by Laura Newman
It was a hula girl tattoo. Additionally, between them they had a constellation, a branch of cherry blossoms, and the pinup from the cover of the Cars album, which I came to learn was a Vargas Girl. One night I sneaked down and found Sister Hope with a tattoo gun, getting ready to use it on Sister Camille, who had a look on her face like that gun was as sexy as the Sex Pistols. The Violent Femmes.
In the morning they had on their old gray habits. Nothing was different. Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
Then came the year that Ella arrived at The Rookery. She was fourteen years old, one above me. She could match me for skinny, brown-as-bayou water, her hair an untamed Afro. She had bruises, layers of green and deep purple over her skin, under her eyes. She looked like she never cried. I must have looked like a candy apple to this girl. We shared my room. She didn’t talk. She didn’t want to read my Judy Blume books. When we went to church, she held her arms up high and wide. That part she got.
Three Months Later
With Ella there, I never sneaked down the stairs. Most nights I would open the windows, settle into the seat, knees tucked up under my nightgown. One night Ella came and sat by me. The moon shone through her stand-up hair. A teenaged boy rode his old red bike down our street, out at midnight. He saw us in the window and rang the little chime on his handlebars in greeting. We could hear the crickets until the next car came by. “Your hair is pretty,” she said, touching my long braid. I had it in my mind I couldn’t cut it or it would be bad luck for Beau and Charlie. I told her I liked her skin, because in fact it was the same shade as my mama’s. It doesn’t really take that much for two little orphans to become sisters.
I called her Annie after Little Orphan, and she called me Madeline after The smallest one was Madeline. They were our secret orphan names.
Certain minds might think that I will now tell salacious stories, but the only ones I have are of solace. Ella was my Jesus. She suffered so much more than I did, she took all my suffering away. When we held hands, black and white fingers like a checkerboard, we were saints.
Beau died in Afghanistan on a bullshit peacekeeping mission. When I got word of his death, all the anger came back as swiftly and as unhesitatingly as the bullet that blew Beau off the face of the earth. I broke everything in the parlor. Old Sister Lily’s porcelain chow dogs, the antique teacups, I pulled the Boston ferns down and cried like a banshee, smashing the pottery onto the floor. All the babies, who were in the kitchen, shut up in fear. Ella came running down from our room, barefoot, cut her feet on the shards and smeared the dirt right into the wounds to take me directly into her arms. I pushed her away. The Sisters came running in. I was screaming, “It’s all my mama’s fault! That fuck witch burnt-out heroin addict coward!” In my mind, if she hadn’t died, Beau wouldn’t have joined the Army and he would still be with me.
She would still be with me.
Sister Camille cut through my screaming with some screaming of her own. “What do you mean, heroin addict? Your mother wasn’t a heroin addict! What’s wrong with you?” She yelled this so loud all the babies started crying at once. It was louder than my heartbeat, it was the trumpet of God. I stood in silence.
We soaked Ella’s feet in lavender Epsom salts. She asked us to collect the pieces of porcelain and china; she would make a mosaic. We swept up the rest, repotted the plants. While we cleaned, the Sisters assembled the puzzle of my past and laid it at my hearth.
My mama wasn’t my mother. Why did I ever think she was? How could a seriously brown woman give birth to a feather-white baby with blond hair and blue eyes? My mama wasn’t Beau’s or Charlie’s mother. She didn’t have a Chinese baby. She didn’t have babies. She took poor orphans from The Rookery when it got overcrowded. Theresa didn’t use heroin. She was a heroine. That’s what I heard through the window, all those years ago. Theresa was a heroine. A goddess. But she drank. “A goddess can drink, Katrina,” said old Sister Lily.
Did I never notice that Theresa was older than the other mothers at school? No I never noticed, because she dyed her hair and painted her nails and wore pretty headbands and lipstick. Because I was a child.
“Katrina, Theresa was seventy-two years old. She died of a heart attack,” said old Sister Lily.
“Too much Willie Mae’s fried chicken,” tsked Sister Hope.
Old Sister Lily ignored her. “She got y’all from here, same place your brothers came from, so your brothers brought ya back.”
