Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 (17 page)

By the time she was six months pregnant, she was in bad shape. She'd been cooped up forever and ever. She'd received every
heartbreak imaginable. She felt burdened and heavy and tired all the time. The hope that Peter would return had worn thin.
She was so lonely she wanted to die; she probably would have if Joseph hadn't been there.

Then one day she found a letter from Peter in her mailbox. It had been mailed from California to the old address and had been
forwarded by the post office. At the sight of his scrawl on the envelope, familiar from the occasional love letters he'd written,
the hope and fear exploded in her. She practically fell down in the stairwell as she ripped it open and read it.

He was in California. He'd tried to start up in LA but had drifted down to San Diego. Things were going pretty well. He'd
found a job maintaining vending machines at the naval base. He had gotten some regular air-time at a community radio station;
he had also registered with a film agency up in Hollywood and was excited at the prospect of maybe some work as an extra,
there were a couple of films coming up that needed Indian types. He loved her, he would never forget a single moment with
her. But he couldn't be with her. He was a poor backcountry Navajo, she was a rich Santa Fe white girl. They should have known
better than to try, with the deck stacked so badly against them. He was seeing somebody else now, a Jicarilla Apache woman who was escaping reservation life just as he was. Julieta should move on with her life. He was very, very sorry.

A few days later, while she was still reeling from that, she saw a car slide past the building, its driver looking up at the
windows. She realized she'd seen the same car on several occasions. And this time, she recognized the driver's face: one of
Garrett's assistants, a thug named Nick Stephanovic. Garrett was having her watched!

Suddenly the whole absurdity of her plan struck her. A naive twenty-five-year-old idiot and a thirty-year-old idealistic Navajo
doctor were no strategists for the kind of war she was fighting or the kind of enemy she had. She'd never keep her secrets.
Even if the divorce went through without a hitch, Garrett could keep watching. If she suddenly appeared with a baby in her
arms, a Navajo baby, he'd know everything. She didn't dare ask her lawyer, but she suspected that proof of her infidelity
would be cause to retroactively overturn a settlement. Far more frightening, the extent of her deception would conjure in
Garrett the rage she'd glimpsed when he'd killed her horses. At that point it would've had nothing to do with love anymore,
or even ownership: He'd get back at her because his pride demanded it. She'd seen his vengeful side in business dealings—
cross him, and he never forgot. She'd never be safe. Her nightmare would go on and on with no reprieve, ever.

The whole thing had been a mistake, she saw, error upon error, stupidity upon stupidity. If she really wanted to start a new
life, she realized, she had to let go not just of Garrett and of Peter, but of the baby, too.

Yes, she'd have to give up the baby.

It wasn't just her anger at Peter or her fear of Garrett that resolved her. She saw with frightening clarity that she was
in no shape to be anybody's mother. She was too confused, impulsive, damaged; she had too much angry pride and had made too
many mistakes because of it. The baby should have stable, sane, capable parents—two of them. The baby should be removed as
far as possible from the wrath of Garrett McCarty and the emptiness left by an abandoning father and the mess of Julieta's
life.

She talked it over with Joseph. Again, he served as her sounding board, didn't suggest or force her decisions in any way.
The only time he put his foot down was after she'd told him her decision. He would help her, he said, if she was absolutely
sure, if she'd considered every option and felt there was truly only that one. But it has to be forever, he warned her. You
have to let go completely. You can't change your mind in a month or a year or five years. You can't rip a family's life apart
by coming in later and claiming the child they've raised as their own. You can't do that to a child who loves the people it
knows as its parents.

I know, she told him. That's right. I know.

There's another reason, Joseph went on. You can't second-guess yourself, either—can't hold your future hostage to the bad
things that have happened. Your heart has to have freedom to grow and move on. If you emotionally cling to this child after
it's gone, it'll be like having an open wound that can never heal. If you ever change your mind, you'll only hurt yourself
and other innocent people. It's a one-way street, Julieta. It's got to be.

