Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (6 page)

"It's an atlas moth," he said.  I leaned over to get a better look at the sketch.  Its wings, flaring, bore a unique diamond pattern.  "When it hatches from its cocoon, it doesn't have a mouth.  It starves to death within a week."

I pulled back and grimaced.

"Yeah, you're right," Rafael murmured, closing the notebook.  "That's kind of morbid."

I couldn't figure out what Aubrey's brother was singing.  I think the words were Shoshone.

"And this is boring," Rafael said, standing, tucking his notebook beneath his arm.  "I'm outta here."

There was such a careful distance between him and the rest of the community that I didn't think anyone noticed him leaving.  I was about to wave good night when he said, "Are you coming, or not?"

I couldn't very well say no to that.

We walked together through the reservation.  How strange it looked when the windows were dark.  The moon, on the other hand, was waxing and bright.  I tried to figure out what the blue tattoo on Rafael's right arm was supposed to be, but he was wearing long sleeves; I could only catch a glimpse of it on his wrists.

We hadn't even reached Rafael's house when he stopped, running dirty hands through his knotted hair.

"It's even worse with you here."

I didn't know what he meant by that.  Did he want me to leave the reservation?  I felt slightly sick.

"Everyone looks at me and sees Dad.  Everyone.  All my life, it's like they've been waiting for me to grow up and kill someone.  And now you're here.  They're probably taking bets back there.  'Is he killing the white kid now?' "

I shook my head carefully.  He was wrong.  I knew at least one person who thought better of him: his uncle.

Rafael laughed in an unsettlingly hollow way.  "Yeah.  Right."

I grabbed his arm, surprising myself.  This was one of those uncommon occasions when I found it unbearably frustrating that I couldn't speak.  I wanted to tell him: 
If they think you're so terrible, prove them wrong. 
Rafael jerked his arm out of my hand.  I really thought he was going to hit me.  He didn't.  For a moment, it was so quiet, I could hear him breathing.

"Your mom's not the only one he killed."

My face felt oddly cold.

"Rosa Gray Rain.  She lost her mom.  Aubrey and Isaac and Reuben lost an aunt.  Ezekiel lost a sister.  I leave drawings at their graves.  I just want to say 'I'm sorry'...  It's never enough.  My father didn't kill your mother because she was white.  He killed her because he liked hurting women."

I felt sicker, much sicker, than before.  How many families had Rafael's father ruined?  And all those women--and my mother--were they just faceless targets to him?  I think that angered me the most.  Those women were people, real people, individual people.  No one had the right to pretend they weren't people.

Rafael leaned back against a skinny pinyon pine, arms folded.  His sleeve rode up his right arm, just slightly; I caught another glimpse of the blue tattoo.  How angry his face looked, the scowl around his mouth, the darkness in his eyes...  I felt really bad for him just then.

"A couple of years after the council found out what Dad was doing," Rafael said, "Mom passed away.  It's like she died of a broken heart.  She couldn't believe the things he'd done.  I feel like he killed her, too."

So did I.

A brief silence fell between us.

"I'm sorry about what I said," Rafael muttered, eyes averted.  I thought that maybe he wasn't used to apologizing out loud; the words sounded foreign coming from his mouth.  "You didn't do anything wrong.  You're kind of alright."

"Kind of alright" was a sizable compliment, considering the person who was giving it.  I smiled lightly.  There was nothing to forgive.

"Even if you listen to jazz."

I pretended I was going to take a swing at him.

Rafael's mouth did that twitching thing again; I knew he was stifling a laugh.  I wished he'd just let himself smile, but it was close enough.

"I guess this is a dumb question," Rafael said.  He ran his hand awkwardly through the back of his hair.  "You wanna be friends?  I haven't got many."

I felt sorry for him, again, and I was afraid he'd pick up on it; he had proven pretty apt thus far at guessing my thoughts.  If he noticed, though, he didn't say.  I grinned at him.  I definitely wanted to be friends.  I've heard it said that if you go without something for a long period of time, eventually you start hoarding it once it becomes available to you.  For the longest time, my only friend had been my father.  Now I had two new friends--maybe three, if I could spend more time with Aubrey.  I was beyond happy.  I was ecstatic.

