Earth to Emily

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  But the Hodges wouldn’t allow me to visit Betsy. It was their right, but I didn’t like it, and it made me even more determined to maintain a relationship with her, not less. I checked the playground again. Still no kids. It was time for them to be outside.

  I’d begun these clandestine visits to her school as soon as she’d started the first grade, which was the first time she’d attended a school of any kind. Betsy and her parents had entered the U.S. courtesy of a scurrilous human trafficker named Paul Johnson. When other kids her age were discovering the joys of recess and snack time in kindergarten, she was captive in southern New Mexico on Johnson’s Ranch where her undocumented parents were enslaved in a silver mine. When other kids her age started first grade, Betsy was hiding under her mother’s housekeeping cart at the Wyndham/Ambassador Hotel, coloring pictures and singing to her doll, after her mother had escaped from the ranch. So, she hadn’t had a chance to go to school before now. The girl was smart, though, and I knew she would catch up with her classmates fast.

  A text came in on my phone from Wallace: No word from Greg and Farrah. Getting really worried.

  I shot a quick text back: Me, too. Then I remembered the thing that was still bugging me from the night before. Why’d you leave so fast with “Ivanka”?

  Wallace: She was looking for a sympathetic person to help her make an escape before she got busted.

  Me: For what? I could make a good guess since I’d heard Samson call the two skanky women lot lizards.

  Wallace: She’s a lady of the night, honey.

  Me: Oh. Okay. She’d picked the right person for empathy. You’re such a nice guy.

  Wallace: Outcasts are my kind.

  We ended our text conversation, and my mind flashed on Sunday school past, of stories of Jesus washing dirty feet and hanging out with prostitutes. Wallace could try to pretend it was just solidarity, but the man had the biggest heart I’d ever seen.

  The bright voices of children floated across one hundred yards of open playground to my ears as they charged out a side door. Bravo, Windsor Elementary, I thought, for not letting a little inclement weather throw you off your game plan. The kids were wrapped like mummies, and I realized that they were probably running late because of the extra time needed to get them all bundled up.

  Knuckles rapped on the window by my left ear, and I jumped, spilling my Roasters large breve with sugar-free hazelnut—my favorite coffee drink—on the black Red Raiders sweatshirt I was wearing over a long-john top.

  “Spit in a well bucket!” I shouted. It was an expression I’d picked up from my father, before he’d split.

  Mother hated cursing, but she didn’t mind the work-around expressions favored by Dad and me. So spit, heck, darn, and Mother Goose made the cut. Any variants of damn, shit, crap, hell, ass, and—gasp—the f-word did not. Nor expressions she considered vulgar, like douche or vagina. I tried not to even think them, even in the direst of circumstances, let alone say them.

  I glanced out the window and recognized the woman standing there in a gray wool dress that cascaded from the bottom of a white jacket. A white wool cap covered her head, and she’d crammed long, curly brown hair under it, given away by the messy strands that had escaped. She’d knocked with bare knuckles, and I watched as she pulled an insulated ski-type mitten back onto her hand.

  “She” was Mary Alice Hodges, with a runny-nosed, snowsuited toddler of indeterminate gender on one hip. We hadn’t met, but I’d seen her, of course, when gathering information on her and her family. Not that I was going to disclose that I recognized her, or how. I hit the down button on my window with one hand and scrounged with the other in my purse for something to sop up the spilled coffee. Jackpot: a fistful of napkins from Taco Villa. I pressed them to the spill site like it was a bullet wound as cold air violated my warm, cozy space.

  “May I help you?”

  “Ms. Bernal?” She pronounced my Colombian (married) surname Burr-NAL, like most every other non-Hispanic person north of the Mexican border. But I had to wonder how she even know who I was.

  “I’m Emily Bernal.” I stressed the correct pronunciation: Bare-NAHL. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m Mary Alice Hodges, Betsy’s mother, and—”

  The word mother tore at my gut, and I couldn’t let that slide. “Foster mother, isn’t it? I’ve been trying to reach you through CPS about bringing a Christmas present over for her. You may recall hearing my name. I’m the person who rescued her when she was kidnapped.”