Off-record, at-home births were common on the rez—as a rural GP, Joseph had delivered his share. He said he knew of an infertile
couple in a remote area of the eastern rez, good people who dearly wanted a child. When Julieta's time came, Joseph delivered
the baby and brought the boy to them.

Julieta saw her son for only those minutes after his birth: Joseph laid him on her chest while he did some repairs on her.
She looked at the wrinkled little face, saw those tiny lips working, and at that moment felt a force in her that she never
imagined existed. It changed her inside. It was as if her whole body and mind became one big magnet, as if she existed only
as that pull toward the baby. Her breasts ached and tingled with the desire to nurture him, but he wasn't ready to suckle.
She looked at him for a long time. Marveling at him. But labor had exhausted her, and after a while she closed her eyes and
forgot everything but the glow of that warm little weight against her skin, the minute movements. She drowsed. When she awoke
the baby was gone. As they'd agreed.

Joseph never told her the details of where the boy went. There was never any question of finding him again. The new parents
would report the arrival as a home birth and fill out the papers in their names. With a Navajo father and a black Irish-Hispanic
mother, he'd have the right coloring to blend in. He'd grow up as a Navajo, share the good and bad of a Navajo's fate in twentieth-century
America.

For once, their plans went off without a hitch. With all the heartbreak and tension, Julieta had gained barely any weight
during the pregnancy. She was far too thin, but the bright side was that nobody would suspect she'd recently given birth.
The divorce took place in April, and it went as her lawyer predicted. She ended up with the Oak Springs house and twelve hundred
acres and three million dollars, plus an uneasy proximity to McCarty Energy's Hunters Point field and the enduring hostility
of Garrett and his nasty son.

She never saw her baby again. She never heard from Peter Yellowhorse again. She was twenty-five when she began her new life.

Julieta reined Madie to a stop. A mile away, the school was just visible over a swell in the land, the buildings new and clean
but sad-looking in the wan, milky light. Julieta just sat in the saddle and looked at the lonely little cluster. The sun was
not far from the horizon, so dulled by the uniform overcast its glow didn't impart any warmth to the buildings or the walls
of the mesa.

Cree stopped Breeze beside her. She was astonished at how differently she saw the scene now. It was rooted in all the reasons
Julieta had done this monumental thing. The buildings were not just objects of stone and steel but manifestations of feeling
and purpose. They were built not just on the bare red desert earth but on a foundation of one person's past pain and error
and the profound drive to turn it all around, to remedy wrongs and atone for them, to act for the good rather than react to
the bad.

Julieta's accomplishment awed her.

Of course, it was also built on a subconscious desire to find the lost child again. Or to sublimate and channel the mothering
urge, frustrated then, in the act of nurturing and guiding many children.

Screw Sigmund,
Cree thought, impatient with her Freudian reflexes. That urban, neurotic, fin-de-siecle sensibility stripped things of scope
and nobility and poetry. This woman faced herself. She acknowledged her failings and turned every one of them around. She
did a marvelously good thing. Turned a disaster into a brilliant achievement.

Of course, there were so many questions left unanswered. One of them was
not
whether, or why, Julieta would seek her lost baby in every child she encountered: Joseph's advice had been both wise and kind,
but of course that wound in her heart would never close.

But why Tommy? Cree wanted to ask. How did she know he was her long-lost child? His records? Some resemblance to Peter Yellowhorse?
Maybe Joseph told her. But why would he identify the boy to Julieta after making sure the cord was so completely severed?

But Julieta had pulled into herself, and she deserved a break from the relentless probing and prodding Cree had subjected
her to.

Julieta put her hand to her face and seemed startled to find her sunglasses still there. She took them off, folded them away,
wiped her cheeks with the balls of both hands.

"Going to get cold tonight," she said. "Sunset's coming. Better get to the chores." She glanced at the chilly horizon and
urged Madie toward the school.

19

THE SIGHT OF Ben's body disappearing into the Hobart made Tommy break out into a sweat.

The big dishwasher was on the blink, but Ben said he knew how to fix it, no need to call in the maintenance guys. Tommy had
gladly volunteered to help and Ben had let him tag along when the softball game broke up.

