Stolen Grace

by Arianne Richmonde

“I want to go to school,” Grace added.

  “Padre Marco isn’t here at the moment,’” Extra Tall said. The girls looked at each other. Grace felt her body go heavy and she held Hideous Amarillo close. “But,” said Extra Tall, “why don’t you come in and wait?”

  The girls followed her inside. The church was huge, with a pointed ceiling and wooden beams holding everything together. Inside was a table and a few painted chairs. There was a calendar on the wall, bottles of mineral water, and even an iron. There was electricity, too, with wires plugged directly into sockets in the cardboard. Grace wondered if the cow she had seen the day before had been eating a piece of the church, if one of the bits of walls had flown off in a wind, and if that cow was Blast Famous because she was eating cardboard church pieces.

  “Would you little girls like a drink and a cookie?” Extra Tall asked.

  “Yes please,” they both shouted at once. Well, Grace didn’t hear the “please” bit from María, just the “yes” but the woman was happy with them because she was smiling. Grace was thirsty, her throat dry like a crispy autumn leaf.

  Extra Tall poured out two cups of orange drink. Grace could smell the sweetness, even from where she was sitting. The woman put four cookies on a plate. Grace looked at María and saw her eyes widen, her pink tongue lick her lips like a little dog. “Here we go,” the woman said, and gave them each their drink and let them take their cookies. “So you want to go to Padre Marco’s school, do you?” she asked Grace.

  “Yes.”

  “You know you have to work hard and come every day. The uniforms are expensive and we can’t go round giving uniforms away to little girls who aren’t serious, who don’t come to school every day. Do you understand?” Grace nodded. “How old are you?” the big lady asked.

  Because Grace was sitting down, she had to push her head all the way back and hold her neck high into the air to see the lady’s face. Her mom taught her that you must always look at someone when they are talking to you, especially grown-ups. “Five and three-quarters,” she answered softly.

  “Usually we don’t accept children under six years old.”

  “Maybe I am six, I can’t remember.”

  “I’m seven,” María piped up, her mouth full of cookie.

  “And you want to go to school, too?”

  “If Adela goes, I go,” she said.

  The lady turned her gaze to Grace. “Is your name Adela?”

  Grace wasn’t sure. She nodded and took a bite out of her cookie, and squeezed Hideous against her chest.

  “And what is your name?”

  “María.”

  Just then, a man, short and fat, breathed into the church. Grace could hear him wheezing like her friend back home who had asthma, except this man’s wheezing was a hundred times louder. He was almost bald, except for a thin sweep of hair that was combed across his shiny round head, which reached just to the shoulders of Extra Tall.

  “Padre Marco, I have two new, potential students,” she said.

  “Excellent,” he wheezed, sucking in the air. “Excellent.” He had an accent, too, but different from the lady’s. It sounded like a song. But he didn’t look like the Pope, at all. He had regular man’s clothes, not a flowing robe. But he did wear a white collar around his neck. The rest of him was black. Not his skin. His skin was pale, with a face the color of an almost ripe strawberry. But his arms were milky white.

  “I gave them some cookies and a drink.”

  “But that’s not enough!” he exclaimed, coughing now. The wheeze had got all excited. “They need a hot meal! Would you like a proper lunch, girls?”

  Grace thought María’s eyes would pop right out of her head. María turned to her and whispered, “Those horrid boys said we had to be careful of him but I think he’s nice.”

  “But you have to promise you’ll attend school every day,” the priest said slowly. “And be good girls. Huh?”

  Grace managed to say, “What about our uniforms?”

  “All in good time. All in good time.” And he added, “Can you rustle up some gallo pinto, Helga? Something tasty? Meanwhile, I have some books to show you, girls.” He brought out some pretty books with big, colored illustrations. Grace turned a page—Jesus feeding the five thousand with two little fish and five loaves of bread. Where was Jesus now? she wondered. He was never around when you needed him.

  “Helga,” the priest continued, “I think it would be a good idea to bathe these little girls, huh? Scrub their scalps clean, get out all the nastiness, the creepy crawlies, especially the older one with long hair. “Hey girls, would you like to be bathed with hot, soapy water?”

