Looks Over(Gives Light Series) (28 page)

"This is my favorite cake recipe," Annie informed us.

Playfully, I flicked lemon juice at her hair.

"Stop eating all the blueberries," Rafael said to Zeke.

"I wasn't!" Zeke said, and hid his blue fingers behind his back.

The cake was finished in an hour, the floor suspiciously dusty with flour and lemon zest.  Rafael buried his head stoically in his dish and didn't surface at all while he ate.  He took his sweets very seriously, that Rafael.  Neither Aubrey nor Zeke allowed for a moment of silence, one chattier than the next.  Joseph came into the kitchen and Annie pulled him onto her lap and fed him with a fork.  Sometimes I wondered whether Joseph thought Annie was his mother.

"We should start a rock band," Zeke said.

"I'll play the oboe!" Aubrey said.

"Hell no!  You play an oboe and I'll grab it and beat you with it!  Hahaha, I'm kidding--"

"The hell is an oboe?" Rafael asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Annie sighed.  "I need girl friends."

Annie sent each of us home with a piece of cake, which I thought was really nice of her.  I gave mine to Granny, along with the apple blossoms I'd collected earlier, and she preened.  Zeke said good night to me and tossed himself haphazardly on his cot.  He was snoring in seconds.

I started climbing the staircase to my room when I heard a pair of laughs from the kitchen.

I froze on the staircase.  It's not that I was worried.  I knew at least one of the laughs had to belong to Dad.

But I had never heard him laugh like that in my entire life.

Quietly, I stole my way down the stairs.  Zeke was still snoring by the fireplace.  I inched over to the kitchen archway and peeked inside.

Dad and Officer Hargrove were at the table together with a couple of Holstens.  What shocked me was Officer Hargrove's clothing--her uniform gone, replaced with a pretty green dress.  I had never seen her wear a dress before, not even when I had lived with her.  Usually she wore her hair slicked back, too, in a tight, pinned bun; tonight she had left it in its natural state, curly and free. 

"There's no way you knew that just by looking at my shoes!"

"Oh, no.  I'm Native American," Dad said.  "You know how intuitive we all are.  Ask anyone."

I crept away from the doorway before either had a chance to notice me.  As quietly as I could, I made my way up the staircase and into my bedroom.

Dad and Officer Hargrove were dating.  There was no use denying it, or even speculating about it; no one had ever made my dad laugh like that before.  At least, not in my lifetime.

I sat on the edge of my bed and touched the picture frame on the nighttable.  Mom and Dad were together in the photo, young, their lives yet unsullied by their friend's selfish vices.

If Mom had loved Dad anywhere near as much as I did, I thought, even for a second, she wouldn't mind him seeing other women.  After all, he had waited twelve long years.

20

Speaking in Riddles

I went to church with Granny on Sunday, the same as we used to do.  I'd never been so happy to see a church in my life.  We sat and listened to the Sermon on the Mount, although I didn't understand much of it.  I wasted most of the hour by watching Rafael, the picture of brooding unhappiness, who sat sullenly next to a rapt Rosa.

Rafael followed me home at the end of the service.  I set up Granny's loom on the lawn and sat on the porch, practicing my plains flute.  Rafael sat with me and opened a brand new copybook.  I wondered how many notebooks he'd filled with his sketches.  Probably dozens.

Rafael took a pencil from behind his ear and tucked his hair back in its place.  I caught a flash of his hanging earring and reached over to toy with it.

"You should let me pierce your ear," he said.

Not likely.

I played the Song of the Golden Eagle, one of my favorite pieces.  Rafael tossed his head on my lap--like he owned it--and sat sketching characters in his notebook.  He loved fables and fairy tales, and he was really big on
The Little Mermaid
lately.  I'm pretty sure the titular mermaid wasn't supposed to have fangs and talons, though.

"It's called artistic license," he said harshly.

It's called disturbing
, I wanted to retort.

