Boy on a Black Horse (7 page)

Chav came and took Chavali from Topher instead of sticking Rom in a stall. Rom started to wander off. Chavali started to cry. The water trough started to overflow. Things were confusing for a few minutes. When they sorted out, the water was turned off, the horses were in stalls, and we were all in Topher's Blazer, with Chav in the back holding Chavali on his lap.

“Emergency room, I assume,” said Topher as he gunned it up the driveway.

“No!” Chav sounded panicky at the idea. People would ask him questions there.

“Just take us home,” I told Topher. “Lee will know what to do. It's just chicken pox.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.” I explained to him why I felt so sure, and he believed me. That was another reason I liked Topher. He pretty much trusted me, the way Liana did.

“But—what's your aunt going to think of all this?” He meant Chav and Baval and Chavali, I guess, all of whom—well, in the closed car a person could really tell they needed a bath and a change of clothes.

“She'll be cool. You'll see.” I wasn't as sure as I hoped I sounded, but it turned out I was right. When we went into the house, Liana was in the kitchen baking homemade bread, and she looked up and saw Chav standing there with that hard, haunted look in his eyes and his little sister in his arms, and that was all it took.

I said, “Lee, this is Chav and Baval and Chavali—”

“Chicken pox,” she said.

“—and they don't have anyplace else to go.”

She was already wiping the bread dough off her hands. “Go turn up the heat in the spare bedrooms. Chav, follow Gray, take your sister on back the hall; we'll get her in a bed.” Her voice was very gentle when she spoke to him. “Do we still have Children's Tylenol?” she asked me, or maybe herself, since I was on my way out of the room. “No, I bet we don't. Or oatmeal bath, or Caladryl ointment …”

“You need some things?” Topher asked her. “I'll go get them.”

“Would you?” She sounded surprised and glad to see him there. “I'll give you the money.”

“No, you won't. And any other kind of help you need, you call me. I feel responsible, bringing this passel of God-knows-what in here.”

I missed the rest, getting a thermometer for Chavali. Chav wouldn't put her down. Instead of tucking her into the ruffled bed in the peach-colored bedroom that used to belong to Cassie, he sat on it and held her. Baval said, “Chill out, bro,” and sat beside him.

“One-oh-three,” Liana read the thermometer a few minutes later. “That's not so bad, but let's get her in a tub of tepid water to bring that down.” She peeled back some of the blankets and said straight to Chavali, “Is that okay, honey? Will you come with me and get a bath to make you feel better?”

It was like a little miracle. Chavali, the shy one, smiled and held out her arms.

A couple of hours later, after chicken soup and a dose of Tylenol and an oatmeal bath and some Caladryl ointment on her spots, Chavali really was feeling better. In fact, she was feeling good enough to make Chav do something he didn't want to do.

“Story!”

“Not right now.”

“Yes, right now!”

“C'mon, sis. Give me a break.”

They were in the peach bedroom, with Chavali snug in the bed now, and Liana and I were out in the kitchen putting things away after a late supper. Their voices floated down the hallway to us.

“I can't,” Chav was saying. His voice sounded very tired. “Baval, you tell it to her.”

“You tell her. You're the one who remembers.”

I looked at Liana, and my eyes signaled, That's strange. Baval was old enough to remember most of what Chav did.

She nodded and stopped banging bread pans. We both eavesdropped.

“Listen,” Chav said, “how about a new story?”

This must have been okay with Chavali. There was a silence and a rustling of the quilt while Chav stalled for time by getting himself settled on her bed. “This is a story about the night,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because in a minute I am going to turn off the light and you are going to go to sleep. And it will be night in here. Now, listen. In a stable there is a black horse in the black night.”

“Rom? Our black horse Rom?”

“Yes, Rom. The black horse is in the stall in the strange stable all by himself, and he's a little scared. So he listens hard, like this.”

I just knew he had his hands up to his head like horse ears pricked forward to hear. To give him some noises to hear, I started sloshing dishes in the sink, and Lee finally got her pans of bread clunked into the hot oven.

