God Help the Child: A novel by Toni Morrison Page B

alley.
    “It was Steve who decided not to leave her there. I wasn’t so sure it was any of our business but he just went over and grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder. She was screaming, ‘Kidnap! Kidnap!’ but not too loud. I don’t think she wanted attention, especially from pigs, I mean cops. We pushed her into the backseat, got in and locked the doors.”
    “Did she quiet down?”
    “Oh no. She kept hollering ‘Let me out,’ and kicking the back of our seats. I tried to talk to her in a soft voice so she wouldn’t be frightened of us. I said, ‘You’re soaking wet, honey.’ She said, ‘It’s raining, bitch.’ I asked her if her mother knew she was sitting outside in the rain and shesaid, ‘Yeah, so?’ I didn’t know what to do with that answer. Then she started cursing—nastier words in a little kid’s mouth you couldn’t imagine.”
    “Really?”
    “Steve and I looked at each other and without talking we decided what to do—get her dry, cleaned and fed, then try to find out where she belonged.”
    “You said she was about six when you found her?” asked Bride.
    “I guess. I don’t really know. She never said and I doubt she knows. Her baby teeth were gone when we took her. And so far she has never had a period and her chest is flat as a skateboard.”
    Bride shot up. Just the mention of a flat chest yanked her back to her problem. Had her ankle not prohibited it, she would have run, rocketed away from the scary suspicion that she was changing back into a little black girl.
    One night and a day later Bride had calmed down a little. Since no one had noticed or commented on the changes in her body, how flat the T-shirt hung on her chest, the unpierced earlobes. Only she knew about unshaved but absent armpit and pubic hair. So all of this might be a hallucination, like the vivid dreams she was having when she managed to fall asleep. Or were they? Twice at night she woke to find Rain standing over her or squatting nearby—not threatening, just looking. But when she spoke to the girl, she seemed to disappear.
    Helpless, idle. It became clear to Bride why boredom was so fought against. Without distraction or physical activity, the mind shuffled pointless, scattered recollections around and around. Focused worry would have been an improvement over disconnected, rags of thought. Minus the limited coherence of a dream, her mind moved from the condition of her fingernails to the time she walked into a lamppost, from judging a celebrity’s gown to the state of her own teeth. She was stuck in a place so primitive it didn’t even have a radio while watching a couple going about their daily chores—gardening, cleaning, cooking, weaving, mowing grass, chopping wood, canning. There was no one to talk to, at least not about anything she was interested in. Her determined refusal to think about Booker invariably collapsed. What if she couldn’t find him? What if he’s not with Mr. or Ms. Olive? Nothing would be right if the hunt she was on failed. And if it succeeded what would she do or say? Except for Sylvia, Inc., and Brooklyn, she felt she had been scorned and rejected by everybody all her life. Booker was the one person she was able to confront—which was the same as confronting herself, standing up for herself. Wasn’t she worth something? Anything?
    She missed Brooklyn whom she thought of as her only true friend: loyal, funny, generous. Who else would drive miles to find her after that bloody horror at a cheap motel then take such good care of her? It wasn’t fair, she thought, to leave her in the dark as to where she was. Ofcourse she couldn’t tell her friend the reason for her flight. Brooklyn would have tried to dissuade her, or worse, taunt and laugh at her. Persuade her how ill-advised and reckless the idea was. Nevertheless, the right thing to do was to contact her.
    Since she couldn’t call, Bride decided to drop her a note. When asked, Evelyn said she didn’t have any stationery