Boy on a Black Horse (10 page)

Ouch. That hurt.

Then I thought of something, and I was greedy and afraid both at once. Really, what I'd always wanted was a black stallion. And if Chav didn't want Rom anymore …“What about Chav's horse? Can we keep it?”

“I haven't figured that one out yet. Why won't Chav go to see it?”

“I don't know. Lee, I'm worried about Chav.”

So was she. It turned out she had already made an appointment for him to see a psychologist, starting in a few days. But I wondered how much good a person who didn't even know him could do, and how soon.

“Don't say anything to him yet about staying with us,” she told me. “He's not ready.”

“Don't worry. Neither am I.”

Liana had stood up from the table to go on about her cooking, but now she looked at me, and then she crouched in front of me and looked at me some more. “Gray,” she said, “take a couple of days to think it over, and then let me know how you feel, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, okay?”

“Okay.” I felt bad that I couldn't just say yes right away. “It's complicated.”

“Yes, it is. Most important things are.”

I didn't get a couple of days to think it over. I didn't even get a couple of hours. At suppertime Baval blew the whole thing wide open.

Apparently he had been doing some thinking on his own, lying around scratching his chicken pox. This was the first night he felt well enough to come out to the dining room and eat with the rest of us. Aside from the apple cobbler, Liana had cooked roast chicken with Pepperidge Farm stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry-orange relish, and baby carrots in some sort of butter glaze. Baval got cranberry relish on his face, and we teased him that the color blended in with his chicken pox bumps. He laughed and laughed, and then for half a second he looked like he wanted to cry, and then straight to Lee he said, “I want to stay here when I get better. Please.”

She never even blinked, because she couldn't let Baval down—I understood that right away. “I very much want you all to stay,” she told him gently.

“I want to stay here,” Baval said again, this time to his brother. “Carl, I mean Chav, I'm tired of looking for Father. I want us to just stay here with Liana.”

Chav didn't say anything. To me it looked as if he couldn't. He had gone stiff, with eyes like a spooked colt's, wild and white and frightened.

“Let Father find us,” Baval insisted.

“Or we can look for him when we're grown up,” Chavali put in.

“Yeah. That's what we can do. I'm tired of eating garbage and being cold and not having a place to live.” Baval's voice was high and a little shaky. This meant a lot to him. “I want to stay here where it's nice. Chavali, don't you want that too?”

She nodded very seriously, moving her pointed little chin once up, once down.

“Chav?” Baval pleaded. “Can we stay?”

Hanging on to the edge of the table, Chav opened his mouth but did not speak. It was like he was gasping for air, as if he felt like he was drowning.

“Let him alone, Baval,” Lee said softly.

“But it's what he wants too! I know it is!” Baval's voice went so high it squeaked. He couldn't sit still—he headed around the table toward Chav, tripping in his new pajamas and bathrobe and slippers. “Isn't it, Chav? Isn't it what you always wanted? Somebody to give you good food and love you?”

“Baval, let him alone!”

That was me, for all the good it did. Chav had already heard more than he could bear. He couldn't take it. Trying to get away from the table, he knocked over his chair, staggering like he couldn't walk. He fell on the floor, curled up against the wall with his hands over his head as if people were hitting him. He was shaking all over.

“Chav!” I knelt down beside him and tried to hold him. He flinched away from me, hiding his face with his arms. Lee knelt down too and stroked his shoulders. Baval stood looking at all of us.

“But it's what he wants too!” Baval was trying not to cry. “What's the matter with him?”

“He'll be okay, Baval,” Lee said. It sure didn't look like it—Chav was moaning. She tried to hug him, but he pulled away from her. She sighed and tried to explain to Baval, “You always had him to take care of you, but nobody was taking care of him. He's scared. He needs time.”

“But—but Chav's never scared!”

“He just never showed you before,” I said. “He couldn't.”

