Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,18
for the first time and stared straight at me. All I could do was stare right back at her. She had these big, beautiful yellow eyes that just didn’t stop. I knew then and there that I was hers, and she was mine, that we were kin now, and there was no denyin’ it.”
Serafina was so mesmerized by his story that she barely blinked. The yellow eyes that her father spoke of were still looking at him, and they had been for twelve years.
He rubbed his mouth slowly with his hand, looked over at the dynamo, and then continued the story. “In the time that followed, I fed the little chitlan every morning and every night. I slept with her tucked under my arm. I nestled her in an open toolbox beside me when I worked. When she started growing up a little, I taught her how to crawl and run about. I was tryin’ my best to take good care of her—she was mine now, you see—but people started askin’ questions and government types started comin’ around. Men with badges and guns. One night when I was out workin’ in the train yard, three of ’em waited until she wandered off a bit, and then they cornered her, trapped her in real tight. They was gonna take her away and put her someplace, God knows where, or maybe worse. I hit the first officer so hard that he went down bleeding and he didn’t get up, then I struck the second one and grabbed for the third, but he skedaddled on outta there. The little chitlan was all right, thank God, but I knew we were in trouble. They’d be comin’ back with more men next time, chains for me, and a cage for the chitlan. I knew then that we had to go. We had to escape the pryin’ eyes and yammerin’ mouths in the city, so I quit the train yard and found a new job way up in the mountains, workin’ the construction of a great house.”
She gasped as she realized that he hadn’t just been hiding her; he’d been hiding them. That’s why we’re in the basement, she thought as a wave of relief passed through her. He was protecting her.
“I took care of her through good times and bad,” her pa continued, “just doin’ everything I could, and over the years, the strange little creature that I found in the forest grew up into a fine little girl, and I did my best to forget how she came into the world or how I got her.”
And here, finally, her father paused and looked at her in earnest. “And that’s you now, Sera,” he said. “That’s you. It’s plain to see that you’re not like other girls, but you’re not misshapen or hideous like them nuns said you’d be. You’re remarkably graceful in your movements—fast and agile like I’ve never seen. You’re not deaf and blind like they said, but real sharp in your senses. I’ve been protecting you every day for the last twelve years, and the God’s truth: they’ve been the best twelve years of my life. You mean the world to me, girl. There’s no shame here, none at all, just a strong desire to keep us both alive.”
When he stopped and looked at her with his steady dark eyes, she realized that she’d been sobbing, and quickly wiped the tears off of her face before he got mad at her for crying. In some ways, she had never felt closer to her pa than at that moment, for his story had snagged her heart, but there was something else roiling up inside her, too: her father wasn’t her father. He’d found her in the woods and taken her. He’d been lying to her and everyone else for her entire life. All these years he’d refused to talk about her mother, just let her wonder on and on, and now here it was. The truth. Tears kept streaming down her face. She felt so stupid imagining fancy ladies and her mother forgetting her in a washing machine and all that stuff she used to think about when she was little. She’d spent countless hours wondering where she came from and he had known all this the whole time.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked him.
He didn’t answer her.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Pa?” she asked again.
Staring at the ground, he shook his head slowly back and forth.