This Little Light

by Lori Lansens

  Paula’s fussing over the ribbons on her Patriot Girl doll’s blouse. She tells me she’s been praying since the day her abuelo brought her back to his trailer that God would send someone to rescue her. Deliver her from evil.

  I thought of Javier. I hope he’s not dead.

  “I prayed for Mr. Javier,” Paula said, like she knew what I was thinking.

  “You don’t think he sold us out?”

  Paula shrugged. “Still I pray.”

  “Did your mother take you to church?” I asked.

  “No church. Just pray.”

  “And your mother taught you to read?”

  “Yes. And a little to write. And she teach to me English, but mostly I learn from TV.”

  “Dancing Dina. I loved that show when I was little too. Me and Fee and our friends used to do the choreography.”

  Paula laughed. “My mother dances with me too. She is good dancer. She is good singer. She is smart. She is working in the house to clean, but she have a dream to be the nurse. She pray for that. She want to care for the people.”

  “So her cancer—she couldn’t get treatment?”

  “No money. No insure. No citizen. No help. She pray.”

  “But God didn’t answer her prayers?”

  Paula made a face. “He do answer her prayers.”

  I wondered if Paula’s mother knew about Paula—but of course she did. And Paula “has the cable and the Twitter,” so Paula knows what transgender is. She’s ten. Maybe she even googled about it. Maybe she’s seen the KUWTK reruns with Caitlyn Jenner. And if Paula knows what transgender is, then she also knows about the hate. The Crusaders, especially, have tons to say about LGBTQ people and the thousand ways they should die. The word abomination comes up a lot. I don’t understand how Paula can be a believer when so many of God’s people say God hates her fucking guts.

  “I hope God answers your prayers, Paula.”

  “He always do.”

  “God always answers your prayers?” I kinda wanted to shake her. How can she say this? Look at her fucking life? “Like, how…Paula? What prayers has He answered?”

  “When I am in the truck to come to my mother in America, I pray the guards don’t look in the suitcase.”

  “You were smuggled in a suitcase?”

  “I am small. I am seven years old then.” Paula shows me how she curled up into a fetal position. “I do this.”

  “Oh my God. For how long?”

  “Maybe one hour? I sleep a little. Across the border I pray to have more air. He gives. The zipper breaks. I don’t die.”

  “So you came in a truck?”

  “Yes. From my village.”

  “Alone?”

  “My father give the man money. When we get near America, he put me in the suitcase. I pray the man don’t take the money and kill me.”

  “And he didn’t.”

  “Yes. And when my mother get the cancer, I pray God to cure, then to take, for no more suffer.”

  “And after your mother…Someone brought you to your abuelo after your mother died? Even though he’s the way he is. Was.”

  “There is no one else.”

  “Didn’t you ever wanna run away?”

  “Yes. Many nights I go to the hills. I think I will go to the ocean, but I come back. I am scared in the dark. I am scared of coyote and mountain lion and what will happen if Abuelo catch me. Every day I pray to God, please bring me help.”

  “And we came,” I said.

  “Yes. Always He answer my prayer.”

  “Right.”

  “He take my Blackie, my dog, when I pray for Blackie not to suffer.”

  “Right.”

  “And He give to me Mr. Javier.”

  “Why didn’t Mr. Javier help you get somewhere safe?”

  “He ask Abuelo can I come and live with him in Nina’s room. Abuelo say no and get the gun.”

  “Right.”

  “God see. God care.”

  “Right.”

  “God see you too, Rory.”

  “Okay. It’s just, Paula, I’m not down with the Bible. Like, I respect that you believe in God and all, but…”

  Paula touched my hand. She could see my face in the moonlight pouring in through the windows, and she must have seen the tears in my eyes, because she goes, “God love you.”

  “But I don’t believe.”

  “God love all the people. Even who don’t know Him. And He want us to love each other. He is the way, and the truth and the light. Like a ball make of love and light.”