Little Chavali came over and patted Chav's hair. He lay there a minute, but then he sat up and uncurled just enough to grab her and hug her and rock her as if she had been crying. She snuggled up against him, and the two of them stayed like that for a long time.

Liana knelt in front of them. “Chav,” she requested, “please give it just a few more days. Until you get a chance to talk to the doctor.” But he didn't answer her.

Dinner was only half eaten, but we cleared the table anyway. Nobody was hungry anymore.

I couldn't sleep that night.

Chav felt time ticking louder and louder inside his chest as if his whole body were a bomb wired to explode. A while after midnight he decided it was no use waiting any longer. Silent as a cat, he got up and walked to the room where they had put Baval when he got sick. He touched his younger brother on the shoulder. For once Baval sat up right away, wide-awake, as if he had been lying there awake.

“Things are bad when you can't sleep,” Chav teased.

“Chav, please say we can stay.” Baval's voice quivered. He was almost twelve, but he acted like a little boy. Chav had noticed this before, but up until now it had been okay in a way. It was what Chav had wanted, to give Baval back some of his childhood. But now Baval had to grow up. Now everything was different, dangerous. Chav felt the darkness in his heart galloping harder and fiercer than ever before.

“You can stay.” Chav's voice was gentle, because he meant it. “You and Chavali stay with Gray and Liana. They'll take good care of you.”
Better than I ever did. I should have known I'd blow it. You were cold and hungry a lot of the time. You and Chavali got sick
.

“No, Chav!” The kid bolted up out of his covers. “You stay too.”

“Don't try to find our father,” Chav went on, hurrying to stay ahead of the black feeling that surged and pounded in his chest. “We don't have a Gypsy father. All those stories I told you were lies.”

That's me. Typical Gypsy. A liar
.

“No, they weren't! They weren't! They were good!”

“Shhhh. You're going to wake Liana.” But what Chav needed to say was important enough that he had to keep going. He took his kid brother by the shoulders and pushed him down until he was sitting on the bed again. “Baval, you've got to listen to me just this once. Our real father used to beat the crap out of me, okay?”

“
No
! No, that's not true!” Baval's voice rose to a yell. He wasn't listening, just getting hysterical.

He can't bear it. Not what happened to Mom, not any of it. That's why he can't remember. He probably doesn't even remember his own real name anymore
.

But someday he might
.

Keeping his voice low and calm, Chav told him, “Listen, all I want you to understand is, don't go near him, okay?”

“No! No, you stay with me!”

“I can't,” Chav said very softly.
Damn it, if you would face things, remember them, you would understand
.

Baval squirmed away from his hands, lunged off the other side of the bed, and started scrambling into his jeans.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Coming—with you.”

“Damn it, forget about me! I—I'm toilet paper, okay? Flush me down the John. Just stay here and be happy.”

“You—try to go, I'll—follow you.” Baval was crying.

There was a sound. Chav turned. Gray stood at the bedroom door.

She was wearing a big white T-shirt that used to belong to her dead father. She slept in those things, and to Chav they always made her look like an orphaned angel with its outgrown robe too short. A big, long-legged, clownish, plain-faced rescuing angel. The way he felt about Gray scared him to death.

She came in and hugged Baval to calm him down but looked straight at Chav. And she said what she was thinking straight out. That's the way she was.

“Don't go away,” she said. “I know you like it here, I know you like Lee. And me, a little.”

Her, a lot. Too much. He shook his head hard. “Liking I could handle,” he said hoarsely. All his life he had liked people sometimes and left them behind. Damn his rich gadjo father, there had been homes in Florida, Virginia, New York. There had been private day schools, one after another. There had been horses, left behind. There had been friends and friends left behind. Liking was manageable.

But loving was not. If you let yourself love somebody, anybody, then you were in a trap, and terrible, terrible pain followed.

“What is it, Chav? Chav, tell me.”

His face must have changed. She had stepped back. She looked frightened of him. It was bad, how sometimes things showed in his face.

