But Aaron’s and Gordon’s old friend, Jack Holmes, the lawyer, made calls, worked lawyerly magic. And so the children came “home.”
However, Silverbell thinks the DHS is right. She is not fit. She is not fit now.
And her eye? The one that was loose and burning, bulging from her face, blind for weeks but somehow, in all the rumpus, that eye did not stay blind but sees right through the silly joys of ordinary life and out the other side. And what she sees this moment is the dark ominous all-powerful bearlike creature they call Bonnie Loo standing in full black silhouette in the unendurable roar of baby-pink light.
Silverbell’s voice more wooden than the door, “Okay.” She makes room for Bonnie Loo to pass, she who smells kitcheny and fresh-airy, but also there’s a brittle odor of cigarettes.
“Were you resting?” wonders the guest as she tries to look into the darkness for a surface to place the basket upon.
“Not exactly.”
“I just didn’t want to disturb you if you were. But if I left this out in the hall, mice would beat you to it.”
“Mickey and Minnie,” Silverbell wisecracks. Her hair is blond, growing out darker, shoulder length, straight as water off an eave. Maybe silky when it was clean. And brushed. But it is not cared for today, or yesterday, either, or before that. On her feet bedroom slippers with golden plastic-by-product semi-sheen bows, the from-the-big-box-store-into-the-trash-can-in-six-months model. She shuffles along. She snaps on a Settlement-lathed pine floor lamp, a paper shade of dancing black-masked raccoons, the store-bought-in-1940s kind, and then returns to ease the door shut with a hand that seems at first glance injured. But no, it is trembling.
Three beds. Two are for Bard and Eden, almost thirteen, both kids seeming undamaged after the drug warriors and DHS wrung so much of life’s juice out of them. Even after the court ordered them returned to Silverbell, it was six more months when each did not see the other’s face. Yeah, even the brother and sister, these twins, were, as Silverbell was, allowed only guarded visits, which were canceled with no explanation, always at the last minute. Power has no master.
Now Bard and Eden have Settlement friends, maybe at this moment they’re riding horses together, maybe helping with the casting or costuming or last-minute research for a history skit, maybe leading a Simon Says game for a bunch of squirmy tykes, or picking pumpkins. Or peeling pumpkins. Or scrubbing floors. Or sorting mail. Or with a crew off to the planetarium in Portland via two or three old patched mumbly Settlement sedans.
Bonnie Loo positions the basket on the bare breakfast table, lifts the basket’s cloth. “Tomato soup herbed to perfection; real smoked deer jerky; warm bread and cold butter; tea of the mint variety; three cheeses, goat, cow, and reindeer . . .” She winks.
Silverbell sort of smiles, one eyebrow frowning. She enjoys the joke.
Bonnie Loo keeps going. “Salad with my special green Popeye dressing. And apple pie with some Cortlands, some sheep’s noses.”
Silverbell does not blink.
Bonnie Loo says, “Sheep-nose apples are shaped . . . kind of like a beet. I put any apple in a pie. I like a mix. And that’s it. I meant to bring you an extra hand-wiping rag but nothing’s really greasy here.”
“I like all the stuff you brought.”
“I know. I know everything.” She chuckles. “The Settlement has many mouths.”
Silverbell’s eyes narrow. Maybe a headache?
A long silence.
“Oops. I’m such a bubble brain. Forgot to introduce myself. I’m Bonnie Loo. Usually I’m cooking. Or canning. Lately a lot of canning.”
Silverbell’s gray eyes gleam briefly. These are gray eyes with a darker gray outer ring. Gives her gaze an intensity beyond the vigilant eyes of a survivor. Her voice is not silvery or bell-like but clucky, henlike, but also her voice is direct. An arrow. “I know who you are.”
Bonnie Loo runs her large hands down her sides, fingering the hem of her dark green sweater. She had expected this room to be hot. Or cold. Air trapped from another day or night or year. But it is comfortable and the beds have Settlement quilts and in the center of the floor is a warm braided rug of maroons and blues, capering pinks and martial grays. Wooden drawers, the kind you can stack like those roomy cardboard file boxes in office storerooms. Some novels on the night table. Some pottery holding wild blue asters, which will soon fade to fuzz.
This bouquet is probably a “healing” gift from Lee Lynn St. Onge. And that smell like balsam but also peppery . . . a Settlement-made candle or one of Lee Lynn’s witchy salves. Lee Lynn, the witch of salves, teas, and tincture; Lee Lynn, young but with some early gray, like dark and gray straw, like, yes, a witch. Gordon’s wife Tambrah once punched her in the face, circling her, while Lee Lynn’s police siren voice, always so irritating, inflamed to a full scream, broadcast the emergency to the skies, north, south, east, and west. Lee Lynn was so hunkered down in one of her gauzy hippie dresses, her long arms wrapped eel-like around and around and around herself to shield against Tambrah’s dancing, skin-rippling, grunting, biting, hair-pulling, sucker-punching, eye-purpling frenzy. There were many ways to make a stand over possession of Gordon in those days. Tambrah’s was in two parts, where in a few weeks, she, like Claire, would leave. Back to the reservation in Tambrah’s case, while legends of her ferocity stayed behind to cast warning of polygamy’s hazards.
“Are you sometimes called Silvie? For short?” Bonnie Loo asks with a smile.
“No.” A blunt sound, not as airy as a word. The young woman’s eyes had sprung onto Bonnie Loo’s broad dusky face.
Bonnie Loo clears her throat. “They’ve started your cottage. It’s all framed.”
“I know.”
“Then you’ll have windows.” Bonnie Loo is privy to how Silverbell has been pressed to join the family at meals or to sign up for a crew, always to a blank stare and no-show. As with the girl Jane Meserve, some blame it on trauma, some pronounce her an “introvert.” Settlement mouths bark and Settlement hearts are sticky and Settlement hands will make tidy. But it’s no accident that the sucker-punching Tambrah’s legends have become braided with Bonnie Loo’s, for Bonnie Loo’s posture and sometimes pissed-off tremble of the lip show possibilities one might not want to test. She says, “Well, I ought to hustle. Big load of shell beans to fuck with. And my wash has been on the lines for four days. There’s been a crow getting in my cottage when the kids leave the door open. He tells me there’s an eighty percent chance of showers and a sale on drill bits at Mertie’s Hardware.” She chortles. “He—”
“I heard about you.”
Bonnie Loo turns to face her directly. She grins. “Oh, I’m sure.”
“You don’t have to worry. I’m not interested in him.”
“Who?” Bonnie Loo pictures the wheedling crow. She sees him cocking his head and fluffing himself up to twice his size before pooping or his reedy voice the last time he spoke, Sign up now! Don’t miss this chance! Diamond-like brooch for every occasion!
“Your husband.” Is Silverbell smirking? Your husband. Your your your . . .
Bonnie Loo fingers the cuffs of the deep pockets of her sweater, a sweater roomy enough for when the baby, his baby, begins to really show.
Yes, actually she has lost it and attacked Settlement women. It was Beth, smart-ass Beth, only last winter. Well, it was a pushing and shoving fight, Beth laughing the whole time, but Bonnie Loo got in some squeezes, one around the throat that Beth pretends to forget. But oh, so many witnesses!! It is on record. It is in the History as it Happens books in the amazed “voices” of kids.
Bonnie Loo says, “Okaaaay.”