by Ginny Rorby
Only the top half of their door was glass, so it looked as if no one was there, but Ray unlocked and jerked it open as if the house were on fire. It was Sukari.
She screamed, flailed her arms, and spun in circles. The instant Ray opened the screen door, she charged into the room and into Joey’s arms.
“What are you doing here?” Joey said, looking out at the driveway. “Where’s Turtle?” She looked at her mother, then at Ray. “No,” she cried when she saw the expressions on their faces.
With Sukari slung on her hip, Joey ran down the trail. A hundred yards from the house, a tree had fallen, blocking her way.
Sukari weighed twenty-three pounds last time Joey had put her on the scale, but she felt heavier. Joey stopped for a second to gasp for air, shifted Sukari to the other hip, and climbed up through the trees. When she got to Charlie’s, Ray and her mother and Luke were pulling into the driveway. Ray ran and pounded on the front door. There was no answer and the door was locked.
Joey ran down the side of the house and up the back steps. Sukari’s jungle gym had fallen through a pane of the sliding glass door. Joey stepped inside and crossed through the broken glass. When she put Sukari down, the little chimp darted down the hall and disappeared into a rear bedroom.
Charlie was on the floor beside his bed, his right hand clutching the front of his pajama top. Joey screamed for her mother and Ray, then turned to find them in the doorway. Ray knelt and pressed his fingers to the side of Charlie’s throat, turned, and said something to Ruth.
“Is he dead?” Joey cried.
Ray shook his head, no.
Sukari had crawled between Charlie and the bed and was touching his eyelids softly with one finger and signing to him with the other hand.
Ruth grabbed the phone and punched 911. “The ambulance is coming,” she said and hung up. “What’s she doing?” she asked Joey, trying to shoo Sukari away from Charlie. “Why is she grinning like that?”
Joey was hunkered at Charlie’s feet, rocking on her heels. She looked at Sukari and realized she was signing, J-Y HERE, J-Y HERE, and trying to pick his eyes open.
“She’s scared and trying to tell him I’m here.” Tears rolled down Joey’s cheeks. “I am here, Charlie.”
After a moment, Charlie’s eyes blinked open. He smiled weakly. “So you are,” he said, then cupped Sukari’s face in his palm. “You’re a good girl.”
“An ambulance is on the way, Charlie,” Ruth said. “You hang on.”
“Too late,” he said and closed his eyes.
Sukari signed, TURTLE SLEEP, then lay beside him and closed her eyes for a second before lifting her head to peek at him.
Joey squeezed his foot. “Charlie, don’t say that. Sukari needs you. I need you.”
Only his fingers moved. He lifted the index finger of the fist at his chest and pointed to Sukari, then pointed his open hand to Joey. “Take care of her.”
“I will ’til you’re better. I promise.”
His lips moved. “I love my girls.”
Joey looked from her mother to Ray. “Why are you sitting there?” she cried. “Can’t you help him?”
Ruth knelt and put an arm around Joey. “There’s nothing we can do, honey.”
“There must be something. CPR, or something.”
Joey grabbed his hand. “Charlie, please wait.”
Charlie folded his fingers around her hand. A single tear appeared in the corner of his right eye and slid free with his last breath.
“Charlie,” Joey cried, tugging his hand. “Oh, Charlie. Please.”
Ruth tried to pull her away. “It’s over, honey,” she said.
“No.” She looked pleadingly from one to the other. “Ray?”
When tears filled her stepfather’s eyes, Joey slumped against the side of the bed and pulled Sukari into her arms. “What will I do without him?” she sobbed against the coarse hair of her thin shoulder.
* * *
Ruth walked Luke home while Ray waited on the front steps with his head in his hands for the ambulance to take Charlie’s body to the hospital. Joey sat with Sukari in her lap and held Charlie’s hand. Every couple of minutes, Sukari would tug gently on Charlie’s pajama sleeve until finally she leaned over with Joey’s arms around her waist for support and stared intently at his face. She brushed his eyelashes with a finger, then turned and signed, TURTLE SLEEP. Joey could only nod.
