St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (5 page)

Mary elbowed me, her eyebrows going crazy on

her face. "You wanna help us build the little

creep's new room? It'll be fun."

I thought of Rafael with a sinking feeling. I wasn't

sure he wanted me around.

"Thank you, Miss," said Morgan, "but Mom doesn't

trust me with hammers."

I could see the gears turning in Mary's head, in her

devious hazel eyes. She was the type of girl who

lived for corrupting the youth. I grabbed Morgan's

hand and quickly walked him home.

I went home for lunch and found Granny boiling

fish on the wood-coal stove. My stomach turned.

Eating meat in general bothers me, which is why I

don't do it. But actually, I was thinking about

Balto again. Bluegill was one of his favorite

snacks.

Stop moping, I told myself. I hate moping. I'd

rather smile, even if I don't mean it.

I turned on the computer in the front room and

checked the calendar on the tribal website.

Nothing new--just the usual reminders about the

raft race and picnic and the pauwau in July. My

chest was starting to feel heavy, like I'd been

running for a long time, but of course I hadn't. I

didn't pay it much thought. Instead a new button on

the website caught my eye: "Intertribal Chat."

My hands moved of their own accord. The mouse

moved. I clicked on the button and watched the

gray-white chat room window fill up the computer

screen.

At first I was lost in a flood of textual banter.

There had to be about forty different people logged

on at the same time, and they were typing fast--and

some of them in languages I didn't recognize. I sat

back in my chair and stared at the computer screen,

lost in thought.

Finally I typed a question.

Have any of you lost kids to foster

care?

The whole chat room slowed to a stop.

And then it picked up again--and my breath caught.

I have two nephews and one niece, one

person wrote. A social worker showed up

one day and took them off the rez.

Didn't even say why. We called the cops

but they wouldn't do a damn thing. My

sister writes letters every month asking

why she can't see her kids. Her letters

go ignored. We're Seminole.

My baby was taken from me, wrote somebody

else. I was seventeen and unmarried. My

mother and my older brother were going

to help me raise her. I named her

Maureen. I gave birth to her and she

was so beautiful. My mother and brother

were in the hospital room with us and

then a social worker came in. She said,

"I'm taking your baby away. You can't

give her the life she deserves. I'll

give her to a family with plenty of

money and she'll have whatever she wants

in life." I started crying and I begged

her to let me keep my baby. My big

brother yelled at the woman to leave the

room.

But

the

police

came

and

restrained my brother and the social

worker took my baby away. My baby is

four now. I don't know where she is.

I am of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe,

wrote another. My daughter and her husband

were killed in a car crash. The

children came to live with my husband

and me. I had new beds made for them.

I saw them off to school one morning,

the same as always. I waited for them

at the bus stop that afternoon. They

never came back. A social worker had

taken them in the middle of the day.

Apparently the state has decided my

grandbabies are better off with white

strangers than with their grandparents.

The youngest is being adopted by a

family

on

the

other

side

of

the

country. My grandbabies aren't even

going to grow up together. I can't do a

thing

about

it.

I'm

not

allowed

visitation.

My hands were shaking. My breath kept catching

in my throat, chest heaving breathlessly. I turned

off the monitor, my fingers numb. White hot anger

was swimming behind my eyes.

"Cubby?"

I looked blandly up at Dad as he walked in through

the front door.

Dad's face went from somber to wary in a split

second. He walked over to me in a single quick

stride and took my face in his hands, examining

me.

"You're sick."

My eyebrows furrowed. I wasn't sick. Just angry.

"You're sick," he said again. "After all these

years, do you really think I can't recognize

pneumonia?"

When I was little, I used to catch pneumonia all the

time. There's a fairly straightforward reason for

that. When you cough, your vocal cords close up,

blocking out foreign pathogens. My vocal cords

don't close; so I can't cough; so all the harmful

germs most kids avoid travel straight down to my

lungs. Even now I tend to get sick in the rain.

I looked at Dad, alarmed. If he said I had

pneumonia, then I had pneumonia. But I didn't

know where I'd picked it up from. Maybe the dirt

I'd dug up on Aubrey's farm. Maybe the sunflower

seeds I'd eaten at lunch.

"Let's go," he said quietly. "I'm taking you to the

hospital."

He put his bearlike arm around me and led me out

to the porch.

The reservation hospital was south of our house.

By the time we reached the parking lot, we were

practically on top of the turnpike. Dad led me up

the steps between the wheelchair ramps and in

through the sliding doors. The receptionist, a

curly-haired woman named Ms. Bright, rolled her

eyes at us. "You again," she said. I smiled

weakly. I was a regular here.

Dad and I sat together in the waiting room, an old

Shoshone chant playing over the speakers in the

ceiling. He rubbed my back and smiled at me,

though like all of his smiles, it was short-lived. I

elbowed him; and when I had his attention, I

mimed wavering water with my hand.

"What about the lake?"

I gestured between the two of us.

Dad smiled again. "You want to build a raft

together? Yes, I think that's a fine idea."

