Nicola Griffith - Stay

“Banana!” said Button.

“Would you like some banana?”

“Banana!”

Luz smiled at him indulgently. “He likes banana.”

I got up again and chopped some banana into chunks and slid the plate in front of Button.

“Have you ever seen papaya before?”

She shook her head.

“You could look it up in your encyclopedia. But that wouldn’t tell you how it tastes.” I got up again and filled a small glass plate with fruit salad, which I put next to her bowl. “Just in case you want to try a bit.”

Button took a piece of banana in one hand and squashed it with the other, slowly, almost experimentally, and when it was mashed to pulp, he examined it with great deliberation and then licked it off. “Banana,” he decided, and calmly put another piece in his mouth. He chewed and nodded. “Banana.”

“Yes,” I said. “It tastes the same no matter what shape it is.” Luz gave me that birdlike look from one eye, then the other. I sipped my tea and applied myself to the fruit salad.

When everyone had eaten as much as they were going to, I stood to clear the table. Luz automatically picked up some dishes. “Thank you. I’ll do the rest.”

“Thank you for the breakfast it was very nice,” she said in one breath. “Please may we be excused?”

“No. I have a present for you, and for Button.”

“A present?” More wary than excited.

I had no idea what she was thinking. “Yes.” She perched on a recliner while I got the presents. The TV blared and chopped from one station to another: Button had found the remote again.

I’d bought four of the boxes in Little Rock yesterday morning; one, wrapped in heavy silver paper, I’d had shipped from San Francisco via Delta DASH at a cost that would have made Adeline pass out. One large box, two medium, and two small.

“This big one for Button first,” I said.

Luz and I watched while he ripped his open and pulled forth a scale model of a fire engine, with working ladder, unspoolable hose, and flashing light. “This,” I said, pointing to the tiny manual pump, “will actually suck up water and squirt it out here.” He seemed not to hear me, but I was beginning to suspect that Button heard and understood a lot more than I had at first thought. He touched everything methodically, and found that all the firefighters came off, too. It would keep him happy for a while.

I passed her a medium box. “This one’s for you.”

Although she opened the wrapping carefully along the seams, her chest was beginning to rise and fall more quickly. She lifted the lid. It was a cell phone and charger. “Oh,” she said, in the same tone she’d said “Fish.”

“This is a serious present, Luz.”

“It’s a phone. A funny phone.”

“Yes. But there’s something else in the box.”

She lifted out the phone and charger, and when she saw what lay beneath, her eyes positively glistened. A beautiful calfskin pouch, in natural brown, and a belt to go with it.

“It’s to hold the phone. You slide the belt through those slits at the back, and put the phone…” But she was already threading everything together, sliding the belt around the waist of her corduroys, closing and snapping open the pouch with an almost voluptuous satisfaction. “Don’t forget the phone.”

I showed her how to slide the battery in until it clicked, how to put the phone in the charger. She listened with half an ear while running her fingers back and forth on the smooth belt and kicking idly at the recliner.

“Pay attention. I want you to carry it with you everywhere.” I handed it to her.

“Even when I go swimming?”

“Not in the water, no. But everywhere else. Put it in the pouch.”

She slid it in, appeared to be delighted with the fit.

“And there’s a present that goes with it.” I gave her one of the small boxes.

She opened it and lifted out a thick metal bangle. She weighed it expertly on her palm and frowned at its heft. “Is it silver?”

“No. Look on the inside.”

“There’s some numbers.”

“They are secret numbers, just for you and me. Not even for Aba.” I would just have to hope. “That’s my cell phone number.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and flipped it open, turned it on, and showed her. “I carry it everywhere.” Or I would from now on. It beeped: three missed calls and one voice message. All from Dornan. Her wary look was back. Dornan could wait. “I want you to keep that bangle on your wrist, and the phone at your belt or in your pocket, and I want you to call me anytime you need me.”

“So you won’t get lonely,” she said.

“Yes. Yes, that’s right.” I recovered myself. “You can call me in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning, anytime, I won’t get—I’d like it.”

She was watching Button with his toy.

“Luz?”

“Is that why you want to be my tía , so you won’t be lonely?”

“Tía?”

“Aba says you’re going to be my auntie.”

“I—Ah, well—”

“Are you Button’s tía , too?” She still wasn’t looking at me. “I’ve never had an auntie before.”

And then I understood: she was afraid. For her, gaining a relative had always led to terrible change.

“I have an aunt,” I said. “Her name is Hjordis. She talks to me on the phone and sometimes buys me presents. That’s what aunts do.”

“She didn’t take you away, even when she was lonely?”

“Never.” I took her chin in my hand, turned her head so she was looking at me. “Luz, I’m going home today but you’ll stay here. A few things will be different—you’ll go to school, a nice school where you’ll make friends—but every day you’ll come home to Aba and Mr. Carpenter and Button. No one is ever going to take you away. I might talk to you on the phone sometimes, when… when I wish there was someone to kiss me better, and you can call me. If you don’t know what a word means, or if you get lost, or you think something Aba or Mr. Carpenter wants you to do is wrong, call that number. I’ll always answer and I’ll always listen. That’s what aunts do. Do you understand?”

She nodded, eyes enormous.

“Now I want you to take out the phone and learn how to use it.”

She put the bangle on the carpet and took the phone out of its pouch. It was as big as her nine-year-old hand.

“Open it up. That little button there, the round one, turns it on, you have to press that first. Then you dial the number.” She nodded. “Do it now. Dial my number.”

She read the number from the bangle, dialed it. “It’s not ringing.”

“When you dial the number, you have to press Send, the green one.” My phone shrilled. I flipped it open, put it to my ear. Luz lifted hers.

She blushed, hesitated. “Aud,” she said.

“Anytime,” I said into the phone, then closed it up. “You end the call by pressing that button, the red one.”

She pushed the button solemnly, put the phone back in its soft leather pouch, and picked up the bangle again. The fear seemed to be gone. “There’s two numbers.”

“The other one is my lawyer. If ever I don’t answer, if my phone breaks or something”—if I’m lying dead in a park with my throat cut—“you can call her and leave a message. She’s very nice. Keep the bangle safe, wear that all the time, even in the pool if you want. It’s white gold.”

Her expression didn’t change but she slid the bangle onto her left wrist and admired it for a while.

I pushed the phone box over to her. “There’s an instruction book in there. It’s a bit hard to figure out, but eventually you’ll be able to program those numbers into the phone for speed dial.”

She mouthed speed dial to herself and looked determined. I filed that response away for future use. While she experimented with the pouch, sliding it back and forth until she found the most comfortable position, I opened the other small box.