filled with water from the bathroom. He was sponging away the blood from her face when Delores came in with a blanket, a couple of Quaaludes, and a plastic bag of ice.
Delores stared at Janie. “I knew something like this would – ”
“Dee. Shut up.” Stella took the blanket, pills, and ice from her and pushed her out of the office, closing the door in her face. He looked at Janie. “You’re going to be fine. Let’s get you out of here before we have more sightseers.”
On the way to the car Janie started to shake so hard Stella couldn’t keep the blanket around her. He carried her to his car, surprised by how light she felt. He helped her into the front seat and tucked the blanket around her. Her skin was cold. He needed to get her hydrated and warm. He’d ice her face later to get the swelling down, but right then she was shaking so badly he didn’t want to risk it. He kept up a constant patter, calm and neutral – no questions, nothing she needed to respond to, just a voice in the dark for her to focus on. He drove to Doc’s place in town and left the car running while he got a shopping bag full of medical supplies. Stella didn’t stop to think about what he was doing. If he thought too hard about it, he’d be dropping this girl at the hospital emergency entrance and driving away.
As they pulled up in front of Stella’s gated driveway, China, his big black and tan dog, came running out to greet him. He got out of the car, unlocked the padlock, and swung the gate open.
“Settle down, China. We’ve got company.” Since he’d moved here six years ago, he could count on one hand the people who’d been to his home. Now he had this girl – an underaged white girl no less – sitting in his car in front of his house about to spend the night. Stella shook his head to clear it, got back in the car, drove through the gate and re-locked it. He parked in front of the house and helped Janie out of the car. She wasn’t shaking so much anymore. She hadn’t cried or carried on like most people would have given whatever had been done to her. He guessed that besides the beating she’d been raped. What to do about that was beyond the medical training he’d received at Lejeune.
China shimmied her back end around, wagging her tail hard and butting her head against Janie’s legs. Stella held Janie’s arm and stopped as she held out her hand. China sniffed the girl all around.
Stella smiled. “She likes you.”
In the kitchen Stella seated Janie at the table and unpacked the shopping bag. He gave her more pain medication and a glass of warm water to sip while he rinsed off her split forehead with lidocaine and began to stitch her up. She didn’t flinch, and Stella was glad for that. He was having a hard time keeping his hands steady and his stomach from flipping. It had been another life the last time he’d sewn flesh. He hummed under his breath to steady himself. He made them both some chamomile tea, cooling hers to lukewarm with cream and honey, putting a straw in the mug so she could sip it. China sat at the girl’s feet, resting her head on Janie’s lap.
“You feel like taking a bath?”
Janie nodded.
“You won’t slip or fall, will you?”
Janie shook her head.
Stella left her with China and ran a tub. He looked in the closet for something Cookie might have left behind the last time she’d visited. Cookie Novella was the woman he loved, but she lived in Oregon and not with him because she disapproved of the club. He found Cookie’s clean sweatshirt and longjohn bottoms, gathered a couple towels from the hall closet, and carried it all to the kitchen. The girl sat slumped over, holding China’s head on her lap. For a minute he thought she’d passed out until he saw her back shake with a sob. Stella stood in the doorway wiping his face with the back of his sleeve. Then he helped her to the tub.
Tomorrow he’d find some clothes for her. She’d need stuff girls needed. He’d have to do his best to remember what that stuff might be. He’d call Cookie once Janie fell asleep. He’d ask her what to do. He’d already decided. Janie would be staying, no matter what her staying might mean later.
Here Comes the Sun
IN THE MORNING WHEN SHE WOKE, JANIE STUDIED THE quilt that covered her in Stella’s spare bedroom. The quilt contained a thousand shades of blue, from the indigo of blueberries in August to the pale blue of a mountain sky. Each block was stitched precise as a prayer. The fabric looked delicate and felt soft as silk, but was strong even after years of wear. Stella had said the women of his family made it for his mother when she was expecting her first child – him. The idea of all those women sitting together to make something so beautiful captured Janie’s imagination. She lay in bed between thick cotton sheets.
Across from her bed a large window with sheer curtains stained the room with light. She could almost tell time by the square of yellow sunlight as it moved across the quilt. Except for a dresser and the narrow bed she slept in the room was empty and it calmed her. It had been almost six weeks since she came to Stella’s. The swelling had gone down, the bruises were gone, and she could eat, talk, and smile. When she looked in the small oval mirror she could pretend nothing had happened. That was the surface of it. The skin and teeth and hair of it. She’d drawn Stella a map of where the guy in the van had dumped her and her stuff. Stella retrieved what was left – a small wooden box with a few pictures, her Social Security card, a copy of Winnie the Pooh her parents gave her for the last birthday they were both alive. Love to Janie on her sixth birthday, Mommy and Daddy. That was all that was left. The girl she’d been was gone.
She didn’t think of the particulars of what had happened out there in the woods. Though she knew better she didn’t call it rape because she’d been stupid and had paid for it. Janie knew from the boatload of other bad things that had happened to her in sixteen years that thinking too much about any of them would hurt too much and bring nightmares and cold sweats. She chose not to look at her past and looked at the quilt instead.
This morning was already warm. Janie sat up in bed and slid her feet to the floor. China woke stretching and yawning. The dog slept on the bed beside her since the first night. Her tail thumped against the mattress sending dust motes spinning. Janie let China out the back door. She could hear a rake scraping the ground. Stella liked to work in the garden before he went to the club. Janie helped too, since the garden was big enough to keep two people busy. Some of the vegetables Janie had never seen, let alone eaten. There was okra, squashes, melons, greens of every kind, cucumbers and tomatoes, peppers, beans, a patch of corn, cabbages, and different kinds of lettuces, radishes, onions, and garlic. Stella was a good cook, and now that it was high summer, he cooked out of the garden and didn’t buy much from the store. Janie checked on the tomatoes every day for a hint of red. Stella told her to hold her horses, it was only July, the tomatoes wouldn’t come on for at least another month, but Janie had a particular memory of a garden – sitting on the warm dirt with her mom when she was maybe four or five, picking a red tomato, and eating it like an apple, the juice running down her face and fingers.
On the kitchen table sat a white bowl full of nectarines and a white plate of cornbread squares left over from dinner the night before. Coffee perked in the pot on the stove. Stella came in through the kitchen, slipping his shoes off at the door carrying a big bunch of beets that he put in the sink. “You sleep okay?”
“Yeah.” Janie cut a piece of cornbread in half, put it on a white plate, and squeezed honey from a plastic bear over it. “Stella, how come so much of your stuff is white?”
“White always matches white. White goes with anything. It’s the color of the masses.”
Janie took a bite of cornbread.
Stella
