Saffire (4 page)

“Either.”

“Both.” Over the years, doctors had informed me that if I allowed them to break my nose again, they could set it straight.

The girl cocked her head. “I don't know much about love. But you are right about justice, that's certain. I want justice, but I can't get people to see it my way. Every week I sit here and every week when it's my turn, Colonel Goethals won't listen to me. But I'm going to keep coming back until I wear him out or he sends someone to look.”

Before I could ask who or what needed to be looked at, the woman on the other side interjected.

“I wouldn't bother explaining much to the girl.” This was Mrs. Penny. In her screechy voice, she had already complained to me four times about holes in her screens in her apartment and how the ICC—Isthmus Canal Commission—was trying to make her pay for new screens.

Mrs. Penny was skinny and middle-aged, in a Sunday church dress, wearing a scarf over bleached blond hair. She had her hands on her knees and stains of nicotine on her well-chewed fingernails. She was jittery, as if she needed her next cigarette.

Mrs. Penny continued. “It's plain to see the girl is a mulatto. Her mother cleans rooms, I bet. The girl might not even know her father. I'd say she just likes to put on airs in front of strangers, trying to tell people how to spell her name and then talking about books like she can actually read.”

The girl gave the woman a silent stare. Saffire's eyes were almost emerald green, a startlingly beautiful genetic aberration in a face with skin color that showed the mix of two races. A face that held a promise of the woman this girl would become. I couldn't help but think about one of the fairy tales that Winona liked for me to read at bedtime, about the duckling that became a swan.

I raised an eyebrow in Saffire's direction, then nudged the book on my thigh toward her. I wanted to give her a chance, without putting her in a position of embarrassment, in case the shrew with the irritating voice was correct.

Saffire immediately caught on.

“I noticed you asleep for a while right here on the bench,” Saffire said. “You probably still have tired eyes, Mister. Maybe I can help.”

The girl had street smarts. She didn't want to dignify Mrs. Penny's insult by appearing to directly accept the challenge, but she wasn't going to let it go either.

She took the book from me and flipped past the title pages until she found her place. Then she began reading aloud at the beginning. “Some notable sight was drawing the passengers, both men and women, to the window; and therefore I rose and crossed the car to see what it was.”

I'd traveled plenty and was unfamiliar with her type of accent. It had an echo of British formality, but with softened cadence. There was rhythm and poetry in her voice.

At her pause, I smiled. “I like how you read.”

Saffire's disdain of Mrs. Penny was so honest she didn't even give the woman a look of triumph.

“And a good beginning, right?” I continued. “Makes you curious as to what was drawing them to the window of the train.”

She didn't answer my question about whether the beginning was good, because she was already engrossed in the next paragraphs, silently absorbing the story.

I understood that kind of rapture. I leaned down and pulled out another novel, this edition used so there wouldn't be that satisfaction of a spine crack.
The Game.
Jack London. About a twenty-year-old boxer named Joe. I knew from reviews that it didn't end well for Joe. I preferred stories with happy endings but was a London fan and was prepared to make an exception.
The Call of the Wild
and
White Fang.
Great stories.

“A mulatto shouldn't try to reach above her class,” Mrs. Penny said, probably in a huff at being ignored and in another huff because Saffire had proven her wrong. “Next thing you know, the silver-dollar people will start wanting to get paid in gold. Here she is taking up a turn when good folks need to see the colonel.”

Mrs. Penny crossed her arms and set her jaw with self-righteous satisfaction and spat out one more word. “Mu
latto.
”

Saffire glanced at Mrs. Penny, then back at the book. I was in the middle, and I saw enough in that brief glance to understand that Mrs. Penny's poison dart had stung the girl.

Mulatto. Mule. Hybrid cross between horse and donkey. The girl beside me was not a mule. The girl was a girl. She had her own hopes and dreams, like Winona had hopes and dreams. Not long, I told myself, then I'd be able to begin the journey home, where I could again sit at my daughter's bedside every evening and read to her until she fell asleep.

Mulatto.

I couldn't get that word out of my head.

Mulatto.

Half-breed.

I reminded myself that once you start to defend someone, it's difficult to find a place to stop.

But I went ahead and took that first step anyway.

“M
a'am,” I said to Mrs. Penny, acting on a hunch. I pulled out a third novel and offered it to her. “I don't mind sharing all around.
A Room with a View.
Just out last year. Story takes place in Italy. You might like it, and with appointments here moving so slowly, looks like we'll be waiting awhile.”

Mrs. Penny's lips tightened even more, and I restrained a smile. I was correct.

I pushed the book closer.

“Please don't trouble yourself,” she said.

“No trouble at all.” Yes, it was petty. I didn't care. “Try the first few pages. Let me know what you think.”

The girl had stopped reading and was watching Mrs. Penny closely. Maybe she had the same hunch as I.

Given no choice, Mrs. Penny accepted the book.

“Lady,” the girl said. “Want to read us the first page out loud? Maybe it's as good as the one I have.”

Was that question posed innocently or as a challenge? If as a challenge, there was a nice devilish part to the girl that added to my immediate affection for her.

