Nicola Griffith - Stay

“I’m fine.”

“Yes, well.” She picked up her coffee mug. “Get you a refill?”

I shook my head, paid scant attention as she got up and poured for herself. What was it like to care so fiercely for a scrap of humanity you could carry as easily as a small sack of potatoes? What was it like to be the one so cared for? “Why does Luz call you Aba?”

She cleared her throat and made a production of adding sugar and cream. She cleared her throat again. “She called me that from the beginning. Two years now. It’s from Abuela, Spanish for grandmother. I looked it up,” she added defiantly.

“That’s not all you taught her that you weren’t supposed to, is it?”

“No.”

“I’d like to hear about it, about Luz. Will you tell me?”

She turned and sat. “She was such a sad little thing, always weeping and talking in Spanish. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t talk English, wouldn’t take any comfort. I didn’t know what to do, until one day I took Jud’s truck to the library and borrowed a cassette and a book. Had to buy a cassette player too. Had to hide it from Jud. But, oh, you should have seen her sweet face when I put that tape on!” She wiped absently at her eyes. “A flood of words! What with the book and everything, I learned to say Hello and Eat this, and after an hour or two, she was eating pretty as you please and calling me Aba.”

“And you two talk Spanish to each other.”

“God gave her her own language and I don’t see anything wrong in having it spoken in this house.”

“Mrs.—Adeline, I’m not criticizing. Just the opposite. But there’s more, isn’t there?”

She twisted her wedding ring. “Math. She could add and subtract if she did it in Spanish, so I didn’t see the harm of showing her how in English. And you can’t get much done in the house if you don’t know how to multiply and divide. And then… Well, you’ve talked to her, she’s a curious little thing. Once she had the bit between her teeth she had to know more. So I bought some encyclopedias at a yard sale and I taught her, and after a while I started sneaking to the library for extra books when Jud had them both off swimming or suchlike. He doesn’t know. I thought it best.”

“How much of an obstacle is he likely to be?”

“Mostly I worried, before, about following the agreement we had with Miz Goulay. Jud’s stubborn about such things. A man’s word is his bond.” She gave me a complicit woman-to-woman smile that congealed suddenly: no doubt remembering I was nothing like a good Christian wife and mother.

“Perhaps it would be best for you to speak to him privately.”

“I can speak of it some,” she said slowly. “You’ll have to do the money talk.”

“Yes. But perhaps you could give me an idea of what he might think was fair.” I gathered the documents. “How much did Karp send you a month?”

“Five hundred dollars.”

According to his records, it had been four hundred. “And do you think that’s fair? Take a moment to think it through.”

“Six hundred?” she hazarded.

“Let’s begin with seven-fifty, and review the situation after three months.” By my estimate, they would need at least fifteen hundred a month to give Luz what I thought she needed, but for the Carpenters, especially Jud, that might be an immoral sum, easily confused with a temptation of Mammon.

“We could manage with that.” She got a determined look on her face. “There’s her food, and clothes, and things for her room, not to mention all the extra trouble of teaching her good English. It won’t be long before she’s a teen, eating us out of house and home, growing out of all her clothes. Then there’s the books…”

She was rehearsing her argument for Jud. I felt around under the table until I found the transmitter. It peeled off easily and dropped into my hand.

“… thousand and one other things a man doesn’t pay any attention to…”

Once they were used to the arrangement, I would buy items such as a television and computer and music system. I’d provide the money for private tuition so Luz could catch up on those subjects Adeline might not have covered. I’d pay to send her to interesting places on vacation, make—

All money and no love. The way my mother had been with me.

No. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t. I wasn’t Luz’s mother—she already had one, or at least someone who loved her.

I stood carefully. “You’ll talk to Jud tonight? Then I’ll take my leave. I’ll talk to my lawyer and get a preliminary agreement drafted. I’ll come back tomorrow. Afternoon.” I was sweating; the bug cut into my palm.

There was still the booster unit in the tub of flowers by the door, which would be easy enough to retrieve on my way out, and the transmitters upstairs.

“If I may, I’ll go up and use your facilities before I leave.”

I used both hands on the stair rail, and counted backwards from two thousand in sevens as I climbed. Pain is just a message.

In the Carpenters’ room, the back window was open. Faint voices—Button chattering, Jud answering, one short phrase from Luz, an acknowledgment from Jud—drifted up on the night air. The bug was exactly where I’d left it.

Luz’s room looked different without the books on the bedside table. Maybe the suitcase was still downstairs. My heart felt too big for my rib cage, and my lungs too small. I had to sit on the bed for a minute before I could lean forward and reach for the transmitter. When I stood, my face felt cold. The door seemed a million miles away.

I dragged myself to the bathroom, telling myself I did not have concussion, that if I could just drink some water, splash some on my face, I’d be all right, but when I got there my good leg started to fold under me, and I half fell, half sat on the toilet. I shivered, swallowed. I just needed a few minutes, and some water.

A child thundered up the stairs. The bathroom door slammed all the way open. Luz. She stared.

“I have to use the bathroom,” she said.

I didn’t move.

“What are you doing?”

“I was going to get some water,” I said. She looked at the sink, then at me. “My leg hurts.”

She absorbed that. “Would you like me to bring you some?”

“Yes. Please.”

She tipped the toothbrushes out of a glass, rinsed it, and filled it to the brim. She carried it from the sink with great deliberation. When I reached for it, she said, “Use both hands. If you spill it, it’ll make the floor slippery.”

I sipped. “Thank you.” My breathing steadied.

“What did you do to your leg? Did you fall down?”

“I hurt my knee.”

“Aba helps me if I hurt myself, she helps Mr. Carpenter, too. But most people don’t have an Aba. Most people have a mom.”

“Mine is a long, long way away.”

She nodded, unsurprised. “What about your brother?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Button’s not really my brother. Mr. Carpenter isn’t really my daddy, either. My daddy’s dead.”

A child skipping along the pavement, holding my hand on one side, Karp’s on the other. “Mine too.”

She looked worried. “Then who’s going to kiss you better?”

The bathroom walls wavered. A little hand took the glass from mine.

“Don’t cry,” she said. “I can do it. See?” She kissed my cheek, light as a cricket. “There. All better. Only I hope it works. I don’t think you’re supposed to be older than me.”

Her tenderness was unbearable. She was nine years old. She knew how to kiss me better: a simple thing, but one I could never have taught her. And I had come here to save her.

“Aud? I have to go to the bathroom now.”

“Yes,” I said, “of course,” and hauled myself to my feet.