  They nodded.

  “In fact, give them their bath now. They can eat afterwards. I need them cleansed.”

  “Come on little ones,” Extra Tall Helga said. She took them each by the hand and led them outside, behind the church. There was a big, enormous witches’ cauldron bubbling away on a small bonfire. Grace pulled back. Was this woman going to throw her into the pot and mix her up with slugs and snails and puppy dog’s tails? “What’s wrong,” the woman asked in a cross Dragon Voice. “Don’t you want to be clean? Padre Marco doesn’t like dirty children. If you want your uniform, Adela, you have to be bathed first. Now, sit on these stools and wait, like good little girls.”

  Extra Tall Helga placed them each on a very low, plastic stool. Grace’s one was red, María’s blue. They watched her, their eyes following her every movement. She went back into the church and when she returned, she had two big plastic buckets. Then she walked around the side and they could hear her drawing water from the well, the chain clanking, the water splashing. Then she came round to the witches’ cauldron, and with a big soup ladle scooped out boiling water, adding it to the well water in the buckets. When she was done, she put her hand inside each one to test. “Das ist gut,” she mumbled to herself. She rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse which had patches of sweat, like maps of the world, under the arms. She took out a small metal container from her pocket and opened it up. There was a bar of soap inside.

  “Now girls, take off your clothes.”

  They both obeyed. Grace pulled off her mucky shirt and climbed out of her shorts which were stiff with dirt. María stood up and stepped out of her skirt. She pulled her T-shirt, way too big for her, over her head. She was not wearing any underpants. Grace sat there, still in her white cotton panties.

  “Off with those,” Extra Tall Helga barked. Grace took them off. The woman snatched them and turned them over in her giant hands. “These are new,” she said, surprised. She grabbed Hideous Amarillo out of Grace’s grip, and before Grace knew it, the woman had plunged him and all their clothing into the bubbling, boiling cauldron.

  Grace started to howl. She could feel Hideous burning as if it were her own body. “He’s dying!” she screamed, running over to save him. But before she could do anything, Extra-Tall-Helga-Dragon had Grace’s windmill arms caught in a tight vice as the little child thrashed about, trying to jiggle and slip beneath her torturer. “He’s boiling alive!”

  “Hold still!” the woman shouted, “or I’ll have to slap you! I will take the teddy bear out but you have to promise to remain still, or we could all have a very nasty accident indeed!”

  “What is going on here?” It was Padre Marco, shuffling around from the side of the church.

  “This little girl is impossible! She’s screaming because I am trying to sterilize her teddy bear. It must be riddled with germs, crawling alive with eggs and lice and filth.”

  “Let me take the child,” he snorted. “And you get the toy out of the boiling water.”

  While the priest held Grace, Dragon Helga took a giant wooden spoon, stirred the pot a second time, and scooped out Hideous Amarillo. He landed with a plop on the grass, his furry body steaming like a Chinese dumpling. He really did look yellow again. But soaking.

  “Is he still alive?” Grace asked, her curiosity breaking her tears mid-flow.

  “Quite
alive, and hopefully, the creatures nesting inside it quite dead,” the Dragon said.

  The Padre let go of his grip and Grace raced over to the teddy and picked him up.

  “Careful, it’s still hot,” the woman warned. “It could scald you. Now, leave it on the grass to dry and we can wash you girls. Hurry up or the buckets of water will get cold.”

  “It’s alright,” the priest said. “I can take over now. Have a break. Have a cup of coffee. I can do the girls.”

  “With pleasure, Padre. Be careful of that one,” she said, pointing to Grace. “She’s a cat. She scratched me with her sharp little nails. I’ll be trimming those dangerous little weapons later, I can tell you.”

