Stolen Grace (33 page)

d.) Possible sex addict—will want a man with her as soon as she can get one.

The stakes were higher than ever. He
had
to find Ruth. How he was going to trap the monster, he still wasn’t sure.

But once he did? He knew exactly what he’d do with her.

Grace

H
ardly had Grace woken up, when she smelled fumes and heard voices outside María’s little shack. The two little girls had curled up together on the bed the night before, alone, and fallen into a thick sleep. Grace had no idea what time it was but it was already light—the night had been eaten up, as if a great gobbling monster had come and munched up the dark. This place looked better in the dark. She heard rain outside. The curtain was blowing softly in the breeze, a smelly breeze that let in stinky whiffs of rotten cabbages and burning plastic. She knew that burning plastic smell because once, in Wyoming, a farmer had been burning paper potato bags lined with plastic, throwing them in with wood on a big bonfire, and her mom told her that even a little bit of burning plastic was dangerous to breathe. But it was everywhere here.

She opened her eyes wide and looked about the makeshift home. María was still asleep. Her mother was not there, nor her brother. Grace wondered how old María was. She’d asked her but María wasn’t sure. “About seven,” she guessed. But Grace thought she was younger because she wasn’t as tall as the seven-year-olds back home. She had a wide face with almost black eyes, and was darker than she was. And very pretty. María didn’t even know when her birthday was! Grace couldn’t imagine how that was possible.

She squeezed her teddy close and gave him a morning kiss. Today, she was determined to find the school. So what if she didn’t have a uniform? She needed to talk to a teacher. Maybe the teacher would know where The Boom was. Lucho might be worried about her. Not Hell O.D though. She was probably happy. And what about her dad? Where was he? Ruth said she was
working on it
. But now, not even Ruth knew where she was. Where would they have breakfast? The tourist girls had invited them to dinner but Grace was hungry now, and dinner was a long time to wait.

Outside, a motor was stopping and starting and she could hear boys shouting and laughing. She peeped outside the curtain and saw they had a piece of oily old machinery like a bit of the inside of a car. They pulled what looked like a string, stood back and waited for the engine to come alive. Whenever it did, they cheered and squealed. The rain was making puddles in the dirt. She looked down at her filthy, bloody feet.

María woke with a start. “What’s that clatter?” she asked sleepily, rubbing her eyes.

“The boys.”

“Why are boys always so noisy?”

“I want to go to school today,” Grace said in a strong voice.

“Forget school, we don’t have time.”

“I want to go to school!” Grace shouted. Before she knew it, her face was red, her eyes gushing determined tears. “I want my Mommy. I want to go to school,” she wailed stamping her bare feet.

“You said your mom was dead.”

“She’s alive!” Grace bellowed. “She’s in Heaven and she’s alive!”

“We can find the priest, then,” María suggested. “He runs the school. He can talk to you about your mom.”

“In the cardboard church?” Grace asked hopefully.

“Yes. He comes most days. He’s Italian. People give him money and he has a school and sometimes you can get hot meals there.”

“Why don’t
you
go to school, then?”

María shrugged her shoulders. “I have to work, to give money to my mom.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” María answered. “Sometimes she forgets to come home.”

Grace opened the curtain. The rain had stopped. She put one foot out of the shack and felt mud oozing and squidging between her toes.

“Where are you going?” María asked.

“To find the priest.”

“Wait for me, silly! I’ll show you where.”

THE CARDBOARD CHURCH was much bigger than Grace had imagined. In her mind’s eye, she’d pictured a doll’s house church, with the priest outside it, wearing a white and gold flowing robe like the Pope. She’d seen the Pope on TV. He wore a golden cross like hers, but his was a hundred times bigger and more important.

The cardboard church wasn’t like a doll’s house at all. It was way larger than a garden shed, and it was made of white and brown cardboard, like a patchwork. It was pretty, she decided. Some bits had red writing on it with names of things—of bananas or shops—but mostly the cardboard was pale brown, made in layers like fish scales, but square. Around the church, there was patchy grass, and instead of doors to the church, there were white curtains. Not like María’s curtains—these ones were clean as if they’d just been hung up to dry. She could even smell them; they smelled of soap and sunshine. In the garden part, there was a big, black, tractor tire surrounding a deep hole. Inside, it looked like a well for water, with a metal bucket attached to a chain. There was a rusty bicycle leaning against folds of turquoise plastic tarp, clipped up against one of the walls. Half of the church had a wavy tin roof, while the other half was cardboard like the walls, with plastic on top to protect it from the rain.

