Angel Thieves

by Kathi Appelt

  He hadn’t meant to fall in love with Evie. He hadn’t meant to take her in his arms and let the whole rest of the world slip away. He hadn’t meant for it to be only Evie and the sky and the sun and his heart meeting hers, as if it had been made to do just that. He hadn’t meant for any of that to happen. He especially hadn’t meant for her to get pregnant, not then, not when they were still in high school, still so young. Sixteen.

  It wasn’t the way he’d intended to write his history.

  At first, he didn’t think she would go through with it. They even met with the school counselor, who was no help at all. She simply gave them a handful of pamphlets. “Here are your options,” she told them, as if pamphlets were the same thing as options. Paul handed them to Evie, who burst into tears.

  “I love you,” she told Paul like that explained everything. It explained it all, didn’t it? At least it did to Paul.

  But as it turned out, all of them . . . his parents, her parents, Evie—especially Evie—all turned away. No one even said good-bye.

  They chose their options.

  Paul Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  EVERY DAY

  But Paul Curtis, sixteen years old, looked at his baby boy and knew: he had an option too. It was how the history of Paul and Cade began. “By loving you up,” he had told Cade about a million times. “It was the only real thing I knew how to do.”

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  AFTER THE HURRICANE

  Shortly after the storm finally unloaded its last crazy inches of water, the families who had taken shelter at the Church on the Bayou one-by-one began to leave, headed to stay with relatives, headed to try to clean up and reclaim their flooded homes, headed to different shelters, until eventually, there was only one family left: the Byrds.

  The hurricane had taken everything: their car, their house, the swing set in the backyard. Even the trees along the front walk had been swept away. There was only a shattered mountain of debris where their home had once stood.

  And that is when Mama, chief administrator of the Broussard family, announced: “They’re coming home with us.”

  “It’s only temporary,” Mama had told the Byrds. “Until you can get back on your feet. Then you’ll move to California.”

  Of course Soleil and her dad agreed. Wasn’t giving shelter to those in need exactly what their reverend meant by being the heart and hands of Jesus?

  Just like that, Soleil became Tyler’s de facto big sister, babysitter, and dancing partner. But who knew that keeping up with a toddler would take so many hearts and hands? Who knew that he would be so madly crazy about Soleil? Who knew that she would feel the same? Who knew that he would call her Yay-Yay because he couldn’t pronounce the Ls, and that would seal the deal forever?

  Zorra

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER

  Zorra. Trapped in a cage barely large enough for her to spin in a circle, a cage that is leaking like crazy from the pouring rain. Her stomach growls and all she has to fill it with is water. She hasn’t eaten in days, not since the rain began. She can hear the invisible animals snuffling and chuffing, and one, a bird of some kind, has been screeching for hours.

  Zorra’s legs are built for speed, but they are cramped here in this leaky cage. She needs to run. She needs to find the thorny mesquite trees and rub her soaking coat against their rough, gray trunks. Mostly she needs to chase down a fresh rabbit or a chapparal. Soon.

  The bird sends its terrible song into the humid air. Every nerve underneath Zorra’s spotted skin hums. Finally she uses her front paws to scratch against the door. She scratches and scratches and scratches, peels the soaked wood off in strips, until her claws begin to tear and bleed.

  Zorra. Creature of the brush thickets. Native of the Rio Grande. Isn’t there a song for Zorra?

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  SUNDAY NIGHT

  Soleil spreads her homework out on the kitchen table and listens while her dad plays his favorite song, “Jole Blon,” on his accordion. It’s an old Cajun tune that he said he was born knowing. Soleil can’t understand all the lyrics, and she’s not sure that her father does either, a mishmash of French and Creole, something about a blond woman who was the prettiest of all.

  In 1927, a massive flood covered more than twenty-seven thousand square miles of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana with thick, muddy water, water that defied the levees. It took down bridges and swallowed roads. It gobbled up acres of corn and cotton and sugarcane, stripped the paint off the barns. It drove Soleil’s ancestors, the Broussards, from Point Coupee Parish in Louisiana to Houston, where they settled in the Fifth Ward in a section called Frenchtown. Creoles of Color, they were called. None of them were blond.

