Cello shrugged.
“Alright.” She made a note on her clipboard. “How about an address?”
“I stayed at a place about ten minutes west off Route 9. I never saw an address. No mail or anything, I don’t think. My foster family stayed in trailers.”
“I see,” she said, scratching the bridge of her nose. “Give me a moment and I’ll have this sorted out in no time.” She held a clipboard at arm’s length, and squinted at what was written there.
A doctor whisked back the curtain separating Cello’s bed from the rest of the room, blazing with fluorescence.
“Oh, good,” the doctor said. She was a tall, dark-skinned young woman, her hair braided and twisted back with a blue band. “Are you the guardian?”
“No, I’m Doreen, the social worker,” she said. “I guess we haven’t met yet. You’re new?”
Both women stared, shifty-eyed, at one another. “Yes,” the doctor said. “I’m Dr. Bartholemew.” She made the next announcement to all three of them. “This patient needs a CAT scan. I suppose you can push that through. Since you’re the social worker?” She directed this last sentence to Doreen.
“That’s right,” Doreen said.
“I should also add that this patient appears to have no vaccine history.” The cleanliness of the doctor’s speech lulled Cello into a different place. A different time, even. “I suspect there’s been a brain bleed—not a significant one, but he will need to stay here in the hospital for treatment.”
“Will he be okay?” Ben asked.
“He’ll be fine. He’s in the right place,” the doctor said. She turned to Doreen. “The patient informed my colleague that these injuries were inflicted by a group of adults. We need to advise law enforcement to visit the address immediately.”
“Of course, I see,” Doreen said, scribbling on her clipboard. “I’m going to make a phone call, excuse me.”
“What’s going to happen to Cello?” Ben asked the doctor.
“He’ll go in for some tests, and we’ll treat him. He’ll stay here until he’s well enough to go home. At that point I’m sure this will all be worked out.” Dr. Bartholomew plucked Cello’s chart from the foot of his bed and attached a few sheets of paper from the sheaf she carried to it.
“Can I stay with him?” Ben asked.
The doctor appraised Ben’s appearance in an efficient sweep. “When we move him up to the pediatric floor, see the receptionist for a visitor pass.”
* * *
Cello drifted through the scan only half-awake. He never truly slept, thanks to all of the machines that beeped in the hallways and over his body.
After the scan, a blonde woman with an unearthly high ponytail efficiently stitched the wound on his face closed, and then he was sent up to a two-bed room where Ben had waited for him.
The room was dark. A thick stand of pines shaded the one window, and the sun was on the wrong side of the building. Cello’s roommate was asleep. It was a little girl, no older than Miracle. Her parents sat by the bed and kept their hands on the blanket. Ben pulled the curtain across, obscuring them from view. Cello kept touching the large square of cotton that had been taped down over his wound. He wanted to say something to Ben, to tell him the truth about “the guys” he and Dr. Santo had been working with. The deviants they’d been working with.
A soft knock heralded Doreen’s entrance into the room. “I guess we have a couple things to discuss, now that I have a better handle on your situation. Cello, would you like me to ask your friend to leave? I know this is, well, it’s sensitive information,” she said.
“No, that’s okay,” said Cello.
“Well, if you’re sure.” Doreen pulled a pair of reading glasses from a lanyard around her neck and held them to her face as she read from the folder in her hands. “Seems you were placed with the Joseph family sixteen years ago. Is that Miller’s Road address correct? It states here that you have five other foster siblings?”
“That sounds right, but that’s not who I stayed with,” Cello said.
“Alright, then who was it you stayed with? It wasn’t the Josephs?” Doreen’s brow remained creased as she spoke.
“I don’t know their last name. The thing is,” Cello said, “Mother Joseph recently passed.”
“Oh!” Doreen said, the glasses slipping from her fingers. “Well, my records here didn’t show that. I’m so sorry—my deepest, deepest sympathies.”