  I needed a minute with that. Paula’s not stupid. Maybe that’s the way to go—to think of God as a big ol’ ball of light and love you can tap into. Like the way I feel about my mother. Aunt Lill. My Gramma and Pop. I don’t hate that.

  Paula went back to fussing with her doll. I wonder if the family who live in this beautiful house prayed for all of their good fortune and feel blessed by it. I wonder if they are God people. No crucifix on the wall. No Bibles on the shelves. Plus, they know we’re here, so unless we’re being set up—and I can’t even go there—the Masons are just good-ass humans trying to help the wrongly accused.

  On the one hand I get that people shouldn’t be made to feel like assholes, and are not assholes, just because they worked hard and have more shit than others. Or even because their parents are rich and they inherited a lifestyle. I mean, I get that. It’s just the disparity. When some people in our country, and in the rest of the world, don’t have shelter, or food, or water, the excess of lives like mine just feels fucking foul. And I know that sounds like some Commie bullshit. It’s just, not everybody starts life with the same degree of privilege. Shelley says some people were born on third base and some people were born outside the ballpark, and the journey to home plate ain’t the same for all. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone to, like, find a way to get everybody in the game?

  Fee’s just sitting here with Paula’s head on her shoulder now, quiet, and stroking her stomach. She did that yesterday—rubbed her stomach in concentric circles. I thought it was because she was sick. Now I wonder if some instinct kicked in, some maternal urge to nurture and protect. Maybe I just want that to be true. And maybe thinking that way makes me judge-y.

  Paula asks me where I think we might go after here. Where my mother, or whoever is coming to help us, might take us.

  I have no idea. I guess that’s true of all people. No one has a clue what happens next.

  But I tell Paula about Vancouver. I tell her that I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up there, at least for a while. Lilly will give us all a place to stay. We’d be safe in Canada. And away from all the press. Paula smiles when I tell her that we can walk the seawall together, and shop on Robson, and see movies, and eat in ethnic restaurants. Also, there’s the Aquarium.

  “And then we come back home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have room for Paula?”

  We have room for twenty Paulas at our house on Oakwood Circle. But home isn’t home anymore. And never will be again. I can never go back to Oakwood Circle. The bubble has popped. Thank God. In a way. No, actually, thank God.

  “Abortion is legal in Canada,” Fee said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I hope we do go there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They might offer us asylum or whatever it’s called,” Fee said. “And maybe somehow your mom could help my mom get there too.”

  “She will. She’ll figure everything out. Apparently my mother’s a superhero.”

  Fee shook her head a few times. “It feels like a dream. Doesn’t it? I mean, we’re here, which is better than the shed, but we’re still nowhere, and I’m still pregnant, Rory. And I’m afraid. I’m really afraid.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Me too,” Paula added, and got up to go stand at the window.

  “Fee? I know you don’t wanna talk about it, just, you should talk to my mom, and yours, before you make any decisions.”

  Pa
ula stepped back from where she was standing at the window just now and said, “It’s people out there.”

  I got up to look, but I don’t see anyone. We’re all a little tense. Fleeing for your life’ll do that to a person.

  But wait. Holy shit.

  There are people on the beach. I just saw them. Fuck.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I fucked up.

  I mean, if we’re found here, because of what I just did, I won’t ever forgive myself.

  So those people on the beach? There were two shadowy figures trudging through the sand parallel to the row of beachfront homes. So we watched, thinking maybe they’re bounty hunters, or cops, maybe coast guards—we couldn’t really see them well. Then two little figures come scampering up behind them. As they got closer, we saw that it was a family of homeless, a mother and father who looked not that much older than us, and two little girls, barefoot, but dressed in layers of coats and ragged sweatpants. They were all, even the little ones, carrying backpacks and empty trash bags, their eyes on the ground, scavenging, the way they do. The mother had a plush beach towel slung around her neck, no doubt snatched after it was left to dry on a fence or forgotten at the surf. The father was tall and pin thin. They stopped on the other side of the Plexiglas, staring into the Masons’ yard. We stepped back from the windows.