No, it was good, because he was bad, clear through. That was why his father had punished him, because he was a bad person. They had to understand that.

Bad people lied. His poems and stories were all just that, lies. For a while there he had wanted to tell the truth so that people would understand after he was gone, but why bother anymore? It would all be over soon. He would be a liar. That way they would hate him when they found out, they would not grieve, it would be easier on them.

“Nothing,” he told Gray. “It's nothing.”

Liana was peering in the doorway now too, and Chavali, holding Lee's hand. Chav didn't look at them, but he said to his brother, “Baval, go back to bed, go to sleep. I'm not going anywhere.”

The kid looked up at him with his face red and blotched from chicken pox and crying. “You'll stay?”

“Yes,” Chav lied. Well, it was true at least for a little while. He couldn't go anywhere that night, with everyone awake and watching him. He'd manage to wait a short while longer. Pick his time.

Baval cried at him, “You promise?”

“Yes.” They would hate him for this, and that was good. Hate was good. It would make them forget him sooner. “Yes, I promise.”

C
HAPTER

10

The next morning was Saturday. I should have been sleeping in, but instead I was up at dawn, peeking into Chav's bedroom—yes, he was there, lying in his bed. Then another door creaked, and Liana looked out of her room at me.

“Gray,” she whispered, beckoning to me.

I went in and we sat on her bed. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Sure. Why wouldn't I be?”

“Well, I told you to think things over for a few days, but last night I promised Baval—”

“You had to,” I told her.

“That's what I thought. But now Chav—”

I said, “You had to tell Baval yes. You know I'll be okay, but he needs help. So do Chavali and Chav.”

“You want them to stay?”

“Yes!” There was no doubt in me anymore. Every minute I didn't have Chav in my sight now I was afraid he had run away. If he left, I would never be able to forget him. I would spend my life wondering what had become of him. “Of course I do.”

Lee smiled with relief, but her eyes got misty. “You are so much like your mother,” she said. “So bighearted and strong.”

Big-nosed would have been more like it. “Too bad I look like my dad.”

“C'mon. My brother was a sweet man. He loved to read.” Lee gave me a thoughtful look. “Did they ever tell you why they named you Grace?”

Of course they had, because I'd complained at them so often about how I hated my name. But I wanted to hear what Lee said. “I forget.”

“Because it was your mother's mother's name—but also because of something a writer named Hemingway said. He defined courage as ‘grace under pressure.' Not physical grace but a kind of—a kind of inner balance. So to them it was a name that meant courage. They knew you would be a brave person.”

“Right,” I said, being sarcastic.

“Gray, it's true. You are the gutsiest kid I know.”

I shook my head. “Chav is,” I said. “Taking Baval and Chavali with him when he ran away, and taking care of them for a year and a half, that's amazing, that's the gutsiest thing I ever heard of.” Most kids would have turned against their brothers and sisters, but Chav had given everything he had. And he was paying for it now.

On the way back to my room to get dressed, I checked on him. He was still lying there, but my heart pounded at the thought of losing him, my head hurt with thinking of how to help him get well. Grace under pressure, that was me.

Topher, I mean Chris, came over that morning, which was kind of unusual, because Saturday was his busy day. And when I opened the door and said hi he didn't smile, which was even more unusual. He carried his hat and a copy of
Horse Report
magazine with his finger stuck between the pages.

“Hi, Liana.” He smiled at her, but the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. “I've got to talk to Chav.”

“What's the matter, Chris?”

He didn't get a chance to tell her. Chav came into the living room like he had been standing in the hallway waiting for his cue. He held his face so still I could tell he had expected this visit all along, except that maybe he had figured it would come from Grandpa, not Topher.

Topher nodded at him, and he looked steadily back. They had barely ever talked, but somehow they seemed to understand each other.

“Is this about Rom?” Liana asked.

“It's okay,” Chav said to her. What did that mean? It was okay if he went to jail? It was okay if he gave up and died?