Page 11 of The Woman Who Couldn't Scream
She felt the gentle bump as the wheels hit the pavement. “Yes. Perhaps. But that was like offering to carry the scorpion across the river. When she had helped him, loved him, adored him, given him everything of herself… When he had sucked all the life and youth out of her… he walked away. She never recovered.” Her mind wandered to memories of her mother, of the smiles, the love, the time spent together… the well-hidden unhappiness, the slow disintegration into alcoholism, the broken body and soul.
In a gentle voice, Stag said, “You were telling me about your mother and how Rainbow delivered you.”
Kateri focused. “Right. They went out to dig clams by the full moon. Mom was pretty pregnant—her due date had been the week before…”
“Good God. It was night? She was overdue? And they went out to the beach to dig clams?”
“Once I asked Rainbow what they were thinking and she said Mom was fat and uncomfortable and depressed about my father.”
“How old was your mother?”
“Eighteen when she met him.”
“And he was…?”
“I don’t know. In his thirties, I guess, visiting Virtue Falls for the game fishing. Of course she fell in love and gave up her V-card to him because she thought he was going to marry her. He romanced her for a couple of weeks, then when she asked about the wedding…” She looked up and out the window at the tops of the evergreens and the fringe of the sky. “He didn’t stay.”
“Jesus.” Even Stag, who had probably seen plenty of brutality, sounded shocked.
“He wasn’t about to sully his precious eastern white heritage with a short, black-haired, red-skinned Indian wife. What with being a blue blood and being married to a blue blood and having a pure blue blood kid.” Why was Kateri confessing her darkest, most painful secrets to Stag Denali? She never told anyone about her screwed-up heritage… must be the Percocet. Or maybe the experience of lying back in a warm, soft leather seat knowing someone was in charge and she didn’t have to tell him where to go or what to do or worry that Stag would blab her confessions to the world.
The side of his mouth was drawn up in a cynical crease. “What did this guy say when she told him she was pregnant?”
“She didn’t tell him.”
“Your father doesn’t know you exist?” Stag was shocked again.
“Do you want me to finish this story or not?” Snarling was unpleasant, although sometimes necessary.
“Right. One thing at a time. So your mom was overdue and depressed…”
“And nineteen years old and Rainbow was seventeen, and everyone told them the first baby always took hours of labor… so they headed out in Mom’s crummy old pickup down to Grenouille Beach—”
“Rough road.” He clenched the steering wheel hard.
“Right. They hit enough washboard to knock the teeth out of a woodpecker.”
“Woodpeckers don’t have…” He caught himself. “Never mind. What happened?”
“Once they got there, they made a fire out of driftwood and started digging clams. They planned a picnic, a feast in the moonlight. Mom always said the best clamming was in that place where the waves and the currents intersect, so that’s where she was digging. Rainbow was up the beach by the cliff and she said the waves were backing and forthing, as they do, and she was digging, and all of a sudden she realized it was quiet.” Kateri had heard the story so many times she could see it in her mind. “Deadly quiet. She looked up and saw this giant wave rise up over the top of my mother.” She lifted her hands and let them hover. “Rainbow screamed. Mom looked up in time to be slammed down to the sand. She disappeared. Just disappeared. The water rushed up the beach. Rainbow ran toward the spot where she had been. To hear Rainbow tell it, it was long minutes before my mother washed up at the tip of the wave.” Kateri allowed her hands to wilt down onto her chest. “When she crawled out, she was in labor.”
“What did Rainbow do?”
“Delivered me. I came fast. They’d brought a knife and a blanket. For the picnic. They used the knife to cut the cord and the blanket to keep me warm by the fire.”
Stag whistled softly. “I’ll bet when the elders heard that story, they made some interesting predictions about you.”
“As far back as I can remember, there was talk that I had been marked by the frog god. Like I wasn’t already marked enough for being half-white on the reservation and half-Indian in the Virtue Falls schools.”
Stag laughed, not like he thought it was funny, but like he understood all too well. “Get beat up a lot?”
“Conflict is a half-breed’s lot in life.” She managed the balance between pitiful and sarcastic very well. Years of practice had perfected the art.
Stag slowed, turned, hit a couple of speed bumps.
Lights flashed in her eyes; the car stopped and she could see the sign that proclaimedEMERGENCYROOMin bright white and red.
He raised her seat back. “Ready to go in?” he asked.