“And he hears he isn't alone after all,” Chav said. “There's a fuzzy little horse in the very next stall. A fat furry mare with curly hair is eating her hay.”

“Diddle!”

“Yes, Diddle. The stable man with the sandy mustache has brushed all the dried sweat out of her hair. And he gave her oats and water and hay. Rom too. Now he has gone away, but Diddle is there. What else is there?”

“I don't know,” Chavali whispered.

I sneaked a few steps up the hallway to take a look. Sure enough, Chav was doing horse ears.

“The birds are there in their nests on the beams,” he said. “The mice are there in their nests in the hay. There's a fat black cricket right on top of the manure pile. There's a fat black spider on a cobweb on the wall.”

It was strange what I was thinking, that there were other things in the night too, dangerous things. Once a rabid raccoon had walked right into the stable. Topher had tried to hit it with a shovel, and it almost bit him. Then it bit two of the horses before he could get it killed. The horses had to be put down, and that almost killed Topher. Now he kept a rifle leaning in the corner of the stairs leading up to the hayloft. That gun was there in the night too.

“And the fat black cat,” Chav was saying, “the fat, fat stable cat, comes padding along the top of the stall. He curls up right on top of Rom's back, because Rom is a warm place, and he starts to purr.”

Chav's voice had gone singsong, but he must have rolled his eyes or something, because Chavali started to giggle. She would go to sleep now and dream of warm things, cuddly cats purring. “Rom's not scared anymore,” she said.

“That's right. The night is big and black, but so is he.”

Liana and I were still up at midnight, which is when Grandpa slammed in, spitting mad.

“All right, where are they?” He glared at me.

Cops must practice their glares in front of a mirror. Grandpa's was good. I just about wet my pants, I was so scared of him for a minute, and I couldn't say a thing. But Liana said as if nothing much was happening, “They're asleep.”

“Get them out here.”

“No. Sit down, Dad.”

He didn't sit down. “What do you mean,
no
?”

“I mean no. They've had their showers, and I'm washing and drying their clothes while they're in bed. You can talk to them in the morning.”

“Maybe you're not understanding me,” Grandpa said between clenched teeth. “Read my lips. Get them out here
now
.”

“This is my house,” Liana said in a hard tone I had never heard from her before. “Do you have a warrant?”

I dared a look at them, and I could see Grandpa begin to realize Liana was really going to stand up to him. And she was his daughter, so he didn't want to get into a big fight with her. But he was a guy with his ego hanging out. He couldn't back down now. “I can go get one,” he threatened.

“Bull. What have these kids done?” Liana puffed out a breath between her lips and let go of the hardness in her voice. “Sit down and have a cup of coffee, Dad,” she said very gently. “There's no way I'm going to let you near them when you're all fussed up like a stampeding buffalo. If you'd seen them, you'd understand.”

I guess he didn't want to lock horns with her anymore. He actually did what she said—he sat down. But now he was scowling at me.

“My own granddaughter,” he said. “I sat out there in the cold for hours waiting for those squatters to come back before I started to get it. And then I couldn't believe it. My own grand-daughter, making a fool of me.”

“Sorry, Grandpa,” I mumbled, feeling really bad that I hadn't thought before about what he'd do or how he'd feel. I guess I just kind of figured Grandpa would survive, but Chav might not. “I couldn't let you take them to the juvenile home.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because Chav—you might as well kill him.”

“Chav's the oldest one,” Liana said, giving Grandpa his cup of coffee. “He takes care of the little ones like a mama hen, but he really needs somebody to take care of him.”

“Something terrible happened to him,” I told Grandpa. “He has all kinds of scars, like he was in some kind of horrible accident, or maybe a fire.”

Liana gave me a strange look. “No,” she said. “No, I can see why you might think that, but that doesn't account for all of it.”

“All of what?” Grandpa looked at the cup of coffee in his hands and set it down. “No damn coffee,” he grumped.

“It's decaf.”

“I don't care. I don't need it. All of what?”