Rafael sketched the sea maiden with flowing, menacing hair.  "It was an allegory," he told me, his eyes attentively on the paper.  "
The Little Mermaid
, I mean.  Hans Christian Andersen loved a guy called Collin something, but Collin didn't love him back.  Collin got married to some rich broad instead.  Andersen wrote
The Little Mermaid
as a last love letter to him.  Kinda telling that the mermaid kills herself in the end."

Well, that was depressing.  I gave Rafael a bland look of horror.

He put his pencil down, suddenly, and mirrored my look.

"I'm eighteen," he said.  "I turned eighteen last month."

I almost laughed.  What was so terrible about that?

"You're sixteen."

This time I did laugh.  He glowered at me, but I ignored it.

I'm seventeen in May
, I signed slowly.

"Oh, really?" said a new voice.  "Happy early birthday."

Rafael sat up very suddenly.  I looked up from the side of the porch.

The man coming toward us was decidedly not Native American.  He wore a pepper-gray suit, his facial hair trimmed in a neat goatee.  He carried a briefcase at his side and smiled warmly.  I returned his smile reluctantly.

"This isn't public property," Rafael said darkly.  I guessed he was feeling just as wary as I was.

The man in the suit was not to be deterred.  He gave us his hand; I shook it.  Rafael shook, too, but only after looking at the guy as though he were a plague.

"My name is Wei Guan," said the man.  "I'm your new social worker, Skylar."  He added in sign language: 
How do you do?

Granny marched up the steps and onto the porch.  "Come, Skylar," she said, opening the front door.  "We want to be hospitable."

I got the feeling "hospitable" was a last minute substitute for what Granny really wanted to show this guy.  I rose unenthusiastically from the porch floor.  I gave Rafael an apologetic look.

"S'alright.  Just come to my house when you're done," Rafael said.  He tossed a black look at the doorway as Mr. Guan walked through it.  He waved his hand at me and went down to the lawn.

Granny and Mr. Guan sat on chairs in the sitting room.  I folded up Zeke's cot and stowed it to the side.  I sat on the floor, cross-legged.

"So," Mr. Guan said, opening his briefcase, "I understand your previous social worker's been...not so nice."

I grimaced.  What an understatement.

"I'll just be honest with the both of you," Mr. Guan said.  "A social worker's job is to make sure the house his ward lives in doesn't compromise his safety.  I'm telling you right now, I can't see anything wrong with letting Skylar live in this house.  Reservations are a blurry area--they're physically a part of the state, but they aren't governed by state laws; are they a part of the state, or not?  It's not my job to answer that.  It's just my job to make sure Skylar's happy.  Skylar, are you happy?"

I nodded, completely caught off guard.

"I had a feeling," Mr. Guan said, smiling.

"Then will you approve my adopting him?" Granny asked.

"Me, personally?  Yes.  I'll sign off on whatever papers you show me.  The problem is that a judge needs to sign off on them, too.  And, as I understand, the judge assigned to your case is waiting for your tribe's officials to get back to him...something about a Bear River?"

I wondered whether that judge had had anything to do with me getting sent to the Buthrops' house.

"And if the US refuses to sell Bear River to us?" Granny asked.  "This is not the first time we've gathered the funds necessary to purchase the land, only for the government to raise the price."

"Then you'll remain Skylar's custodian on a probationary basis," Mr. Guan said.  "But at the end of a six month period, you can reapply for full legal custody."

There wouldn't be much of a point in six months.  I'd be nearly eighteen by then.

"I think you'll find this arrangement comfortable enough, though, Mrs. Looks Over," Mr. Guan said.  "I sincerely doubt CPS will lobby to remove him from this household a second time.  I have a lot of experience with runaway foster children, some as young as six or seven--it's sad, but the agency just can't be bothered looking for them.  CPS considers runaways a poor investment.  Make no mistake about it, foster care is first and foremost a business."

