Silver Basilisk - Zoe Chant Page 0,10

for reporting an abandonment more than sixty years ago.”

Bird’s chin lifted. “Was he abusive?”

“Naw. I never would’ve put up with that.” Godiva looked at two of her longest-term friends. Yes, it did seem to be time to fess up. Rip the band-aid.

“If you want to hear this sadsack story of mine, better grab a chair. Though I’ll try not to whine too long. Stop me if I do.”

Doris sat on Godiva’s reading chair, and Bird perched on the footstool, saying, “In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never whined, but you’ve listened to us whine. You’re owed.”

Godiva plopped down on the end of her bed, which undulated gently under her. “I should probably begin at the beginning. I was born in a shack in the desert just south of the Rio Grande. My pa loved his moonshine more’n us, which was why my ma walked out on him after one bad night too many.”

Godiva shut her eyes, thrown back to when she was barely twelve, and her mother had woken her in the middle of the night. You’re strong, mijita. Much stronger than I am. You’ll survive. I won’t unless I get away, Ma had whispered in Spanish, and then was gone with barely a rustle.

“Life was okay when Pa vanished on his benders. To this day I have no idea how he and my Ma ended up together. She was a dreamer. She saw exactly one movie, something with Shirley Temple in it, and she was so jazzed she named me after the child actress. We lived so far out there were no neighbors, much less any schooling. While we chopped cactus and pounded corn meal to make tortillas, she taught me the alphabet, and the basics of reading and writing. But not long after she left, Pa went on a bender. When he got back he burned our shack down and came at me, roaring that it was all my fault she was gone. I hid up, and once he stumbled off looking for his jug, I beat feet for the big city. ‘Big city’ being Hidalgo, which had one major street, but that looked huge to me.”

“You were twelve?” Bird asked, her eyes huge.

“Yup.”

Doris shook her head slowly, and looked down at her hands, then up. “What happened next?”

“In those days there was no child welfare, at least in those parts. I got a job washing dishes at the Main Street diner. The owner let me live behind the kitchen in trade for doing all the laundry by hand, as well. Just me, a scrub bucket with lye, a wringer, and a clothes line. Every Sunday, when the diner closed, I spent ironing. I learned English by listening to the customers. One of the waitresses started teaching me English reading and writing at night so I could take over chalking the menu each morning.”

Godiva cackled, looking back. “Everything I’d been through was nothing to tackling English, with its miles of verb tenses and spelling rules shiftier than snake-oil salesmen. What do you even do with tough, through, though, plough, and cough? The Spanish alphabet is honest. What you see is what you get.”

Godiva knew she was taking a sidetrack, and checked on her audience.

Sure enough, Doris and Bird weren’t laughing.

So she forced her way back to the point, though this was a whole lot harder than it had any right to be. “Anyway, life was a grind in those days. This was during World War II. Then the war ended, and things picked up a little when the men came back. A rodeo hit town. The town came alive at night, or at least the establishments catering to the cowboys, who spent their earnings as fast as they made them. I liked visiting the animals. I might have been young, but I was savvy. Or thought I was. Then one day out at the corral I met Rigo.”

She closed her eyes. “Short version: one look, and I thought it was Forever. Go right ahead and laugh.”

She opened her eyes. Still no laughter.

“Yeah, okay, then I’ll laugh. I was eighteen and he didn’t look much older’n me, though sometimes he talked like he’d been around during the days of the silver mines. You know, horse and buggy days—though a lot of towns didn’t get electricity for many years. Hidalgo only had one phone in the entire town.”

She was letting herself get sidetracked again, sighed, and forced herself back to the painful past. “He was the fastest rider