  I knew Betsy would love my gift, too. She had lost her treasured pink backpack when she’d been held captive, and I’d bought her a new one like the one she described—since I hadn’t found the one she’d lost, despite repeated calls to the task force of federal, state, and Alamogordo officers and the trustee for Johnson’s Ranch.

  “I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible. We don’t allow Christmas presents in our home. That’s our special time to praise God for the birth of the Christ child.”

  I could feel my jaw drop, and I stared at her. I had no response to that. Poor Betsy. Presents rocked. I’d considered the Hodges top tier because of siblings and morality, but I also hoped for fun and happiness. Maybe they were a loving family who made up for it in other ways, though. I knew how much worse it could be—neglect or abuse was a whole ’nother level of Hell from unhappy—but it wasn’t what I wanted for this sweet little girl who had stolen my heart.

  Mary Alice switched the child to the other hip. “Betsy said she’s seen you here.”

  I didn’t doubt that she had. Betsy and I had talked on one of my many visits, until a teacher put the kibosh on it. After that, I would wave to her as I walked laps around the school block, soaking in the sight of her and her nearness.

  My pulse sped up, throbbing in my ears. “Yes, and . . . ?”

  “I thought my husband made it clear that we don’t welcome outside interference with the young people we bring into our home.”

  The child in her arms suddenly threw its head back and wailed, flailing and kicking. I stared at the toddler, distracted. The hood came off its head, revealing short locks of wavy cotton-candy hair. The haircut looked very male, even though still babyish, and I decided to run with that gender classification. The little boy lifted his face again, still squalling, and I took a closer look. He didn’t look like your normal everyday kid. Something about the eyes. Down syndrome, I realized.

  “Ms. Burr-NAL?”

  “Um, yes, well, I’ve never spoken to your husband, but Wallace Gray with CPS did let me know you’ve turned down my requests to see Betsy. I wasn’t given a reason.”

  She bounced the boy up and down and made shushing noises for a few seconds, then turned her attention back to me as she continued to bounce him. “We keep tight control over the type of people our children associate with.”

  My face grew hot. “All righty then. You have a nice day.” I reached for the button to raise my window.

  She put her free hand out as if to stop me. “You need to stop bothering her here.”

  I recoiled and released pressure on the button. “Bothering her? I’m in a parked car a football field away.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  A roaring started in my head. “I’m not really sure that I do.”

  Her eyes narrowed and I saw her arms tighten around the child. He squealed. “Don’t make me take this further, Ms. Burr-NAL.”

  The roaring intensified. “Further? Should I be scared of something?”

  She leaned away from the child, toward me. “The wrath of God,” she whispered. “You should always be fearful of the wrath of God.”

  I laughed aloud. “Okay, gotcha. Thanks for stopping by.” I rolled up my window.

  She took three steps backward, then whirled, almost falling on the packed snow along the gutter. I watched in my rearview mirror as she strapped the boy into a car seat in her oversized army-green van, then went around and climbed in on the driver’s side. She started the engine, but sh
e didn’t leave. Instead, she looked at me—or the back of my head, at least—then lifted a phone and spoke, waving a fist in what looked like punctuation to her words. Her eyes fell. She nodded. She set the phone down and stared toward me again, a half smile on her lips. Finally, she grabbed something at the height of a steering wheel gearshift and her vehicle engaged. She accelerated away from the curb, her van fishtailing for a moment as she passed me, snow spitting up behind her tires as they caught.

  “Well.” I said it aloud, even though I was by myself. “She’s a whackjob.” I chuckled, but it wasn’t a laugh of mirth. If that woman had been holding up a cross instead of a baby, I would have sworn she was attempting to exorcise demons from my soul in her last moments at my window. I wouldn’t have been completely surprised if the archangel Saint Michael had swooped from the sky to assist. But now I was the one thinking crazy. I breathed out through my pursed lips, very slowly and deliberately.