When Ray came to the bedroom door, Joey knew the ambulance had arrived.
WANT BATH? she asked Sukari, who hooted with joy and ran down the hall, stripping off her pajama top and diaper as she went.
Joey had no idea how long she’d been sitting with Sukari and Hidey, both napping among the litter of toys, books, and dolls that Sukari had dragged up to surround them on the sofa, but when her mother’s hand on her shoulder startled her, the sun had moved to cast long shadows on the deck.
“I thought I’d call Lynn,” she said. “Do you know her number?”
Joey shook her head. “Did you look on his desk?”
“It’s a mess in there.”
“Her last name is Mansell, too, and she lives in Fresno.” She started to get up, but Sukari screamed when she moved.
“Stay there,” Ruth said.
Joey hugged Sukari. “I won’t leave you.”
Charlie’s moth-eaten old sweater was slung across the back of the couch. Joey picked it up and buried her nose in it. It smelled so strongly of him that it was hard to believe he wasn’t there. Tears came again. She wiped her arm across her eyes and put the sweater around Sukari’s shoulders.
Her mother came and sat in Charlie’s recliner and twirled a strand of her hair around her index finger. She often did that while watching television, sometimes inspecting the tips and pinching off the split ends. Joey wondered how everything could continue to look and smell the same.
Her mother waved for her attention. “Lynn will be here Friday.”
“Why so long?”
“One of her patients is due.”
“Who?”
“Not who, due. A baby is coming.”
Joey nodded.
“She was awfully upset.”
“Charlie was like a father to her.”
Her mother slid forward in the chair. “I’ve called Animal Control.”
Joey stiffened and watched her mother’s mouth more closely. “What’s that?”
“People to take Sukari until Lynn…”
“No.”
“She can’t stay here.”
“Why not? I’ll stay with her.”
“Alone? No way.”
“Why?”
“You’re deaf, Joey. If you’re not standing right under it, you can’t even hear a smoke alarm.” She pointed to the unit attached to the ceiling.
Joey opened her mouth to protest, but her mother held up her hand. “You can’t hear the phone.”
“So? I can call out.” She thought of what Charlie had written in her sign language book. Tears pooled in her eyes. “I’m deaf, not helpless, Mom.”
Her mother looked past her toward the front door, then got up. “I said no. That’s final.”
A young woman in a beige uniform left a large carry-cage just outside the door before stepping into the foyer. She smiled at Joey. “I’ve never picked up a monkey before.”
“She’s deaf,” her mother said.
“Oops, sorry,” said the woman.
Joey had seen her say “monkey.” “She’s not a monkey.”
The woman glanced back and forth between Joey and her mother.
“She reads lips.”
“Oh, of course. Will she bite?” the woman asked Joey, making each word big.
Sukari moved in tight to Joey’s legs, hair bristling as if she, too, had taken an instant dislike to this woman. SUKARI BITE, she signed.
Joey almost smiled. “Yes, she’ll bite.”
“Has she ever bitten anyone?” The woman spoke quickly. “We have a policy. If she’s bitten anyone, we’ll hav
e to destroy her.”
“What’s she saying?” Joey demanded.
“Nothing,” her mother said; then said to the woman, “She minds my daughter.”
“Good, good,” the woman said, moving farther into the room. “Oh, look, she’s smiling.”
All of Sukari’s teeth showed.
“That’s not a smile,” Joey said. “She’s scared.”
Sukari moved to put Joey between herself and the woman, who came around the end of the sofa and slipped a syringe from her pocket. “Can you hold her?” she asked Joey.
Joey usually liked people with easy lips to read, but not this woman. “Leave her alone,” she said, then glanced pleadingly at her mother.
“This will put her to sleep.”
“No.”
The woman turned to Ruth.
“Joey, help her catch Sukari. It’s for her own good.”
“Liar,” Joey screamed.
Ruth’s hand flew and the open palm caught Joey’s cheek. The smell of tobacco was so strong on her mother’s stained fingers that the odor lingered in the air between them. Joey was stunned. Her mother had never hit her. She touched her cheek where it stung.
