by Becket
Just then, when he thought he could not be surprised any more, running past him was the boy he had almost forgotten about. Eric Flu! The other boy twirled around and gestured in midair for Dominic to chase him. He almost saw Eric Flu’s laughing face. His laughter still sounded like sickness. He hid behind a stranger in the crowd, peeked out from behind, and then waved with his fingers. It was as though he were playing a game. Dominic took the bait and chased after him, determined to know why the boy had hurt him on the island. For a brief moment, he thought of the cave with its ancient art. For a moment, he thought he understood the artist who had drawn the image of the darker figure wrestling with the lighter one. How long ago was that, he wondered. Perhaps over a thousand years ago.
Eric Flu snickered before running away and weaving through the crowd. He ducked under tables and hurdled over chairs. No one seemed to notice him. But everyone noticed Dominic. He chased the boy until his mamá gripped both his arms and almost lifted him from the ground. She was very angry and gave him a hard shake. She whispered in English and her words sounded like hissing. “Stop acting like a child! You are the man of the house now!”
Then she released him to turn back around as though nothing had happened, to continue speaking in Spanish with a man that Dominic had never seen before. This man had dark skin like his mamá. He was not as tall or as strong as his papa. But very much like his papa, this man also had a thick black mustache that his mamá called “machismo.” Now she brushed her hair from her face. She smiled at this man in a way that Dominic had not seen before. Her smile was wide. Her cheeks became very red. Her eyes seemed to be reflecting candlelight. She had never looked at his papa the way she was now looking at this man.
Dominic looked for Eric Flu in the crowd. The boy dashed by some girl. Dominic did not know her either. She had long straight black hair and dark skin like his mamá. But this girl had bright green eyes and she seemed no older than Dominic. She was standing alone at a table with his papa’s books. Holding one open, she appeared to be intensely reading a passage, her face down toward the book the way his papa used to read instead of holding the book up like his mamá. It was as though this girl would rather notice the world in the book than the world around her. She certainly did not notice Eric Flu. The boy had a plan for Dominic, but the girl had a guardian angel. Dominic could not see her angel but he could see its good work. The angel saw how Eric Flu’s plan would hurt people in the plan of God, so it chased him away like a dog. The boy hissed at the angel. Then he vanished. Dominic could not see him anymore and he wondered where he was. Eric Flu was just gone in the way darkness is gone when a light is turned on.
Dominic approached the girl. She was reading Robinson Crusoe. His papa had not cared for the beginning or the end of the book, just the middle where Crusoe is shipwrecked and stranded on the island. His papa had talked often about how much he admired the hero’s will to survive by faith in God. “There is no more story after Crusoe found that footprint on the shore,” he had said. His papa had also said that Crusoe had been wedded to solitude before he learned to fall in love with it. Dominic had not understood what his papa meant, but he wanted to. And he would not let this girl take away not only the book, but also his chance to know his papa the way no one else could.
The girl was reading the book with such intensity that she was on the island with Crusoe. Her cheeks could almost feel the cool sea breeze blowing. The glare of the sun on the crest of the blue waves was almost hurting her eyes. Her nostrils were almost filled with the damp scent of the cave.
Dominic ran to her and snatched the book from her hands. She gasped, as if she had been frightened out of a dreamy sleep. She held her hand on her chest in an effort to slow her breathing. She glared at Dominic. Who is this boy, she wondered irritably as he gathered up the remaining books on the table and began to walk away.
“Take it,” the girl said finally. “It’s a bad book anyway.”
“It’s not bad!” he said back.
“Have you read it?”
Dominic didn’t say anything.
The girl smirked at him knowingly. “Well, if you haven’t read it, how do you know it isn’t bad?”
“Because my papa told me so.”
“Is it yours?”
“It belonged to my papa.”
“Why is he selling it if it is so good?”
“My mamá is selling it.”
“Is she mad at your dad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is he?”