“It only just happened.” Cello cast his gaze down, hesitant to look at Doreen or at Ben. He did love Sil and Letta in a way, like you could grow fond of a place. He hated to betray them so thoroughly, but he loved Sabina, Marcela, Miracle and Emil more. Maybe he’d lost too much blood to make sense of it. “I think the kids there aren’t safe,” Cello said, looking at his hands on the faded, striped blanket.
“I see,” Doreen said. “We do have law enforcement scheduled to check in, but I’ll call over and see that they hurry on up. I’ll call my office, too. All of those children will have to be placed elsewhere immediately. It’s going to be a late night. Guess I’ll be ordering a pizza,” she said with a cheerful wink. Doreen opened the door to leave. “I’ll be back as soon as I have any news for you.”
Cello looked up as Ben stood from the chair. “Move over a little,” Ben said, climbing up next to Cello. He turned on his side and put a hand over Cello’s wrist. Part of Cello was pleased, to be so close to Ben, but mostly he felt stiff and weary.
“Why didn’t you tell her about the baby?” Ben asked.
“I nearly did. A couple times.” Cello forced himself to speak up, loud enough for Ben to hear. “But Sabina said she left him at a church. If he got found, he got a new family. I don’t want something bad to happen to Sabina. She doesn’t deserve that.”
“What about you?” Ben asked.
“What’d you mean?” Cello stared up at him, puzzled.
“I mean, what do you want to happen? To you, after all of this gets worked out.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can come live with you?” Cello looked at the other boy’s half-turned face.
“I wish you could, man,” Ben said with a reassuring squeeze of his hand. “I don’t want you to think I don’t care about you, or the rest of your family. It’s not that at all.”
Cello looked at the sheet where their hands lay touching.
“But I’m at school. I’m living in a dorm. People aren’t supposed stay with me.”
“No, but I could. I don’t take up space, and I’m quiet.” Cello felt, as he tried to convince Ben, like a man marching up a steep hill. “And it’s not like I’d stay with you forever or anything. I can figure out my own way.” A spate of coughing from the roommate’s side interrupted Cello’s speech. “We could be friends. Roommates.”
“I already have a roommate, Cello.” Ben didn’t move from the spot on the bed beside him, but he already seemed very far away.
“What about Dr. Santo?” Cello begged.
“Ray?” Ben gave him a crooked smile. “Look, I know things might be kind of crazy for you while this all gets fixed, and I’ll keep checking on you.”
“What about the senging? Won’t you need help?” Cello said, ashamed of how desperate he sounded.
“I think you’re going to have a lot more to deal with than senging.” Ben’s voice was low, and he settled an arm around Cello’s shoulders. “And I’m sorry about that.”
“Are you?” Cello asked, stunned by his own bitterness. “What’s going to happen to the rest of the kids? Should I not have told her?”
“No, you had to tell her. You absolutely had to. I don’t know how this works, but I’ll wait with you until we do know. Okay?”
Cello nodded and slumped forward. “You think I could find a job someplace?” Cello asked. “Get myself settled?”
“I know you could. That I can help you with. You did th
e right thing, Cello,” Ben said, his voice lost in the series of beeps and alarms that signaled Cello’s next dose of medication.
29
Joanie let the river hold her. She imagined the current twisting into an illustration of a beautiful water creature, with seaweed-green hair. Joanie could feel the sea-woman’s arms around her, nestling her close—a sodden cheek resting against the woman’s warm breast.
She didn’t mind the water carrying her. Joanie knew it was bringing her to her son. Even when she collided with the rocks and was caught upon the riverbank, she felt a measure of correctness in it. The worship demanded balance; she couldn’t get something for nothing. One had to be worn down, broken up into small pieces. There would still be someplace for her. She felt a blink, that same bright cry from her infant calling her forward—warm and constant as a heartbeat.
