Angeline, p.9
Angeline, page 9
Together they cover the doll with the sticks, shells, driftwood, and seaweed. When they’re done, they look at the tiny hump of debris, and Amelia’s eyes fill.
“Amelia, would you like me to say a prayer for her?”
“If you want,” she says, a tremor in her voice.
Sister Angeline closes her eyes, bows her head, makes the sign of the cross, and folds her hands into prayer. Dear God, please keep Barbie safe and protect her from harm and give her comfort and warmth, until Amelia can be with her once again. Amen.
When she opens her eyes, Amelia is sitting back on her heels, staring at her. After several moments she says between sniffles, “Why do you dress like that and the other nuns don’t? Aren’t you like really, really hot?”
Sister Angeline smiles. “Yes, I am like really, really hot.” It startles her that she can sound so hip.
“Then why?” Amelia asks.
“Well,” Sister Angeline says—she’s never had to explain this to anyone before, “it teaches me humility and compassion.”
“I don’t get it,” Amelia says.
“It helps me concentrate on what matters most to me and to better understand the suffering of others.”
Amelia picks at a scab on her arm. “I used to think God was real. Actually, I used to like God a lot, but now I hate his guts.” She stops picking the scab and rearranges a few of the stones and sticks. “My grandmother read me Bible stories when I stayed at her house—I used to stay there sometimes—and I thought God was an extremely good storyteller.”
She looks at Sister Angeline. “I mean, I really, really liked that God talked about crocodiles and trees that clapped their hands. Oh, and there’s that scary beast in the Book of Job who has bones like bars of iron and was able to suck the whole River Jordan into its mouth! I love that! Don’t you love that?”
Sister Angeline laughs softly. “I do. But—now you
hate God?”
Amelia gnaws on a dirty thumb cuticle, then looks up. “God lets too many bad things happen.”
“Maybe God’s not a person,” Sister Angeline says, though as soon as the words are out, she thinks maybe she is wrong to say this to a child, yet she was a child when she discovered God wasn’t a person, so—
“Not a person?” Amelia says.
“Well, I think that God is like love—an energy we can send out to others or call to for help. Kind of like a chemical reaction, like a spark, like ocean waves traveling from my heart to your heart.”
Now something cold and brittle crosses Amelia’s face. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” she says, and she looks so vulnerable that Sister Angeline reaches out to touch her hand.
Amelia pulls her arm back angrily. “Don’t touch me! Who said you could touch me?” She pushes past Sister Angeline, crawls to the opening of the log, shoves Anu out of her way, and disappears.
Sister Angeline stunned. She’s made things worse, increased this child’s distress. Why didn’t she keep her mouth shut about God? She feels suddenly that what she believes about suffering is profoundly naive—the unending fasting, the draping of herself in heavy black fabric, the self-mortification—when here in front of her, here is a frightened bird of a girl, hiding her Barbie in a log under sticks and shells and stones, saying, Don’t touch me.
Is it suffering if you choose to suffer?
She moves from her kneeling position and sits curled with her back against the log. Anu comes to her and rests her chin on Sister Angeline’s knee.
Sister Angeline looks deep into the eyes that mirror her own, one blue and one brown. Anu makes a series of low, distressed sounds. It is then Sister Angeline’s own eyes throb and blur, and for the third time since her arrival, here is the surge of energy—the radiating heat of love. Waves flash from her abdomen into her arms, into her chest, into her mouth.
Find Amelia, her mouth whispers. Help her.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Edith is hanging sheets on the clothesline. It is windy, as it is most afternoons, and her black skirt and veil fly like birds against a strong wind, unable to move forward.
Sister Angeline, Anu by her side, runs to her, breathless. “Edith, I need to find Amelia. Can you—can you tell me where she lives?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Edith says, struggling with the whipping fabric. “What happened?”
Sister Angeline grabs a clothespin and a flailing corner of a sheet, secures it to the clothesline, and turns to Edith. “I met Amelia today on the beach. She was really upset because her father said she had to get rid of her Barbie, and there were bruises on her arms, and her dress was torn and—”
“Her teachers have already filed reports with Child Protective Services,” Edith says, pulling another soggy sheet from a basket and handing a corner to Sister Angeline. “There’s a caseworker. But Amelia’s family is new here, so it’s going to take time.”
“But—”
“Listen, you can call CPS too,” Edith says. “The number is by the phone in the kitchen.” She studies Sister Angeline for a moment. “And I assume you haven’t used a phone in what, seven years? There are directions for that too, next to the list. It’s not that hard.” She reaches for another damp sheet.
Sister Angeline’s heart hammering. “But I don’t know anything for sure, it’s—”
“You don’t have to be certain—you just need to have suspicion, reasonable suspicion.” Edith speaks more carefully, something wavering in her voice. “Your concerns will be added to the reports. Maybe it’ll help speed things along.”
Angeline’s veil blows into her face. She gathers the fabric of it like a ponytail, holds it behind her head, thinks about the danger Amelia could be in right now, the mysterious energy still fluttering like adrenaline through her body. “I think I should go to her—”
“No,” Edith says, moving closer to Angeline. “No. Don’t even think of taking things into your own hands. Don’t talk to her father on your own, don’t stalk their house, don’t follow Amelia home from school. If things aren’t done right, it could make things worse for her.”