I was so shocked I grew an inch. And old Sister Lily was just getting started. “Y’all might as well know it,” she continued, “The Rookery isn’t even a licensed orphanage. People bring us babies, we find homes. We’re not nuns.” She ripped her habit off her head, great waves of silvery hair cascading, little diamond earings. It could have been the parting of the Gray Sea. I think I peed my pants. Not nuns!
“It’s impossible to keep this up. That’s why we stick with babies. We started wearing these god-awful outfits after Camille got robbed at knifepoint on our own street. While carrying a baby! Even crackheads usually don’t attack nuns. And yes, Pastor Letur knows we aren’t nuns. Everybody in that church knows we aren’t nuns!” She stamped her foot like, so there!
“So those aren’t your real names?” Ella asked, looking at Camille and Hope. Ella’s eyes were bigger than her hair.
“Course not. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a joke,” said Camille. “I’m Diane. Pleased to meet ya’.”
“Jenna,” said Hope, “and well, Lily really is Lily.”
Well, bless my soul.
Five Weeks Later
Five weeks later Charlie came home. I knew he was coming; letter said today. I sat out on the front porch swing and waited, nervous as a mayfly. Ella and the Sisters left me to myself. Would I know him? Would he still have the little cross-stitch pattern of pockmarks on his cheek? Would he smell like Afghanistan and dust and guns?
When I saw my brother walking up Franklin Avenue, I ran down that street and clamped on to him like I was an alligator. I pulled him under and ate him in one bite. He was mine.
Charlie stayed at The Rookery for a week. He played with all the babies, one, two, buckle my shoe and Charlie Horse. He talked to me long and slow and we talked about Beau and Mama. We polished the stone of what we had, what we lost. On the third day he told me he was getting married and moving to Arizona. I should come with him and I could grow cactus that blooms only at Christmas. I could see saguaro. The rain is filled with dust. He told me that Beau left half of his death benefit to him and half to me. I could go to college. I could buy a dress that wasn’t secondhand.
But then Ella wouldn’t have worn it first.
How could I explain that The Rookery and the Sisters and Ella, the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, and the merry-go-round of babies had become my home? How could I say that in truth we had to work hard to recognize each other, our travels had taken us so far apart? How could I leave Ella, who cut her feet for me?
I told him I would think about it.
Three Years Later
Ella and I rent a little two-bedroom bungalow near Tulane. Garden District folk might consider our bedrooms the perfect size for a wine cellar, but a room of my own is orphan-speak for luxurious. Ella is majoring in law with a goal to work for women’s rights. Her boyfriend brings beignets and there’s always one for me. I’m majoring in creative writing. This is my first assignment.
On Sundays we go to church on Franklin Avenue and then to The Rookery to do a batch of cooking and take care of the babies to give the Sisters an afternoon off. In good weather we eat outside and when the magnolia petals fall, they fall right on us.
The Little Ice Girl
A reimagined faerie tale based on The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
On the morning of the summer equinox the sun rose over San Diego as if drawn with a child’s crayon, flat and waxy. A low and roaming fog caught on harbor masts
and drew ghost sails across the sky. The city was cool and preparing to sparkle. But just south, at the San Ysidro border crossing, the sun was in a different mood, the sky already blanched by rising heat. As the people of Tijuana came out of their homes, few bothered to look up, for the poor come to believe that they deserve less, even when it comes to weather. There has always been Auntie America with her pockets of poppies in her green hills and Tia Juana with her dust and dirt. Oh, there is color. The giant flag of Mexico flapping over Tijuana like a bullfighter’s cape. The strings of filigreed papel picado flags crisscrossing the tourist streets. Rainbows of Chiclets in a little girl’s hand. On this equinox, San Diego would slip in and out of air-conditioned homes, cars, restaurants. Tijuana would sweat.
There is a little house in the Los Laureles Canyon, assembled from garage doors discarded in San Diego, patched together with plywood and gumption. One of the doors that is part of the roof has three oblong windows over the kitchen, and a feral cat that Ana Maria Bianca Aguilera is forbidden to feed sleeps in one of the early morning sunbeams from the skylights. Ana calls him Pedro, but not in front of her father. She pets his rakish ears as she gets her ice chest together, then steps outside.