The girls tiptoed up to the entrance.

“Shush,” María said, “there’s someone inside.”

Grace remembered Ruth reminding her, over and over, that she was Catholic now. That she must be a good girl and that, one day, when she was twelve, she could have her First Communion and wear a dress like a princess. Grace twiddled the cross around her neck and mumbled . . . “six, seven, eight” . . . how many years until she turned twelve? “Nine, ten−”

“You’re rich,” María said, eyeing up her cross. “You have gold. You could sell that.”

“But that would be Blast Famous.” The Blast Famous part came out in English. Grace didn’t know how to translate that word into Spanish.

“You’re funny,” her friend said with a giggle. “You say silly things sometimes.”

A booming voice from inside rattled the cardboard walls. Grace wondered if the building would topple over. “Hello? Who’s out there?” A big fat woman opened a curtain and stood with her legs like tree trunks, planted firmly on the scrubby lawn.

The girls looked up. Grace noticed she was extra tall. She saw folds of fat making mountains and valleys, trapped behind a tight, white bra underneath the lady’s tight, white blouse. She had pale, foreign skin and although she spoke Spanish, she had a strange accent like karate chops.

“We came to see the priest,” María ventured.

“I want to go to school,” Grace added.

“Padre Marco isn’t here at the moment,’” Extra Tall said. The girls looked at each other. Grace felt her body go heavy and she held Hideous Amarillo close. “But,” said Extra Tall, “why don’t you come in and wait?”

The girls followed her inside. The church was huge, with a pointed ceiling and wooden beams holding everything together. Inside was a table and a few painted chairs. There was a calendar on the wall, bottles of mineral water, and even an iron. There was electricity, too, with wires plugged directly into sockets in the cardboard. Grace wondered if the cow she had seen the day before had been eating a piece of the church, if one of the bits of walls had flown off in a wind, and if that cow was Blast Famous because she was eating cardboard church pieces.

“Would you little girls like a drink and a cookie?” Extra Tall asked.

“Yes please,” they both shouted at once. Well, Grace didn’t hear the “please” bit from María, just the “yes” but the woman was happy with them because she was smiling. Grace was thirsty, her throat dry like a crispy autumn leaf.

Extra Tall poured out two cups of orange drink. Grace could smell the sweetness, even from where she was sitting. The woman put four cookies on a plate. Grace looked at María and saw her eyes widen, her pink tongue lick her lips like a little dog. “Here we go,” the woman said, and gave them each their drink and let them take their cookies. “So you want to go to Padre Marco’s school, do you?” she asked Grace.

“Yes.”

“You know you have to work hard and come every day. The uniforms are expensive and we can’t go round giving uniforms away to little girls who aren’t serious, who don’t come to school every day. Do you understand?” Grace nodded. “How old are you?” the big lady asked.

Because Grace was sitting down, she had to push her head all the way back and hold her neck high into the air to see the lady’s face. Her mom taught her that you must always look at someone when they are talking to you, especially grown-ups. “Five and three-quarters,” she answered softly.

“Usually we don’t accept children under six years old.”

“Maybe I
am
six, I can’t remember.”

“I’m seven,” María piped up, her mouth full of cookie.

“And you want to go to school, too?”

“If Adela goes, I go,” she said.

The lady turned her gaze to Grace. “Is your name Adela?”

Grace wasn’t sure. She nodded and took a bite out of her cookie, and squeezed Hideous against her chest.

“And what is your name?”

“María.”

Just then, a man, short and fat, breathed into the church. Grace could hear him wheezing like her friend back home who had asthma, except this man’s wheezing was a hundred times louder. He was almost bald, except for a thin sweep of hair that was combed across his shiny round head, which reached just to the shoulders of Extra Tall.