  And neither was Soleil. Instead, her hair was amber and flew away from her face in thick curls that tumbled down her back. Her skin was light brown, like her Creole ancestors who arrived in Houston with their jumbled-up bloodlines of Spanish, French, African, Caribbean, and Taensa, none of whom lived in Frenchtown anymore either, since Highway 59 pretty much sliced it all up with its multiple lanes of steel and concrete.

  Her father’s inherited accordion came with them. “Pretty sure it was strapped on the back of a mule,” he says. “Which is why it’s never in tune.”

  Soleil’s not sure what the mule had to do with the accordion not being in tune. More likely it had to do with the river water.

  “Join in, Lay-Lay,” her dad says. Just like that, she’s reminded of Tyler’s name for her: Yay-Yay. A reminder that just like that, the Byrds were gone, and even with her father’s accordion filling up the air, the house feels eerily quiet. It’s amazing how noisy a toddler can be, she thinks.

  She closes her eyes, and under her breath, she prays, “Keep them safe, please.” And from the other room, she hears her mother’s voice, joining her father’s. It’s a familiar sound, her parents’ voices, twined like a braid, filling the house with song.

  Soleil sometimes joins in, but mostly she doesn’t. She loves to sing, but more than that, she loves to dance.

  What Soleil knows is that when she dances, it makes her feel as if she isn’t actually connected to the ground. Her two best friends—yes, she has two best friends, Channing and Grapes—told her that sometimes they feel the same way.

  “It’s like I just can’t help myself,” says Channing, twisting a strand of kinky hair around her forefinger. She’s going for full-on locs, but it’s taking some time.

  “Me too,” says Grapes, talking about dance, not locs. She couldn’t grow locs if she wanted—her hair isn’t thick enough, and it’s way too straight.

  Of course, Grapes is not her real name. Her real name is Grace. But somewhere around the third grade her little brother, Jordan, who was three at the time, accidentally called her Grapes, and instead of being mad or upset, she thought it was funny. And since Grace is a fairly common name, she decided to just roll with it.

  As for Soleil, it’s pronounced so-lay, which in French means “sun.” “So full of light,” her mama always tells her.

  But now, with the sun itself missing in action, Soleil doesn’t feel full of light at all. She presses her elbows on the table and rests her chin in her hands. She never knew she would miss the Byrds so much, like an ache she never knew she could feel.

  Her father sings the last of the lyrics in “Jole Blon.” “Jole Blon, Delta flower, you’re my darling, you’re my sunshine. . . . I love you, and adore you . . . and I promise to be true.”

  Soleil doesn’t know any other fathers who play old waltzes on old accordions. He squeezes the bellows closed, with a whoosh that sounds like a sigh.

  He must’ve seen something in her face because he set the accordion on the floor, pulls her into his arms, and gives her a gigantic hug, just like he has every day of her entire life.

  “Lay-Lay, ma cherie. It’ll be okay. You’ll see.” And Soleil, named for the sun, prays that h
e is right.

  Because on top of everything, there is someone else who has entered the picture.

  Just like that.

  Cade Curtis.

  Taking up space.

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  AT SCHOOL

  What Soleil doesn’t know:

  Cade thinks about the way her name opens in the middle and doesn’t end, like there’s no stopping it.

  He notices the way her hair swishes from side to side across her back as she walks down the halls.

  Admires the honey bear tattoo on her wrist.

  He would like to hang out with her, maybe meet her for a cup of coffee or invite her to play pinball at the store. He bets she is good at pinball, with absolutely no evidence for that whatsoever. Why would she play pinball at all?

  But then again, what about the angels? What would she think, if she knew?

  Soleil Broussard.

  Taking up space.