“In Heaven.”
The girl’s green eyes grew wide with a look of surprise and sorrow. She could not speak.
Dominic’s mamá and the dark man that she had been talking with came to them. The man put his arm over the girl with the bright green eyes. He looked down at her, she looked up at him.
“Found any books you like, Mija?” he asked her.
The girl turned and glared at Dominic. She folded her arms and shook her head. Then the man pulled the girl closer. He looked at Dominic’s mamá and smiled at her.
“Gracias por todo,” he said, as he walked away, taking the girl with him.
His mamá waved the man off, replying in Spanish, but speaking more slowly than Dominic was used to. He actually understood her when she emphasized: “Hasta la próxima vez.”
“Who was that man?” he asked her.
“Someone like me,” she said in a distant voice as she watched the man walk away.
“Is he also from Mexico?”
“Yes. But his wife just died.”
“Is that girl his daughter?”
His mamá nodded. “Her name is Pascala.”
PASCALA
Pascala stood at the front of her new class. Her teacher told her to introduce herself. She said her name shyly. The teacher told her to repeat her name and speak louder. She did. Then the teacher wrote her name on the board for the whole class to see. Her name was embarrassing. It was pretty to adults but pretty strange to children. Her new classmates stared at her. They looked bored. And bored classmates looked threatening. She missed her old school down in the desert valley. She had not been one of the popular students, but at least she hadn’t been the new student. And as she stood at the front of the class, waiting for the teacher to assign her a seat, all she could think about was writing in her journal to her guardian angel, Ruth, that she would rather be unpopular than new.
A year earlier Pascala might not have minded moving from the desert valley to the mountain range overlooking it — but that was when her momma was alive. Now that her momma was in Heaven with the choirs of angels singing praises to God, Pascala was unhappy that her papaito had taken her away from the last semblance of her old life. Even the two-hour drive from her old home to her new made it seem as though her friends and her old school and her old life had perished with her momma on that hospital bed. But her papaito was not happy in a house that reminded him of his wife. He does not miss my momma, she wrote to her angel in her journal. He misses his wife. Ruth wept for Pascala. And the angel prayed that God would give her and her papaito enough grace to pick up their individual crosses, and follow the Son of God over the divide between childhood and childlike.
Pascala’s teacher told her to go to her seat in the middle of the classroom. She was thankful and glad, but she wished that she had a seat in the back. She did not like standing in front of the class and she did not like the feeling of people looking at the back of her head. She wondered what her classmates thought of her. She did not know which person would be best for a friend or which would be her one best friend.
Pascala removed books from her backpack hanging over the back of her seat and she put her books in the holder underneath her desk. Then she placed a pen and two notebooks on her desktop. Both notebooks looked identical, but she could tell them apart. One was her journal. The other was for schoolwork. She opened her journal and she read her most recent entry. Then she flipped back in her journal to the entries she made before her momma died.
The older entries looked childish. The more recent entries looked grownup. The handwriting had not changed much. But the words of the newer entries had been more carefully chosen. The sentences had been more thoughtfully crafted. She read the last journal entry she made and she loved how full of thought it seemed. It is better to think than to feel because feeling does not help me think, she thought. But thinking helps me feel better.
She closed her journal and she studied her new classroom. There were fluorescent lights overhead, wooden walls, spots speckling the windows, and a green patina mottled the metal window frames. The whole school smelled like pine and varnish and sweat. The student in the seat beside her was the boy from the garage sale. His short hair was almost as black as hers, but his skin was a little lighter. He had not seen her sit beside him because he was more interested in the work on his desk. It did not look like homework.
