Looks Over(Gives Light Series) (29 page)

You're right here, I thought, but I can't talk to you.  There are a million things I've never said to you.  I'll never say them.

"Does anyone have a pen?" Dad asked.  "Some paper?"

Mr. Little Hawk shook his head slowly, stupefied.  Mr. Black Day bent his head and ran his hand through the back of his hair.

"Come on," Dad said gently.

Balto and I followed Dad home.  Dad took a notepad and a pencil out of the computer desk and handed them both to me.  I wrote quickly and handed him the pad.

How many birth certificates do I have?

I watched Dad's eyes void themselves of expression and knew he was deep within the semantics of his thoughts.

"Two," he finally said, setting the pad aside.

I showed him my bewilderment. 

"Your mother and I weren't married when she gave birth to you," he explained.  "So my name's not on the original birth certificate.  Once we married, we had a new birth certificate made up.  The old one was sealed."

That didn't make sense at all.  If Dad was my father, why hadn't Mom put his name on the birth certificate to begin with? 

And then I thought:  Oh.

And I looked at Dad, and I suddenly felt really, really sick--a stranger in my own skin--and he looked back at me, a stranger in familiar clothing, and didn't try to deny it.

"Skylar," he said.

I backed up until I felt the door behind me.  It was a knee-jerk reaction.

"It's not like that," Dad went on, his voice strained, advancing.  "It's not like that at all.  Please calm down, I'll explain--"

No, he wouldn't.  I laughed bitterly, soundlessly.  Explaining was the last thing anyone in this family liked to do.

"I don't know what you're thinking," Dad said.  In all the years that I'd known him, it was the first time he sounded afraid.  "Please tell me what you're thinking."

How? 

Dad mopped his face with his hands.  His face had always reminded me of a sad, flightless hawk's.  Now it looked anguished, like he was trapped in a prison cell, serving another man's sentence.  In a way, I guess he was.

"Don't blame your mother," Dad said.  "It was a long time ago..."

Blame her?

"She was very young.  Young people don't always know what they want."

I didn't understand.  I didn't understand any of this.

Dad looked me in the eye, much as I thought it pained him to.  "I didn't know," he said.  "That she was seeing...  She waited until you were five to tell me you weren't mine.  That's why we were living separately when she...when you were hurt."

Oh.

Oh.
  I wasn't just someone else's bastard.  Mom had actually cheated on him.

I thought:  I guess I don't have Dad's nose after all.

I slid against the door and sat on the wooden floorboards.  Dad mopped his face again and knelt on the floor.  Balto paced around the room, no doubt picking up on the tension between us.

"If you want me to find your real father," Dad said, very slowly, eyes downcast, "then I will.  I'll try my best.  I don't know him.  I know they met in college."

I wanted to scream at him: 
You're my real father.

"Go ahead," Dad said quietly.  "Scream if you have to."

I looked at him like he was crazy.  Ironically enough, I felt like I was crazy.

So I opened my mouth and screamed.

I could feel the rough air burning my throat.  I could feel my clipped nails digging into my palms.  And I could hear the silence pouring out of my mouth--deafening--pathetic.  I couldn't even scream.

I buried my face against my knees.  I wrapped my arms tightly around my legs.  I don't know what I was trying to do.  I know I wasn't thinking straight.

I heard a soft thump as Dad sat at my side.  He put his arm around me and I felt small.  Small and sick.  I wasn't his son.  He didn't owe me comfort.  He didn't owe me anything.  He didn't have to raise me.  Why did he raise me? 

Dad laughed without any humor.  "I loved that woman," he said.  "Even when she was ripping my heart out."

I didn't have to wonder anymore why Dad always looked somber.

I felt the door budge and bump against my spine.  Half-aware, I moved over on the floor.  Dad stood up.  The door swung open, cool, early evening air rushing into the front room.

"Whatcha doing on the floor, Sky-lark?" Zeke greeted jovially.

I smiled at him.  I didn't know what else to do.

