Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [60]
“She went to school because my father made her. She never answered questions in class or turned in papers. My parents took her to a bunch of doctors, here and in Phoenix, too, but they couldn’t find anything wrong. When the doctors couldn’t help her, my father even took her to a medicine man. He said she was retarded. There was nothing he could do—that’s how she was.”
Brandon Walker looked down at his own white skin and was suddenly ashamed. He felt a surge of anger toward that brutish grade school principal whose actions had so traumatized an innocent four-year-old girl that she had damned herself to a lifetime of silence.
The worthless son of a bitch! he thought. Somebody should have thrown his ass in jail.
“Two years later there was a new principal, a nice one,” Andrea continued. “When the school secretary told him what had happened, he fixed it so Roseanne and I were in the same class. She was my shadow.”
“Ehkthag,” Brandon said.
Andrea Tashquinth looked Brandon full in the face and smiled for the first time. “Yes,” she agreed. “Roseanne was my ehkthag.”
“Whatever happened to the first principal?” Brandon asked.
Andrea shrugged. “Nothing,” she said. “He left. Went somewhere else. When Mil-gahn do bad things on the reservation, they leave, but nothing ever happens to them. That’s the way it is—the way it’s always been.”
After Philip staggered off, a humiliated Delia Cachora stood on the sidewalk looking at Fat Crack Ortiz, this ghost from her distant past. She had felt this same way the day her father had come to Ruth’s house in Tempe to collect Eddie and take him back to the reservation.
When they arrived in Tempe, Ellie Chavez had planned to stay with Sister Justine’s friend, Ruth Waldron, just that one night. They arrived late in the evening because it had taken so long to get the car running. Then they’d encountered a summer rainstorm that made the washes between Quijotoa and Casa Grande impassable. They’d had to wait for the water to go down.
When they finally stopped in front of the small frame house, they had passed through the worst of the storm, but a fitful rain still fell. It was late. Eddie had fallen sound asleep in the backseat. As soon as the car stopped, an outside light flashed on and a tall bony woman—the tallest Mil-gahn woman Delia had ever seen—emerged onto the porch. A cloud of mouthwatering fragrances drifted out of the house behind her, and Delia realized she was hungry.
Ellie stepped out of the Falcon. Taking Delia by the hand, they hurried up onto the porch and out of the rain. “Miss Waldron?” Ellie asked tentatively.
Ruth Waldron stretched out both hands in greeting. “You must be Ellie,” she said. “Please call me Ruth.” She turned to Delia, who wavered on the edge of the porch like a wild thing poised for flight. Ruth bent down until her face and Delia’s were on the same level. “You must be Delia,” she added with a toothy smile. “Now where’s that brother of yours? Where’s Eddie?”
Delia pointed to the car. “He’s sleeping,” she whispered.
“I’m sure you’re all worn out,” Ruth said kindly. “Sister Justine called and told me you were on your way. Go get Eddie and come in. Supper’s waiting. By the time we finish eating, maybe the rain will be over so we can bring in your suitcases.”
The next day, however, much to Delia’s surprise, her mother didn’t go apartment hunting after all. Instead, they stayed on with Ruth for the next four years—for as long as Ellie Chavez was in the undergraduate program at ASU. While Ellie was busy studying, Ruth Waldron, a phys ed teacher at two Tempe elementary schools, became Eddie and Delia’s surrogate mother. She was good to the kids. She took them to ball games, to the zoo, and to the Arizona State Fair. She helped them with homework and attended