Edith so close now Sister Angeline can see her eyes are bloodshot, and she wonders if Edith is tired, she works so hard, but now the unmistakable smell of alcohol, the sickly yeasty smell she too often smelled from her father. Her whole body tenses.
She hated when her father drank. He’d start in the morning, drinking beer after beer until it turned into whiskey after band practice at night. She watched the way it darkened him, the stench of it, how it changed him, made him break promises, slurred him until he could barely speak at all.
She turns away from Edith, her lungs pressing together tight, her mouth a hard line of memories.
“Listen,” Edith says. “Amelia sells flowers at the farmer’s market tomorrow. Why don’t you go with Kamika and check on her? And if you’re so worried, go call CPS.”
A timer goes off inside Sister Angeline’s chest, pushing out images—her hand dialing the police when her drunk father left the house to pick up Ricky from school, then her hand hanging up before anyone answered, how she’d pulled on her father’s coat, begged him not to go, how her hand had tried again to dial the police but then, again, hung up fast, because who reports a father?
“Well? Are you going to call or what?” Edith says, steadying herself on the clothesline post.
“Yes, I’ll call.” Sister Angeline hurries away, head throbbing, her brain spinning between her father and Edith and Amelia. She walks down the hill straight to the kitchen yurt, thinking, yes, she will call. This is how things are done here, here in this place with its white yurts, women painting and protesting, a dog sitting by your feet, a place where the tides rise and fall naturally. And in this moment some small splinter of self-condemnation, some shard of resistance, falls away, and in its place a tiny sliver of alive.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
It is nearly midafternoon prayer time, and the kitchen is empty and quiet and still smells warm from the bread of lunch. She finds the CPS number on the list tacked to the wall. Reads the how-to directions for the phone. Picks up the silver cold of it from the stand. All at once feeling inadequate and distressed. She takes several deep breaths to compose herself. Presses the numbers, resistance pulling at her, the urge to run and find Amelia insistent, but her mind saying, Follow the rules, and she presses green for go.
A woman with a smooth, official voice answers. “This is Carol. May I get your name, please?”
“It’s . . .”
“Your name is held in confidence,” Carol says. “We won’t share your identity with anyone.”
“It’s—it’s Sister Angeline from Light of the Sea convent.”
“You’re a nun?”
“Yes. At the Light of the Sea convent on Beckett Island.”
“And why are you calling?”
“There’s a child I’m worried about.”
“And the child’s name?”
“Amelia.”
“Last name?”
“I don’t know.” It feels wrong not to know Amelia’s last name. Mostly, it feels wrong that she’s not looking for Amelia right now. Just thinking about this makes her heart—
“And how old is the child?”
“Eight.”
“Where does she live?”
“She lives at the oyster farm on the other side of the island.”
“Oh. Okay, yes. A man and two kids.” The woman is silent for a moment and then, “Sister Angeline, we are already following this situation.”
Situation?
“Does—does that mean you’ve already sent someone to help?” Sister Angeline asks. “I heard there was a caseworker, but I—”
“No, not yet. We’re still completing the report. Sister Angeline, what is your relationship to Amelia?”
“I’ve only talked to her two times. Both times she was alone, and both times she was really upset.”
“Do you know her family?”
“No. I’ve only met Amelia. I—I haven’t lived here long either, only a few weeks.”
“And what is the neglect or abuse you suspect?”
“There are several small bruises on her right upper arm and a few on her legs, and her dress is dirty and torn.” Sister Angeline shivering now, even though it’s at least eighty degrees in this room.
“Well,” Carol says wearily, “kids play rough sometimes. Also, maybe their washing machine is broken, or it’s her favorite dress and she wants to wear it every day.”
Something hot rises within Sister Angeline, moves into the back of her throat.
Carol wants reasons not assumptions, facts not feelings.
She wants to say the bruises wrap around Amelia’s arm like mean fingers, that they are definitely not from dodgeball.
“Oh damn, I’m sorry,” Carol says, “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s been a long day already. That was unprofessional. You have no idea how many calls we get, and people wonder why we don’t get anything done. Anyway, please tell me about the bruises.”
“Like I said, they’re on her right upper arm, and I think, well, they look like fingerprints, like maybe someone grabbed her.”
“Did you see anyone grab her?”
“No.”
“Sister Angeline, is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“Amelia—she looks over her shoulder a lot. She seems scared, she seems perpetually scared.”
“Anything else?”
She wishes she had something else, but she can’t think of any more facts, can’t think of a way to explain her intuition, the lost look in Amelia’s eyes. “I guess not,” she says.
“Well, thank you for calling us, Sister Angeline. Really, thank you.”
“Will you let me know if she’s okay?”
“Sister Angeline, I can hear that you care about this child, and as I said, we’re following the situation, but I have to be honest with you. So far there’s no evidence of imminent danger, and we can’t just walk in and remove her from the home. The family has rights too.” She hesitates for a moment and says, “There are other things you can do. Like you can ask Amelia open-ended questions like, ‘Can you tell me more about the bruises? Can you tell me why you’re angry?’ Things like that. If she tells you anything that suggests she is in danger, call us back. Does that make sense?”
