Read St. Clair (Gives Light Series) Online
Authors: Rose Christo
pleasant shudder trailed its way up my spine. I
kissed him harder; I seized the zipper of his jacket
and pulled it down.
He pulled back.
I laid my hand on his shoulder, concerned. Had I
read him wrong? I'd thought he wanted--
"I don't know what to do," Rafael said.
Oh, I thought. And when I really thought about it--
we were both boys. Dad hadn't included boys in
his severely awkward "When You Become a Man"
speech five years ago.
Tentatively, I tugged his jacket down his
shoulders. I reached for the hem of his shirt. He
didn't take his eyes off mine; and consequently, I
couldn't look away.
"Do you know what you're doing?"
I tilted my hand.
Sort of.
"How?" he blurted out, frantic.
I frowned at him. I squeezed his shoulder. I didn't
mind if he wanted to stop--I just wanted him to
calm down.
"I mean--I've never had another--you're the first
person I've ever--"
I pressed my finger to his lips.
Calm down. It's
okay.
Rafael went on looking at me, flustered, eyes
earnest and blue.
I took my hands away and signed to him slowly.
I've done this before. Just not with a guy.
Rafael's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "I
didn't know you liked girls. I mean. Like that."
I don't.
Rafael hesitated. "So, like...it was a mistake?"
I shrugged and smiled.
I guess so.
"It wasn't a mistake?"
I rubbed my forehead--not with annoyance; nothing
about Rafael could possibly annoy me. It's just
that I was starting to feel the onset of a headache. I
hate when you've got this concept sitting in your
head, but you don't know how to put it in words,
and even if you know the words, you can't say
them.
It was a mistake, yeah.
Rafael scrutinized me silently, chewing on the
inside of his mouth. I couldn't tell what was going
through his head. I didn't have his crazy mind-
reading powers.
"When did you..."
Eleven years ago.
Rafael looked at me. And I saw his eyes dilating,
but slowly. And I suddenly felt that whatever was
going through his head, I didn't want to know it.
"Who--I mean--tell me about it," he said. His
voice was firm, but I couldn't help noticing his
stammer.
Eleven years ago
, I signed slowly. I didn't think
Rafael knew enough sign language for a
conversation like this. I knew he knew the ASL
alphabet. I decided I'd just fingerspell any word I
thought he was unfamiliar with.
After your dad--
I started again. I didn't want to bring Rafael's
father into this.
A year after Mom died, Dad
signed me up for therapy.
He nodded, to show that he was following.
The problem is, I didn't know any sign language
back then. So I had no way of talking to anyone.
The poor psychiatrist who got saddled with me
just didn't know what to do with me. After a
while, she started bringing in dolls. That was
nice. We played house. I really wanted to play
action heroes, but she's a girl. You can't make a
girl play action heroes if she doesn't want to.
"Yeah, they suck like that," Rafael murmured. "Go
on."
I rubbed my right hand.
We played dolls together
for a couple of weeks. You know, they were these
anatomically correct dolls--the creepy ones cops
sometimes use when they're interviewing kids.
Anyway, one day she said--'Watch me.' She
undressed the guy doll. She said, 'Have you ever
been touched right here?' I shook my head. So
she said, 'Would you like to be?'
I stopped signing when I realized Rafael wasn't
looking at me anymore. I touched his shoulder
again, worried. He jumped like a livewire.
Are you okay?
"I shouldn't be here."
My heart plummeted. I shouldn't have told him, I
thought.
"I should have never--you should have--just--what
the hell?" he said shakily. "Why didn't you push
me away? I didn't know!"
I don't like girls. I promise. You're being kind of
ridiculous.
"You don't get it, do you?"
Helplessly, I shook my head. I glanced warily at
the door. I was afraid Rafael was going to wake
my dad.
"Does your dad--did he know about it?"
I stared blankly. How could I have told him?
Rafael dropped his head into his hands. I reached
for his shoulder a third time. He jumped a second
time.
"I've gotta go," Rafael muttered.
He pushed the window open and swung his leg
through. I tried to kiss his cheek--the same as
every night--but he slipped right past me. He
gripped the side of the log cabin and lowered
himself to the ground.
I pulled the window shut. I turned off my lamp. I
couldn't bear to watch Rafael walk home.
This was shaping up to be a pretty crappy summer.
It was pandemonium in Annie's house the
following morning.
"I
hate
you!" Lila Little Hawk screamed. She was
Annie's little sister, a twelve-year-old. She was
my favorite little brat. But I hardly recognized her
with the tantrum she was throwing. She stomped
out of the kitchen and into her bedroom, where I
heard the door bang shut.
Annie rolled her eyes and kneaded her hands
through a bowl of wojapi.
I touched Annie's shoulder.
Is everything okay?
I
asked.
"Oh, it's fine. Lila's just going through the change
is all."
The change?
"You know."
Oh
, I said, embarrassed.
That change.
"Yes, that change," Annie said placidly. "We're
building her isolation tent tonight. Of course, she
doesn't want to go."
I thought about Rafael. He'd wanted to know for
the longest time what went on in the women's
isolation tents. He'd tried sneaking into one when
he was a little boy, only for the elders to throw
him out.
