Wild Girl Read online

  8

  WOODHILL SCHOOL

  I awoke thinking I’d been here for more than a week. I angled my head to see the picture of Gallorette, the great tomboy mare, seventeen hands, bigger than many stallions. It was as if she were staring back at me with her dark eyes.

  Next to her was Native Dancer, the gray ghost, with his lovely silver face. The blur in the corner of the photo was the stray black cat Native Dancer loved, and that traveled with him wherever he went.

  I smiled at my pictures. Today was my first day of school.

  I grabbed my clothes from the dresser. I’d packed them carefully, thinking of this day: a yellow top and jeans with small flowers to match.

  I put the sandals back in the closet; what good would they be against the snow outside? It was a good thing the Horseman had bought boots for me yesterday. He’d wanted to buy pink ones with cat faces in front, but how could I have worn them in sixth grade?

  I’d pointed to striped boots and he’d frowned. I’d put out my chin, standing there silently, trying to look as if I didn’t care, until he’d told the woman to wrap up the striped ones.

  Today the early morning went by in a blur: I ate a quick breakfast of bread dipped in honey and coffee laced with milk as the Horseman and Rafael tried to stuff my head full of English.

  I held up my hand. “I know English, what do you think?” I would never let them know how worried I was.

  Rafael tilted his head. “I’ll make you a terrific sandwich for lunch.”

  I watched as he put some kind of strange meat on two slabs of bread and filled the whole thing up with lettuce leaves. He smushed it together and dumped it into a bag with an apple.

  “Nice, right?” he said in English. “A wonderful lunch.”

  Ah, nice, not niece.

  As the Horseman and I pulled out of the driveway, I whispered some of my words: tree, forest, and watch out, the mosquito bites, and added a few new ones: horse, barn, snow. At supper every night, I had repeated sentences with Pai and Rafael, but they had disappeared somewhere into the back of my head. I had to hope the English words would come to me when I needed them.

  We parked in front of a school built of faded red bricks. Next to the huge doors, an American flag blew in that cold wind. The metal clips that held it to the pole clanked, and withered leaves skittered across the snowy yard.

  I shivered. It was so unlike the school at home with the windows opened wide to catch the breeze. The colors here were almost dull, as if the world were washed in gray paint.

  I didn’t want to go inside; it was … too much. But then I remembered what Titia Luisa had told me once: You, Lidie, will learn everything there is to know. You’ll do something wonderful with your life.

  And Mrs. Figueiredo, my teacher for the last two years, had said: You are as smart as any child I’ve ever taught, Lidie.

  I held on to those two memories as the Horseman took me inside and kissed me goodbye. Then a teacher with a pencil in her pouf of hair walked me to a classroom. She talked the whole time, pointing at doors, at the long window at the end of the hall.

  I nodded. “Yes, nice.” Through that window I could see a tree, its branches gray against the sky. “Nice …,” I said again. “Nice tree.”

  I walked with my head up now. My words were turning out to be very useful.

  The pencil teacher opened the classroom door, and another teacher came toward us. She patted my shoulder, talking slowly, introducing me to the class. I couldn’t find a place to fit in any of my words except hi, and I was too shy to say it. I thought about watch out, the mosquito bites; it wouldn’t work here in a million years.

  Jackets hung along the side of the room. All of them had different colors, and for the first time, I saw that this place could be bright and cheerful. I unwound myself from my own jacket, glad that the bunny scarf was under my bed where no one would see it. In my head, I told the jacket, You belong here now.

  A girl looked up, patting the seat next to her, and someone else reached out to pat my arm as I walked past to the empty seat at the table. Was that what they did in America, patted everyone who came into the room or walked by?

  But the boy in front of me just leaned over and drummed with his fingers on the table. “Ian,” he said, and smiled. “Hi, shrimp.”

  Shrimp?

  What was that? It sounded like something lovely, so I smiled at him. “Hi, shrimp,” I said, too, and he burst out laughing.

