Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver [62]
The people of Grace would soon be refugees too, turned out from here like pennies from a pocket. Their history would dissolve as families made their separate ways to Tucson or Phoenix, where there were jobs. I tried to imagine Emelina’s bunch in a tract house, her neighbors all keeping a nervous eye on the color coordination of her flowerbeds. And my wonderfully overconfident high-school kids being swallowed alive by city schools where they’d all learn to walk like Barbara, suffering for their small-town accents and inadequate toughness. It was easy to be tough enough in Grace.
Well, at least they’d know how to use condoms. I could give them that to carry through life. I settled the glass lid back over the terrarium and turned out the lights. I would be long gone before the ruination of Grace; I had a one-year contract. Now I’d made sure of it.
Rita Cardenal called me up on the phone. She hesitated for a second before speaking. “I don’t think your old man has all his tires on the road.”
“It’s possible.” I sat down in my living-room chair and waited for her to go on.
“Did you tell him about me? About dropping out?”
“Rita, no. I wouldn’t do that.”
Silence. She didn’t believe me. To Rita we were both authority figures—but at least she’d called. “My father and I aren’t real close,” I said. “I go up to see him every week, but we don’t exactly talk.” A pregnant teen could surely buy that.
“Well, then, he’s got a slightly major problem.”
“What did he do?”
“He just sorta went imbalanced. I went in for my five-mouth checkup? And he said the babies were too little, but he was all kind of normal and everything?” She paused. “And then all of a sudden he just loses it and gets all creeped and makes this major scenario. Yelling at me.”
“What did he say?”
“Stuff. Like, that I had to eat better and he was going to make sure I did. He said he wasn’t going to let me go out of the house till I shaped up. It was like he just totally went mental. He was using that tape measure thing to measure my stomach and then he just puts it down and there’s tears in his eyes and he puts his hands on my shoulders and kind of pulls me against his chest. He goes, ‘We have to talk about this. Do you have any idea what’s inside of you?’ I got creeped out.”
I felt dizzy. There was a long pause.
“Miss? Codi?”
“Rita, I’m really sorry. What can I tell you? He’s losing his mind. He’s got a disease that makes him confused. I think he was really just trying to do his job, but he got mixed up about what was the appropriate way to talk to you.”
“I heard that. That he had that disease where you go cuckoo and turn back into a baby.”
“Well, that’s not quite the way I’d put it, but it’s true. Occasionally rumors are true.”
“Is it true you’re really a doctor?”
I looked out my east window at the wall of red rock that rose steeply behind the house. “No,” I said. “That isn’t true. Did he tell you that?”
“No.” She paused. “Well, yeah. He said something a real long time ago, that you were in medical school or something. But not this last time. I heard it from somebody else, that you’re a doctor and Doc Homer’s dying and you’re going to take over.”
“Take over?”
“Take over being the doctor for Grace. They said you already saved that baby down at Doña Althea’s restaurant.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“Look, people say stuff, okay?” Rita said. “This town is full of major mouths. It’s just what I heard.”
“I’m only here till the end of the school year, so you can tell whoever’s spreading that gossip they’re full of shit.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
I regretted snapping at Rita. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s not your fault. I’m not used to living in a place where everybody’s into everybody else’s business.”
“It’s the bottom level, isn’t it? My mom found out I was pregnant