Hurt Go Happy (15 page)

“What's she saying?” Joey demanded.

“Nothing,” her mother said; then said to the woman, “She minds my daughter.”

“Good, good,” the woman said, moving farther into the room. “Oh, look, she's smiling.”

All of Sukari's teeth showed.

“That's not a smile,” Joey said. “She's scared.”

Sukari moved to put Joey between herself and the woman, who came around the end of the sofa and slipped a syringe from her pocket. “Can you hold her?” she asked Joey.

Joey usually liked people with easy lips to read, but not this woman. “Leave her alone,” she said, then glanced pleadingly at her mother.

“This will put her to sleep.”

“No.”

The woman turned to Ruth.

“Joey, help her catch Sukari. It's for her own good.”

“Liar,” Joey screamed.

Ruth's hand flew and the open palm caught Joey's cheek. The smell of tobacco was so strong on her mother's stained fingers that the odor lingered in the air between them. Joey was stunned. Her mother had never hit her. She touched her cheek where it stung.

“Oh Jesus, I'm sorry,” Ruth said. The back of her hand flew to her mouth.

Joey straightened her usually humped shoulders to make herself taller before turning to the woman. “You're not taking her. Charlie said she was mine. Those were his last words. You can't have her if I say you can't.”

Her mother's hand waved desperately. “Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “He didn't mean for
you
to keep her.”

Sukari took Joey's hand. She could smell Charlie's sweater, which Sukari had pulled over her head.

“Yes, he did.”

“Where do you plan to keep her?” her mother asked, her face full of sarcasm.

There had been no time to think of that. Joey shrugged. “I don't know, but you can't put her in a cage. She has her own room like Luke and I do. Don't you understand, Mom? I'm not going to let anyone”—Joey glanced at the woman who was filling the syringe from a bottle in her pocket—“take her from the only home she knows. I'll stay here with her until Lynn comes.”

“It may be weeks before Lynn can take her. Or maybe she won't want her.”

“Lynn will take her. She loves Sukari. So does Jack.”

Ruth looked at them, then at the woman, whom, Joey realized, her mother didn't like, either. When she said, “We'll try it for one night,” Joey knew she had won.

The woman looked disappointed. “Want me to take the cat?”

They all turned to follow her gaze. Hidey had gone up the drapes and was crouched on the valance.

Sukari gave a hoot and would have scampered up after him if Joey hadn't caught her around the waist. “Not the cat, either,” she said to her mother.

*   *   *

After Joey swept up the broken glass, she tried to entertain Sukari, who would sit quietly for a few minutes before running down the hall to Charlie's room, then to the bathroom, then to his office. WHERE TURTLE? she'd demanded after each search.

Joey had no idea how to tell her the truth. Did Sukari remember her mother being killed or Charlie's wife dying? Could she understand what death meant? “He's here,” she said finally, tapping Sukari's chest, then her own. “This is where he lives now,” she added, sinking into the soft cushions of the sofa. She put her head back and closed her eyes and soon felt Sukari crawl up beside her. When she peeked, the little chimp was sitting with her head back and her eyes closed, too.

After only a moment or two, Sukari scrambled down but this time she ran to the front door.

It was Ray. He waved, then maneuvered a large sheet of plywood through the opening. He had cut it to fit the shattered sliding glass door.

Though Joey had never spent an entire day in charge of Sukari, she was familiar with her tricks. Like any child, Sukari went from one game to another, losing interest almost as quickly as she started something new. Joey was exhausted and wished she'd settle on something quiet and stick with it, but each time Joey tried to get her to finish a puzzle or draw a picture, Sukari would rub her thumb and index finger together: her sign for “raisin.”

For a while Joey gave them to her. She wanted Sukari to be quiet so that she could think about Charlie, collect her memories. “You've had enough raisins,” Joey said, when she realized Sukari had eaten an entire eight-ounce box.

By evening, Sukari had such horrible diarrhea that Joey took her diaper off and carried one of her potties with them from room to room.

Her mother showed up at dinnertime with Joey's pajamas, her toothbrush, and a Papa Murphy's Hawaiian pizza, Joey's favorite because she loved pineapple. So did Sukari, who plucked and ate most of them before the oven heated up.

