Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light Series) (27 page)

"Mickey," I said, "why don't you listen to the rest of the radio show, and you can tell us how it ends?"

Mickey saw right through me.  You can't fool that kid.  "You're trying to get rid of me," she said.

"Just for a little while," I admitted.

"Fine," she said.  She slouched back into the sitting room.  I heard her turn up the volume on the radio.

Zeke followed me into the kitchen where Rafael was--unskillfully--cutting up chili peppers.  Rafael tucked his hair behind his ear and looked up at our arrival.

"What?" Rafael said.

"I've got the papers you need," Zeke said, his eyes bouncing from floor to wall to window.  He laughed nervously, his hyena's laugh.  "But uh..."

"What, Zeke?" I asked quietly.

"I got a fax from CPS," Zeke said.  "Her mother gets out of prison next month."

There was a moment during which none of us spoke.  A moment during which I could hear Whacky Bob's voice trilling through the room from the children's radio station:  "Gee, Gus, that sure looks like a pickle to me..."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," I said.  "She was convicted three years ago, wasn't she?"

"Yeah," Zeke said.

"And she only served three years?  After trying to kill her own daughter?"

"She didn't go to jail for attempted murder, man.  She went in for aggravated assault."

Momentarily, I closed my eyes.  Class 5 aggravated assault's only a three-year sentence.

Three years for nearly murdering your own daughter.  Not bad.

"She stabbed a seven-year-old in the chest," Rafael said.  I could hear the anger quavering in his thick voice.

Zeke shrugged.  "I don't make the law.  I don't even practice the law.  I'm just telling you what they told me, okay?"

"All the same," I said.  "It doesn't matter whether her mother gets out a month from now or a year from now.  CPS terminated her parental rights."

Another silence.  I was starting to like these silences less and less.

"Zeke," I said.

"We did terminate her parental rights," he said quickly.  "But she's looking to reinstate them."

"She can't," Rafael said at once.

"Look," Zeke said, and raised his hands.  "I'm on your side!  I've always been on your side.  We go way back.  But adoption laws always favor the biological parents.  I don't make the law--I told you that--"

"Zeke," I said.  My voice sounded strangled to me.  "This woman tried to kill Michaela."

"I know that.  But she says she didn't..."

"Zeke, you can't let them do this to us."

"I'm
not
," Zeke said.  "How many times do I have to tell you I'm on your side?  I'm going to testify on your behalf--"

"Testify?" Rafael said bleakly.

Zeke straightened the lapels of his jacket.  Not that it did much to improve his appearance.  He's always been a slob.  A hyena wearing a business suit is still a hyena.

"Mrs. Morales doesn't have any rights over her daughter right now," Zeke said.  "To get them back, she has to petition a judge.  If
she
wants Michaela, and
you
want Michaela, you'll have to go to family court and fight it out."

My stomach turned.  I hated family court.  I wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the place.  It's an absolute nightmare--the moment you step inside, the vigor drains right out of your heart.

"She can't take Michaela," I said.  I was beside myself with disbelief.  I was about ready to throw up.  Rafael must have seen that, because he moved closer to me, and he gripped my hand.  "She'll hurt her again.  She could kill her..."

"I know," Zeke said.  "Believe me, I know.  And I'm going to mention it in my homestudy.  So just...calm down, okay?  This isn't a bad thing!"  Oh, it wasn't, was it?  "It just means we've got a ways to go!  We're not going to lose this!"

"I'll kill her," Rafael swore.  "I'll kill her before I let her touch Michaela."

"Rafael," I said.  The last thing I wanted was to worry about the both of them.

"Hey," Zeke said, chuckling nervously.  "Actually, if you kill her outside the rez, and you come back here, they can't prosecute you for it, so..."

"Zeke," I said, and closed my eyes again, "
please
don't encourage him."

Zeke left us a little while later.  The milk, the eggs, and the chili peppers stood abandoned on the kitchen counter.  Neither Rafael nor I could think much about dinner right now.

"What do we tell Mickey?" Rafael muttered.  I almost didn't hear him.

"Nothing," I said.  I massaged my temples.  "We're not going to worry her with this."

"But--"

"We're
not
going to let her mother take her away," I said.  "Even if we have to get creative.  Are you forgetting when we were teenagers?  That whole year we spent thwarting the government?"

Rafael frowned.  "But we lost," he said.  "They got your dad in the end.  They got what they wanted."

I thought about Dad in a prison cell, shriveled, aging, fighting for his life.  A part of him was missing now.  I knew it, no matter how well he feigned otherwise.  A shudder traveled through me.

For the most part, I thought we held up a pretty good pretense at normalcy.  I finished making the hotbread and Mickey was chatty and agreeable throughout dinner.  "Mr. Siomme's taking us to the badlands tomorrow," she said.  "He's going to show us where the coal comes from."  Mini climbed in through the kitchen window--I don't remember her going outside to begin with--and I slid the window closed.  Already it was getting very chilly outside.

I was chilly when we went to bed that night.  I could hear Mickey's door snapping shut down the hall.  I peeled the bedcovers back and tried to settle down.

"You're freezing," Rafael said, when we lay together.

"I don't know why," I said.  "The hearth's warm."

"Don't give me that," he said, and put his arm around me.  He pulled me close to his body, the warmth of him heating me from the outside in.

"She can't," I said.  My fingers tangled in his t-shirt.  "She can't take Michaela from us.  She can't hurt her..."

"I'm not going to let that happen," Rafael told me.

I was silent.  He went on.

"You remember when you were in foster care?" Rafael said.  "And CPS gave you to that couple that wanted to adopt you?"