This time I mimed a telephone.

Dad's face took on a sheepish undertone. "I don't

really think..."

Dad had a girlfriend of sorts, Racine, a police

officer he got on with fairly well. And Racine had

herself a couple of kids, DeShawn and Jessica. I

thought a raft race would be fun for the two of

them.

"Come on, you two," said the nurse, who glanced

into the waiting room and waved his clipboard at

us.

Dad and I went down the hall to an empty exam

room where the nurse weighed me and took my

blood pressure. The nurse kept giving me these

dark, reproachful looks. I wasn't sure what that

was about. "Somebody hasn't been eating his

spinach," he clucked. Well, yeah. I don't like

spinach. He left us presently; and then Dr. Stout,

Morgan's mom, came in with a stethoscope and

listened to my lungs.

"Preposterous!" she shouted. She was kind of a

loony lady.

"I think he has aspiration pneumonia," Dad said

awkwardly. "He had this a lot when he was a

child. If you could just give him amoxicillin

before his breathing gets bad..."

Dr. Stout insisted on doing things her own way. "I

want him to have a chest X-ray," she said firmly.

"Sorry, Cubby," Dad mumbled.

Dr. Stout led us out of the room and down another

hallway. I saw a sign on one of the walls labeled

"X-Ray Lab." We veered to the right and stopped

outside a small room. "Wait here," Dr. Stout said.

She walked off somewhere and returned with a

paper hospital gown, which she stuffed into my

hands. She pointed at the door. "Get changed,"

she said. "And make sure you take off that flute

around your neck. The X-ray technician will be

with you when he's ready."

I trudged into the dark, cramped little room and

closed the door behind me. I sat on the X-ray table

and tugged the plains flute over my head, the

leather cord tangled in my fingers. Rafael made

this flute for me about a year ago. I put it aside;

my skin felt bare without it. I touched the front of

my throat. Two thick red scars ran across my neck

from ear to ear, uneven, overlapping at my

voicebox. There used to be a time when I was

afraid to let people see my neck. I wasn't afraid

anymore.

I took off my shirt, messy curls getting caught in the

collar. I folded it and set it aside.
Now
I was

afraid. Something about my body just struck me as

repulsive. I didn't like being alone with it; never

mind somebody else looking at it. Hastily, I pulled

the hospital gown over my head. A sensation of

relief settled over me--followed by pain. My

chest felt sharp, like it was trying to rip away from

the rest of my body. I guessed the sickness was

settling in. Dad knew me better than I knew me. I

was really grateful for that.

I wound up having to wait about twenty minutes for

the X-ray technician; apparently he wasn't on call

today and Dr. Stout had had to page him. He

finally came into the dark little room with an

apology and made small talk while I smiled,

because there was nothing else I could have done.

He pulled a clunky machine down from the ceiling

and pressed it to my burning chest. I jumped the

first time the X-ray machine let out a loud bang.

I'd forgotten they did that.

"Alright," he said, "you can go now."

He left the room and I changed as fast as I could,

wrapping my plains flute around my neck. I went

outside and found Dad reading a surgical chart on

the wall. That's how I knew he was bored. I

touched his arm and we went back to the exam

room to wait for Dr. Stout.

"Just as I thought," said Dr. Stout, when she

arrived with the X-rays a few minutes later,

pinning them up on the wall. "He's got aspiration

pneumonia."

Dad and I exchanged a look. I tried to keep the

mischief off my face.

"Robert will bring you your medicine! You know,

Paul, next time this happens, you can just put a

mustard plaster on his chest. Works just as well

and you won't have to come running to the hospital

in a tizzy."

"Thank you."

Dr. Stout eyed me suddenly. I smiled

inquisitively.

"I want to see something," she said.

She pulled on a new pair of latex gloves and

pressed her fingers to my throat. I felt a little

nauseous. I don't like people touching my throat.

"Swallow for me," she said.

I swallowed.

"Hrmm..."

"What's wrong?" asked Dad.

"His larynx is fine. So it's just the vocal folds that

never healed?"

"Yes," Dad said. "They're paralyzed."

"He has no trouble eating?"

"He did. Up until he was seven. He had to eat

through a stomach PEG. When he was seven, I

took him to a speech therapist. She helped him

learn how to swallow again."

I kind of missed that feeding tube. The kids in

kindergarten thought it was cool. They used to pay

me in quarters to watch me pump water into my

gut. The way the doctor plants it in you is pretty

neat: right through your belly button, so it doesn't

leave a scar.

Dr. Stout turned on me. She rapped her knuckles

on my shoulder.

I frowned, confused.

"Would you let me stick a camera down your

throat?"

I twisted my mouth in a mortified grimace. I shook

my head.

"Why?" Dad asked.

"I was thinking. If it's only one fold that's

paralyzed, we could surgically move it to the

center of his throat. The other fold would meet it

halfway. He'd get his voice back."

My heart leapt and bound and I swore I could feel

it rising through my throat. I looked quickly from