  Fee goes, “Why are they stopping here?”

  I saw one of the little girls pointing to the big grapefruits left hanging on the tree. The father picked her up and lifted her as high as he could as she strained her little arm, trying to reach the fruit. Just as she was about to grab the grapefruit, the wind shook the branch and her prize dropped to the ground behind the Plexiglas wall.

  The father set the little girl down. She took her younger sister by the hand and the two pressed their faces against the glass wall, staring at the fallen grapefruit like candy in a case.

  “That is so sad,” Fee said.

  The little girl started crying. A high-pitched wail that carried through the windows. I wondered if old Monty’d shuffle out to his back deck and try to shoo them away with the broom.

  Maybe it was that—the thought of the neighbors shooing these people away…Don’t know what made me do it. Didn’t give it much thought, I guess. I ran to the pantry, stuffed some boxes of cereal and granola bars into a bag I found on the back of the door, then grabbed an armful of cold waters from the fridge and put them in another bag.

  Paula and Fee were going, “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  I didn’t answer.

  When I opened the sliding door to the sea breeze, the little girl stopped crying and the family froze. When I took a step off the deck, they started to skitter through the sand toward the ocean. I called out in a whisper, “Wait! Don’t go!”

  I held up the grocery bags. They stopped.

  The father started back first, cautious, followed by the mother and the scared little girls. They waited on the other side of the glass as I checked the sky. There was a copter heading our way, but I thought I had a sec, so I picked a fat, oily fruit from a low-hanging branch on the grapefruit tree and tossed it to the little girl, who caught it and smiled, and immediately handed it to her little sister. I picked another fruit, which she also caught, and immediately began to peel with hungry hands. Then I hoisted the bags with water and food over to the mother and the father.

  The guy looked at me weird, and I wondered if he’d recognized me as one of the fugitive girls from TV, but then I realized it wasn’t that. To them I was just the rich girl who lived in this fab house and gave them food—a curious and verboten act, because, like Jinny Hutsall says, everyone knows if you feed them they’ll never go away.

  I hear the copter getting closer, the heartbeat of the blades, but I don’t run, because the littlest girl starts screaming and hopping on one bare foot because she just stepped on something sharp. I can’t help. I can’t do anything. And now I’m afraid to run because the copter is about to fly overhead. I flatten against the glass security wall, trying to blend, and all of a sudden a siren starts blaring from the speaker on the deck and thousand-watt security lights flood the property. Exposed.

  I look up, but the copter has banked left, heading for the valley, and couldn’t have seen me. Then I thought of Monty and the old woman next door. Would they think the raccoon set off the alarm? Would they call the police? Then I thought of the armed guards from the home security service who’d likely be storming the house any sec.

  The whole thing lasted less than five seconds. The lights snapped off and the alarm went silent. When I turned to look, the little family of vagrants were gone. Disappeared. I ran back to the house.

  When I got inside, Paula just looked at me. Fee sighed, and almost sounded relieved when she said, “The security people are gonna respond to that. Or the cops, because some alarms go straight to the station. We’re busted, Ror.”

  Paula had the idea to put our dirty clothes back on and hide out on the beach near the surf. This seemed like a bad idea to me. No shelter at all? Plus, the copters? Plus, the coast guard? I thought of Anne Frank, and wondered if the beach house had an attic. Couldn’t remember seeing any small ceiling doors, but I did remember that Mrs. Mason’s walk-in closet was huge, and her clothes were crushed together on felt hangers, pressed together like the layers of sediment that mesmerize me on mountain drives.

  I felt pretty sure we could hide in there, behind her color-coded wardrobe, like when I was little and hid behind the racks at Target, so we hurried upstairs to the walk-in and found a spot behind the lavender-scented blouses. We stayed there for what felt like forever. It was dark, and hot, and tight, and after a while Fee said, “Wouldn’t they have come by now? If they’re gonna come?”