"Okay," Rafael said.  He was trying to sound nonchalant, I think, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it.  "You do cooking at the Little Hawk house, right?  Get out of it.  You can come on the hunt with Uncle Gabe and me tomorrow."

I didn't know whether it was accurate to say I "did cooking" so much as I tried not to burn the bread. I even thought I'd ruined Annie's sage bread, somehow, because Annie's dad had tried some after a long day of fishing and said "It doesn't taste right."

But the thought of hunting left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.  I could feel the color draining from my face.  Rafael took one look at me and figured out what was going through my mind.

"It's not like that," he said.  "It's not cruel.  It's just nature."

I went to Annie's house the next morning to ask whether she'd have any trouble cooking without me.  My incompetence considered, I didn't anticipate for a second that she would.  Still, she looked at me suspiciously.  "Where are you going?"

I was afraid she'd laugh at me--she knew how queasy I felt around dead animals--but I signed,
Hunting with Rafael
.  Even then I wasn't sure I'd actually go through with it.

Annie didn't laugh.  Annie didn't even crack a smile.  In fact, she suddenly looked grave.

What's wrong?
I asked.

Joseph came crashing into the sitting room and wailed with annoyance, Lila on his heels.  A tea kettle hanging in the hearth whistled loudly.  Annie removed it quickly and separated her siblings at arms' length, signing rapidly as she yelled at Lila.  Her eyes misted with frustrated tears.  Suddenly I knew that this didn't come easy for her, that she was trying to fill her mother's absent shoes.  The realization made me a little angry.  She shouldn't have to be a parent, I thought.  Where was her father?

"Whatever!" Lila shouted, storming off to her room.

Come with us
, I signed to Annie.  I hadn't been on the reservation very long, but already I'd gathered how things worked.  Nettlebush operated on a gift economy.  Everyone helped everyone because the tacit understanding was that everyone contributed something to the community, no matter how small a contribution.  If Annie came hunting with us, she could get someone else to do her cooking.

"No, no, I can't," Annie said firmly, her voice high and clipped.  She pressed her arm to her eyes.  She was crying; she just didn't want us to see.  Instinctively, I took her into a hug.  She sighed against my shoulder, shaking her head.  I suddenly knew that I wasn't going to leave her alone that day.  She was my first friend, the first person who had shown me kindness.  And when I thought about it, I was pretty sure I was her only friend.

And I really hated that.

I kept my eyes peeled at dinner that night and found Aubrey handing out fresh squash and okra with his brothers.  I grabbed his wrists--he sputtered--and pulled him over to Annie's seat.  Annie, listless, raised her head.

He's madly in love with you
, I signed. 
Discuss.

Annie's face turned beet red.  Usually she was a better actress than that.  I couldn't help but grin.

Rafael caught up with me when the bonfire had been extinguished, when I had picked up Granny's loom to carry it in the house.  I expected him to be angry with me.  He wasn't; in fact, he looked like he didn't know whether to laugh or hit me upside the head.

"You're not off the hook that easy, Cyrano."

I didn't think my nose was that big.

6

Cicadas

I got another visit from Officer Hargrove toward the end of June.  She caught up with me and Granny outside the church, looking just as harrowed as I remembered.  A couple of the elders looked alarmed to see her and prodded each other, pointing conspicuously.  Granny raised her eyebrows but didn't intervene; she left us standing outside the school house, hobbling her way back to her front porch.

"Think carefully," Officer Hargrove said.  "Does your father know anyone in Wyoming?"

Wyoming?  Baffled, I shook my head.  I wasn't even sure that Dad could pick out Wyoming on a map of the States.

"Are you sure?"

I nodded slowly.  I didn't like this urgent line of questioning; I had the feeling it was leading up to something decidedly less pleasant.  And sure enough--

"Your dad's fine.  He was spotted buying a train ticket to Newcastle."

Oh, I thought, that's good.  That's terrific, actually.  He's fine.  He's not--

It really felt like my heart had stopped.  My arms were heavy and cold, too heavy for me to raise; my veins were like ice, cold spells crawling beneath my skin.  Blood pounded between my temples, chilly and dizzying.  Dad was fine.  He just didn't want me with him.

