Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You (29 page)

Two short, gentle breaths, careful not to overexpand her small lungs. Then locating the sternum, lacing my hands together one on top of the other, heel of my palm firm against her chest, and five shallow but sharp compressions.

I lost track of time. Two breaths, five compressions. The sun beat hot against my back and legs; my arms and hands were slippery, and sweat dripped down my forehead and neck. Smaller rocks dug into my knees each time I shifted from mouth to chest. Her body was so tiny. I'd never done CPR on a child. I'd never worked on someone I knew; the bodies I'd worked on had been strangers, victims of violence or car accidents, one time an allergic reaction to multiple yellow jacket stings. And there had been others around to help me,
others who knew more than I did. I knew so little. Two breaths, five compressions. I'd never really noticed the freckles on her chin before, the tiny scar under her left ear, the way one eyebrow grew straight across and the other arched. Such a small chest. My back hurt, my arms ached, my wrists throbbed, there was a cramp in my thigh. It was hot, dusty, dirty, and she wasn't breathing, her heart wasn't beating. Two breaths, five compressions.

I heard movement behind me, feet digging in the dirt for traction, but I didn't stop.

“Sarah.” It was Henry. “What can I do?”

“You know CPR?”

“Yes.”

“Compressions? I'll breathe.”

His hands appeared on her chest, and I counted: one, two, three, four, five. Then I breathed: one, two.

“They're coming?” I asked as I watched his hands work. Briefly I looked up, checked his face, relaxed slightly.

“Yes.”

“Isael?”

“With Doña Eva, waiting for the police and ambulance.”

I don't know how long we worked like that in tandem, silent, watching her face, his hands, her chest before we heard the sirens, voices, and footsteps approaching.

Henry pulled me up and away from her as the paramedics and police surrounded us, his hands firm on my shoulders. I stepped away from him, watched the paramedics' faces. I recognized the sheriff's deputy who'd come by my house weeks ago, and we nodded at each other—short, impersonal nods. I gave them what little details I knew as they worked, watching Luisa's head carefully for a rush of blood that never came as they applied the neck brace and bagged her, as they moved her to the portable stretcher. What could I tell them that they couldn't see for themselves?

Stumbling back down the hill, following the stretcher, I felt like three separate beings: there was the physical body—hands still feeling the rhythm of the compressions, the echo of her mouth under mine, the ache of most every muscle, my stomach hollow and burning and familiar; there was the detached, professional cataloguing
details and assessing the situation; and there was this other me, deep inside, howling.

 

The hospital—a squat, rectangular, brown hunk of brick slapped down in the middle of nothing—was twenty miles away. They'd gotten Luisa's heart beating in the ambulance. Marisela and Jose arrived soon after we did, their faces clamped tight against their fear, and disappeared into the critical care room. The rest of us, family and neighbors, crowded into a cold, dingy room with green linoleum and hard chairs. We waited. Some talked, and some, like me, stared quietly at a wall or counted the ceiling tiles. Isael kept looking at me, quick, darting glances. Eva Posidas sat stoically, hands clasped in her lap, murmuring in Spanish. Henry paced methodically around the circumference of the room. And I kept wondering if I'd made a horrible mistake, if I'd misunderstood. Was I supposed to have been watching Luisa and Isael? Had their parents left because they thought the children were at my house, painting, and I was watching them?

When Isael left to use the bathroom, Henry stopped, standing over me, and said, “Thank you.”

I stared at him, stunned. “I was supposed to be watching them,” I whispered.

Eva Posidas clicked her tongue. “
Los niños estaban conmígo. Permití que ellos jugaran afuera. Nada es su culpa. Ella tiene nuestras gracias por encontrar a Luisa.
” She patted my knee once then knitted her fingers together again and pressed them into her lap.

I looked at Henry.

“She's upset, the English goes. She says it wasn't your fault,” he said. “They were supposed to be with her, she let them play outside. She appreciates what you did for Luisa.”

“I didn't do much,” I mumbled through the heat of anger toward the old woman for her carelessness and her stoicism.

His index finger touched my arm. “You were there. You kept her alive.”