When Joey mentioned bedtime, Sukari ran to her room.
That was easy,
Joey was thinking, when Sukari came back in to the living room trailing her wagon, into which she'd piled a selection of games and toys.

“I don't think so,” Joey said, took the wagon, and wheeled it back into Sukari's room. When she came back, Sukari had disappeared.

Joey checked Charlie's room, then the bathroom. As she crossed the living room to look in the office, she saw the draperies move and Sukari's long toes sticking out from beneath them. Joey tiptoed over to the chain that opened the curtains and drew them back to expose Sukari, pressed against the window with a jar of Skippy peanut butter. She grinned at Joey and offered up a gloppy finger full.

Joey scooped her up, carried her to the bathroom, and, to Sukari's delight, ran another bath. Joey soaped her head, back, and belly, which she'd caked with peanut butter, while Sukari signed to her rubber animals and kicked her legs, soaking Joey to the skin. After the splashy, soapy ordeal, Sukari, wrapped in a towel, pulled her stool out and climbed up onto the edge of the bathroom counter. She got her toothbrush from the holder and squeezed out a big glob of Crest.

Joey cleaned the hair out of the tub. When she turned to throw it in the toilet, she saw Sukari, head back and mouth open, wringing out a long, delicious strand of toothpaste.

“Stop that.” Joey grabbed the toothpaste away from her. “You make Luke look like an angel.”

A little later Sukari crawled into Joey's lap with her hairbrush and sat like a princess, admiring herself in her hand-held mirror while Joey brushed her from head to toe. She kissed her reflection, then held it for Joey to admire, as if her image stayed on the glass.

When she'd been quiet for a while and seemed to be sleepy, Joey carried her to her room and helped her up onto her bed-board. Joey stood on the ladder and tucked the blanket around Sukari and covered her with Charlie's sweater. “I love you, sugar-butt,” she whispered and kissed her cheek.

When she reached the door, she turned and blew her a kiss.

DOLL, Sukari signed.

Joey found a doll in the toy box and handed it up to her. When she reached the door again, Sukari signed, HAT, and pointed to her cowboy hat dangling from a hook on the back of the door.

Joey handed it up.

HUG.

Joey climbed up and hugged her.

This time she didn't look back when she reached the door, but when she flipped off the light, Sukari screamed loudly enough for Joey to hear.

She turned the light on. “What?”

BEAR.

“Okay. Okay.” She tossed her her bear.

TRICYCLE.

“No way, you brat.”

RAISIN.

“No.”

HAIRBRUSH.

“This is the last thing.” UNDERSTAND?

Joey was stretched out on the sofa, petting Hidey, who was asleep on her stomach, when Sukari's face appeared over the back of the couch. Joey jumped, scaring Hidey, who leapt away, scratching Joey's stomach clear through her sweatshirt.

“Now what?”

Sukari came around the end of the couch, dragging one of her potties. She grinned, in the dimness of the light above the stove. She pulled her diapers down, fastened her bottom to the potty, and pooped.

Joey went for tissue to wipe her, powdered her bottom, pulled her diaper up, then lay back down and patted her chest.

The day that had started with an earthquake ended with Sukari curled against Joey's side, the top of her head lodged beneath Joey's chin, asleep in each other's arms.

*   *   *

Lynn arrived on Friday. Joey followed Sukari to the door and let her in. They hugged until Lynn had to give in to Sukari's demand to be picked up. She signed, WHERE TURTLE? in Lynn's face.

WHAT TELL HER? Lynn asked.

“That he is here now.” She tapped her chest. “I didn't know how to tell her the truth.”

Lynn put Sukari down and took a pad from her purse.
It's best she doesn't know. Let's let her think she is going to my house to see him.

Joey nodded. That was the first she knew for sure that Lynn was going to give Sukari a home. She was relieved and shattered. Lynn was going to take her, but take her away.

Lynn patted Joey's shoulder, then wrote,
You can see her anytime. Fresno's not very far from Fremont.
She smiled when Joey looked up.

“Fremont?”

I guess he didn't get a chance to tell you, did he?

“Tell me what? Where's Fremont?”

South of Oakland.
Lynn took Joey's arm and led her to the sofa.