"We're investigating former clients to figure out who he's running from, but it's difficult, his line of work doesn't exactly leave a paper trail.  I'll let you know if--Skylar?"

The more she talked, the less I heard.  I don't remember sitting down, but the next thing I knew I was on the school steps, a choir of afternoon cicadas buzzing in my ears.  Officer Hargrove was gone.

I might have felt iced to the bone; but now I felt like I was burning from the inside out.  Every time I breathed, the air caught in my chest, tangible, like hot coals.  I finally understood the idiom "seeing red." 

I thought:  If Dad had wanted to leave without me, the least he could have done was tell me about it.

"You know school doesn't start until September, right?"

I looked up.  Rafael was coming down the road toward me, shoulders slouched, hands in his pockets. 

I really didn't think I was in the mood to talk to anyone.  I tried to smile, but I don't think it worked, because Rafael had this look on his face, inquisitive but knowing.  He took a couple long strides toward me and sat next to me on the school steps.

"Someone giving you crap?"

Quickly, I shook my head.

"Something about your dad?  He's missing, right?"

I shrugged noncommittally.

"Not missing anymore, I take it."

I smiled again.  I suspect it was wry. 

Rafael looked around.  A couple of girls were walking arm-in-arm down the lane; they whispered and shot furtive looks our way.  Rafael glowered after them and they hurried past, alarmed.

Rafael rolled up his sleeve.  Finally I saw what the tattoo on his right arm was: a winding blue chain.

"When I'm pissed," he said, "when I feel like I could hurt someone, but I know I don't want to, I add another chain link."

I sat gazing pensively at the ink chain for some time.  It looked like it had hurt, but maybe there was some catharsis in that.

Rafael knew what I was thinking.  He stood up.

"Let's go," he said.

I followed Rafael back to his house.  The heavy scent of roasted yaupon rolled out of the kitchen, but I don't think Gabriel was home.  I couldn't imagine what he was doing; nobody on the reserve worked on Sundays, except probably for the hospital staff.

Rafael showed me into his bedroom, a small, square room without paint or windows.  It was pretty cluttered, clothes and charcoal remnants and a radio lying strewn on the floor.  Every wall was covered in sketches--bugs, trees, sometimes people, but rarely anyone I recognized.  On a stand next to Rafael's bed was a glass case filled with inks.  He pulled a tin box out from under the bed, and when he lifted the lid, I saw that it contained hand-hewn needles.  I suddenly realized he was going to do this the outdated way.

"Your skin clean?" Rafael asked.

I nodded.  I sat cross-legged on the floor.

"Where?"

I shrugged my arm out of my jacket, rolled my shirt sleeve up past my shoulder, and indicated my upper-arm.

"What do you want?"

I hooked my thumbs together and mimed wings.  I wanted that atlas moth.

Rafael gave me a dubious look.  I returned it questioningly.

"Some dumbass outside the reserve thinks you're wearing a butterfly on your arm, you'll get your ass kicked," Rafael said.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Fine," Rafael said gruffly.  "Don't say I didn't warn you."

If I had known exactly how excruciating of an experience tattooing was, I don't think I would have agreed to it.  One time Dad had taken me to a gas station, back when we'd still had a car.  In his clumsiness, or maybe drunkenness, he had spilled half a tank of gasoline down my leg.  I remember how it burned and peeled for days.  The crude needle weaving in and out of my skin felt exactly like that burn, only multiplied by a thousand.  I might have yelped noiselessly, once or twice, but even I didn't know that for sure.  Rafael held me by the shoulder when I flinched, probably to keep my arm steady.  He stopped his onslaught only when he needed to change inks, allowing me the very briefest of reprieves.  I guess it was impressive that he didn't need to use an outline for the tattoo, but back when it was happening I could only think of the burning in my arm, a companion to the burning in my chest; how Dad was just fine, but had left me worrying about him for a whole month; how Dad didn't want me with him in Wyoming, or wherever he was headed.  I was hurt.  I wanted to hurt.  I almost thought I wanted to hurt Dad.  Almost.  Even then, I knew that wasn't true.