"Don't let that corn burn, Skylar. We're grilling it,
not blackening it."
Quickly, I took the pan off of the wood-coal
burner. I took the lemon juice out of the icebox.
"Are
you
okay? You don't usually stare off into
space like that."
Just daydreaming about the change
, I joked. I
couldn't very well tell her that I was feeling
pensive because Rafael didn't want to sleep with
me. The Shoshone have unspoken rules about
those kinds of things, and a conversation of that
caliber breaks about a thousand of them.
"You're a terrible liar, but alright. Can you hand
me that pot?"
It was ten in the morning when we had finished
cooking. We set the corn and the wojapi aside to
be warmed again in the evening. Annie and I went
outside her house to wash our hands at the water
pump. Annie's little brother, Joseph, was playing
on the rope swing with their grandfather, a round-
bellied, ruddy-faced man who was as insouciant as
he was friendly.
"Hello there, Nancy Boy!" Grandpa Little Hawk
greeted me. That's what I'm talking about.
Dad at the lake
, Joseph signed.
I smiled at him.
Excited for the raft race?
Joseph blushed and hid behind the curtains of his
long brown hair.
Dad and Annie and me.
Can't Lila play, too?
Annie signed, suppressing
the faint smile on her lips.
Joseph shook his head emphatically.
Scaring me.
Another child lost to hormones. It was a real
tragedy.
I checked my wristwatch. I was due at the radio
tower with Morgan Stout. I waved goodbye to the
Little Hawk family and followed the beaten path
through the woods.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't keep my eyes peeled
for any sight of Balto. But of course I didn't see
him; you almost never spot a coywolf unless he
wants to be seen. I walked the path to the lake, a
touch disappointed, where the men were sitting in
their fishing boats, dipping their nets into the
crystalline water. I spotted Dad on the water with
Mr. At Dawn and waved to him. I walked the
edge of the lake to the latticed radio tower and the
tiny studio underneath.
Morgan Stout was already waiting outside the
building for me. "Hello, Mr. St. Clair," he said. A
soulful, solemn, dark-eyed little boy, he was the
same age as Lila, and her best friend, too--
provided that she was in a good mood. His auburn
hair came from his grandmother, an Irish woman.
"Um, there's a problem..."
I tilted my head.
"Well, I was waiting out here for you, and then
Miss Gives Light came up out of nowhere, and--"
He didn't need to say another word. I took him by
the hand and led him into the sound studio.
The little studio was one room, square, with
carpeted walls and a drop ceiling to absorb
sound. The little old lady who controlled the
airwaves, Martha Grace, looked up at us, then at
the glass partition, perplexed. I saw why.
I don't know how better to describe Rafael's big
sister than hell on legs. She was twenty, her
makeup shockingly neon, her hair teased to
scandalous heights, and she didn't own an article
of clothing in any color besides purple or black.
The problem wasn't really the way she dressed. It
was the way she scared the living daylights out of
you just by virtue of being--well--her. She was
brash, vulgar, irreverent, opinionated, and
probably the most fearless person on the planet. I
kind of idolized her.
She was standing behind the glass partition,
plugging her bass guitar into an amplifier.
I picked up Morgan's hand and led him through the
door to the sound room. Mary looked up at the
two of us and grinned. She set her bass down and
pulled us into crushing hugs.
"My little buddies!"
Ow
, I mouthed against her bony shoulder.
"Um, hello..."
Mary let go of the two of us and started tuning her
bass.
I felt myself in an odd position. Because, of
course, this was a Plains music station, and a bass
guitar wasn't a Plains instrument. But I had no way
of conveying that to Mary; she didn't know sign
language. I looked sideways at Morgan.
"Miss," Morgan started, "we're supposed to be
recording now, and..."
"Great! What are we playing?"
"Um...Enchanted Canyons," said Morgan, defeated.
"So start already, brat."
We picked up our plains flutes. Morgan started--I
could tell he was reluctant--and I joined in on the
second verse. Then Mary jumped in, surprising
me. The bass line, heavy, deep, added a new
dimension to an old song. I checked the console to
make sure we were recording.
Mary stifled a long yawn when we had finished.
Morgan looked through the hand-written catalogue
for songs we hadn't played before.
"Guess what?" Mary said to me. She bared her
teeth in a devilish grin. "Rosa's knocked up!
Found out just this morning. We're gonna add a
nursery to the house."
I didn't know whether to laugh or start clapping. I
settled for both. Gabriel and Rosa were having a
baby? They must have been really excited, I
thought.
"I'm gonna have another baby brother! Or sister.
Sister? God, I hope it's not a girl. Boys are easier
to push around."
There's no word for "cousin" in the Shoshone
language. Traditionally, Shoshone consider their
cousins to be their brothers and sisters. In fact, the
word for "uncle,"
atapu
, literally means "little
father." To an outsider, a Shoshone family can get
really confusing, and fast.
Morgan and Mary and I left the recording studio
around noon; I waved to Mrs. Grace and she
beamed at us while we walked out into the fresh
air. A few yards away the In Winter kids were
playing tag, skirting the shallow lakeshore.