Her house is not so different from the others in the slum. The worst are made of cardboard, the thick kind used to box appliances that tend to blow away, come winter. The best are made of brick; even Mexican kids know the wolf can’t blow a brick house down.
Ana caught the dusty bus down to the San Ysidro border crossing. Luckily Juan was the bus driver today; he waved Ana on. With other drivers she fiddles with her cloth satchel, pretending to dig for pesos until an impatient line forms behind her and the driver lets her on. Or kicks her off. But generally no one much minds when a wisp of girl, she barely takes up a seat, rides for free.
On this day Ana wore the dress her grandmother hand-stitched out of flour sacks; she looked like a faded, walking billboard for tortillas. A triangle of calico pulled her black hair back from her churro-brown face, and freckles daisy-chain across her nose. She has a pretty face; she doesn’t know it, because it’s been a long time since anyone told her so. Ana always wears a humble tin cross from her first communion and a small medallion stamped with the raised image of Our Lady of Guadalupe with her star-covered cloak covering her hair and flowing over her gown. A halo enshrines her entire body; that’s Ana’s favorite part. Ana absently pressed her finger into the Madonna while she sat in her seat, feet swinging well above the floor. She only had on socks. When Ana left home, it is true, she had her grandmother’s slippers on. She had tried the baby powder trick to make her feet slide into her too-small shoes. No luck. Her father says it’s just the heat, the shoes are fine, but he’s wrong. So Ana wore the slippers; her grandmother doesn’t need them anymore, wouldn’t mind if Ana wore them. The slippers had started out a hopeful pink, but quickly dusted down. Well, they are gone now. They were far too big for her feet and she lost them trying to avoid a truck that was trying to avoid a donkey that was trying to get the goddamn flies out of his eyes. She fell. One slipper was simply gone, the other carried off by an urchin, no better off than Ana, who thought his mother might like it for the new baby to sleep in. His little sister seemed as small as a slipper. Ana went on in her socks. She had tough feet anyway; slum soles. The important thing was that she didn’t lose the Yeti.
Ana’s father had stolen the Yeti from some American tourists on the Playas de Tijuana. When he opened it, the ice chest was full of Coronas, a pot of gold! He had the idea that Ana could make ice cubes and popsicles and sell them at the border crossing. Make money from water, for the popsicles add a little food coloring and a stick, that’s all. The American imbeciles would buy anything.
But they won’t. They will buy many things while trapped in their cars waiting through the long lines of the border crossing: tacos, cokes, toys for the kids. Talavera plates. Huge patio pots with orange and green geckos painted on the sides. But not water. Never water, unless it’s bottled and sealed. A very, very few, will give the little girl—what could she be but seven years old?—a few coins. Their leftover pesos that they can’t spend at home anyway. Sometimes other Mexican kids will buy a popsicle from her. These coins Ana brings back to her father.
Ana worked the border on many hot days. Among the roving merchants she was known as La Pequeña Niña de Hielo—The Little Ice Girl. Sometimes she would be handed some food; there was that man who carried the wood-carved cross of Jesus on his back, he always bought her a lunch so big it’s also dinner. But he was not there often. The lady with the funny eyes sometimes gave her tamarind candy in a pretty box with a pink donkey on it. But mostly people were concerned with themselves, and a little girl was below their line of sight.
Ana walked between the cars in misery. The sun was assaulting, coming up through her feet like the heated brick her grandmother used to place under the covers on a cold winter’s night. Her hair an itchy blanket down her back. Nobody wanted her ice; nobody saw her at all. She had not one peso the whole livelong day. It was late afternoon. Most of the merchants had departed, it was too hot to be out. Mexicans know when to take a siesta.