  Buffalo Bayou

  HOUSTON

  The bayou loves her some stars. For thousands of years, she’s been catching them. Straight out of the sky. Stars falling from the Milky Way, sizzling as they hit the water and sink into her bed, safe at last from their journey through space.

  Make a wish. Then make another. Don’t tell a single, solitary soul.

  Achsah

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  Six years was how long Achsah belonged to the Captain. Since she was twelve years old. Since she was sold away from her mother, Happiness.

  When the slave dealer showed up at their cabin, with orders to chain Achsah to the coffle, to take her to the Forks of the Road, Happiness had stepped in between her and the dealer, begging him, pleading with him, “No! You can’t take my girl. No, sir. Don’t take my baby girl.”

  Achsah, hearing her mama’s words, baby girl, her words for her youngest child, Achsah thought her whole body might fly apart right there, bits of her hanging in the cabin air. She tried to scream, but the terrors had jammed into her face, rendered her mute, while it seemed like more and more pieces of her flew away. The slave dealer pushed Happiness aside and jerked Achsah by the arm, pulled her toward the door. Happiness lunged for him, but the dealer shoved her again. Achsah heard the thud of his fist against her mother’s rib cage, saw her mother slump to the ground.

  “Don’t get up,” he ordered. Achsah knew, from the way her mama groaned, that she couldn’t get up, even if she wanted.

  “She’s my baby,” her mama cried. “My baby girl.”

  And that was the last time Achsah saw Happiness, her mama, all those bits and pieces of herself still back at that cabin door.

  She had missed Happiness every single day.

  But now she was free. The Captain was dead. And she wanted, more than anything, to take her papers, to take a mule and ride to Alexandria and find her, to fall into her mama’s arms, to hear her say baby girl again. That was what she wanted.

  But what she needed was to bundle up Juba and Mary Ann and run. Run to Mexico, where no one could take them away from her. “Not my baby girls,” she said. “Not mine.”

  Juba and Mary Ann

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  Juba knew, stay quiet, as quiet as a flower on a stem, so quiet. She was good at Quiet. All her life, all five years, she had practiced Quiet. Quiet sharpened her eyesight, so she could notice things like the gray-and-white cat that hid in the brushy space between the main house and the privy. Quiet allowed her to overhear the voices of the grown-ups when they didn’t know she was listening. Quiet showed her how to slip from one spot to another without being seen. She wore Quiet like a shadow.

  Not Mary Ann. At three years of age, she didn’t like Quiet. She liked birds, especially their songs. Her mama told her more than once, “Daughter, you’re like a whole flock of chickadees!”

  Mary Ann liked being a whole flock of chickadees. If she could, she’d climb a tree, maybe every tree, and she would flit from one branch to another, and then she would burst into the sky in a noisy explosion, right into the mighty blue of it all.

  Quiet—Juba.

  A flock of chickadees—Mary Ann.

  Achsah’s daughters.

  Cade and Paul Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  MORE BACKSTORY

  Imagine a sixteen-year-old father, with a brand-new son and no place to go. With a warning from his parents to leave and not come back, Paul stuffed his backpack as tightly as he could with clothes, took the old stroller from the garage, the very same stroller his parents had used for pushing him around the neighborhood. He packed Cade into it and struck out on foot, up and down the streets of Houston.

  He passed a hospital. He passed a fire station. He passed a twenty-four-hour emergency room. He paused in front of each one. Then moved on.

  “Thirty-two dollars,” he told Cade. “That’s all the money I had.”

  Cade had heard the story a million times, heard about how his dad eventually walked his way to the park that straddles both sides of the Buffalo Bayou, connected by several long bridges high over the water. Next to one of those bridges was a concrete bench, where Paul stopped long enough to give Cade a bottle of formula and change his diaper, and also to eat half a box of Raisinets, a last-minute grab from his mother’s pantry. Then he gathered up his pack and the stroller and walked across the bridge, up Washington Avenue, one of the oldest streets in Houston, into a neighborhood called the Heights. Did Paul know that the neighborhood had a name? Hardly, but it was a name that made sense, as it was nestled on a bluff that overlooked that bayou. It was higher than most sections of Houston, which wasn’t saying a lot. Truth is there is hardly a metropolitan area in the world that is flatter topographically than Houston, Texas.

