The Tiger’s Child and Somebody Else’s Kids 2-in-1 Collection. Torey Hayden
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path circling the water, Sheila stopped stock-still. Her brow furrowing, she watched the ducks and geese noisily announce our arrival. One by one, they clambered out of the water and waddled over until we were surrounded, and all the time, Sheila never moved. She just stared down the path to the water, her expression inward, and I suspect she never saw the ducks at all.
The ghosts rose up before my eyes also. With an intensity I hadn’t experienced elsewhere, the past came back to me. The rain disappeared and the air was full of children’s voices. “Look at me, Torey! Look what I can do! How big the trees are here. Do you see the bunnies they got? Down here, come this way, so I can show you. Can I feed the ducks? Can I wade in the pond? Let’s roll down the hill. Torey? Torey, look at me!”
And there on the path around the duck pond was Sheila, little Sheila in her bright-orange sunsuit, running, skipping, laughing. She threw out her arms and spun around, letting her head fall back, her long hair sail out in a sunlit halo. Around and around and around she turned, completely oblivious to the other walkers on the path, the other children, us. Eyes closed against the sun, lips parted in a half-smile, she satisfied some inner dream to dance.
Did she remember? I glanced sidelong at the gangly adolescent beside me. Intuition told me she was remembering something, and I longed to know her thoughts just then, but I dared not ask.
“I was happy here,” she whispered after a long silence. It was said so softly that I couldn’t detect the emotion it held. Finally she turned away from the duck pond. Crossing the grass to reach the lane again, we started back to the car.
We were soaking wet by then. It was warm summer rain. I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable, but everything was dripping. Sheila bent to pick up a long, brown locust pod that had fallen on the walk.
“When I think of Marysville, I always think of locust trees,” I said. “I remember how they used to scent the air when they were blooming. I remember driving into Marysville the first time. I’d come along the highway and as it dips down the hill into the valley, I can recall having my car window down, and I could smell Marysville before I got here. And when the blossoms start to fall, it’s like snow. I remember coming out in the mornings and my car would be covered.”
Sheila stopped, turned and looked back down the lane toward the duck pond, no longer visible. Pausing, she slit open the locust bean with her fingernail and took out the seeds, letting them drop to the wet pavement. “These are poisonous, did you know?” she asked and threw the empty pod out into the road. “They can actually kill you.”
Sheila grew increasingly moody. Keen to rescue the situation, I suggested we go for a couple of games of bowling, a sport I knew she enjoyed very much. No, she didn’t want to do that. An ice-cream cone at Baskin & Robbins? No. Was she sure? I’d pop for a banana split with extra nuts and whipped cream? No. A browse around the bookstore? No. All she wanted to do was just drive around more.
Having more or less exhausted the town, I tried the countryside, heading north along a network of small rural roads. We were soon into open countryside, comprised mainly of corn- and wheat fields. The area was hilly and Marysville had quickly disappeared from view to leave the fields stretching away from us in an undulating fashion for as far as the eye could see.
I made a few efforts at conversation, but they were useless. Sheila sat absolutely silent. Arms folded across her chest, she gazed out the passenger window so motionlessly that I could have been driving around with one of those inflatable dolls in the front seat beside me and no one would have discerned the difference.
The rain lessened, then finally stopped altogether, and very slowly the clouds began to break up. It was already early evening, so when the first patches of blue sky began to appear in the west, the sun came slanting across the hills.
“Stop!” Sheila cried. Not only was it the first word she had spoken in the better part of an hour and a half, which made it startling enough, but she said it with such suddenness that I fully expected to hit something with the car. I slammed on the brakes sufficiently hard to throw us both sharply forward. This made her smile briefly in my direction, before pointing to the east. “Look at that.”
For a short, shining moment, color was sovereign. The wet asphalt of the road gleamed black against the sudden gold of the sunlit wheat. Beyond the ruffling grain rose the dark remains of the storm clouds, pierced through by a rainbow. Only a very short part of the rainbow was visible; there was not even enough to form a clear arc, but that small section shimmered brilliantly above the restless wheat.
“Oh, God,” Sheila murmured softly, as she regarded the sight, “why do beautiful things make me feel so sad?”
Back at the motel, we had our evening meal and then went out to enjoy the pool. The rain had cleared away entirely to give a cloudless night, the stars dimmed by the town’s lights but still faintly discernible.
Sheila remained subdued. There was a heavy, almost depressed feel to her quietness. For the first time, she put aside that smoldering anger I always sensed just below the surface. In its place was nothing, just a great emptiness.
The exercise did me good. The pool was cool enough to let me swim hard and I did, blocking out everything except the feel of the water rushing over me, until at last I surfaced, tired and relaxed. Sheila wasn’t a very good swimmer. I suspect she had never been taught and just got by on what she’d figured out over the years, but she kept at it almost as long as I did. Then we both retreated to the warmth of the Jacuzzi.
Back in the motel room, she stood before the mirror toweling her hair dry. She studied her reflection as she worked.
“Do you like me?” she asked.
Having finished with my shower and changed into my nightgown, I was lying on my bed and inspecting the TV schedule. Her question caught me unawares. “Well, yes, of course I do.”
“I know I look stupid,” she said to her reflection. “I know you think I do.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she said. “You do. Everybody does. I do too.” She ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing it down. “You see, I just don’t want to look like me. That’s why I do it. I can put up with looking stupid, if there’s a chance that it might make me into someone else.”
Once she was in her bed, I turned the light out. It wasn’t all that late, only a little after eleven, but the swimming, combined with the emotional rigors of the day, had left me exhausted. I was ready for sleep and drowsy almost immediately.
Sheila turned restlessly in her bed. The room was very dark, so I could only hear her, not see her, but the sound of her movements kept intruding.
“Torey? You asleep?”
“No, not quite.”
Silence.
“You wanted to say something?” I inquired.
A second long pause. She turned again. “A lot’s changed,” she said quietly.
“In what way?”
“In the migrant camp. It’s a lot different to what I remember it.”
I didn’t answer.
“I do remember it. I haven’t forgotten everything.” A pause. “My memory’s like Swiss cheese. It’s got big holes in it. But other things … I saw the camp today and it was, like … well, like I’d never been away. I can remember it so good.”
Silence then, long enough that I felt myself growing drowsy again.
“You know what I used to do at night, when we lived in the camp?” Sheila asked into the darkness.
“What’s that?”
“Well, my pa used to always be out drinking,” she said, using her old name for her father for