Ana twined her way between slow-moving cars. She nearly fell several times. The air was pale molasses, she almost had to push through; any moment she would be caught, a bug in amber. Ana reached the edge of the lanes where the heat slightly receded, sat down in an eddy of luster. That Yeti, that glacier of ice, sat beside her. She reached her hand into the cool, touched a cube. A jolt of cold. She ran the ice up and down her arms, it made her shiver, her whole body shaking off heat like a puppy would water. Looking inside the fissures of the ice cube Ana saw a snowy mountain range, the Sierra Nevada. Imagined herself in the black-and-white photo of the mountains from her schoolbook. Black-and-white is so much cooler than color. A world of snow, a relief of white. The fever inside her quieted. But quick as melting ice, the cube was gone.
Ana refocused her eyes. Saw the low, gritty exhaust cloud radiating a wavy haze, tires Catherine wheels of heat. She stood up. She should go home. But her father … Ana remembered the last of her parents’ fights—half the slum heard her mother shout, “You so macho, hit a woman? You’re as macho as a daiquiri.” And he hit her again. No trusting that father.
Ana looked into a passing car, could see the air-conditioning lifting the fine hair of a little blond girl sitting in the back. The little girl was buckled securely into her booster seat and on her lap was a wide, white napkin illuminating a treasure of food. Ana saw bread fluffed up and buttered, circles of cheese in red wax, Mexican wedding cake cookies dusted with powdery sugar. Ana was so hungry. She pulled out another ice cube, it started to melt immediately, her fingers incendiary. Again she looked into the prisms of ice, and inside she saw a summer’s picnic laid out on a clean white cloth. A whole fried chicken, if you please. But then the chicken hopped up and started reeling toward her, knife and fork in its breast. Poor girl! The ice melted, almost sizzled in her hand, and was gone, along with the food.
Ana was too fevered to care about repercussions from her father. She pulled another chunk out of the Yeti, peered into the prism. Deep inside the cracks she saw a tree, a winter pine covered in icicles, tinseling in the soft glow of a light falling snow. Under the tree she saw presents, wrapped in silver foil and velvety ribbons. As Ana watched, entranced, the icicles on the tree turned to candles and then the lights rose from the tree, higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven. One fell down and a trail of fire burned behind.
“Someone has just died,” whispered the little ice girl. Her grandmother, the last person to love her, had told her that when a star falls, a soul ascends to heaven. Ana did not know that she was now back on the ground, that her knees had deserted, soldiers giving up the fight. She looked up into the sun and in the wavy luster stood her grandmother, radiant, with such an expression of love. An expression Ana had not seen for so long.
The ice cube was fast me
lting in her hand. Almost gone. “Oh, Grandmother,” she called, “Take me with you. You’ll go away when the ice melts, like the snow, like the feast and the presents. Take me with you!” Ana knocked open the Yeti and gathered all the remaining ice up into her hands. The melting ice ran down her arms, dripping into the ground as if couldn’t wait to get it over with, to evaporate and reincarnate into a cloud that drifted over the border and rained in a benediction on San Diego. Ana looked for her grandmother in the fissures of the ice but couldn’t find her. She looked up into the sun and saw a woman in long robes, a cloak embroidered with stars covering her hair, cascading over her shoulders, coming toward her. The sun made an aura all around the woman, shimmering and silver. “Our Lady of Guadalupe,” whispered Ana, knowing the Madonna had come to take her to her grandmother, that her prayers were answered. She dropped all the remaining ice from her hands and raised her dripping palms up to the Madonna.
What might this Madonna ask the people of the San Ysidro border crossing about this girl in need of charity? If all the gold and silver crosses of the people who made their living or drove across the border were illuminated, it would be a constellation, a Milky Way of holy crosses, representing people professing Jesus’s little lamb ways.
But it was not Our Lady of Guadalupe appearing out of the dusky sun. No one called the Catholics, the Christians to task. It was only Huda, who had managed a brutal escape from Syria; Huda, who had scars both skin-deep and beyond the bones. Who thought she would never have to see a child die again. Huda had made her way to Mexico, land of plenty, to make a life selling harissa chicken and mashed fava beans in shallow foil bowls from her halal cart on the border. The woman with a hijab draping her head and shoulders in soft folds, reached down for the crumpled child. The woman had kind eyes, the kind you want to look at you. “Don’t worry, little one,” she said. “I will find help for you.”