The Hobart was seven feet long and had doors on both ends, just like a casket-sized car wash. The dishes went in dirty at
one end and came out the other clean and so hot they steamed dry in seconds. Ben lay on his back on the counter, arranged
a flashlight and some tools on his chest, and then shoved himself into the open maw until only his bottom half emerged from
between the strips of the spray curtain.

It reminded Tommy of the times he'd been fed into the MRI machine during the last couple of weeks: the claustrophobic panic
of being strapped to the plastic shelf and sliding inch by inch into the huge, roaring white doughnut.

Ben grunted and made clanking noises inside the housing. His legs bent and scissored, as if he were struggling to get out,
and Tommy had to look away. Still, he'd rather be here in the kitchen instead of walking around with the nurse. She creeped
him out, always hovering near him, prying at him. Even now, she was just the other side of the swinging doors, waiting at
one of the cafeteria tables.

"Just don't turn it on while I'm in here, huh?" Ben joked. From inside the stainless steel housing, his voice had a metallic
ring.

"Why not? You look like you could use it."

"Hey, I took a shower just last month!" Ben chuckled. "Wouldn't help, anyway. Even this thing won't clean a dirty mind."

Tommy couldn't laugh. That hit too close to the mark: The worst part of the MRI had been the fear of what it might see in
his head.

"So, what's the matter with you, anyway? Not going on the field trip. Sick last week, too, right?"

"Cooties. Bad case of cooties."

Ben chuckled again. His legs braced and pushed, as if he were being eaten by the machine and was fighting it. In another moment,
his hand emerged with some kind of a valve. Tommy took it and set it on the counter.

"So," Ben said, "the good-looking
bilagâana
—what, she's a doctor or something?"

Tommy didn't want to answer, couldn't stand to turn their talk serious.

This was good—just hanging with someone, like he was a regular person and not some kind of specimen or freak. And if Ben
knew the truth, he wouldn't let Tommy anywhere near him. Ignoring the question, Tommy quickly inspected the industrial meat
grinder bolted to the opposite counter and turned back to slap the housing of the Hobart.

"What's this red button for?" he asked innocently.

"Don't touch that!"

Tommy reached over and flipped the toggle on the grinder, and he could see from the sudden tensing of Ben's legs that the
loud, grating whine had caught him off guard. He let it run for a few seconds, then hit the switch and let the motor wind
down.

Ben's legs were shaking as he laughed. "Just about peed myself] Gonna feed you into that thing when I get out of here! Hey,
see my toolbox? Want to hand me the half-inch box wrench?"

Tommy found the wrench, but before he could give it to Ben it slipped from his fingers and bounced under the counter. His
right hand wasn't working. He felt a growing confusion about it: The waistband of his jeans pressed against him in back, and
if he shut his eyes he could swear it was something tightening on his
wrist.

The feeling was coming on him again, slowly but remorselessly.

He was on his knees, reaching under the counter for the wrench, when a long, thin, jointed thing darted in toward it from
the right side. He reared away so hard he smashed his head on the counter supports. His own right hand! It had come so quickly
and purposefully, like some awful animal that lived under the counter. He felt, he
knew,
his real arm was back behind him, stretched along his spine. It took him a moment to catch his breath and stop shaking. He
got the wrench with his left hand, extricated himself from under the counter, and put it into Ben's waiting palm.

"Butterfingers," Ben complained good-naturedly. "You think I want to be in here all day?"

Tommy felt tears in his eyes. He moved away from the feed opening to make sure Ben couldn't see his face. "What'd you say
this red button was for?" he asked.

"Couldn't we skip it?

Please? I'm fine now." He couldn't stand the thought of another examination, Mrs. Pierce's flecked eyes
narrowing as they inspected him.

"Sorry, Tommy. Doctor's orders. I'm supposed to track your vital signs."

She shut the examining room door. As if there was anyone going to come in. He wished she'd leave it open.

"You'll have to take off your shirt," Mrs. Pierce said.