  Padre Marco took one of the buckets and knelt beside María on her stool. “It won’t hurt,” he assured in his singsong accent, “I’ll be gentle. We just need to clean the dirty bits.” Grace watched him as he lathered up a big sponge with soap. He carefully rubbed it on María’s back, making it frothy and bubbly and white. “See?” he said, “I’m not going to bite.” He frothed the sponge around her neck, her chest, and her arms. Slowly. Softly. “Now I’m going to pour some warm water over your head. Close your eyes.” María closed her eyes tight and giggled when the warm water gushed over her skinny body. The priest took a bottle and spilled out a glob on his fat sausage fingers. It was shampoo. He massaged his hands into María’s head, whipping it up like cream on a cake.

  “This is lovely,” María said to Grace. “It’s all warm and clean and smells yummy.”

  Grace relaxed on her stool. She felt her itchy head and thought it would be nice to have her hair washed too. She loved it when her mom washed her hair. But then Ruth cut it all off and now she hardly had any hair at all. She’d seen her face in a mirror and knew she looked like a boy.

  María was giggling now. “That tickles,” she tittered. “That feels funny down there.”

  “But we have to wash in between. In those secret places,” the priest panted. “We have to make it all clean and smell like roses. Now I’m going to rinse your lovely long hair with clean water. Hold still and shut your eyes again.”

  Grace waited for her turn. It didn’t seem so bad. María was enjoying it.

  “You see how pretty you are now?” he said. “Like one of Christ’s little angels.”

  Grace wanted to be one of Christ’s Little Angels, too. María was getting all the attention. But then, like a tornado, Extra Tall came by and surprised the priest with her heavy footsteps. Padre Marco stood up in a jolt, knocking the bucket over which splashed all over his pants.

  “How are we getting on here, Padre?”

  “All finished now,” he said. Grace noticed his face had burst into an even redder Strawberry Red than before, and drops of sweat were dripping from his forehead. He quickly knelt down again, grabbing the now empty bucket and holding it against him as if he was trying to hide the zipper on his pants.

  “I’ll finish this, Padre. I’m sure little Adela has calmed down by now, haven’t you?”

  Grace managed a smile and watched as the woman stomped over in her white wooden clogs, the big, soapy sponge in her giant hands.

  “Little girls?” the Padre said. “Do you have a home? Because if you don’t, you can stay tonight for dinner. We can set you up in a crib. Do you have anywhere to go?”

  “Not really,” María lied. She was standing by Grace now, naked, dripping wet, as the Father wrapped her in a clean white towel. She skipped next to Grace and whispered in a hiss, “We can have a yummy dinner here.”

  “But what about the tourist girls? The American girls?”

  “Never mind about them, we’re staying here tonight.”

  “But we promised—”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “They said they’d buy us shoes, they—”

  “I can buy you shoes,” the Padre interrupted. “For good little Catholic girls like you,” he said, looking at Grace’s cross, “the least I can do is buy you shoes. And then tomorrow we’ll organize your school uniforms.”

  “See?” María said. “Told you it was better here.”

  “Can we start school tomorrow?” Grace asked.

  The Padre raked his eyes over her little frame. “Yes, Adela, you can both start school tomorrow. But before that, I’ll want to see you tucked up in bed nice and early so you can get a good night’s rest. I’ll be coming in personally to read you both a bedtime story.”

  María giggled and asked, “What will the story be about?”

  He paused and thought about it for a minute and then said, “A story about Jesus, of course.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Sylvia

  This time it wasn’t Agent Russo that called Sylvia, but the FBI attaché in Panama. Sylvia and Melinda had caught a taxi from the unappealing capital of Managua and finally, after getting out of the entrails and endless suburbs of the city, they were heading north toward Chinandega. It was now five pm. The attaché had bad news. Grace had been reported missing by this young man, Lucho Reynes, the day before. The Chinandega police had swept the area by the beach. There was no sign of her having drowned, and there was a lot of morning activity there—somebody would have spotted her, they said.

  But Grace had not been seen for thirty-six hours, since before dawn the day before. The man in question—this Lucho Reynes, a twenty-four-year-old Columbian surfer—was being held for questioning. He was a suspect, obviously, the local police assured the attaché. Just because it was he who had reported Grace missing didn’t make him innocent, didn’t let him off the hook. Casebook, they told him. Often the most helpful person at the scene of the crime turns out to be the perpetrator. Sylvia listened as carefully as she could to everything the attaché said but her heart was hammering in her ears, her breath short. It was happening again. Every time there seemed to be hope on the horizon, some outer force dragged them backwards through the dirt again.