"Cubby..."

I rose and reached for Dad's hand.  I took it and squeezed it; but I didn't look at him.  I felt like the impostor who had murdered his real son and usurped his face and name.  I had to get away.  I couldn't get away.  I'd yet to devise a solid strategy for escaping myself.

My legs carried me out the door.  My legs felt like they belonged to someone else's body.  There was somewhere I was supposed to be right now, wasn't there?  I couldn't remember where.  I walked indiscriminately, my chest aching.

I wasn't entirely surprised to find myself standing in front of the graveyard.

Mindlessly, I pushed through the gates.  I went straight to the last few rows of headstones.  I knew where my mom's grave was.  I had visited it plenty of times over the summer.

I sat on the dry ground in front of her grave.  I read her epitaph for the millionth time.

"Christine St. Clair.  1962 - 1989.  Mother and friend."

Mother and friend.

The hollow aching in my chest exploded. 

It was stupid of me.  I know it was.

My hand balled into a fist.  My teeth ground together, pain inching up my jawline.

I punched the epitaph.

The pain splitting through my knuckles was catharsis.  It hurt so bad, but at least it was real, and I wasn't real, and I punched the smooth stone again and again.  I smashed my fist against my mother's name.  I heard the crunching and cracking of bone on stone.  It hurt.  It hurt so bad.  I thought:  You hurt my father.  You deserve to hurt, too.  I didn't know which of us I was addressing.

I leaned back, my hand prickling with alternating numbness and pain.  I looked at the blood on Mom's epitaph, the rivulets streaked across her name.  And I realized--

Mom was dead.  She didn't care that I thought I hated her, in that moment, or that she had humiliated her husband by making him raise someone else's kid.  She couldn't care.  She was dead.  The only person I was hurting was me.

I wouldn't have wanted to hurt her, anyway.

The numbness coursing through my knuckles dissipated, only pain left in its wake.  Instantly, the pain intensified, ringing through my knuckles and fingers, swimming hotly in the veins in my wrist.  Just the sight of my knuckles was nauseating.  The skin had burst open in a bloody mess; the bones beneath had collapsed and sunk in.  My fingers were still curled.  I tried to uncurl them and they resisted, excruciating.  Involuntary tears bit my eyes; to my credit, they never fell.  I bit my tongue and tasted blood welling up under my teeth, blinded by crashing waves of pain.

I thought:  Great job, genius.  You broke your hand.

The blood spilling from my right hand, fresh and stark, mesmerized me.  All this blood, and not a drop of it was Dad's.  I wasn't my father's son.

I wasn't even Shoshone.

I cleaned my hand at the water pump behind the church.  I didn't want Dad to know what a stupid thing I'd done.  The blood rinsed weakly off of my skin, the running water stinging and cold.  I still couldn't unfold my fist, and the knuckles looked deformed, but as long as I kept my hand at my side, maybe Dad wouldn't notice.  Dad, who wasn't my dad.  Dad, whom I'd betrayed just by being born.  I'm sorry, Dad, I thought.  I'm so sorry.

I wished I'd never asked him about those birth certificates.

I looked up at the late afternoon sky, shades of blue losing their saturation as the sun wandered west.  Rafael, I remembered.  I was supposed to go to Rafael's house hours ago.

It was in a dreamlike state that I traveled north through the reservation.  The badlands opened up before me, breathy and blue-gray, milk-white clouds blanketing the canyons.  I stopped, for a moment, to watch the view.  I loved that view; but now I felt like I was looking at it with someone else's eyes, someone who didn't know how to appreciate it.

"The hell took you so long?"

Rafael came out of the house beneath the southern oak tree.  He walked toward me, and I smiled, an automatic response.  His face went slack with dread.

"What happened?" he said.  "You're white as a sheet."

I shook my head; but it wasn't enough to dissuade him.  "Is that blood on your shirt?" he said.  "Where are you bleeding?"  An expression like a dangerous rainstorm passed over his face.  "Who hit you?"