Pascala watched for the teacher to turn around and write on the board. Then she leaned over to see what the boy was writing. But he was not writing. He was drawing the island on the lake. She recognized it. The island had a high hill that she had seen. But she had not seen the cave that he was drawing on one side of the hill. The boy had also drawn designs for a table and a kiln and a pen for ducks. Two boys were also in the drawing. One boy was darker, the other was lighter. She leaned closer to see the picture better. The boy beside her had drawn the two boys together in a wrestling match. Over the lighter boy was the name Dominic. Over the darker was the name Eric Flu. Pascala looked at the holder under his desk for books. The top book was the one he had snatched from her hands at the garage sale. Robinson Crusoe. Now it looked dog eared and dirty. He must be reading it, she thought. Good for him.
Pascala cleared her throat to get his attention but he did not look at her. She did it again. The boy clenched his jaw. Then he looked at her from the corner of his eye. She pointed to the two figures in his drawing.
“Which are you?” she whispered.
“Dominic,” he whispered back.
None of her new classmates sat with her during recess. None sat with her at lunch. Most just looked at her and smiled and whispered and pointed. Dominic sat alone like her. Pascala wrote in her journal about him and the other students. The only real difference between him and her was that the other students were used to his aloofness. They must be tired of smiling and whispering and pointing at him, she wrote down and her angel looked over her shoulder to read. Then she wrote about the difference between being alone and being lonely. She thought she was smart for knowing that there was a difference but she did not write that down. Then she wrote about how much she wished someone would speak with her.
Ruth her angel was singing a song to the glory of God. The guardian angels of the other children were also singing. The song finished and Ruth leaned closer to Pascala and whispered into her ear a word of hope. She heard the word as if she had remembered it out of nowhere. It was a word that she had heard her momma say countless times. She had not understood the word before that day, and now that she understood it, she wanted to say it, so that she might have it and keep it like a treasure.
“Communication,” she said aloud.
Pascala wrote the word down in her journal. Then she spoke it aloud again while gnawing on the end of her pen. Communication, she read. “Communication,” she said. The words looked and sounded lovely. She said it again and again. Sometimes she spat it out quickly. Sometimes she enunciated each syllable as if she were singing the melody of a mockingbird. She liked everything about the word, how it sounded from her mouth, how it was spelled, how beautiful it looked on paper, in her handwriting. It made her feel powerful. It is a word of power, she thought. Then she glanced toward Dominic.
He looked alone but he did not appear lonely. He seemed as interested in drawing as she was with writing in her journal. She tried not to let the other students catch her looking at him. She would let her long hair hang down in her face and she would peek through the strands. Sometimes he would pause drawing and he would open his book for inspiration. He did not seem to have any interest in the narrative. He appeared to be drawing the details from certain passages. He would find a page somewhere in the middle of the book and he would read with his finger skimming the lines. He would write a note in the margin of one page and he would dog-ear another page. Then he would close the book and return to drawing. Pascala detailed in her journal all that he did. The more she watched how he was, the more she saw who he was. The more she saw of him, the more curious she was about his work. She had never met any boy (she wrote the word student in her journal) who put not merely himself, but his self into his work. She knew only one other man who could concentrate on his work the way he did. Papaito, she thought.
The class after recess was English. The teacher told Dominic to answer questions about assigned reading from the book, Where The Red Fern Grows. Pascala had not read it, but Dominic had a few years earlier and had liked it very much. Even though Pascala was thinking that she liked his name because it was strange like hers, but she was disappointed at his taciturn responses. The teacher also seemed disappointed, but not in the way Pascala was. She had hoped to hear him speak more. She had hoped that he would share her love for her newfound word. Communication. The teacher called on another student and he returned to his drawing. He seemed happier now. And now Pascala thought she understood him better. She felt something for him that she did not have a word for. He smiled at his drawing before he folded it up and put it inside his book. He noticed Pascala watching him. He stopped smiling and he looked at her. His eyes were so dark brown they seemed almost black. She tried to smile and not smile at the same time. Her head felt very large and awkward. His expression did not change. He looked the other way. Something in her chest felt strange. Like burning, she thought and she decided to write that down in her journal.