Sukari raced ahead and fished the dog puzzle from beneath a cushion. She drew her lips back and showed it to Lynn.

“Scary,” Lynn said, then sat Joey down and wrote,
I don't want your mother to know that I told you, but Charlie just finished setting up a trust fund so you can go to the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. The school is free, as is room and board, but he's made it so your parents won't have to pay a nickel for anything. The trust fund will buy your clothes, pay your medical insurance, anything that the state doesn't cover. There's even a generous allowance.

Lynn reached over Joey's shoulder as she read and added,
It's a wonderful school!

Joey looked up from reading; tears brimmed, then spilled down her cheeks. “Why would he do that?”

“He loved you, honey,” Lynn said, then wrote,
He wanted only the best for you.

“Does Mom know?”

“Yes, and she said no.”
But I think that was a knee-jerk reaction,
Lynn wrote.
I think she'll change her mind. Don't tell her you know. Anger will make it harder for her to think it through, to realize what this means for you. Right now, I think she feels Charlie has stolen you from her, and that this extends his reach beyond the grave. She needs to get past that.

Lynn may have thought her mother would change her mind, but Joey didn't. As she knelt in front of Sukari to tell her that she was going with Lynn, Joey believed that they would drive away and she would never see either of them again.

Joey took a small suitcase from the hall closet and went into Sukari's room. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as she opened it on the floor and began to fold Sukari's clothes, putting them in piece by piece.

Sukari stood in the doorway and watched for a minute or so before she ran in, pulled the clothes out, and threw them around the room. Joey sat down in the middle of the floor. “Come sit with me,” she said.

One of the signs for “doctor” is to tap the pulse in the wrist with the “D” hand. Lynn's sign-name was the thumb of the “L” hand tapped against the pulse. Joey hugged Sukari, then made her watch as she signed, YOU GO L HER HOUSE.

Sukari broke free and ran circles around her, slapping her on the back each time she passed. Joey caught her arm and pulled her into her lap. SUKARI GO L HER HOUSE, Joey signed, then with a tightness in her chest that made it hard to breathe, she added, SEE TURTLE.

Sukari watched Joey's hands, then studied her face. SEE TURTLE?

Joey nodded.

J-Y GO?

Joey pulled Sukari close so that she couldn't see her tears. “Not just yet,” she whispered.

In the end, they had to “slip her a mickey,” as Lynn called it, with some tranquilizers she'd gotten from the Humane Society. Joey fed them to Sukari in a banana, then read to her until she was asleep. Joey lined the big carry-cage Lynn had brought with Sukari's blanket and folded Charlie's sweater for a pillow. She added her favorite animal book and her teddy bear, then carried Sukari to the car, but couldn't bring herself to put her down. She just stood there with her head bowed and her skin stinging in the cool air as if she'd been peeled. When Lynn touched her shoulder, Joey buried her face against her little friend's neck. “My heart is breaking,” she whispered, then leaned and laid Sukari on the floor of the cage.

The last thing Lynn did before driving away was to nail a for-sale sign on a tree by the road. She stood with her arm around Joey's shoulders and stared back at the house, wiping her eyes from time to time with the heel of her hand. Lynn had let Joey pick anything she wanted of Charlie's to keep. She took Sukari's tortoise and its aquarium for Luke and for herself chose his binoculars, the field guide he'd loaned her on their first walk in the woods, and a baby picture of Sukari taken in Africa. In it Charlie stood behind his wife, who held Sukari up to face the camera. But when the picture was snapped Sukari had twisted to reach for the baby bottle in Charlie's hand. The photo caught Charlie holding the bottle out of her reach like a torch as he leaned to kiss Sukari's forehead. At the same moment his wife, on her tiptoes, kissed his cheek.

*   *   *

On the second Monday after Lynn left with Sukari, Ruth, Joey, and Luke came home from school to find a strange man sitting in a BMW in front of their house. He stepped out as they came down the hill from the mailbox. He was dressed in a suit and tie, so Joey thought that he was a Jehovah's Witness, but it wasn't Saturday.

“He must be from out of town.” She glanced at her mother. The angry expression on her mother's face surprised her and suggested that she knew who he was and why he was there. It only took a second more for her to figure out that this was Charlie's lawyer.