“Oh Jesus, I’m sorry,” Ruth said. The back of her hand flew to her mouth.
Joey straightened her usually humped shoulders to make herself taller before turning to the woman. “You’re not taking her. Charlie said she was mine. Those were his last words. You can’t have her if I say you can’t.”
Her mother’s hand waved desperately. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “He didn’t mean for you to keep her.”
Sukari took Joey’s hand. She could smell Charlie’s sweater, which Sukari had pulled over her head.
“Yes, he did.”
“Where do you plan to keep her?” her mother asked, her face full of sarcasm.
There had been no time to think of that. Joey shrugged. “I don’t know, but you can’t put her in a cage. She has her own room like Luke and I do. Don’t you understand, Mom? I’m not going to let anyone”—Joey glanced at the woman who was filling the syringe from a bottle in her pocket—“take her from the only home she knows. I’ll stay here with her until Lynn comes.”
“It may be weeks before Lynn can take her. Or maybe she won’t want her.”
“Lynn will take her. She loves Sukari. So does Jack.”
Ruth looked at them, then at the woman, whom, Joey realized, her mother didn’t like, either. When she said, “We’ll try it for one night,” Joey knew she had won.
The woman looked disappointed. “Want me to take the cat?”
They all turned to follow her gaze. Hidey had gone up the drapes and was crouched on the valance.
Sukari gave a hoot and would have scampered up after him if Joey hadn’t caught her around the waist. “Not the cat, either,” she said to her mother.
* * *
After Joey swept up the broken glass, she tried to entertain Sukari, who would sit quietly for a few minutes before running down the hall to Charlie’s room, then to the bathroom, then to his office. WHERE TURTLE? she’d demanded after each search.
Joey had no idea how to tell her the truth. Did Sukari remember her mother being killed or Charlie’s wife dying? Could she understand what death meant? “He’s here,” she said finally, tapping Sukari’s chest, then her own. “This is where he lives now,” she added, sinking into the soft cushions of the sofa. She put her head back and closed her eyes and soon felt Sukari crawl up beside her. When she peeked, the little chimp was sitting with her head back and her eyes closed, too.
After only a moment or two, Sukari scrambled down but this time she ran to the front door.
It was Ray. He waved, then maneuvered a large sheet of plywood through the opening. He had cut it to fit the shattered sliding glass door.
Though Joey had never spent an entire day in charge of Sukari, she was familiar with her tricks. Like any child, Sukari went from one game to another, losing interest almost as quickly as she started something new. Joey was exhausted and wished she’d settle on something quiet and stick with it, but each time Joey tried to get her to finish a puzzle or draw a picture, Sukari would rub her thumb and index finger together: her sign for “raisin.”
For a while Joey gave them to her. She wanted Sukari to be quiet so that she could think about Charlie, collect her memories. “You’ve had enough raisins,” Joey said, when she realized Sukari had eaten an entire eight-ounce box.
By evening, Sukari had such horrible diarrhea that Joey took her diaper off and carried one of her potties with them from room to room.
Her mother showed up at dinnertime with Joey’s pajamas, her toothbrush, and a Papa Murphy’s Hawaiian pizza, Joey’s favorite because she loved pineapple. So did Sukari, who plucked and ate most of them before the oven heated up.
When Joey mentioned bedtime, Sukari ran to her room. That was easy, Joey was thinking, when Sukari came back in to the living room trailing her wagon, into which she’d piled a selection of games and toys.
“I don’t think so,” Joey said, took the wagon, and wheeled it back into Sukari’s room. When she came back, Sukari had disappeared.
Joey checked Charlie’s room, then the bathroom. As she crossed the living room to look in the office, she saw the draperies move and Sukari’s long toes sticking out from beneath them. Joey tiptoed over to the chain that opened the curtains and drew them back to expose Sukari, pressed against the window with a jar of Skippy peanut butter. She grinned at Joey and offered up a gloppy finger full.