  “What’s wrong now?” Melinda asked with a look of fear in her eyes.

  Sylvia’s body felt numb as if something had sucked out the nerves in her hands and limbs. She sunk into the corner of the taxi and looked out the window as they sailed past colorful buses belching out black fumes, dodging chickens and dogs, forcing bicycles to go wobbling into the verges of the road. In the distance, she could see a smoking cone-shaped volcano, the white clouds steadily climbing from its crater. It looked as if it could explode any minute.

  “Just as I thought we were finally getting somewhere,” Sylvia murmured.

  Melinda held her cousin’s trembling fingers in her hand. “What did they say? Grace isn’t there?”

  “She was there. Quite happily, it seems. Hanging out with this surfer guy, Lucho, and his French girlfriend—living in the cabin by the beach where Ruth left her. This Lucho has sworn to the police that he has nothing to do with her disappearance. Apparently, he was even in tears. Said Grace’s mother left her with him and said she was going to return in a couple of weeks. Left him some money, the cabin paid for in advance. He met Ruth in El Salvador; she was acting as a kind of cougar cum sugar-mommy, it seems. She was going under the name of Rocío and he thought Grace’s name was Adela. Can you imagine? Poor Grace not only has had to deal with getting kidnapped, but has had her name changed and been given a whole new identity, a new mother.”

  Melinda’s eyes welled with tears. “Oh my God. That is so fucked up!”

  “Tell me about it. I just feel sick. That’s bad enough, but disappeared?”

  Melinda wiped her face and her voice took on a fake cheery tone. “I’m sure Grace is okay. Somewhere. Maybe she’s even looking for you, poor thing.” Then she added, “If Ruth was passing herself off as her mother, where does Grace think you are?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t Grace say something to this Lucho, tell him her story?”

  “I don’t know,” Sylvia shouted to herself as much as to her cousin. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to snap. I’m . . . just . . . I really can’t im
agine, Melinda. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “We need to see Lucho. We need to talk to him,” Melinda said, more softly, “Where is he?”

  “The police have detained him. He’s at the station in a town called El Viejo, only a few miles from Chinandega. I’m not saying he’s innocent but it just seems to me that if his plan was to do something nasty to Grace he could have done it ages ago.”

  “We just don’t know till we see him. I want to look into his eyes. You can always tell a person by their eyes.”

  “Well that makes me and Tommy really dumb then, doesn’t it? Both of us were hoodwinked, on different occasions, by Ruth.”

  Melinda flinched and said, “I’m sorry, putting my foot—”

  “No, you’re right,” Sylvia went on, “you can tell who someone is by their eyes—if you’re smart enough. We weren’t, and look where it got us.”

  Melinda began to surf on her iPhone. “We’d better tell the driver, then, that we need to go to El Viejo, to the Policía Nacional and not straight to the beach.”

  Sylvia wiped the back of her hand across her face. She realized she’d been drinking her tears that were trickling into her mouth. Sometimes, she was unaware she’d even been crying. She was squandering her energy, she needed to focus.

  “Look, I’m just thinking. Both of us going together is a waste of our resources—it would be frittering away precious time. Melinda, is your Spanish still pretty good?”

  “Not too bad. I used to have to talk to the Madrid lot at work quite a bit. It’s not great, but I can still recite bits of Pablo Neruda.”

  “I don’t think poetry is going to get you very far with the police here.”

  “Sylveee, I was just kidding. We have to keep ourselves going with a little sense of humor or we’ll just cave in.”

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t find anything funny right now. Look, why don’t you go to the police and I’ll go straight on to the beach? See if you can persuade the police to let you talk to Lucho, and I’ll find the cabin and anyone nearby who knows something. I want to get there before sunset—it’s always early in the tropics—I don’t want to be flailing about in the dark.”