“It probably isn't a story suitable for children,” Mrs. Penny said.

“Ma'am,” I said, “go ahead. I'm sure if you find any offensive words, you would keep them to yourself as you read to us.”

Mrs. Penny left the book unopened. “She obviously has her own book. I'd advise her to stay with it.”

“Of course.” I nodded to Mrs. Penny. “Just go ahead and enjoy it on your own to pass some time here.” It gave me great satisfaction to observe Mrs. Penny's eyes as she pretended to scan the first few pages.

A minute later, Mrs. Penny handed the book back to me. “I find this to be boring.”

I flipped to the opening words of the novel and read in silence.

“The Signora had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!”

“Strange”—I tapped the page—“when something begins like this, with a sword fight between two noblemen, I'm immediately drawn by the action.”

“Not me,” Mrs. Penny said. “I don't need cheap trash like that to hold my attention. That's exactly why I put it down.”

“Of course.” I set the book back onto my lap along with my copy of
The Game.

“Sword fight?” Saffire said.

I winked as I handed her the book. For some reason, I wanted to see how she would react when she found out that Mrs. Penny was a pitiful illiterate woman lashing out at the world. I was ready to silence Saffire with a shake of the head if needed. One public humiliation didn't deserve another in return.

Saffire read the opening words and lifted her eyes to me, giving me a smile that made me feel like a knight in a King Arthur story.

“Sword fight.” Saffire gave me a return wink. “I might like this too.”

“Not me,” Mrs. Penny repeated. “Trash.”

“Stick with
The Virginian,
” I told Saffire. “Soon enough you might discover outlaws and shootouts.”

Her eyes widened.

“In fact, how about you keep that book as a gift from me?”

“My
tito
would love that,” Saffire said. “Perhaps you could inscribe the inside of the book for him and for me?”

“Tito?”

“
Grandfather
in Spanish. Well, actually,
abuelito.
But I like to call him Tito. Spanish is his first language, but not mine. He's the one who sent me to school and made sure I could read in both languages. He'll like a story with outlaws and shootouts. As for me, when I am around him, I sometimes stop worrying about what has happened to my mother.”

I sensed that Saffire had again offered an opening, if I wanted to take it, to ask more about her, about why she was waiting for an audience with Colonel Goethals and why she expected to be sent away yet again when her name was called.

Sensing her trust, I toyed with the idea of taking the girl into my meeting with Colonel Goethals. Given that there was no higher American authority than the man who had sent me, I had the leverage to make Goethals listen to Saffire's story first—whatever the story was.

But the girl's story was not my business. Besides, Goethals probably knew the girl's story already. Therefore, either the story wasn't worth listening to or, if it was, Goethals didn't care or couldn't do anything about it.

Instead of asking questions about the girl's mother, I slid my journal from my valise and pulled the pencil out from the coils of the journal. It was here I recorded all the things I thought Winona would like to hear about on my return. On the steamship tonight, I'd write a description of Saffire and Mrs. Penny and how Saffire had shown a high degree of class by playing along. Winona would like the story. She would like Saffire.

I used the pencil to spell
Saffire
in the front pages of the book for her, two
f'
s, no
p
or
h.
I saw that my attention to the correct spelling gave her satisfaction.

“My mother gave me the name Safrana,” she said. “But nobody remembers when I was called anything but Saffire. I decided to spell it the pretty way, not the way that the jewel is spelled. A
p
and an
h
is a silly way to spell the
f
sound. I think the people who invented the dictionary could have been more sensible about how to spell words. Like
colonel.
Do you see an
r
anywhere in that word in the dictionary?”

I touched my knee.

“Yup,” Saffire said. “In my dictionary that part of your leg would be spelled
n-e-e.
”

We traded smiles.

“And your grandfather's name?”

“He's not my real grandfather, but he's just like a grandfather to me. Ezequiel Sandoval. He has always helped me and my mother.”

She spelled out Ezequiel's first name and his surname.

During my exile years, show after show, I had signed thousands of souvenir leaflets for
Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World.
As I signed this novel, I forced myself not to use the automatic flourish in my signature that I once used with such misplaced pride.

James Holt.

I dated the inscription.
Sunday, January 10, 1909.

I gave Saffire the book, and she accepted it gravely, as if the gift was a great honor. Then she opened it and immersed herself in the story again.

I doubted Mrs. Penny would bother us anymore.

So I began reading
The Game
and stayed inside the story until Billy May told Saffire that Colonel Goethals would not see her and that since Mr. Holt was the next person in line, it was time for Mr. Holt to have an audience with the colonel.

She would not be dismissed that easily and asked, “Did the colonel read the note I left for him last week? He's the only person who can help me.”

“I have no answer for you,” Billy May said.

“Then tell him I am going to keep coming back until I hear his answer. And if I don't get an answer soon, tell him I meant what I put in the note.”

Twenty minutes, I told myself as I stood to walk past Saffire, who said nothing to me.

Twenty minutes. At most, that was all it would take to turn down whatever Goethals asked me to do and for me to begin my journey home.