Kazmir said Maksim was blind.

Erik, age nine. Looked like a cherub. Wanted to be a cook on a ship when he grew up. Liked pandas.

Arturs, also nine, wanted to be a firefighter and loved French fries.

Intars, age six. Didn't know what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wanted to belong and to learn to believe in God.

Kostays, age eight. When he wished upon a star, he wished for lots of money to buy food.

Vladimir, age ten. Liked to walk around. He hadn't given much thought to his plans, but he knew he'd like to have some money. At school, he liked the breaks best.

Denis, age six, asked you to pray for him to be more reliable.

Vova, age eleven, liked salads. When he wished upon a star, he wished for his brother to get out of prison.

Raymonds, age six. Liked cucumber soup and potato chips. An only child. Summer was his favorite season because there was no school. When he grew up he wanted to become a cop or a mechanic. When he wished upon a star he wanted to learn how to swim.

“That's the one,” Chloe said, handing Raymonds's file to Reverend Kazmir. “That's the little guy.” His last name was Fyodorov. He had a round face, an impish smile, black hair, round friendly eyes. He was the one. You know how you just know?

“Oh, I know,” Hannah said. “That's how I feel about Zhenya.”

Please, please, Chloe thought, closing her eyes. Please, unlike Zhenya, let Raymonds be available for my mother and father.

“Ah, Ray. Good choice. He is a sweet boy. He's out playing in the back. It's break time. Would you like to come watch him play for a few minutes before you meet him? That way you can see how he is with other children.”

Chloe jumped up. “These things written about them in their folder, are they accurate?”

“Of course.”

“Then I don't need to watch him play. He's the one. When can I meet him?” She turned to Hannah. “Are you coming?”

Like a queen, Hannah slowly lifted herself out of her spot on the sofa. “Oh, so for
your
chosen child, we bolt instantly.”

“I wouldn't call what you're doing bolting, but yes,” said Chloe. “Do you know why? Because mine is still here, still available, oh, and we're not here to sponsor a child for
your
mother. You don't think she's got enough to deal with?”

“Not for my mother, are you crazy? For me.”

“Are
you
crazy?”

“Tell me you wouldn't go chasing after Raymonds all over Liepaja if you found out he wasn't here.”

Chloe stomped out of the reverend's office. She wasn't sure she wouldn't.

Raymonds was too shy to come near Chloe. Her visit with him was brief. He didn't take his curious cocker-spaniel eyes off her but didn't approach her, either. He spoke no English, but gave her a high five before she left. Back at the reverend's office, Chloe spent a long time filling out the paperwork. Did the reverend have some more photographs of him? Could her parents write letters to him? Would he be studying English? If her parents wanted to bring him to the United States, how would they go about it?

“Now? That's not possible.”

“No, later. For a visit.” A long visit, Chloe thought. She wasn't sure her parents would be able to part with him once they'd met him.

Hannah paced, looking out the window. “What if they wanted to actually adopt Raymonds?” she asked. “What then?”

“It's possible,” the reverend replied. “We can arrange adoptions through our Dallas partners. They screen the sponsors for adoption eligibility. It has happened.” The way he said it indicated that it happened rarely. “Americans want little babies,” he said. “We have bigger children, unfortunately.”

“Just the right size,” said Chloe, putting her hand out into the empty space where Ray's little black head might've been. Or Jimmy's. She glanced at her watch and gasped. It was 4:15. Their train was leaving in forty-five minutes. The reverend called for a cab and paid for it up front, four latu, not thirty-two. After saying goodbye to him, they left in a hurry.

In the cab, Hannah leaned toward the driver.

“Do you speak English?”

“Little.”

“Can you take us here?” She showed him an address on a scrap of paper.

“Hannah!”

“Shh.”

“Not for four latu,” the cabbie said.

“How much?”

“Another four.”

“Okay. I'll pay.”

“Hannah, what are you doing?”

“Nothing. We won't be late for the train. I promise.”

“You do understand that the train is at five.”

“I just want to drive by her place. To see where she lives.”

“Why?”

“Because. Why did you want to see Raymonds?”

“Because my parents are going to sponsor him,” Chloe replied slowly as if speaking with the deranged.

“Maybe I can convince my mother to help me sponsor Zhenya.”

A defeated Chloe fell back on her seat. “You do understand that if we miss the train, there isn't another one until tomorrow night?”

“We'll make it.”

Liepaja was flat, granite, and looked abandoned. The rain had stopped, but the wind swirled the residual mist in the air like icy pollen. Chloe's face and shirt were damp after a minute of walking down the steps to the cab. Apartment buildings rose up out of the grass, looking like the urban project tenements Chloe had seen on the evening news. Dilapidated concrete boxes, six stories high.

Zhenya didn't live in one of those, “Thank God,” said Hannah when they stopped next to a small brick house with bars on the windows. On the front patch of brown grass stood a mangled, rusted, functioning seesaw, and on this seesaw balanced two girls. One of them must have been Zhenya because Hannah's face softened as if she'd encountered a long-lost sister. “There she is,” she whispered, pressing her face against the dirty glass of
the cab, fanning her hand on the window. Chloe wasn't sure if Hannah was waving hello, or wiping the dust away to see the girl better.

There she was indeed. The girl's hair was matted, and she wore someone else's clothes: someone bigger, taller, and maler. She was barefoot in the icy vapor, her arms white sticks, poking out of the greasy, dirty T-shirt.

The cabbie said something that Chloe didn't understand, but Hannah, having suddenly acquired the gift of Latvian comprehension, said, “No, no. Drive on. I just wanted to see.” She rolled down her window. The girls on the seesaw guardedly studied the people in the cab. Hannah smiled and waved. An uncertain Zhenya waved back.

Chloe was flummoxed. “Hannah, stranger danger, what are you doing? They're going to call the cops. What are you seeing?”

“Just a girl,” Hannah said. “Who asked me to pray that she wouldn't be beaten.”

“Not you specifically.”

“Yes, me specifically. I was the one who heard. Therefore, me. Blake should've come with us. He'd understand. He could write about her. She could be his vanished girl.”

“What does urchin Zhenya have to do with his treasure, his Latvian spies?”

“Maybe they're searching for the treasure but they find her instead, in that house. And they find the suitcase, too.”

“In her house?”

“Perfect place to hide it. Maybe Zhenya is the treasure. Did you ever think of that?”

How little Chloe understood about life. Her friend had acted like an adult at eleven, twelve, thirteen. Sometimes Hannah's mother didn't even look up when a car came through their dense wood to pick up her daughter and take her somewhere. Hannah could have said she was out with anybody, and often did. Hannah, already a beautiful young woman, mature, appealing,
the most grown-up of them all. Yet here she sat, her cheek to the Latvian glass, waving to a neglected kid on a seesaw. A thousand questions, all answers invisible to the naked eye.