When She Flew (17 page)

“Okay,” she said, kind of laughing. “You got me. So, you’ve never been scared of anything up there?”

“Only people,” I said.

She was quiet then. I looked out the window. At night, the city seemed dim and dirty, more frightening than the forest had ever felt.

“So?” She touched my arm. “Will you do it?”

I didn’t want someone looking at me there, touching me there, but I had a feeling we weren’t going anywhere until I did.

“If I do, will you take me to Pater?”

“If you do, I will have an easier time making sure that happens as soon as possible.”

I unbuckled my seat belt. “Then let’s go.”

Inside the building, we walked down long, shiny halls until we came to a tall desk with nurses behind it. Officer Villareal asked, “Is Dr. Yamin on tonight?”

“Third-floor lounge, next to the chapel,” one of them said. “Slow night. She’s catching up on paperwork.”

“Thanks,” Officer Villareal said, and we walked to the elevator. On the ride to the third floor, she said, “Dr. Yamin is a friend of mine. I think you’ll like her.”

I tried to smile. The elevator made me feel sick, or maybe it was the idea of someone looking at my private areas. I just kept thinking,
This is what I have to do to get back to Pater.
So far, it seemed better than trying to escape and run away, like he wanted me to, and meet him at our church. But if I had to, I would.

Dr. Yamin was nice. She was younger than I thought doctors were allowed to be, and had pretty dark eyes and long black hair, almost as long as mine.

Officer Villareal introduced us, and she shook my hand.

“This young woman needs a physical,” Officer Villareal said, “including a pelvic.”

The doctor looked concerned. “Have you been assaulted?” she asked me, and the way she spoke I knew she was from a land far away, her words musical and soft.

Officer Villareal shook her head. “No, it’s a custody case,” she said. “We just need to prove Lindy’s healthy, and hasn’t been abused.”

The doctor nodded and led us to a small, dark room. When she turned on the lights, there sat a paper-covered bed, like at the VA clinic, but cleaner. Whiter. She opened a drawer beneath it and pulled out something that looked like old people’s pajamas, explaining that I had to take off all of my clothes, even my underwear, and put the thing on backward, so that the opening was behind me. She and Officer Villareal left while I did this, then knocked on the door to see if I was ready.

I sat on the edge of a plastic chair, trying to keep the gown wrapped tightly around me. The shiny floor felt cold on my bare feet. “Okay,” I said.

They both came in, and Dr. Yamin asked if I’d like Officer Villareal to stay. I nodded, and she sat in the chair next to me while Dr. Yamin walked to a counter and sink to wash her hands, then put on a pair of see-through gloves.

“Now, Lindy, sit on the end of the table, just here, while I check your heart and your lungs.”

She talked the whole time she was examining me, explaining everything she did in her pretty voice. Her hands were warm through the gloves, but the things she used to check my heartbeat and blood pressure and ears were cold, even after she tried to warm them in her hand.

When it came time to lie back, I started to feel sick again. I put my feet in the metal holders at the end of the table. She pulled a paper blanket out of another drawer under the bed, placed it over me, tucked me in almost, smiling down at me. “Please relax. This really won’t take long at all, but you’ll feel some pressure, and perhaps a little embarrassed. I’m sorry for that.”

How could I relax, no matter how nice she was? There had been another soft voice I trusted. “Just relax, kitten,” Crystal had said, “for Mommy. It’ll all be over soon.”

I was frozen, trying not to remember Crystal’s “friend.” I looked at Officer Villareal, and her face went all soft.

“Are you all right?” she asked. I couldn’t answer. She held my hand. I held my breath. Was it lying not to tell her that I did know what this felt like, kind of, like from a dream, a really bad dream?

When the thing went inside me, I closed my eyes and let her squeeze my hand. I tried so hard not to make a sound, but one escaped me, a baby-crying sound. I squeezed my eyes tighter, quit breathing almost, and when it was over, Dr. Yamin pulled the gloves off with a snap and looked at Officer Villareal. “No injuries, no trauma. This is one healthy girl, Jess. I’ll write up a report for you.”

I felt like I had passed a test of some kind, like when Pater has me lead us back to camp from an unfamiliar entry point in the woods, or identify poisonous berries. Even though I’d done nothing but lie on that hard table, though, this test was the worst I’d ever taken, and I hoped I’d never have to do it again.

When we got back to the car, Officer Villareal opened my door for me, touching my shoulder as I stepped inside. Once she was in her seat, she turned to me, a troubled look on her face. “Honey,” she said, “has someone hurt you?”

I closed my eyes. The sound of screeching, like a hundred eagles, filled my ears, or maybe it was all the screaming I never let out before. I clenched my teeth together as hard as they would go, squeezed my eyes tighter so tears wouldn’t leak, but my nose kept running no matter how hard I sniffed. I heard the sound of rummaging, of keys and coins clinking, and then felt a tissue in my hand.

I opened my eyes and felt the water run down my cheeks. If I didn’t tell her, I’d never see Pater again.

“It was a long time ago, when Pater was in the war.” I pressed the tissue against my face, trying to hide in it. I wanted to stifle the gulping noises that sounded like someone else, but were coming from me. “One of Crystal’s boyfriends touched me, but that wasn’t even as bad as when Dr. Yamin put that thing inside me. That hurt.”

I cried harder. It had hurt, but it had done something else. The doctor had been right. It had embarrassed me just like back then. It had made me want to fly far away from everything, from my own body, even.

“Oh, Lindy,” Officer Villareal said, “I’m so sorry,” and I felt her hand on my head, like Reverend Rosetta’s when I am praying for forgiveness on Sunday.

I looked up at her. “Pater never hurt me. He was gone when it happened. When he came back, he saved me.”

