Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [126]
“She isn’t an elephant. She’s a little girl.”
“But if she’s raised in a totally white culture, there’s going to come a time when she’ll feel like one. And she’ll get about as many dates as one. She’ll come home from high school and throw herself on the bed and say, ‘Why do I have this long, long nose?’ ”
Alice wants to argue that there are worse things, but she can’t immediately think of any. She still doesn’t want to buy it, though. “If I’m Cherokee, and Taylor is, a little bit, and we never knew it but lived to tell the tale, then why can’t she?”
Annawake lays her dark wrist over Alice’s. “Skin color. Isn’t life simple? You have the option of whiteness, but Turtle doesn’t. I only had to look at her for about ten seconds on TV to know she was Cherokee.”
Alice crosses her arms over her chest.
“Alice, there’s something else. I was going to call you in a couple of days. It turns out we have compelling reason to file a motion to vacate this adoption.” She watches Alice carefully as she says this. “Someone has come to me asking that I help locate a missing relative who could be Turtle.” She continues to look Alice in the eye.
“Oh,” Alice says, feeling her heart pound.
“You didn’t know about this?”
Alice’s mouth feels dry. “No. Nobody would think to tell me about it. Sugar wouldn’t, nor anybody, because there isn’t a soul except you that knows what I’m here for.”
“I see.” Annawake looks back at her hands. “Well, we don’t know for sure. All we have to go on really is the child’s age, and the circumstances of her being removed from the family. The child they’re looking for might be someone else entirely. But to tell you the truth, I think it’s likely to be Turtle. I have grounds enough to subpoena Taylor and require her to bring the child here for identification.”
Alice stares at the flat river where upside-down trees are dancing and cattails reach down toward the blue sky below them. There is a whole, earnest upside-down world around her feet.
“I thought you already told her she had to come here with Turtle.”
“No. I suggested it, but I haven’t filed the motion yet. What I’d like most is for Taylor to go ahead and do the right thing on her own. For the good of the child, I’d like to handle this with a minimum of antagonism.”
“Well, Taylor’s already done antagonized. She’s living on the lam. That’s the truth. I have to wait for her to call me. I don’t even know what state she’s in.”
Annawake shakes her head slowly. “I keep thinking there has to be a way to explain this so it doesn’t sound to you like we just want to tear a baby from a mother’s arms.”
“Well, what else is it?”
Annawake looks thoughtful. “Do you remember that surrogate baby case a few years back? Where the woman that gave birth to the baby wanted to keep it? But the judge awarded custody to the biological father and his wife.”
“That made me mad! I never did understand it.”
“I’ll tell you what decided it. I read that case. The biological father stood up and told the jury his family history. He’d lost everybody, every single relative, in concentration camps during World War II. That baby was the last of his family’s genes, and he was desperate to keep her so he could tell her about the people she came from.” Annawake looks sideways at Alice. “That’s us. Our tribe. We’ve been through a holocaust as devastating as what happened to the Jews, and we need to keep what’s left of our family together.”
Alice watches the water, where dozens of minnows have congregated around her calves. They wriggle their tiny bodies violently