What if waiting for things to make sense is too late?
“Yes. Thank you.”
After the phone call, Sister Angeline walks back to her yurt, fingering her rosary and feeling scared for Amelia, hoping she’s done enough. It is then, as she walks past yurt after yurt, that she hears delicate sounds floating through the air. She follows the sounds, and the sounds turn into words, and the words are coming from Kamika’s open window.
Sister Angeline stands for a moment and listens. Kamika is praying aloud in Arabic, the lightly weighted sounds float out the window and drift all around her, over her, landing soft on her lashes, her lips, folding her hands into each prayer, closing her eyes, each note, each space between the notes lifting her fears, and now she recognizes the words Mama and Allah, and she holds her breath, stands absolutely still, and blows the beautiful vibrations like tiny, quivering wings toward Amelia.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Kamika and Sister Angeline walk to the farmer’s market, the sun blinking through the madrona trees on the beach side of the road. It is early, and there are several hours before the last of the August heat stifles everything and keeps them inside until evening. They’ve gone a mile or so when up ahead they see a man and two boys walking toward them.
“Hey, there’s Collin,” Kamika says. “And Liam and Michael. Have you met them yet?”
“I haven’t met Collin, but I met the boys on the ferry when I first arrived,” Sister Angeline says. “Collin’s Liam’s dad, the island EMT, right?”
“Yes, and you’ll like him. Honestly, he’s remarkable. He fixes everything from broken arms to fences.” She pauses, the light in her eyes dimming. “He’s also a widower, a
single dad.”
Voices behind them shout, “On your left!”
Kamika grabs Sister Angeline by the arm and jerks her off the road as a group of cyclists in matching lime-green shirts race by as if every second counts, their speed causing the air to shake behind them.
Before Sister Angeline can catch her breath, Collin and the boys have reached them.
“Hi, Collin!” Kamika says. “Hi, Liam! Hi, Michael!”
“Hey, Kamika,” Collin says. He is a tall man in his early forties. Thick red hair waves across a forehead etched with deep lines. He is wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, exposing muscular, freckled arms.
“This is Sister Angeline,” Kamika says. “She joined us several weeks ago from Chicago.”
Collin extends his hand. “Nice to meet you.” His face pleasant and unhurried. “Quieter here, I’d imagine.”
Sister Angeline reaches back. The warmth and strength of his hand. “Nice to meet you too, and yes, it’s very strange and beautiful to hear waves and doves instead of sirens.”
“I’ll bet,” Collin says, smiling wide. He nods now to the boy closest to him. “This is my son, Liam, and his friend Michael.”
“Yes, we’ve met. On the ferry. Hi, boys,” she says, managing a smile, her mind distracted and troubled by the guns the boys are carrying. She sees, though, they are probably only BB guns like the one her little brother had. Still, she thinks of what Edith said—that the squirrel was most likely killed by a BB gun.
Liam has a gray hoodie pulled tight around his face. “H . . . h . . . hi,” he says, and their eyes meet briefly before he looks back to the ground.
“Hey, I remember you!” Michael says. He is wearing his red sneakers, a Seahawks T-shirt, and matching baseball cap. “We watched the whale together!”
“That was really something,” Sister Angeline says. She is reminded then of Ricky shooting a rabbit when he was five and the way he’d cried and said, I’ve made the rabbit dead, I’ve made the rabbit dead! and how there was nothing she could do to comfort him, no way to explain that death was irreversible.
“We’re going to the landfill,” Michael says. “There’s tons of bottles and shells there we can shoot and Liam’s an expert and he’s teaching me.” He twirls the gun like a baton.
“Stop playing with that,” Collin says, his smile tightening into annoyance. “And if I have to say it again, we’re not
going.”
Michael’s little face crumples, he cradles the gun close to his chest, and everyone is quiet. A breeze flows across the water, carrying heat and salt. Tiny birds skitter along the lip of the low tide. A blue heron standing one-footed on a log is startled by a woman speeding by on a noisy motorbike and goes airborne with a loud shriek.
“We heard about what happened at the convent a few weeks ago—the squirrel in the prayer box,” Collin says now, looking at Kamika. “Edith paid us a visit. Said the Madrona Island police won’t help, so she’s checking on things herself.”
“Sh . . . sh . . . she’s always in my f . . . f . . . face,” Liam says suddenly, his free hand forming into a fist.
This sullen boy is not the amiable one Sister Angeline met on the ferry.
“Liam,” Collin says, batting his son on the back of his head, “show some respect.” And then to Kamika and Sister Angeline, “It’s been a rough time.”
“It’s okay,” Kamika says. “I know Edith can be—”
“She’s the meanest ever,” Michael says, his heart-shaped face a scowl. “She came to my house too, and I told her I would never kill a squirrel. Never, ever. Besides, you can’t kill squirrels with a BB gun, right, Collin?”
“Not likely, but not impossible either.”