Joey scooped her up, carried her to the bathroom, and, to Sukari’s delight, ran another bath. Joey soaped her head, back, and belly, which she’d caked with peanut butter, while Sukari signed to her rubber animals and kicked her legs, soaking Joey to the skin. After the splashy, soapy ordeal, Sukari, wrapped in a towel, pulled her stool out and climbed up onto the edge of the bathroom counter. She got her toothbrush from the holder and squeezed out a big glob of Crest.
Joey cleaned the hair out of the tub. When she turned to throw it in the toilet, she saw Sukari, head back and mouth open, wringing out a long, delicious strand of toothpaste.
“Stop that.” Joey grabbed the toothpaste away from her. “You make Luke look like an angel.”
A little later Sukari crawled into Joey’s lap with her hairbrush and sat like a princess, admiring herself in her hand-held mirror while Joey brushed her from head to toe. She kissed her reflection, then held it for Joey to admire, as if her image stayed on the glass.
When she’d been quiet for a while and seemed to be sleepy, Joey carried her to her room and helped her up onto her bed-board. Joey stood on the ladder and tucked the blanket around Sukari and covered her with Charlie’s sweater. “I love you, sugar-butt,” she whispered and kissed her cheek.
When she reached the door, she turned and blew her a kiss.
DOLL, Sukari signed.
Joey found a doll in the toy box and handed it up to her. When she reached the door again, Sukari signed, HAT, and pointed to her cowboy hat dangling from a hook on the back of the door.
Joey handed it up.
HUG.
Joey climbed up and hugged her.
This time she didn’t look back when she reached the door, but when she flipped off the light, Sukari screamed loudly enough for Joey to hear.
She turned the light on. “What?”
BEAR.
“Okay. Okay.” She tossed her her bear.
TRICYCLE.
“No way, you brat.”
RAISIN.
“No.”
HAIRBRUSH.
“This is the last thing.” UNDERSTAND?
Joey was stretched out on the sofa, petting Hidey, who was asleep on her stomach, when Sukari’s face appeared over the back of the couch. Joey jumped, scaring Hidey, who leapt away, scratching Joey’s stomach clear through her sweatshirt.
“Now what?”
Sukari came around the end of the couch, dragging one of her potties. She grinned, in t
he dimness of the light above the stove. She pulled her diapers down, fastened her bottom to the potty, and pooped.
Joey went for tissue to wipe her, powdered her bottom, pulled her diaper up, then lay back down and patted her chest.
The day that had started with an earthquake ended with Sukari curled against Joey’s side, the top of her head lodged beneath Joey’s chin, asleep in each other’s arms.
* * *
Lynn arrived on Friday. Joey followed Sukari to the door and let her in. They hugged until Lynn had to give in to Sukari’s demand to be picked up. She signed, WHERE TURTLE? in Lynn’s face.
WHAT TELL HER? Lynn asked.
“That he is here now.” She tapped her chest. “I didn’t know how to tell her the truth.”
Lynn put Sukari down and took a pad from her purse. It’s best she doesn’t know. Let’s let her think she is going to my house to see him.
Joey nodded. That was the first she knew for sure that Lynn was going to give Sukari a home. She was relieved and shattered. Lynn was going to take her, but take her away.
Lynn patted Joey’s shoulder, then wrote, You can see her anytime. Fresno’s not very far from Fremont. She smiled when Joey looked up.
“Fremont?”
I guess he didn’t get a chance to tell you, did he?
“Tell me what? Where’s Fremont?”
South of Oakland. Lynn took Joey’s arm and led her to the sofa.
Sukari raced ahead and fished the dog puzzle from beneath a cushion. She drew her lips back and showed it to Lynn.
“Scary,” Lynn said, then sat Joey down and wrote, I don’t want your mother to know that I told you, but Charlie just finished setting up a trust fund so you can go to the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. The school is free, as is room and board, but he’s made it so your parents won’t have to pay a nickel for anything. The trust fund will buy your clothes, pay your medical insurance, anything that the state doesn’t cover. There’s even a generous allowance.
Lynn reached over Joey’s shoulder as she read and added, It’s a wonderful school!
Joey looked up from reading; tears brimmed, then spilled down her cheeks. “Why would he do that?”