This Little Light - Lori Lansens Page 0,64
brave.”
“I am just Paula.”
“Are you sick too?”
“I don’t have the cancer.”
“But your head…”
“I have the lice. Mi abuelo shave me.”
I feel relieved to hear this. Fee does too.
All of a sudden I remember. “Wait. Your dog? Where’s your dog?”
“Dog?”
“Perro? The black pit bull?” I say. “He is dead. Abuelo kick him very hard.”
“Fuck. I mean, sorry. That’s awful. That’s so awful.”
“It’s better. His life is bad. I bury him in the woods where we play.”
“You buried him already?”
“I bury him in the summer. When he die.” She looks at us, confused.
“The summer? But last night? We heard your abuelo beat the shit out of him.”
“No.”
“But we heard him calling for Perro, and then there was all the crashing around.”
“My dog is called Blackie.” She drops her eyes.
So she is Perro. Her grandfather beats her and calls her Dog. That’s her life. Choose happy. Right.
“So, do you, like, drug your abuelo a lot?”
“Yes. I give to him the pills mucho times.”
“Sleeping pills?”
“In his whiskey.” She counted off on her little fingers. “Vicodin. Percocet. Tramadol.”
Fee looks appalled. I’m frankly impressed. Paula’s an angel, but her halo’s pretty warped.
“So many pills left from my mother. I give to him the pills so I can play with my dolls. And for when he is too drunk and too mad.”
“Right. You like the Patriot Girls,” I say. “But why do you have to drug him to play with your dolls?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she runs back into the curtained-off part of the trailer and returns with a big black backpack. She presses it into my hands and says, “I put clothes. His clothes. They small. Is better for you to go in the shed now. Sometimes his friend comes here.”
I realize I’m still holding the peanut butter knife and put it back down on the counter. We take the backpack, gratefully, and head for the door.
Fee stops. “Come with us. Come to the shed with us.”
“Paula come?” It’s like we’re inviting her to Disneyland, she gets that excited.
I go, “It’s not really safe, Fee. I mean, Paula, you understand people are hunting us?”
Paula’s abuelo let out a long, low fart. Safe? It’s all relative? Right?
Paula goes first, acting casual, trying not to be blown away by the winds that’ve kicked up pretty hard during the time we’ve been in the trailer. The chopper has flown off, because of the wind, or because he thought the area was clear. I’m afraid he will come back around for another look.
When we’re sure the sky’s clear, and no humans are lurking in the bushes, we run, the three of us, back to the relative safety of the metal shed. Paula heads straight for the corner, and digs into one of the white plastic garbage bags I was so afraid to open, and unearths a Patriot Girls doll and a matching outfit from the dry leaves and lawn clippings.
Paula goes, “Yesterday I be Maggie Martin. Today I be Hannah Good!”
“Cool,” I say. “We used to love Patriot Girls too, right, Fee?”
“Yeah, but Paula, why do you keep your dolls here?”
“It’s Nina’s dolls. She is dead. Hurt in her head. I never know her. Mr. Javier give to me the dolls and tell me hide them here.”
“I still don’t get it. Why do you have to hide your dolls in the shed?”
Paula shakes her head. “Abuelo.”
“Nina had Patriot Girls dolls? They cost a fortune,” I say.
“The people give to Nina when they daughters don’t want to play no more.”
Oh. My. God. Shelley packed up my Patriot Girls dolls years ago, along with the matching outfits that I’d outgrown too, and told me she was gonna give them to her clients’ kids. That’s actually my doll. I know it. My fucking Hannah Good doll.
“Your abuelo’s gonna wake up eventually,” Fee says.
“Yes.”
“He beats you. A lot?”
“Yes.”
“Fucking asshole. Sorry. But.”
“I know those words. I have the cable. And the Twitter.”
“What are you, like, seven?”
“I am ten. I am small.”
“So, fourth grade? Fifth?”
“No school. I am illegal.”
“Oh, Jesus. Paula…like, my mother’s an immigration lawyer and she’s gonna help you. We’ll figure something out. I promise.”
“Okay.”
Paula digs into her backpack and takes out two half-frozen gas station burritos. “The microwave don’t work. I don’t have no more soda. No water. Abuelo don’t have the filter.”
“Thanks, Paula. It’s okay—Javier’s said he’d come back with help. When does he usually get home?”
“When the sun go down, Mr. Javier is coming home.”
Paula digs deeper into the backpack and starts pulling out the old work pants and sweatshirts, baseball