  “Ian,” the girl said with an edge to her voice.

  He raised his shoulders and smiled at me.

  “Okay,” I said. What was going on?

  The teacher clapped her hands once, and everyone stood suddenly and changed seats with a great clatter. The girl who had patted the empty seat pulled me along with her to a table near the window. “Liz.” She pointed to herself.

  How strange to have a name that sounded like a swarm of bees. I nodded as if I approved. “Lidie.” I pointed to myself, glad my name sounded more like a flower.

  Liz asked me questions, talking loudly as if I were deaf. She took books out of a drawer in the table, one for her and one for me. I spotted a picture with a lot of trees. Ah, yes. “Forest,” I said.

  She smiled and mumbled something that sounded like—was it certo? She spoke my language! I felt the relief of it in my throat and chest.

  I let a flood of my own words come, telling her about Jales and coming here, and the most important thing: I had to go to the bathroom.

  My talking wound down like Titia Luisa’s old clock. Liz’s eyes told me that she didn’t understand a word. She raised her shoulders helplessly. I turned toward the teacher, who was standing still, looking at me. I saw something in her eyes, too; she felt sorry for me.

  I felt sorry for myself. The morning took forever to move itself along. When everyone bent over their books, reading, all I could do was page through mine, pretending the silly trees were fascinating.

  All the time, I thought about bathrooms: the one outside Mrs. Figueiredo’s classroom, with the row of faucets that dripped; the one in the barn yesterday, with its wonderful drawing of Man o’ War on the door: all the bones carefully marked, the muscles outlined.

  At last I couldn’t wait anymore. I took a deep breath and went up to the teacher. I patted her shoulder nicely and pointed to the door.

  The teacher smiled and pointed to herself. “Mrs. Bogart.”

  I shook my head and moved toward the door. I’d have to run down the hall and open all the doors until—

  Mrs. Bogart stepped in front of me. She took papers off her desk, then led me back to my seat, talking. She opened the blank notebook the Horseman had bought for me and smoothed down the first page with her large hands. Then she put her own papers next to it.

  Baby math problems.

  Mrs. Figueiredo’s lip would have curled up at these. But there was no time to think of the math problems a six-year-old could easily solve. I felt the wetness coming, seeping into my lovely jeans with the yellow flowers. I sat there, frozen.

  But the girl, Liz, next to me and the teacher finally realized what was happening. The teacher made a small sound, a sound you could tell, in any language, was sad, was sorry.

  I crumpled up the math paper, hearing the sound of it as I threw it on the floor. I stood up with everyone turning to look at me.

  I went to the side of the room and pulled my jacket off the hook. It didn’t belong there.

  With the teacher calling after me, I opened the door and looked for the nearest way out. Before she could catch up, I was outside in the cold, running.

  9

  NEW YORK

  As I ran, I zipped my jacket up to my neck, feeling it rip into my skin. I heard the clink clank of the flagpole clips in the cold wind that took my breath away My flowered jeans were stuck to my legs.

  I turned the corner away from school. Behind me the teacher called, “Lidia!”

  She didn’t even know how to say my name. “Lidie,” I yelled back over my shou
lder, my voice mean and angry.

  I didn’t wait to see if she’d heard me. I turned into a new street. I’d never go back to that school, where everyone knew what had happened. I wouldn’t grow up the way Titia Luisa said I would, doing something wonderful with my life. And someday, when Mrs. Figueiredo heard that I’d never gone to school, how disappointed she’d be.

  But no one would be as disappointed as I was.

  I reached a wide street with cars running back and forth, slush spraying from their wheels. Everything was in a hurry here, even the snow, which was melting with great drops coming from the bare tree branches, and water gurgling along the curb.

  I didn’t know where I was. I passed stores. One smelled of eggs cooking and some kind of meat, another had signs with words pasted all over the windows. Not my words—but I was never going to learn English, anyway.