Tommy wasn't sure he could. He was too twisted. He knew the thing at his side had to be his arm, but it felt like he was standing
in a packed crowd so that someone else's arm was pressed against his body. No, it was worse: It was as if there was someone
invisible
overlapping
him on the right side. He couldn't even
think
about the arm completely. When he lifted his T-shirt with his left hand, the right arm thing just hung there. He got stuck
with the shirt over his head, tangled and disoriented. Mrs. Pierce had to help him. When they got it off, he felt uncomfortable,
standing half naked in the room with her looking at him.

She put on her stethoscope and listened to his chest and back, cold rings against his skin. Her eyes had an excited, curious
look, like on some level she enjoyed this. When she was done, she guided him by his shoulders to sit on the crinkly paper
of the examining table, then wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his left arm. She pumped it up and let the air out slowly,
listening with the stethoscope, watching the gauge. She jotted something on her clipboard, but she didn't remove the cuff.
Instead, she lifted the strange thing to his right.

"Tommy, what's this I'm holding?"

"My arm," he muttered. He didn't look at it. If he looked at it, he knew it would seem like a huge thing emerging inexplicably
from the side of his face, near the hinge of his jaw.

"Is it? So, tell me about your arm."

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me more about it. How it feels. What it does."

"You've already asked me so many times!"

"I mean, what it does when nobody's looking."

He felt nausea surge in his stomach. He refused to answer or to look at the awful thing she held.

"I guess you don't know," she whispered. "And of course you don't know what it does when you're asleep."

At that, he couldn't help but look at her, horrified.

A little smile stayed glued to her mouth as she made a gesture with her own hand, as if she was rubbing something small between
finger and thumb. Then more gestures, her hand gripping, then beckoning. When the miming hand touched his face, he jerked
away.

Once when he'd been almost drowsing he'd looked over to see something groping stealthily around the edge of the bedside table.
It was like suddenly finding a tarantula right next to his head. The scariest part was that it had stopped immediately, as
if it didn't want him to see.

So it did things while he was asleep, too.

He slid off the examining table, wanting to run out of the room. But he was still hooked up to the blood pressure machine.
Without two hands there was no way to take it off himself.

"We're
not
done with our examination, Tommy!" the nurse said commandingly.

He stopped tugging at the tubes, frightened by her tone, and stood as she released the rest of the pressure and ripped the
Velcro loose. Once she'd put it away, she clamped his wrist in her hard fingers and timed his pulse. Her eyebrows rose as
if his racing heart alarmed her.

She gazed at him for a long moment, then checked her clipboard.

"Okay. So, let's weigh you. Then let's go for a nice, long walk. Exercise will help you get your appetite back, we can't have
you losing so much weight. Would you like that?"

"Yes," he said readily. She'd probably ask him weird questions about his parents or about what supernatural stuff the other
kids talked about, like last time, almost as if she
wanted
to scare him. But being outside would be better than being in here alone with her.

They walked along the edge of the athletic fields, not far from the foot of the mesa. The sky had turned dull white and featureless,
dimming the sun. Tommy struggled to coordinate his legs and arms. He had a rising feeling of expectancy, as if there was another
person coming, or maybe was already silently walking with them and was about to do something. A third person, listening, even
more sneaky than the nurse.

"You know," Mrs. Pierce said, "sometimes it helps to talk about what frightens you. It can be therapeutic. Even if you have
angry feelings, talking about them can be what we call
cathartic.
"

"I know what 'cathartic' means!"

"Of course you do," she said soothingly. "You're a highly intelligent young man. You're smart enough to be nervous about all
this medical business, aren't you? The technology can be intimidating. But everyone feels the same way, believe me."

He nodded. There was some small relief in hearing that.

"Like what?" she persisted. "What's the worst? The MRI?" She glanced over at him expectantly.

He still didn't want to answer. But her question had made him think of the magazine in the cranial diagnostics waiting room.
He'd sat there in his hospital gown while they prepared the MRI and he'd picked it up, some kind of doctor's magazine, not
anything they should've let a patient see. He'd opened it to find an article about lobotomies.