  Clearly, the Hodges were ultrareligious, in a way that made my church-lady mother look like a trifler. Still, I didn’t understand Mary Alice’s behavior. Wallace said he had informed the Hodges that I intended to seek adoption of Betsy as soon as I could gain state approval. They’d known that when they first got Betsy, just like they’d known that I’d saved the girl’s life and forged a strong bond with her. So why forbid me to see her in the first place, and why the fuss now? Maybe they considered me to be an unsuitable kind of person. Yes, I’d been the talk of Amarillo for a few months after I moved back from Dallas, pregnant and humiliated by my cheating husband’s sexuality and paramour. But that was him, not me. Surely I was not such a threat to a child that I had to be warned off.

  I peered through my passenger-side window, looking for Betsy in the playground full of shouting kids. My eyes sorted through them. Too tall. Hair too light. Hair too short. Skin too dark. Skin too white. When I’d narrowed them down to short brown girls with long dark hair peeking out from under their winter caps, I found her. Tiny and adorable. She saw me looking at her, and she waved at me, using her whole body.

  I raised my hand, waving back. She looked around and I saw her eyes lock on the back of a teacher, and then she took off, a tiny pink dynamo hurtling in my direction. I jerked open my car door without hesitation, cutting the engine and pulling the keys out as I did, and ran toward her, coatless. Betsy made it twenty-five yards and I covered the other seventy-five. She slammed into me and I lifted her into a huge swinging-around hug.

  “Hi, Emily!” Her high-pitched voice sang out, as she pressed her cold face against mine. It felt wonderful.

  “Hi, sweetie-pie! How are you?” I set her down. Her long hair hung in braids fastened with pink scrunchies on each side of her head. She had lost a front tooth.

  She frowned, very serious and adult suddenly. “I’m good, but I miss you and Thunder.” Thunder was the horse we’d escaped on together.

  I laughed. “I miss you, and I’m sure Thunder does, too.”

  Her face lit up. “Have you found my backpack? Mama would be so mad I lost it.”

  I stuck out my bottom lip. Per Mary Alice Hodges, I couldn’t give her the new one, so I didn’t mention it. “No, no one has seen it. I’ll ask them to keep looking, okay?”

  A whistle blew.

  Betsy looked back toward her teacher, who was walking toward us, fast, head shaking back and forth, whistle in hand near her lips. “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah, uh-oh.” I hugged her one last time, and she ran back to the teacher.

  I walked toward my car. At the last second, I turned. Betsy was walking backwards, waving to me, and I pulled out my phone and quickly snapped a picture. I got in the Mustang, restarted it, and blew on my cold hands as I watched her.

  She rejoined her friends in what looked like a game of tag, a good way to stay warm out there. Watching her kept my face stretched in an ear-to-ear smile. Even though she’d lost both parents and now lived with the killjoy Hodges, I hoped she took some comfort in knowing she had me, and that I truly wanted her. I thought of my parents. Until I was sixteen, I’d felt wanted and loved by them both. After my dad left, especially after he cut off contact when I was a senior at Texas Tech, I still had my mother. It’s not that losing my father’s love didn’t hurt me, because it did, but I knew I wasn’t alone. Of course, it was possible the Hodges were loving people and made Betsy feel wanted, too. It just seemed highly unlikely to me after meeting Mary Alice.

  My phone rang. I answered it without looking, my eyes still on Betsy. “This is Emily.”

  “This Ava,” a lilting, cheery voice said. “You know, Katie’s Ava in St. Marcos.”

  My best girlfriend and former boss at Hailey & Hart in Dallas, Katie Kovacs, had left the practice of law to live in the Caribbean, where she had reinvented herself as a singer and keyboardist with her new friend Ava Butler. I’d gotten to see Katie and Ava perform several times. They were the real deal. They’d almost landed a New York recording contract but Katie got cold feet when she became a mother. I remembered that Katie said Ava had a little girl now, too.

  “Hi! Wow, what a nice surprise to hear from you.”

  I watched Betsy, half-listening to Ava. Betsy got tagged and was “it.” Her friends dispersed, and she began to chase them.

  “I got a manager book me a bunch a stateside gigs. I gonna be up your way soon.”