  Inside another store were piles of vegetables and fruit. I stopped to look at them. Pathetic. In Jales, the broccoli would be twice that size, rich and dark. In Jales, the pole beans would be plump, the cucumbers shiny green, and the grapes in thick purple bunches.

  If only I were back in Titia Luisa’s house, snapping beans into the colander or fighting with Tio Paulo over the last banana in the bowl. If only I had my cell phone.

  But how could I call the Horseman? How terrible it would be to tell him what had happened.

  But how could I not? How could I wander around in this cold, alone?

  Make a plan, I told myself, trying to fight away the panic that was coming up from my chest to choke me.

  Suppose I went into that fruit store and asked the owner to help me. What could I say, nice, tree, farm?

  Yes. Farm.

  I would say farm, and the store man might know I wanted to go there. He’d pick up the phone and call the Horseman. I tried not to think about that part.

  So that was what I did. Pulling my jacket down as far as I could so it almost reached my knees, I went into the store and placed myself in front of the counter.

  I could see immediately that this man wasn’t as friendly as he might be. I smiled and in my best English said, “Farm.” At the last minute, I remembered to add “Please.”

  The man blinked.

  I said my two words again, my hands gripping each other.

  The man shrugged, so I said it again.

  His face was blank; he didn’t even understand his own language. And now people were waiting in back of me.

  I stepped away and went out the door. Anyone with such sickly vegetables was not a person I cared to talk to, anyway.

  I looked back. The man was staring at me, and so were the two women in line. I turned the corner, suddenly afraid.

  Somehow I’d be saved. Maybe the Horseman would come along in his truck, or there’d be someone walking by. But what would I say? What? I was so cold now, almost too cold to think.

  Mrs. Figueiredo’s face came into my head. It was almost as if she was smiling at me, her face tilted. I could even see the freckles on her cheeks.

  If I were in Jales, I’d be sitting at my desk with the classroom window next to me, and outside I’d see the yellow hibiscus blooming. You can do this, Lidie, she had said a hundred times, about a math problem, an essay, a difficult page in my science book.

  And what about Tio Paulo that time I had that huge splinter in my thumb? I’d gritted my teeth as he took it out with a needle, telling myself he could cut off my finger before I’d let him know how much it hurt.

  He’d said, You have the strength of ten.

  I had turned away so he wouldn’t see how pleased I was.

  So now I said aloud: “You can do this, Lidie. You have the strength of ten.” And before I could lose my courage, I went back to the fruit store.

  Another set of women stood in line with their poor vegetables in baskets. I reached across them for a pen on the counter and stood on tiptoes for a paper bag.

  They watched as I drew the barn. I drew a horse going into the barn, relieved that the animal actually looked like a horse.

  “Ajuda,” I said, and suddenly remembered the English word. “Help.” And then like a light going off in my brain: “Perdida. Lost.”

  “Ah,” they said, almost together. They gathered around me, and one of them patted my shoulder. Of course.

  The man picked up the phone. At the same time, he opened a bottle of suco de laranja and poured the orange juice into a cup for me. I drank it with my back against the counter so no one could see what had happened to my flowered jeans.

  I heard him say something that sounded like policia. I thought of my passport picture and the story Tio had told me about Pai in prison.

  Would I be arrested? I thought about running. I put down the juice and took a step, but before I could move, two policemen unfolded themselves from a car outside. I looked toward the back of the store. Was there any way I could escape?

  But the policemen smiled, talking to me so fast I wondered how they even understood themselves.

  A few minutes later, Rafael came, almost dancing around a bin of pale lettuce, and reached out to me.

  “How did you know where I was?” I leaned against him.

  “Oh, Lidie, the school called. And we called the police. Everyone is out looking for you.”

  One of the policemen looked at me. “Okay now?”

  “Okay.” I waved my hand to show him he could leave.

