Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [146]
“I think every time.”
“So that was her secret!” Taylor looks at Andy Rainbelt, feeling as if she might as well throw up too. “I guess we must sound like a pretty weird family.”
“All families are weird,” he says. “My job is to see which ones are good places for kids.”
“Barbie is out of our lives, completely. I know it sounds bad that Turtle was exposed to that. I don’t know what to tell you. She baby-sat for a while, while I was trying to get started in a new job. But she’s gone.”
“She took all our money,” Turtle adds helpfully. “The guy that catches gooses had to take our electricity because we didn’t pay.”
Taylor knows her face must look like the cow in the corral who finally comprehends the slaughterhouse concept. “I was working full-time,” she explains. “But somehow there just still wasn’t enough money. It’s probably hard for her to remember, but we had a pretty good life before all this happened.”
Andy looks patient. “Listen. I hear everything in this office. I’m not grading you on what you say. I’m watching, more than listening, to tell you the truth. What I see is this little girl in your lap, looking pretty content there.”
Taylor holds her so close she feels her own heart pounding against Turtle’s slender, knobbed spine. “It’s real hard on her to have to be separated from me. I just want to tell you that, for your records.”
“I understand,” he says.
“No, I mean it’s terrible. Not like other kids. Sometimes Turtle lies in the bathtub with a blanket over her head for hours and hours, if she thinks I’m mad at her.” She squeezes Turtle harder into her arms. “She went through some bad stuff when she was a baby, before I got her, and we’re still kind of making up for lost time.”
“Is that right, Turtle?”
Turtle is silent. Taylor waits for some awful new revelation, until it dawns on her that her daughter may be suffocating. She relaxes her hold, and Turtle breathes.
“Yeah,” she says. “The bad one wasn’t Pop-pop.”
“She just met Mr. Stillwater. I mean, met him again. Her grandfather. I guess she’s started remembering stuff from when she was little.”
Andy has a way of looking Turtle in the eye that doesn’t frighten her. Taylor is amazed. A giant who can make himself small. “Some tough times back then, huh?” he asks her.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s okay to remember. Scares you though, sometimes, doesn’t it?”
Turtle shrugs.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you now.”
Taylor closes her eyes and sees stars. She wishes on those stars that Andy Rainbelt could keep his promise.
Late that same afternoon, Taylor and Alice walk the dirt shoulder of the road out of Heaven. Turtle came back to Sugar’s and fell into a hard sleep, but Taylor wanted to get out of the house for a while.
“I’m sorry you broke up with your new boyfriend,” she tells Alice.
“Lord, what a soap opry,” Alice declares. “All the fish out there, and I have to go for the one that’s related to Turtle.”
“Mama, that’s not just bad luck. You were set up.”
“Well, still, he didn’t have to be so handy, did he? And related some way to Sugar?”
“To hear Sugar tell it, she’s related some way to everybody from here to the Arkansas border. If they were determined to get you two together, it was bound to happen.”
“Well, that’s so. But I still have to say I got the worst darn luck in men.”
“I’m not about to argue with that.” Taylor has begun picking long-stemmed black-eyed Susans from the roadside as they walk along.
“The thing is, it’s my own fault. I just can’t put up with a person that won’t go out of his way for me. And that’s what a man is. Somebody that won’t go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.”
Taylor hands Alice a bouquet of orangey-yellow Susans and begins picking another one.
“It’s the family misfortune,” Alice says. “I handed it right on down to you.”
“I called Jax,” Taylor says, feeling faintly guilty.
“Well, honey, that’s good. I mean it, I think he’s tops. What’s he up to?”
“His band is sort of breaking up. Their lead guitar quit, but they’re getting an electric fiddle. Kind of going