“Padre Marco, I have two new, potential students,” she said.

“Excellent,” he wheezed, sucking in the air. “Excellent.” He had an accent, too, but different from the lady’s. It sounded like a song. But he didn’t look like the Pope, at all. He had regular man’s clothes, not a flowing robe. But he did wear a white collar around his neck. The rest of him was black. Not his skin. His skin was pale, with a face the color of an almost ripe strawberry. But his arms were milky white.

“I gave them some cookies and a drink.”

“But that’s not enough!” he exclaimed, coughing now. The wheeze had got all excited. “They need a hot meal! Would you like a proper lunch, girls?”

Grace thought María’s eyes would pop right out of her head. María turned to her and whispered, “Those horrid boys said we had to be careful of him but I think he’s nice.”

“But you have to promise you’ll attend school every day,” the priest said slowly. “And be good girls. Huh?”

Grace managed to say, “What about our uniforms?”

“All in good time. All in good time.” And he added, “Can you rustle up some
gallo pinto
, Helga? Something tasty? Meanwhile, I have some books to show you, girls.” He brought out some pretty books with big, colored illustrations. Grace turned a page—Jesus feeding the five thousand with two little fish and five loaves of bread.
Where was Jesus now?
she wondered. He was never around when you needed him.

“Helga,” the priest continued, “I think it would be a good idea to bathe these little girls, huh? Scrub their scalps clean, get out all the nastiness, the creepy crawlies, especially the older one with long hair. “Hey girls, would you like to be bathed with hot, soapy water?”

They nodded.

“In fact, give them their bath now. They can eat afterwards. I need them cleansed.”

“Come on little ones,” Extra Tall Helga said. She took them each by the hand and led them outside, behind the church. There was a big, enormous witches’ cauldron bubbling away on a small bonfire. Grace pulled back. Was this woman going to throw her into the pot and mix her up with slugs and snails and puppy dog’s tails? “What’s wrong,” the woman asked in a cross Dragon Voice. “Don’t you want to be
clean
? Padre Marco doesn’t like dirty children. If you want your uniform, Adela, you have to be bathed first. Now, sit on these stools and wait, like good little girls.”

Extra Tall Helga placed them each on a very low, plastic stool. Grace’s one was red, María’s blue. They watched her, their eyes following her every movement. She went back into the church and when she returned, she had two big plastic buckets. Then she walked around the side and they could hear her drawing water from the well, the chain clanking, the water splashing. Then she came round to the witches’ cauldron, and with a big soup ladle scooped out boiling water, adding it to the well water in the buckets. When she was done, she put her hand inside each one to test. “Das ist gut,” she mumbled to herself. She rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse which had patches of sweat, like maps of the world, under the arms. She took out a small metal container from her pocket and opened it up. There was a bar of soap inside.

“Now girls, take off your clothes.”

They both obeyed. Grace pulled off her mucky shirt and climbed out of her shorts which were stiff with dirt. María stood up and stepped out of her skirt. She pulled her T-shirt, way too big for her, over her head. She was not wearing any underpants. Grace sat there, still in her white cotton panties.

“Off with those,” Extra Tall Helga barked. Grace took them off. The woman snatched them and turned them over in her giant hands. “These are new,” she said, surprised. She grabbed Hideous Amarillo out of Grace’s grip, and before Grace knew it, the woman had plunged him and all their clothing into the bubbling, boiling cauldron.

Grace started to howl. She could feel Hideous burning as if it were her own body. “He’s dying!” she screamed, running over to save him. But before she could do anything, Extra-Tall-Helga-Dragon had Grace’s windmill arms caught in a tight vice as the little child thrashed about, trying to jiggle and slip beneath her torturer. “He’s boiling alive!”

“Hold still!” the woman shouted, “or I’ll have to slap you! I will take the teddy bear out but you have to promise to remain still, or we could all have a very nasty accident indeed!”

“What is going on here?” It was Padre Marco, shuffling around from the side of the church.

“This little girl is impossible! She’s screaming because I am trying to sterilize her teddy bear. It must be riddled with germs, crawling alive with eggs and lice and filth.”