one, even when he gripped her arm and there was also her sweater between
them, the contact made her belly quiver so badly that she thought she
was going to vomit, but she fought that urge because, with the gag in
her mouth, she would choke to death on her own regurgitation.
Through ten years of adversity, Regina had developed lots of tricks to
get her through bad times. There was the think of something-worse
trick, where she endured by imagining what more terrible circumstances
might befall her than those in which she actually found herself Like
thinking of eating dead mice dipped in chocolate when she felt sorry for
herself about having to eat lime Jelly with peaches. Like thinking
about being blind on top of her other disabilities. After the awful
shock of being rejected during her first trial adoption with the
Dotterfields, she had often spent hours with her eyes closed to show
herself what she might have suffered if her eyes had been as faulty as
her right arm. But the think of something-worse trick wasn’t working
now because she couldn’t think of anything worse than being where she
was, with this stranger dressed all in black and wearing sung at night,
calling her “baby” and “precious.” None of her other tricks were
working, either.
As he pulled her impatiently across the lagoon, she dragged her right
leg as if she could not move fast. She needed to slow him down to gain
time to think, to find some new trick.
But she was just a kid, and tricks didn’t come that easy, not even to a
smart kid like her, not even to a kid who had spent ten years devising
so many clever tricks to make everyone think that she could take care of
herself, that she was tough, that she would never cry. But her trick
bag was finally empty, and she was more afraid than she had ever been.
He dragged her past big boats like the gondolas in Venice of which she
had seen pictures, but these had dragon prows from Viking ships. With
the stranger pulling impatiently on her arm, she limped past a fearful
snarling serpent’s head bigger than she was.
Dead leaves and moldering papers had blown down into the empty pool.
In the nocturnal breeze, which occasionally gusted heartily, that trash
eddied around them with the hiss-splash of a ghost sea.
“Come on, precious one,” he said in his honey-smooth but unkind voice,
“I want you to walk to your Golgotha just as He did. Don’t you think
that’s fitting? Is that so much to ask? Hmmm? I’m not also insisting
that you carry your own cross, am I? What do you say, precious, will
you move your ass?”
She was scared, with no fine tricks left to hide the fact, no tricks
left to hold back her tears, either. She began to shake and cry, and
her right leg grew weak for real, so she could hardly remain standing
let alone move as fast as he demanded.
In the past, she would have turned to God at a moment like this, would
have talked to Him, talked and talked, because no one had talked to God
more often or more bluntly than she had done from the time she was just
little. But she had been talking to God in the car, and she had not
heard Him listening. Over the years, all their conversations had been
one-sided, yes, but she had always heard Him listening, at least, a hint
of his great slow steady breathing. But now she knew He couldn’t be
listening because if He was there, hearing how desperate she was, He
would not have failed to answer her this time. He was gone, and she
didn’t know where, and she was alone as she had never been.
When she was so overcome by tears and weakness that she could not walk
at all, the stranger scooped her up. He was very strong. She was
unable to resist, but she didn’t hold on to him either. She just curled
her arms against her chest, made small fists of her hands, and pulled
away within herself.