  I turned to Rafael. “I’m never going back to school.” I said it with anger. Anger at this school. Anger at him. Anger that nothing was the way I had dreamed it back on Tio Paulo’s porch.

  Everyone was smiling at me. They wouldn’t be smiling if they knew what I was saying, or worse, what I was thinking.

  “School is good,” Rafael said. “Why not?” He reached for his cell phone.

  I shook my head. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him about my flowered pants. “They don’t know how to speak right,” I said.

  Rafael laughed, showing the one tooth that overlapped another. He spoke quickly into the phone, first in our language, telling the Horseman that I’d been found, and then something in English.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  I nodded to the man behind the counter, who had turned out to be friendlier than he looked. He came around and held out his hand. I shook his hand and waved back at the women until we were in the truck, driving away from there.

  “Don’t take me back to school,” I said. “I’ll only run away again.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” he said. “We’re going someplace else.” He sounded as if he were talking to a four-year-old.

  I took a breath.

  “Not home,” he said.

  “Home is Jales. Home is the lemon grove, and Mrs. Figueiredo, and—”

  “We’re not going there, either,” he said. “We’d never get there in this old truck.”

  “I didn’t ask you to joke,” I said.

  “Ai, Lidie.” He turned to look at me. “Do you think I don’t know how hard it is? When I came here, I cried every night for Mamãe and the house on the hill.”

  I could feel my eyes burning. “We’re going to be in an accident if you don’t keep your eyes on the road.”

  “I cried for you for a long time,” he said. “My sweet baby sister.”

  I swallowed, feeling a lump in my throat. Crying for me? I couldn’t remember anyone caring about me as much as that since Mamãe had died.

  I wanted to say a hundred things to him, things like I’m not a baby, Rafael, I haven’t been a baby in a long time; things like I’m glad you cried for me, things like I still miss Mamãe, who used to dance us around in the living room.

  But I couldn’t talk.

  I thought about the Horseman, my running out of school, and the police coming. How could everything have gone so wrong so quickly?

  Rafael said, “I’ll tell you where we’re going, Lidie. To the races.”

  10

  NEAR HARRISBURG,

  PENNSYLVANIA


  Sometimes the van was still. It was then that the filly made the greatest noise, kicking, neighing, her ears pasted flat with grief and anger. But then the floor rumbled, and she began to sway with the movement again.

  At last it stopped, and the noise, too. Everything was quiet.

  She was hungry and thirsty. She pulled some of the dried grass from the hanging bag and took huge gulps of water from the pail.

  Behind her, everything opened.

  She turned her head to see the creatures standing there.

  She kicked once. Kicked again.

  One of them climbed in with her.

  She reared up on her back legs, but the creature darted around her. The others pushed at her, and she was pulled outside …

  To the air, to the cold.

  And in one moment, there was an open space. She raised her head and ran.

  The ground was wet underneath, but that didn’t stop her.

  She raced the way she had in the field with the others. Raced as fast as the birds flew overhead.

  Raced across the field with the creatures far behind her.

  She came to a stop at a fence that was too high to jump. She stood there, looking at the trees on the other side. There was no place to go.

  The creatures caught up with her at last. She could hear the sound of their hard breathing. They pulled on her lead and took her to an empty stall…

  Without the mare.

  Alone.

  11

  THE TRACK

  It had begun to rain, a cold, soaking rain, as Rafael drove between the great stone pillars and pulled into the track. We stumbled out, heads down; in a moment, my hair and jacket were soaked.

  The huge white pine tree with dripping branches stood in front of the grandstand. I thought of all the champion horses that had pranced past that tree on their way to win.

  I was standing where Whirlaway had walked, and Native Dancer, and Ruffian, who was buried at the racetrack, her nose pointing toward the finish line.

  “Are you hungry?” Rafael asked.

  I glanced back at the truck, but my lunch bag had disappeared. It might still be in the classroom for all I knew. I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what happened to my lunch.”