Girl in Ice(17)

“Where are they, the clothes?”

“We had to cut them off of her. I threw them away. But I asked Pitak to send me some girls’ clothes with the supplies we got in yesterday. They’re over there.” He gestured at a cardboard box near the door.

“What’s with the Christmas sweater?”

“It’s the only thing she’ll wear. We gave her a pile of our clothes, and she grabbed that. Hasn’t taken it off since she laid eyes on it.”

I walked by him to sort through the box. Felt his eyes on me in a way I couldn’t translate. Not sexual, exactly. More an estimation of some kind. A shot of cold shivered up my neck as I sorted through Hello Kitty pajamas, a hot-pink parka, down overalls, underwear, socks, and a pair of deerskin boots decorated with fringe and beads. Still, his eyes on me.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said, finally, wandering off toward the kitchen in his odd shuffle walk.

I exhaled.



* * *



FOR TWO HOURS, all I did was talk to her through her door, occasionally nudging it open a crack, but she wasn’t having it. Still, I could feel her just behind it, breathing, listening. Wyatt paced, observing my every move, until something seemed to snap in him. He thumped his way over to the door and rapped hard, his shadow monstrous under the hall light.

“Hey, girl,” he said. “You know, we’re trying to help you.”

“Please watch your tone of voice,” I said from my seat on the floor.

So he poured on the honey. “Come on, sweetie pie, you gotta be starving by now. How come all the sudden you don’t like old Wyatt?”

I got to my feet, faced him. He towered over me; I took a step back, said, “Could be she’s overwhelmed by all these new faces. Maybe you could leave us alone for a while?”

“I didn’t do anything to her, you know. Never once raised my voice. She smashed some of my slides and half my test tubes, and I was cool as a cuke.”

“I’m sure you were.”

He gave me a look I couldn’t parse, but there was no warmth in it. “Enjoy your girl talk. See you in a couple hours.” He threw on his parka, pulled his hat down over his ears, and left.

When I turned back to the girl’s door, the bowl of hamburger and glass of water were gone. In its place was a coffee can half filled with urine. I carried it to the bathroom and flushed the contents.

As I passed Jeanne’s room, I detoured to her bed, grabbed a doll, and returned to the girl’s room. An empty bowl and water glass had been set outside the door. I didn’t know the Greenlandic or even the Danish word for doll. I knocked softly and said, “I have little baby.” Slid down to my usual position and said again, “I have little baby for you. Want to see it?” I leaned into the door, put my shoulder into it. Suddenly it gave a few inches, enough for me to slide the doll in. The door slammed shut.

Seconds later, it was wrenched open and the doll sailed over my head, smacking against the wall opposite, its ceramic face shattering in pieces on the floor.

Guess she didn’t like the doll.

In a salad of languages including Old Norse, I chattered through her door, filibustering at her about anything I could think of: how I wished she could have met Andy, the things I liked to do when I was her age, even Greenlandic history. I asked her what had happened to her, who her family was, what was the last thing she remembered. All the while I stared down the hall at Wyatt’s screen saver, a narwhal floating in outer space.

Maybe it was only to get me to stop talking, but after an hour, the door creaked open. I smelled her before I saw her. A rank, acrid taste—unwashed hair and skin, the memory of leather—filled my mouth. Her clotted breath came rough in her throat as if her nose was stuffed up. Had she been crying? It all broke my heart a little bit. As tall as I was crouched on the floor, she stood inches from me, a small, somber-faced child backlit by morning sun.

Very softly she whispered, “Stahndala,” and again, “stahndala.”

I pointed at her. “Are you Stahndala?” I said in English. “My name is Val. Val.”

Her face screwed up in confusion.

I motioned for her to come out. Fear in her eyes, wild black hair sticking up every which way, she took a few steps into the hall, glancing both ways. Santa’s reindeer led by Rudolph, his nose a puffy red ball sewn onto the loose knit, flew diagonally up the sweater. Her tiny toes, blackened with grime, poked from under the ragged hem.

“Stahndala,” she whispered hoarsely.

She looked at me with such pleading in her dark eyes; I simply wasn’t ready for it. The frank reality of her, this girl from ice. Just a child, but from what world, and how could I possibly enter it? Who are you, dear child? I drew in a sharp breath, uttering a little cry. What should I do? I had no children, no nieces or nephews. Sure, if you were eighteen and wanted to major in Latin or Greek, I could handle it, but this?

Maybe—the toys. I’d brought some, but they were in the front room and I’d have to walk past her to get them and she would run, I could see it. Very slowly, repeating the word she’d said to me, stahndala—which I now know was the exact wrong thing to say to her—I ventured a few paces toward the front room. Which is when I remembered I’d stored them in my bedroom. But she hadn’t budged. Stood like a ghost of a girl. I sat in Wyatt’s swiveling desk chair, glanced furtively around. Grabbed one of those stupid get-rid-of-tension rubber balls next to his computer.