She was outraged when the dulled sensation of the river’s waves receded and real pain announced itself. The sea-woman was no sea-woman at all, but a human, middle-aged hiker wearing a soft fleece jacket. Joanie tried to resist the woman’s attempts to revive her. She closed her eyes against the woman’s attention, trying to sink back into that earlier murkiness. She wanted to plummet back into the worship, and permit it to drag her to its conclusion. Joanie tried, but couldn’t resist the shock and lights of the ambulance the hiker had called. The voices washed over her, too loud, jolting her back into her body.
“Temperature’s low,” one of the voices—a man—said.
“Glucose depleted, hook her up,” a woman said. Joanie felt them stabbing and pulling at her.
“Support the airway, Terrance, come on,” the woman barked. “I don’t see any ID on her. Ma’am, you coming with us?” The woman EMT held the door wide for the hiker. “Hold on, I think we’ve got consciousness. Can you hear me, sweetheart?” the woman called, too close, practically in her ear. Joanie winced away.
“Ma’am, looks like you saved a life today,” Terrance called to the hiker.
Joanie heard as the woman climbed into the vehicle, unable to resist doing more good. Joanie hurt all over. She rolled her throbbing eyes in her throbbing head. In the back of the ambulance more people, just horrible, regular people—not the angels or demons she’d imagined would communicate with her in the early morning of this particular day—spoke to her.
“How’d you come to be in the river?”
“I’m not sure.”
“How old are you? What’s your name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you tell me what day it is?”
“No.”
“What year?”
“No,” Joanie said, a mutant sound in her throat—half sob, half laugh. “Where’s my baby? Where are you taking me? I won’t go without him.”
“We’ll get you the help you need, sweetheart, and then you’ll go home. Don’t worry—we found you just in time. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Right,” Joanie said. She fell away from them all, dreaming of the flowering shed, and the cold turtle clutched in her hands, of her son asleep beside her.
* * *
Joanie opened her eyes to a swath of pastel-printed curtains. Her body was bound and bandaged all over, but her mind was clear. The hiker who pulled her from the river sat by the bed. Her hair was dry, and she wore a neat yellow blouse, but Joanie was certain it was the same woman. She held a stack of folders in her lap, and a pair of reading glasses she wasn’t using hung on a lanyard around her neck.
“What happened?” Joanie asked. “Do you have my baby? Where am I?” Her voice felt smoother, different.
The woman startled, looking up from the sheaf of papers in her hands. She smiled, pressing her lips together and widening her eyes like an excited child. “Hi there, Joanie. My name’s Doreen. I’m the social worker here. Can we talk a second? I think we already found who you’re looking for.”
West Virginia, 1999
Cello spotted the little wooden house in the clearing easily. The flat roof was glazed in a bronze layer of autumn leaves, and every tidy corner glinted in the sunset’s filtered blaze. He couldn’t help but admire his own work—well, Sil’s, and Ben’s, and Marcela’s, too. They had built such a perfect, habitable secret. Eyes that didn’t dwell there, or hadn’t contributed to its construction, would skip right over it.
The little house exhaled warmth, like a campfire, drawing him involuntarily nearer, almost like it knew he was supposed to be there.
“Cello!” a voice called from the half-open window. Emil ran out, disrupting the stillness of the forest, and leaped at his foster brother. Out at Joanie’s place, Emil had grown sturdy and joyful; he wasn’t that scrap of a kid he’d been in their last summer at the garden. Cello suppressed a little swirl of regret over leaving them all and missing out on the ways Joanie, Emil, Miracle and Sabina were connecting as a new family without him.
At first, Cello was worried that the state granted custody of all of the kids to Letta and Sil. He was afraid that they would just go back to the way things had always been. But Joanie said they’d leave them alone, and she had been right. Letta needed Joanie to be happy in order to keep up her side of the bargain with the Vine. Something had changed after Mother Joseph’s death; the Vine was no longer satisfied with the planting rituals done by just anyone. All of the Work had to be Joanie’s. In return for her cooperation, Sil and Letta let Joanie and Sabina keep the little kids, along with a monthly payment that Joanie and Sabina alone decided how to spend.