  The Heights was originally called Germantown, because so many German settlers landed there in the early days of Houston. The Heights was old and new all at once.

  “That was us,” his father told Cade, “an old kid with a new kid.”

  Now Cade is exactly the age his dad was when he was born. Did that make him an “old kid”?

  Of course, Cade didn’t remember that long walk when he was just a baby. Didn’t remember pausing in front of the hospital or the fire station or the emergency clinic. Didn’t remember crossing the bayou. His dad told him that they hadn’t gone too far when Paul saw a sign in a shop window. HELP WANTED. His dad had never had a job, never had a baby, never been so tired. Suddenly he didn’t even care what the job was, the need for it gripped him like a glove. He looked at the sign above the door: WALKER’S ART AND ANTIQUES STORE.

  “I’m telling you, Li’l Dude. It was a sign.” Okay, Cade didn’t love being called “Li’l Dude,” but he did love hearing the story. He looked upon it as his and Paul’s very own creation myth, like their personal beginning of the world-as-they-knew-it. The first chapter in their collective history.

  At any rate, Paul pushed Cade through the door and walked directly to the counter and asked Mrs. Walker for an application.

  When Mrs. Walker saw Paul and baby Cade, she somehow knew what was going on, and even though the garage apartment she had in the back of the store lot was old and rickety and didn’t really have reliable heating or air-conditioning, she knew it would serve this weary boy and his baby, so she offered it to him, and without even seeing it, Paul hugged Mrs. Walker and said, “Yes, ma’am,” followed by, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” And that was followed by a wail from Cade.

  “It was like you were telling us, ‘In the name of all that is right and holy, please change my diaper and give me something to eat,’ ” said Paul, beaming while he said it.

  Mrs. Walker gathered up some old sheets and towels from her apartment on the second floor above the shop, and an ancient electric fan from the store, and showed them their new home. The old garage had probably once served as a barn. It still housed a midcentury Packard, one with fins on the back and a bumper that hung down on one
side. There was a FOR SALE sign on it, but it was dusty and hard to read. It seemed like the sign might have had a red background at one time, but now it was a dull shade of pink. It was obvious the sign had been there for a while.

  “Everything here is for sale,” said Mrs. Walker. Then she added, “But not everything has found the right owner yet.” Somehow Paul knew what she meant. As he followed her up the rickety steps toward the apartment, he realized that if he believed in fairy tales, he would say that she looked just like what he imagined a fairy godmother might look like. Her hair was white and poofy, and her pink glasses set off her blue eyes. Her skin was so light it was almost translucent. Not only that, but she was tiny, barely reaching his chin. The only thing missing was her magic wand.

  When she unlocked the door and stepped aside, he looked at the ratty apartment with its coating of dust and cobwebs, looked at his brand-new son, and took in a huge, deep breath, as if he had never inhaled before.

  Mrs. Walker told him she’d see him in the morning. He could start his new job then. He hugged her again and put his hand on his chest. “You can count on me,” he said, and watched her walk back down the rickety stairs. Then he pounded the old mattress to loosen some of the dust, threw the sheets on it, gave Cade another bottle, and changed his diaper again. Finally he softly rocked his little son in his arms. “You and me, Li’l Dude,” he said, “we’re going to be okay.” And he kissed Cade’s face from top to bottom and then tucked him back in the stroller. The stroller would have to serve as a crib for now, at least until he could save a little money, more than thirty-two dollars anyway.

  With his tummy full, and his diaper dry and his face all kissed up, Cade didn’t mind. The stroller was comfy and safe. As for Paul, he finished off the box of Raisinets, and without even taking off his shoes, he fell onto the mattress and into a deep, deep sleep. Cade too slept as if he knew that he was home. And he was. And he has been for these past sixteen years.