I don't know whether I'd ever heard anything so disgusting.  Granny sighed through her lips.  I guess she must have felt the same.

"I would like to take the boy to New Mexico for an upcoming pauwau," Granny said.  "Do I have your
permission
?  I'm told I can't take my own grandson to celebrate his tribe's history without consulting you people."

"I'm truly sorry you were told that.  Of course you can take him to New Mexico.  I'll make a note of it in his file."

"And the adoption papers?  You may as well sign them while you're here."

"Absolutely," Mr. Guan said.  "May I see them?"

Granny got up and swiped a pile of papers off of the mantelpiece.  Mr. Guan unbuckled his suitcase and found a pen.  Granny offered him the papers and he took them, smiled briefly, and read them over.

He chuckled as he scrawled his signature at the bottom of the sheet.

"What?" Granny asked sharply, eyeing him.

"It's nothing," Mr. Guan assured.  "It's just that this is a first.  Don't you think?"

I couldn't have been more puzzled had he been speaking in riddles.  To be honest, it kind of sounded like a riddle anyway.  What was a first?  A grandmother adopting her grandson? 

"I've never heard of a boy with three birth certificates before."

21

Cynthia Parker

I stared after Mr. Guan.  I stared after the door when it clicked shut behind him.  I felt cold and foreign in my own skin.

Three birth certificates?  What was he talking about?

Granny rose indifferently from her rocking chair.

No.  No way was she turning on the Shoshone reticence.  I jumped up from my chair and reached for her hand.

"I wouldn't know anything about that," Granny said, and slipped her hand free from mine.  "You'll have to discuss it with your father."

I stared helplessly after her as she went into the kitchen to brew a pot of tea.

Dad.  Where was Dad?

I bolted up the staircase.  I looked through his room and mine.  I checked the attic.  Nowhere.  Dad wasn't home.

I raked my fingers fiercely through my hair, wrapped the curls around my knuckles, and pulled until my scalp stung.

Okay, I thought.  Calm down.  It doesn't mean anything.  It could very well be a clerical error.

Dad would know for sure.

I climbed back down the staircase.  My pulse was so loud, I could hear it in my ears.  Hurriedly, I went out through the front door.  I stood on the lawn below the porch and clapped my hands twice.

Balto dashed out from the pinyon trees.

I knelt on the lawn and rubbed Balto's muzzle.  I took an orange peel from my back pocket and offered it to him as a snack.  He gobbled it up whole and gazed at me expectantly.

Dad?
I signed, my hand spread, my thumb against my forehead.

Coywolves inherited all their ancestors' good genes--the wolf's intelligence, the coyote's affinity with humans--and none of the debilitating ones, like the wolf's shyness or the coyote's spazzy attention span.  The attention span probably went to Zeke.  Coywolves will even follow your gaze when you point at an object in the distance, something no dog on Earth can do.  So you can say that coywolves are really more related to humans; but I'd say they're even smarter.  Don't be surprised when they take over the world one day.

Balto's tail wagged with recognition.  He sprinted from the lawn to the dirt path.  It was all I could do to keep up with him.

We ran down the forest trail and found Dad on the other side of the lake with Mr. Little Hawk and Mr. Black Day, helping to fit a new roof over an aged home.  I didn't want to interrupt Dad's work, although he wasn't supposed to be working, anyway; Sunday is a day of rest in Nettlebush.  I waited until Dad had climbed down the side of the cabin, drinking from a bottle of water, before I walked over to him and took his arm.

"Cubby," he said, visibly taken aback.  "Is everything alright?"

I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what was wrong.

Then I remembered:  I can't talk.

I was so frustrated, so on edge, I had to squeeze my eyes shut and clench my jaws.  I hadn't even thought to bring a pad of paper.

I felt Dad's hand on my shoulder.  I opened my eyes.

"It's okay," he told me.  "I'm right here."