“Joanie said you might not come,” Emil said, reproachful.
“I had to study for a big test I got coming up. But I still need to eat!” On Ben’s suggestion, Cello was studying to take the GRE, but he still wasn’t ready. He didn’t know if he would ever be. He wiped a smudge of grease from Emil’s forehead. “What’ve you been working on?”
“I’m building a radio.” Emil held his hand and led him up toward the house. “With Sabina.”
“Wow,” Cello said, whistling. He grasped his brother’s palm a little more tightly, struck with an unexpected bolt of happiness to know that Emil was not too old to take his hand, to be excited to see him. “How’s school?”
Emil looked over with a theatrical grimace. “What do you think?”
“Okay, that’s fair,” Cello said with a smile. “It’s a lot to get used to.”
“Miracle loves it, though.” Emil shrugged.
“And you’ve got to keep her company,” Cello said.
“I guess. Come on, Marcela brought doughnuts.”
“Doughnuts? Aren’t we eating dinner?” Emil dragged him up the little rocky slope and shoved the front door, opening into a compact kitchen where Joanie stood chopping basil.
“Oh, hey,” she said, turning toward them. “Emil, go set the table in the back. We’re going to eat outside—that alright with you?” she asked Cello, leaning over and pulling him toward her with a free arm.
“Sure,” he said, hugging her back. “Can I help?”
“Nah, we’re almost done. Where’s Ben?”
“Working.” Cello gave her an apologetic smile.
“Everything okay with you all?” she said, watching him closely even as she chopped.
“Completely fine.”
“Maybe it’s actually better that he couldn’t come—better that it’s just the family, I mean.”
Cello made a sound in the back of his throat. “Marcela already here?” He pulled off his gloves and stuffed them into his jacket pocket.
“Yeah, she’s out back with the girls. She’s doing so good,” Joanie said with a wide-open smile. Marcela had moved in with some friends of Ben’s from Grove, and was already halfway through beauty school.
“I knew she’d be fine there. Where’s the little dude?”
“Asleep. He’s teething—those molars are coming in,” Joanie said, wincing. “So I’m not going to
bother him. Can you bring out plates and remind Emil he’s supposed to be helping?”
* * *
Marcela and Sabina sat at the picnic table outside, their heads pitched toward one another. Miracle sat on the far end of the table, a comic book splayed open beneath her hands. “Cello!” Sabina said, springing up to hug him. “I didn’t think you were coming.”
“Of course I came,” he said, a little too brightly. “I wanted to hear all about Mar’s new job.” He set the plates down and motioned Emil over to take them. “Hello to you, too,” he said pointedly to Marcela and Miracle. “Don’t y’all get up at the same time.”
“I won’t,” Marcela said, midyawn. “I’m exhausted. I had to work an extra shift for Carol since one of the girls called in sick.”
“Hey, Cello,” Miracle said without lifting her eyes from her book.
“Don’t take it personally,” Sabina said with an eye roll toward Miracle. “She’s growing up.”
“She’s moody, you mean,” Marcela corrected, leaning over to pluck the book away.
“Stop it!” Miracle stood and grabbed it back. “I’m going to my room,” she said, adjusting her new glasses where they slipped down her nose.
“Nope, you’re not—we’re eating now.” Joanie pushed the screen door open and held a pan of lasagna with a mismatched pair of oven mitts. “Emil,” she called, frowning over the table. “What did I say?”
“Sorry, sorry.” Emil rushed around her, sloppily throwing down plates and forks.
“Miracle, go get the salad from the kitchen, will you?” Joanie set the pan down and waved away a curious bee. “I’m telling you, they got so spoiled so quick.”
“No way.” Cello sat down at the picnic table, straightening his place setting, and the others around his. “You and Sabina are doing a great job with them.”
“We’ll see,” Sabina said with an indulgent smile.
“Sit down, everybody,” Joanie said, taking the salad from a reemerged Miracle. “Who wants what?”
Daughters of the Wild Page 28