“Such that it is,” I said, rubbing the palm of my hand along the spot he'd touched.

Eva Posidas made a small whiffy sound and moved one hand
through the air before it settled back into her lap. “
A Sarita se la está comiendo el temor y ella no puede encontrar en símisma el perdón y tener esperanza. Ella piensa que entiende mucho, pero ella sabe poco. Ella nunca vivirá bien hasta que entienda que nadie lo puede tener todo o lo entiende todo. Ella piensa que es fuerte, pero ella es débil. Sólo al abrazar nuestra debilidad podemos ser fuertes.”

I'd looked at Henry as soon as I heard my name. “What did she say?”

He watched Isael approach us from the hallway. “You give up too easily and you try too hard.”

“Jesus! Who do you people think you are?” But I said it softly, for now Isael was in front of us, his eyes checking my face again. I gave him a tired smile. “It's okay, Isael. Promise.” He nodded, but I knew he didn't believe me. I didn't blame him. I didn't believe me either.

I sat there, my body aching and restless, thinking about Eva Posidas's long rush of words and Henry's short translation: you give up too easily and you try too hard. What did that mean? It was a paradox, unsolvable. And what else had Doña Eva said that Henry hadn't translated?

Just when I thought I couldn't spend one more minute in that room, Jose came down the hall, his hands jammed deep into his pockets. Isael ran to him, and he pulled the boy into a tight hug before he stood and told us that Luisa was alive.

Her heart was beating, but she couldn't breathe on her own; an EEG showed brain activity; although the wound to her head itself was not deep, there was a great deal of swelling around the brain; she was in a coma; StarFlight would take her to a major trauma center in Las Cruses later that evening. There was hope, Jose said; we all needed to pray.

I slipped out as everyone gathered around him. The sun was disorienting; I'd expected it to be dark outside.

The street where I lived was deserted except for Penny Face sitting on his bench, staring at nothing. I got out of my car and walked across the street, pulled toward him despite myself. His eyes seemed to track me as I approached, but it was a trick of the light and shadows. There was no comprehension, no intelligence, no one at home
inside those eyes. I squatted down on my heels in front of him. Saliva had crusted in one corner of his mouth, and his body odor reminded me of a mixture of wet river mud and cockroach-infested apartments I'd worked calls in.

“What do you know, Penny Face?” I said softly. “What's chasing you?”

He just stared at me, those blue watery eyes with nothing in them.

“Luisa, you know her? The little girl across the street? She was hurt today. Badly. She says you talk to angels. I think you see something else, don't you?” I tapped him on the shin.

A hot flush ran through me, and I stumbled to my feet and stepped back as briefly, quicker than a finger snap, Penny Face was present, here, seeing me, a mind processing information, and then, even quicker, so quick I thought I might have imagined it, his lips turned up slightly into some semblance of smile, a horrible, familiar smile. And then he was gone, blank again, the wind rustling the leaves on the ground, and my stomach clenched tighter than steel.

I crossed back over to my house, trying to quell the tremble in my body, the dryness in my mouth. The empty plate that had held my lunch still sat on the back stoop of my house; the back door was still open. The ash gray cat had disappeared. My stomach twisted and turned. I stood for a minute looking up at the quiet hills beyond my house, taking deep breaths before I put the dish in the sink, opened the can of red paint, stirred it, and started painting the half wall in the kitchen. It was unabashedly red.

I'd just finished the first coat and sat down on the porch with a cigarette and beer, looking everywhere but at Penny Face, when Henry pulled into my driveway. He got out of his truck and walked slowly up the sidewalk.

“Want a beer?” I asked, lifting mine toward him. “There's more in the fridge.”

He shook his head. “I don't drink.”

“Really. You look like a drinking man.”

He reached out and wiped a finger across my cheek and held it out to me.

“Smoke. Burns my eyes.” I used the heels of both hands to wipe my cheeks and jaw dry.

“Uh-huh. Should quit smoking then.” He reached out a hand. His palm was large and deeply lined, the fingers long and narrow with little hair on the knuckles. His nails were clipped close; one had a fading black spot that covered half the nail bed.

“What?”