Suddenly I felt tired, like I could go to sleep and stay there for months.  I considered turning around and walking home.  No, I thought.  Home is the last place I want to be right now.

"What the hell did you do to your hand?"

Rafael didn't wait for an answer.  He took me by my good hand and led me into his house.

Gabriel and Mary were both in the sitting room, Mary idly plucking the strings of an acoustic guitar.  Gabriel looked up from the book he was reading and smiled at me.  I'd only just smiled back when Rafael abruptly dragged me into the kitchen.

I'd never been in the Gives Lights' kitchen before, as funny as that might sound.  The counters were granite and the walls were the color of packing straw.  It was humid in there, the sluggish ceiling fan pushing the same old warm air around in circles.  A large array of potted herbs stood between the refrigerator and the walk-in pantry, with the result that the whole room smelled strongly of yaupon and sage.

Rosa stood at the stove in her hospital scrubs and stirred a pot of rosemary elk stew.

"Rosa?"

Rosa spun around calmly.  By magnetism--maybe nurses are just hard-wired to zoom in on people's injuries--her eyes landed on my mangled hand.  Her forehead puckered in a frown.

"Don't tell Uncle Gabe, okay?"

Rosa's forehead smoothed.  She set aside her apron and put the lid on the simmering pot.

"Sit," she said.

Rafael pulled out a chair for me, and we sat at the island in the middle of the kitchen.  Rosa pulled open a drawer and took out a pair of scissors.  She unearthed a roll of gauze from underneath the kitchen sink.  She knelt by the potted herbs and cut the hard, woody stems from the rosemary plants.  She ran the faucet and washed and cut the wood into long strips.

She reached across the island, took my hand, and forced it flat.

The pain was agonizing.  I squeezed my eyes shut and mouthed a curse.  Rosa stuffed a piece of gauze into my open mouth and I bit down, hard.  She massaged my palm--incredibly, even that hurt--and pressed a block of wrapped ice to my knuckles, I guess for the swelling.  God, did it hurt.  It came as a relief when she eventually took the ice away--but then she spread my fingers and slotted the wooden splints between them, and my vision swam in an unpleasant kaleidoscope of dark colors.  Finally she wrapped my whole hand in tight, burning gauze.  I was glad I couldn't scream.

Rafael's hand was against my back, soothing, open and broad.

"She's done," he said.  "It's okay, Sky."

I spat the gauze into my open palm.  I wrenched my eyes open.  Rosa was at the stove again, her back to us, her spoon in the pot of stew.  Amazing, I thought.  It was like she hadn't even done anything.

Apprehensively, I inspected my fractured hand.  Wrapped and stiff, it looked alien.  The pain, surprisingly, had already started to dull.

"So what happened?"

I looked at Rafael, wondering if I should try sign language or ask him for a book to write in.  It hit me:  I couldn't do either.  My hand was broken.  I couldn't sign with it.  I couldn't write.  I couldn't even play the plains flute.  There was no way for me to communicate with anyone.

Man, was I an idiot.

Rafael grabbed my shoulder.  His grip was a little hard, but I don't think he was aware of it.

"Did you fight with someone?"

I shook my head.

"You argue with your family?"

I hesitated.

"Yeah, you did," Rafael said.  "Don't lie."

I smiled dryly.

"You'll get over it," he said.  "I know that sounds rich, coming from me.  But they're your family, right?  Even when you rail at each other, you're still family."

I looked at him.  He couldn't possibly know how close to home he'd hit.  Or maybe he could.  Why was it that his thoughts were always in tune with mine?  There was something there, and I didn't know what it was.  I didn't have a word for it.  Just something.

I kissed Rafael's cheek.  He watched me closely when I pulled back, no doubt culling the unspoken thoughts from my head.  He lifted his hand; he faltered; he sank his fingers into my curls.  He ran his hand through my hair, his fingertips softly grazing my scalp.