The first photo showed a woman with her head in a clamp, a doctor putting a long, thin blade into her nose. Other pictures
illustrated how to hit the tool with a special hammer that drove the blade through the thin bones behind your sinus cavity,
right into your brain. It cut the connections, so the sick part just sat there, probably still doing its crazy thing but not
screwing up the rest of your mind. The article said the procedure had been mostly abandoned for twenty years but was now making
a big comeback. Sometimes people couldn't walk or talk or recognize their family afterward, but it was worth it if their brain
problems were really severe.

Whatever was the matter with him, he knew it was severe. So maybe that's what they'd end up doing to him.

Tommy felt panic coming and tried desperately to think of something reassuring. He told himself Dr. Tsosie and Mrs. McCarty
would help, they were very smart, they acted like they really did care about him. And maybe that new psychologist could do
something, she seemed like she understood things. But he hardly knew any of them, it was hard to trust them.

His back twisted, and though he willed himself straight it was like big invisible hands were wringing him, so hard he heard
his own backbone crackle. From the way she looked over at him, the nurse must have heard it, too.

He knew what it meant: The other person, the controlling stranger, was getting closer.

He had to unkink and calm himself. Find some safe place in his mind. His thoughts kept fleeing back to the family homesite,
the smell of the sheep pens, the familiar shape of the land, and most of all his grandparents.

Grandfather, particularly—he could do anything with his hands, he could make anything, he totally knew sheep and horses and
cars, he remembered everything from long ago, he could tell stories really well. What Tommy admired most was how deeply he
believed in helping people—he'd do anything for someone in need, give anything he owned. He'd never in his life complained
about his responsibilities. But he was old-fashioned and stuck in his habits and getting tired and weak. He was negative about
every change, even things like when they graded the county road, and was paranoid about white people, technology, the government.
He and Grandmother believed the old myths about First Man and First Woman, the Hero Twins, and Spider Woman, they saw the
world as full of mysterious things that required all this respect and doing things in very particular, pointless ways every
time. They were down on Tommy's choice of music and clothes and friends, frowned whenever he talked about his career ambitions,
asked suspiciously about the clan of any girl he mentioned. He loved them so much it hurt inside, and he knew how much he
owed them. But they couldn't offer any safety or reassurance now. And they shouldn't have to, he was fifteen, he should be
taking care of
them.

Sometimes he thought maybe he should confide in Mr. Clah, his social studies teacher, he was smart and seemed to know how
things worked. He wore khakis and carried a laptop computer, he did mountain biking and had a white lawyer girlfriend. He
treated Tommy like an equal. But though Tommy mostly agreed with his opinions, too often they sounded like complaining, making
excuses, and accusing. He wasn't strong the way Grandfather was. He'd never worked as hard as Grandfather, had never gotten
his hands dirty, didn't know what it meant to sacrifice for anybody. In any case, he didn't care enough about Tommy to help
him now.

As always, his thoughts spiraled back to his parents. If they were alive, maybe they'd know how to help. Maybe they'd figured
something out about how to live. They put up with Grandfather's Dinê heritage stuff but weren't particularly into it. Some
nights Tommy missed them, crying secretly into his pillow, but the more he missed them, the more he hated them for getting
themselves killed. They had no right to do that to him and the family! Once when he was obsessing about it last year, he'd
gone to the library and looked at some psychology books. He'd discovered that his attitude was typical: adolescent kid loving
but resenting dead parents, searching around for role models. Cliche or not, it was true: You had to know something about
your people or you couldn't know who you were. Especially right now, knowing who they were would help him sort out what he
was going through. But all he had was a collection of mental snapshots: roiling on the ground and wrestling with Father when
he was five or six, feeling safe against his strong chest, laughing at the silly way he pretended to fight. Mother teaching
him how to fry an egg when he was maybe four, proudly showing Aunt Ellen and everybody how incredibly big a mess he made of
the stove. Beyond that, all he knew was they liked country-and-western music, they fought a lot and drank too much. What he
remembered wasn't enough to help him figure out anything.