“Let's go for a drive.”

“Right.” I didn't move.

“I'm not the biting kind.”

“I've heard that one before.”

“Trust your instincts.” He smiled slightly.

I thought of Luisa's comment about the police taking him away, about a woman and baby dying. “Where to?”

“Something I want to show you.”

I shook my head at the ground. “Henry.” After a minute I looked up at him standing there steadily, waiting. I looked at the lines around his eyes and mouth, the slight stubble starting to sprout on his chin and cheeks, his hand still hovering in front of my face. I took his hand, warm and dry and firm, and let him pull me to my feet. “Let me close up the house.” I went inside, closed the back door, put a flannel shirt on over my tank top and jeans, laced up my hiking boots, then took a box down from the closet shelf and tucked the one gun I hadn't been able to bury, a .38 Chief's Special, in a small belt holster, into my waistband. I buttoned the shirt up partway and went back onto the front porch, locked the front door. Henry was in his truck, the engine running. I slid into the passenger seat and fastened my seat belt. “Okay,” I said, feeling as if I had a foot in two worlds—the past and the present—and neither of those worlds willing to let me be. “Show me what you want to show me.”

 

When he brought the truck to a stop thirty minutes later, I didn't move. My stomach was a hot coil.

“The locals call it Moon Mountain.” Henry pointed toward the hill that wanted to be a mountain. “The back side is scarred and puckered, just like the moon. Not much grows there.” He got out of the truck and looked at me. “Coming?”

I hesitated.

“What are you scared of?”

“I'm not scared.”

“You brought a gun.” He pointed toward my waist. “Most people carry them because it makes them feel big or they're scared.”

I shifted forward and sideways in my seat. “Guns have never made me feel big. And I'm not scared. I'm in the woods with a man I don't really know. I'd say it was prudent.”

He shrugged, grabbed a bottle of water and shoved it in his back pocket, and slammed the truck door closed.

I followed him into the woods, relaxing slightly when he took a path that ran perpendicular to where I'd buried the tarp. We hiked steadily for twenty minutes on a trail that cut up sharply through mostly pine trees. The sun had dipped well below the tree line, and the air was much cooler here. I kept my eyes on his back and his hands, tucked my elbow against my waist several times. My body ached, my stomach burned, and my breath came in short, hard gasps by the time we rounded a bend and came down into a small clearing.

My stomach flipped once, and I took in a deep breath. We were surrounded by tall, slender trees. Sunlight filtered through golden leaves that danced and fluttered, like thousands of pale butterflies, but with a soft clattering noise. The trunks were a light gray, almost white, with mottled darker patches. I reached forward and touched one; it was both cool and warm.

“
Populus tremuloides
,” Henry said. “The common name is quaking aspen, but everyone just calls them aspens. They're more common in the northern part of the state. This is the only stand in the county. The elevation is high enough and cool enough for them to thrive.”

I looked up through the branches. “Seems more like dancing than quaking.”

“Quaking isn't necessarily negative, is it? You can quake with joy as much as you can from fear.”

When I looked over at him, he was smiling at me, that compassionate half-smile, the tiny sugar lines folded up near his eyes. And his eyes, full and tender, seeing me. Too much there, in his eyes, for me to stand. Tears close to the surface burned again, as quick and as hard as the bile roiling in my stomach. I turned away, trying to bite
back the waves of nausea, gagged twice. I bent over and retched, again and again, sobbing as I did, furious and defeated, one hand out on a trunk supporting me, and then Henry was by my side, his hand cupping my forehead. I tried to pull away, but he held me firm, whispering, “It's okay, let it come, just let it come.”

My knees buckled, and I sank to the ground on all fours. I cried long past the time I stopped throwing up. Henry kept his arms around me, and eventually I relaxed against him. The leaves fluttered above us, a million muted wind chimes. Every cell in my body felt like heavy cotton batting.

I pushed myself up, took the water bottle he offered, and rinsed and spit several times before drinking. The water felt good against the back of my throat. I sat down, lit a cigarette, and closed my eyes. I was conscious of the heat of his body next to mine. “Well, I feel like an idiot.”