  Just a delayed response to a security alert at a Malibu beach house? Or maybe they weren’t coming at all? The media has been reporting that law enforcement’s spread thin because of the crowds gathered over at the Pier and all the highway closures around the fires. Is that why they’re not here yet?

  Chase’s uncle definitely got an intruder alert, and a phone call. Maybe he told them everything was fine and no need to investigate. Or maybe he’s got shitty reception on some yacht off the Hawaiian coast. Or maybe he left his phone at the hotel and doesn’t know what just happened at the home where he’s hiding fugitives.

  Then again, what the fuck about the alarm anyway? Someone obviously disabled the alarm on the interior of the house. At this point I have no idea why the backyard alarm went off, who shut it off, or if the cops will come.

  At this point, on top of everything else, I can’t stop worrying that the sharp thing the little vagrant girl stepped on was a dirty needle. Fuck.

  * * *

  —

  We decided to leave the closet and come back to the white leather sectional and the ocean view. No sign of Monty or his wife from next door. The cops haven’t busted down the gates, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. We’re all still on high alert, listening for sirens and the thud of footsteps and the clatter of rifles.

  I’m back online, of course. Paula looks at the news with me, but Fee’s just sitting here staring at the sea.

  Kimmy K, my girl, gave a quote to TMZ as she was coming out of Nobu tonight. First she told the world that the sushi there is bullets, and then, when the dude asked what she thought about the Villains in Versace, she said, “Um. They weren’t wearing Versace.” Then, when the dude said he meant did she believe we’re guilty, she got real. She said she’s felt persecuted her whole life, flamed and trolled for just doing Kim. She said she understands how we must feel, wherever we are, but urged us to turn ourselves in. She believes the truth will prevail. And that no matter what, God is on the side of the truth.

  Paula watched the interview with me. “She is beautiful,” she said.

  “You’re beautiful too, Paula.”

  “Mi mamá say too.”

  “You’re mamá’s right.”

  “But I like to have long eyelashes.�
��

  I laughed. “Totally feel that.”

  “And pretty feets.”

  I wish I could take Paula to the ocean to put her big, unpretty feets in the water. But then again, what if we stepped on a stingray? Or a sharp like that little girl? God, I hope it wasn’t a syringe. I mean, there’s so much litter on the beaches these days.

  I’m looking out right now watching the sky traffic. There are breaks—moments when the ocean is clear and the sky is clean. Just like with the cops, so many copters and planes had to be diverted to the fires, and a ton of them are hovering over the demonstrations at the Pier. That would actually be a good place to hide. In plain sight.

  Sacred Heart does a beach day each year. It’s a charity thing where we invite a bunch of procit kids, or homeless kids, to come hang with us at Zuma. We have a nice catered lunch under a tent and we tsk the shit out of the fact that all these kids live only miles away from the ocean but have never been to the beach. It seems impossible. Yet it’s true. The homeless and procit kids our age hate our fucking guts, for obvious reasons, so we give our attention to the little ones, splash in the surf, Boogieboarding and all. Then we wrap them up like burritos in the huge Sacred Heart High beach towels they’re allowed to take home—even though they’d prolly never get to the ocean again. We pat ourselves on the back pretty hard for our efforts. Pastor Hanson is totally in it for the pics, gathering little brown kids onto his knees and making sure the mommies who volunteered to help that day snapped tons of pics for Sacred’s Insta.

  I’m so freaking tired. Yet can’t stop going online.

  Authorities have finally released footage of the scene at the school and parking lot from all the security cams. It doesn’t prove or disprove our innocence. Just shows the rest of the world the insanity of yesterday night. Now I understand why we were asked to check our cell phones at the door. Why our purses were searched—I mean, that’s pretty common now because guns. And bombs.

  It wasn’t just Jagger controlling his image. It was Jagger controlling the whole show, making sure that two hundred phones couldn’t document what happened. Warren Hutsall is definitely involved. They’re saying that Hutsall is Jonze’s “de facto agent,” taking commission on his earnings as an entertainer and through his AVB franchise. And all of it for what? Money? The righteousness of his cause? Both?