"Yes," I said, and thought about Danny, Marilu's friend.

"I came looking for you, right?"

I smiled, if only a little.  "You certainly did."

"You remember how you you couldn't talk for twenty-two years?  So I read all those boring books--"

"I've never heard you call a book boring before," I realized.

"--shut up, Sky, and figured out how to put your vocal cords back together?  You remember that?"

"Well," I said, and I couldn't help it if I teased.  "Considering I'm talking to you right now..."

"I'm always gonna protect you.  And I'm always gonna protect that little girl.  There's no way in hell I'll let that woman get her hands on her."

"Rafael," I said.

"Yeah?"

"You are the most wonderful person I've ever known."

It took him a moment to answer me--and when he did, I thought he sounded bashful.

"I'd better be," he said.  "Because, you know.  That's what you deserve."

I smiled.  "Thank you."

"Stop thanking me."

"Are you sure?"

"Is the door locked?"

"You lock it.  I can't get up.  I'm the fat one."

"You're not
that
fat..."

"But I'm not
that
skinny..."

"How is it thanking me if I'm doing all the work?"

"Aren't you usually doing all the work anyway?"

After careful deliberation, and much well-delivered oration (of various sorts), the problem seemed to settle itself.  And I must say that the results were very satisfactory.  I professed my gratitude not once, but twice, and Rafael was graciously receptive both times, which ought to have surprised me because we're not exactly spring chickens, he and I.  I took his enthusiasm for a compliment.  And he swallowed me up in his arms, the same as every night; and somehow, I thought, that was my favorite part of all.

I drifted off to sleep with my head on his chest, his fingers buried in my hair.  And I probably would have slept a dreamless sleep--if not for the reservation pager ringing loudly on the floor.

"Go'way Mary," Rafael mumbled, half asleep.  His arm swung out and smacked me in the face.

"Ow," I said.  I stumbled out of bed.  Whose pager was beeping?  I dug through our discarded pants pockets on the floor.

Mine, by the looks of it.  A simple message glowed through the darkness, stamped across the small, digital screen.

where is your father?

Racine.  Racine couldn't find my father?

I considered, for a moment, how I ought to reply.  Obviously Racine thought there was a good chance Dad was with me.  I didn't want to panic her by saying, "I don't know."

he's on his way home
, I wrote back.  It wasn't necessarily a lie.  Not if I could find him.

I glanced back at Rafael on the bed.  Sound asleep.  That man could sleep through a hydrogen bomb, I'm telling you.

I dressed quickly--not entirely sure whose clothes I was pulling on--and stuffed the pager in my back pocket.  I kissed Rafael's cheek, partially to see whether he would wake up and partially because I just felt like it.

A hydrogen bomb, I am not.  He slept on, unperturbed.  I slipped out the door.

The reservation was cold by night.  Of course I hadn't thought to bring a jacket with me.  I very rarely think that far ahead.  The wind whipped my curls about my face, cold air stinging my eyes.  The moon was full as it rained down on the forest path, guiding my way to the cluster of houses just beyond the beech trees.

Truthfully, I had no idea where I was going.  I didn't even know whether Dad was still on the reservation.  When I was very young, he used to go drinking at night; sometimes I wouldn't  see him for two and three days at a time.  Now that I was older I understood he wasn't really getting drunk at those dive joints.  He was collecting information on Rafael's runaway father.

The first place I checked for Dad was our old house, the one in the north of the reservation.  Not my grandmother's house; my mother's house.

The house was in shambles.  Shoshone always abandon a house where a death occurred; they're not allowed to rip it down, or give it away to another family.  Out front was what might have been a garden once, sanctioned off by worn and peeling gates.  The planters beneath the dust-laden windows were faded and crumbling.  The vines tangling up the west-facing side were as thick as jungle growth.

I pushed open the swollen, bloated door.  Beyond the doorway was darkness.

"Dad?" I called out.  I didn't feel like going inside.  That house was the scene of too much heartache.

I called for Dad a couple more times, but without any response.  Finally I conceded that he had to be elsewhere.

I closed the aged door carefully.  I started the trek south.

Granny's house was in much better shape than my mother's, but it stood abandoned, just like its counterpart to the north.  Granny had died here--unexpectedly, in her sleep.  A headstrong, ornery old woman, she probably wouldn't have moved into a wickiup even if the Wolf himself came strolling out of the woods and advised her to do it.

I climbed the steps to the front porch.  Nostalgia gripped my heart tightly, painfully, and wouldn't let go.  This was the house I had grown up in.  This was where I had met my grandmother and my heritage, where I had learned about my family, where I had met my first friends.  This was home in a way that no other house could be.

I eased the door open and glanced inside.  Moonlight streaming through the front room windows.  The closet door ajar.

I stepped inside the old home, overpowered with its unfamiliar, musty scent.  When did it start smelling like that?  It's like the house just knew its caretaker had passed away, so it had relinquished its own spirit, too.

Granny's quiltwork still hung on the wall above the mantel.  Oh, I wanted to touch it.  I wanted to brush it with my fingers and remember the aged fingers that had brought it to life, the woman I loved more than life itself.  The back door stood locked, much as it had been even in life.  The staircase to the right of the house--the stairs I had climbed up countless times on my way to bed, or a late night rendezvous with Rafael...

"Dad?" I called out.

No response.

The chill of the empty home took me in a vicegrip, the hearth empty and black.  The hearth Balto used to climb into as a coywolf pup.  The hearth Granny and Dad and I had sat before on so many occasions while Granny told us her favorite stories, or taught me the songs of the Plains.

And then I noticed something on the mantelpiece I'd never noticed before.