She blinked rapidly. Her eyes were moist, and she took her own tissue from the packet and held it to her nose. “I am so sorry,” she said again. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head, and blew my nose. “No, thank you,” I said, and she tilted her head and smiled. It was that sad kind of smile, but it made me feel better.

She studied me for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. “So, in case you’re wondering, I’m not exactly following the rules, here.”

I’d figured that out when we first left the police station. “Are you taking me to where Pater is now?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not just yet.”

“Are you taking me to your house?” I was surprised to realize that as much as I wanted to go find Pater, the thought of going to her home was almost too exciting to imagine.

“I’m sorry. I can’t. I’d be in even bigger trouble than I am now.”

“Then where are we going?”

“Well, I’m kind of figuring this out as we go.” Her cell phone rang; she pulled it from her purse, looked at the screen, and then hit a button that made it stop ringing. “Well, the sergeant’s on to me,” she said. “The foster parents must have called looking for us.”

My heart banged harder now. I was so tired of being afraid, of people looking for me. I reached over the seat and grabbed my backpack and pulled out the notebook she gave me. While we were waiting at the police station, I’d started writing our story in it, remembering the questions she’d asked me. It felt good to have the words somewhere real, where I could find them when I needed them. I opened the notebook to a page where I’d written about the Emergency Plan, about meeting at the church, and handed it to her.

“Oh, wow,” she said, thumbing through all the pages. “You wrote a lot while you were waiting, didn’t you?” She looked at the page again. “Lindy, you probably shouldn’t draw these anymore, not on anything that might get into someone else’s hands.” She meant the svastikas mixed with the hearts and birds and flowers.

“But they’re like pinwheels,” I said, “like wind and lightning bolts, like the intersection of two birds crossing paths. I love that symbol.”

She sighed. “I know, but—”

“Just like your mother gave you the statue. Pater taught me all about the svastika, about how the Persians, and the Hindus, and the Native Americans all used it in their religions and their pottery and stuff, and it was as beautiful to them as a cross is to people who love Jesus. We have a cross up there, too, you know, if you would have looked farther up the hill, and a peace symbol down by the creek. I asked Pater to make them for me, and he did.”

“But did he teach you about Hitler and the Nazis?”

“Of course he did, but before that, people thought the svastika brought happiness and good luck for thousands of years. Why should one evil man change all of that?”

She looked at me, then away. “Because that’s what evil does.”

“Not to me, not to Pater. It still meant something good in the woods, without other people around.” I knew I sounded angry, and I was. Why did they have to take away everything that made us happy? Why did they have to make us leave our home? Why did they have to break us apart?

“I don’t mean to sound impatient, Officer Villareal, but are you going to read what I wrote?”

“Oh, sorry,” she said, reaching to turn on the overhead light. When she finished, she looked at me. “You think your father will go there?”

I nodded fast, head like a woodpecker’s.

A breeze came through her open window, the smell of linden flowers and some kind of smoke, and she turned toward it, eyes closed for a moment. Then she started the car. “Buckle up,” she said.

As we drove, I looked for the gull, hoping to see it again, flying alongside us, but there were no birds. Amid ugly dark buildings, a tall spire glowed like the green sea glass Pater and I found when we went to the ocean, right after we first got to Oregon, before we had to sell the car. I’d seen that building in the daytime when it looked ugly but unusual. At night it became beautiful.

We turned and drove along a wide street lined with closed stores and homeless people either shuffling along or lying in doorways. I’d never been on this street before, and I didn’t want to be now.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “This isn’t the way to the church.”

“I know. I’m taking you to a place that will take good care of you until morning, and then we can arrange to meet up with your dad tomorrow. Okay? I just think it’s better this way.”

I closed my eyes, trying not to be sick. I felt her hand on my arm.

“You know how Dr. Yamin was my friend, and she was nice and wanted to help us? I have another friend who runs a safe house, a place where women and girls, mothers and daughters live when they need shelter. I’ll be back for you first thing in the morning, I swear. I bet your dad will have found a way to call me by then.”

She wasn’t going to take me to the church, even after I showed her the plan. Even after I told her everything.
Everything.
I wanted to cry again, but I wouldn’t. I never should have trusted her.

Find an opportunity, Pater had whispered at the police station. There will be an opportunity, and you’re going to have to recognize it, to seize it. There may not be another.

She pulled the car over in front of a plain building with no signs to tell what it was. There were bars over the windows. It looked like a prison. She took her phone from her purse, hit a few buttons, waited, then said, “This is Officer Jess Villareal with the Columbia Police. Is Wendy on tonight? Thanks. I’ll hold.”

I crept my hand along the armrest on the door, fingering the button to make the window go up and down. Where would the lock be? I wondered.

She glanced over at me. “It’ll be okay, sweetie. I promise.”

I stilled my hand.

“Hi, Wendy. It’s Jess. Good, you? Listen, I have kind of an unusual case tonight. . . .”

The door lock was on the top of the doorframe, just below my right shoulder. I pretended to have an itch. Officer Villareal kept talking.

Slowly, silently, I released the latch on my seat belt, but kept it in place, wondering which bus I would catch from here to the church, wondering if buses ran this time of night or if I’d have to find somewhere to hide until morning.

I wrapped my left hand around the top strap of my backpack. Officer Villareal glanced at me, then turned away.“Really? Oh, great. You don’t know how much I appre—”

Before I even knew what I had done, I was standing in the gutter outside the car beneath a dirty streetlight and ten thousand stars. I pulled my pack through the door and slammed it shut. I started to run back the way we’d come so she couldn’t drive after me, slinging on the backpack as I ran.

Pater would be proud of me, I thought. I recognized the moment, and I seized it, even though I was afraid.