“The look in his eyes,” Liana said. “I think he's had awful things done to him. I think at the very least he was abused. Beaten.”

At first when she said that I couldn't think or breathe. Then a minute later it all made sense, everything about Chav, but understanding it felt like somebody was beating on me. I hurt all over and had to curl up. Oh my God. Who could do such a thing to a beautiful child named Chav?

Grandpa was staring up at Liana, looking shocked. “You don't want that kind of kid in your house,” he told her, though not like he was angry at her anymore—instead he sounded scared. “You could wake up with a knife at your throat.”

“Dad, that's ridiculous.”

“No, it's not. There's a pattern with these battered kids, and that pattern is that they turn out just like the people who did it to them. They don't care what happens to them, and they've got so much rage and pain—where do you think mass murderers come from, and serial killers? Hitler was abused as a child. Show me a violent criminal and I'll show you somebody who was abused as a child.”

“But the pattern can be broken,” Liana said. “Not every abused child turns into a criminal.”

“The point is, you're taking a terrible chance.” He was serious, pleading with her.

“I'll risk it.”

“Liana, you're my daughter! I don't want to risk it. Let me get him out of here.”

“Isn't he innocent until proved guilty?”

“All I'm saying is, let the professionals take care of him.”

“No. He came to me.”

“Liana, be reasonable!”

She stood up and said, “If I were reasonable, I would have given up a long time ago. I need to live my life, Dad. Now, if you're not going to drink your coffee, go on home and go to bed. You can come back in the morning.”

There was some more yelling. That is, he yelled. She never raised her voice at him. But in the end he did what she said.

C
HAPTER

7

In the dead of night Chav lay tensely awake, staring into the darkness.

Certain the gadjos were asleep at last, he swung his bare feet out of the double bed he was sharing with Baval. His brother immediately took over the whole bed, still sleeping soundly. Baval could sleep through anything, but some nights Chav hardly slept at all, and this was one of them. Restless, he padded into the hallway.

The feeling in his chest tonight was not so much pressure as pain because Chavali was sick and it was all his fault. Now here he was back in a house again—his mind knew it was better for Chavali to be in a warm bed under a roof, but the rest of him was in a panic, screaming to run, run. Once he had lived in a house like this, even bigger than this, and he remembered being thrown against its walls, and he remembered how blood had looked, splattered on its carpeted floors. His blood. His mother's blood.

Houses were places where terrible things could happen. They had locks on the doors. They had walls to hide from the world what went on inside.

Chav walked softly toward Chavali's room. Being on the move helped him feel a little better—it would be harder for punishment to find him if he was moving. In the peach-colored bedroom he stood awhile listening to his sister's peaceful breathing. By the dim glow of her nightlight he could not see the rash all over her, even on her eyelids. That helped some. But looking at her small face was like looking at angel goodness, at perfection. He did not deserve to be her brother. He had to leave her room.

Back down the hallway he barefooted, glancing into doorways as he passed them—Baval's room again, the bathroom, and Gray's room, where a hundred model horses stood alertly watching her sleep. All those plastic horses, but no real ones. Rom was far from here, out in the stable. Chav wished he were there with the horse, sleeping in the hay. He wouldn't have minded the cold—shivering with cold was better than shaking with fear inside a gadjo house. He hoped the black horse was okay. Did not feel at all sure, no matter what sort of story he told Chavali. Did not trust Topher or Gray. Did not like having to trust anyone.

She was a strange gadjo, that Gray. Tall—she looked like a clown riding that ponyish Diddle. Big and bossy—but there was poetry in her too. And she seemed to care about—things. Maybe. Maybe not. It had been a long time since Chav had felt that sort of caring coming his way from anyone, and it frightened him. Because he had been born a bad person, the one person in the world who cared about him had been taken away, and he did not want to feel such grief and pain ever again.

He walked past the sweet-faced gadjo woman's room. Her hair was light-colored and permed, her eyes blue, her skin pale; nothing about her was at all like his small brown mother, yet she reminded Chav so much of his mother that it hurt.