Her papaito had become a teacher at her school. He was the new teacher of the advanced classes. She would go to his classroom when school ended. She would finish her homework while he finished grading papers. Then they would walk home together. It was then that he would ask about her day and her classes. On their first day, he asked if she had made any new friends. She began to respond but he asked more questions about her schoolwork. She gave him her assignment notebook. He placed his finger lengthwise over his lips beneath his mustache. She called this his “thinking face.” He read her assignment book while they walked.
“Your schoolwork is not difficult, Mija,” he said at length.
“No, papaito.”
“You can do it easily.”
“I know, papaito.”
“You must make the best grades.”
“I do, papaito.”
“You must go to the best college.”
“I will, papaito.”
“You must do better than I have done in life.”
“Papaito, you have done good.”
“You have done well.”
“Only because I learn from you,” she said with a smile.
But he stopped walking and turned to her with a serious expression. “No, Mija,” he said reprovingly. “You have done good is not proper English. You must say that you have done well. Not good.”
“Yes, papaito.”
The school was at one end of the village. Their new home was at the other end, a short way up the mountain, near the lake. The house was more like a cabin, small. Pascala called it “quaint” and “cozy.” The roof needed to be repaired. Snowfall had caved it in last winter. The former owners had had the roof fixed but they had made minor repairs throughout the house. They had intended to have the local millwright make much more major repairs. But the millwright had passed away and they were not sure if his son was up to the challenge. She did not like walking through the village. She felt better after she and her papaito had passed through it. The walk home was very beautiful with the tall pine trees and the thick oak trees and the lovely songs of the goldfinches and the bluebirds. The smell was unlike the city. Cold and clean like ch
alk. The air was wet and thick to breathe. But it was also very delightful.
Night came early. Her papaito made a fire in the wood stove. Pascala had never seen one before. She liked the thick pipe and the black stove. Soon the house filled with the good smell of sappy pine logs burning. They ate black beans and white rice with onions and red and yellow peppers. Her papaito questioned her while they ate. He wanted to know about her feelings. She needed time to think about her responses. He sat and waited and watched her while he chewed his food. She finally answered, but he did not seem to like her answers because he did not seem to think about them. He asked more questions about her feelings. The questions made her sleepy. He inquired little about her thoughts and never her opinion. Dinner finished. For dessert he fried buñuelos. Pascala was happy. She loved biting through the brittle crust rolled in cinnamon and sugar. She bit slowly down to the doughy middle. Fresh off the skillet the buñuelos were warm and delicious. She loved her papaito. They ate in silence. She asked about his feelings. But he looked at the buñuelos and chewed slower. He swallowed. Then he said that it was time to check her homework.
This was his ritual almost every evening. And every night her papaito made sure she brushed and flossed. The fire in the living room did not heat the whole house. Her room was always cold even in the late summer. Her pajamas were never warm enough. She had to bundle in thermals and thick socks. She would slide into bed between her ice-cold covers. But she would keep her arms out over the covers with her hands clasped together on her chest. Her papaito would enter and sit on the edge of her bed and place his hands over hers. They were always warm. He recited many prayers in Spanish. She would lay still and listen to his deep husky voice. It could lull her to sleep. He would murmur a litany of names of people who were still alive and in need. He would remember his dead wife with silence. Then he would kiss her forehead and whisper to her, “Goodnight,” before turning off her room light and leaving. He never closed her door all the way. He would turn the light off in the hall but she could still see the living room lights. The village seemed too silent. She missed the low drone of an air conditioner. She missed the sound of passing cars. She could hear her thoughts more clearly in the silence and the stillness of the mountains. Her thoughts never let her sleep. She kept her journal beneath her pillow. She would write her thoughts down until her eyes would droop with sleepiness. She would write about her thoughts and feelings. She would tell Ruth about the good foods that she had eaten. But her journal entry the night of her first day at her new school was about the boy she had met, yet barely talked with.