  “That’s great. You realize it’s winter here, right?” Ava was an island girl. I couldn’t imagine her here in the waterless, palm-treeless Panhandle anytime on purpose, much less in this freezing cold weather. And if Ava was coming all the way to Texas for gigs, motherhood must not be slowing her down as much as it did Katie.

  She laughed. “Yah, mon. I asking for double rates.”

  Another rap on my window. This one sounded like it was shattering it. I gasped and wheeled, dropping my phone and ducking toward the center of the car as I did so. No glass fell in on me, and I regained my composure quickly, ready to shout at Mary Alice, only it wasn’t her.

  Chapter Four

  From the console where my phone had fallen, I heard, “Emily? You okay, Emily?”

  An officer waited outside my car, one hand clutching a baton that he had tucked under his elbow. He was young. And short. Red haired. Full faced and thick bodied. Behind him stood Officer Samson. I rolled my window down again.

  Before I could speak, the new officer said, “I’m Officer Burrows. Step out of the car, please, ma’am.”

  “Certainly, Officer Burrows.” I held up one finger. He shook his head, so I made it fast before he could object further. I grabbed my phone and said to Ava, “Sorry, gotta go—police.”

  Ava’s voice sounded concerned, but I was already hanging up the phone. “Oh, bad news. Okay, I call you.”

  I set my phone on the passenger seat. “Do you need my license and registration, sir?”

  The officer’s voice grew louder. “Step out of the car, ma’am. Don’t make me say it again.”

  Officer Samson echoed, in a more gentle voice, “Ms. Bernal, if you could please do what Officer Burrows asks you to do.”

  My throat constricted. I unbuckled my seat belt and grabbed my winter coat. I opened the door and got out, then started to put it on.

  Burrows snatched it away from me. “Hands on the hood of the car, feet shoulder width apart.”

  My mouth went dry and it took a second for his words to register. He gave me a shove on the shoulder, spinning me around. It jarred me out of my confusion, and I did as he said. Behind my car I saw not one but two squad cars parked at an angle, blocking me in like a dangerous criminal.

  I moistened my lips. “What’s the problem, sir?”

  He didn’t answer, just patted me down everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. It was the first time anyone other than my OB/GYN had touched me there in four months, and this wasn’t exactly the way to break that unwelcome streak.

  “You’re going to wait in the back of my car while we search your vehicle.”

  “Why do you need to search i
t?”

  He took me by the upper arm—his fingers biting into it even through fleecy sweatshirt material and long johns—and led me to the cruiser, my coat still in his other hand.

  “Officer Burrows, am I under arrest?”

  He said nothing.

  Thinking back to the advice I’d heard Jack give clients, I said, “I do not consent to a search of my car. Nor do I consent to being locked in your vehicle, unless I am under arrest.”

  Burrows opened the back door to the cruiser and dropped my coat to the ground. Without warning, I felt a cuff snap around my right wrist and my arm pulled behind me. My first reaction was to struggle, but I stopped myself. My father had always told me to respect authority, even when it didn’t deserve it. Might made right, in the moment, because dead couldn’t be undone. Jack could help me sort this out later.

  I looked up at Officer Samson, but his eyes were hidden behind aviator sunglasses. Burrows grabbed my left arm and jerked it behind my back to join the other. The second cuff snapped closed. I wanted to shrink into invisibility. Betsy’s recess bell hadn’t rung yet. She was still outside. If she was looking, she could see all of this, with no one to explain it to her, to tell her I would be fine. Her mother had died in prison, and her father had died escaping Johnson’s Ranch. Watching me, powerless, could be incredibly traumatic for her, and I prayed she was playing with friends and didn’t see what was happening one hundred yards away.

  Burrows put a hand on top of my head and shoved me down enough to topple me into the backseat of the car. The whole scene was surreal for me. My only brush with the law had been a few traffic tickets. A vision flashed through my mind of a tie-down roper’s lariat sailing over the head of a calf. The rope jerked tight as the quarter horse stopped and threw its weight in reverse. The calf thrown on its side by the cowboy, who then wrapped three of its ankles with a piggin’ string and threw his own arms into the air to signal he was done. Now I knew how the calf felt.