Girl in Ice(24)

“So, let’s try this again.” I pointed to myself. “My name is Val. Can you say Val?” I patted my breastbone. “Val.”

Nothing.

I pointed at her. “You are…”

She snatched the remaining morsel from its paper wrapper as if I might steal it from her and crammed it in her mouth. That’s when I saw her molars; they were almost completely worn down. My breath caught in my throat. From what I’d read, starting girls early in the tradition of chewing caribou hides to soften them enough to cut and sew for clothes was archaic, a custom no longer practiced except perhaps in isolated villages.

She swallowed the last piece and turned toward the picture window.

“Today, we’re going to learn the names of things.”

She reached up to the pane, squeaking clear a little circle with her finger. I clicked on my recorder I kept in my shirt pocket. She drew another circle, each time saying what might have been a number. Two rows of eight rings, the third row only seven, the last of which she rubbed out hard. Again and again she performed this ritual. Is it the act of counting that’s important, the circles themselves, the rubbing out of the last one, or all of it? Beyond her small hand, the sun rested on the horizon, swept with dove-gray streaks in the purplish light.

I noisily dumped out the markers and crayons, flipped open the picture books, cleared my throat. “Okay, you need to look at me, honey. You need to look over here.” As gently as I could, I took hold of her narrow shoulders and turned her toward me.

She tore out of my grip, punching down with her fishy hands, scattering the books and toys to the floor. Let loose a high-pitched shriek and pounded on the desk.

A flame of fury and frustration shot through me, so strong it frightened me. I paced the chaotic space, picking my way among the anarchy. Why won’t she just try? What is wrong with me that she won’t respond at all?

I went to the front door, banged on it once. “Is this what you want? You want to go outside? Say it: outside. Or you’re not going anywhere.”

Her eyes widened. She slid her legs off the desk and let them dangle there. Though the sight of her grimy little calves and feet aggrieved me, I never grew tired of looking at her: this child who had lived a life worlds apart from mine. Her expressive face, capable of conveying humor, sarcasm, pain, delight, fear, and maybe even love, her miles-long words and sentences, her bursts of laughter, even her fits of tears were as much a wonder to me as her refusal to learn confounded me.

“Do you want to go outside?” I gestured at the door.

She nodded, not taking her eyes off me as if I might change my mind.

“Say, outside. Outside.”

“Ou-sigh…”

She slid her agile body to the floor with a thud and padded over to me, her sweater catching on and dragging a piece of a Lego set across the rug behind her. She reached up and rattled the doorknob, brow furrowed as she burned a you promised look into me.

What was I doing? Was this insane? Maybe, maybe not. I’d been running around after her for a week up and down the halls of this place; surely I could keep up with her outdoors for a few minutes.

“Then we have to get dressed, do you understand?” I grabbed her boots and set them next to her. She jammed her bare feet in them as I brandished her socks in front of her. “With socks.” She whipped off the boots and hurried on the socks. I started to layer up too. Every article of clothing I laid before her she dutifully put on.

We stood at the door, parka’d, snow-panted, mittened, and mufflered. It never occurred to me to sign the log. “Are you ready?”

She nodded, pulling her hat down halfway over her eyes.

“Say outside.”

She smiled a little. “Ou-sigh.”

“Are you going to stay with me? Walk with me?”

A slow nod.

“Hold my hand? Not run away?” I held out my hand. She took it. “Be a good girl?”

She nodded yesyesyesyesyesyesyes.

“Do you love me?” I asked, smiling.

She actually smiled back. Nodded once more. Of course it wasn’t real, but it felt good all the same.

Gripping her hand tightly in mine, I opened the door.

She jerked her hand free and charged away from me like a scruffy little rocket, sending me tripping and stumbling forward onto hard-packed snow, the air bitter in my lungs. Behind us, the rime-powdered beach. Black dots—bullet-shaped seal heads—bobbed in the rich blue water. Before us, the glacier that led to the ice lake snaked up the mountainside, disappearing in the pass that cut through the peaks.

Which is where she was headed. Quickly she grew smaller and smaller in all the terrible white. I looked down: I still clutched her mitten.

I ran screaming for her to come back, my eyes tearing, glazing my cheeks.

My oversized snow pants and parka slowed me, binding my limbs. Snot froze and cracked in my nostrils as my steps shortened, stalling in the mounting drifts. The slope steepened. Undaunted, the girl flew higher and higher.

“Girl! Girl, come back!”

The dot turned to look at me, then went back to running, but began to lose steam, alternating brief rests with short spurts up the slope. Still, she would not stop. She was like a train chugging up a track, whipping up billowing clouds that obscured, then revealed her bright red parka. I called out to her again, my voice splintering in the brittle air. Gasping, I rested my hands on my knees—my lungs felt a third their normal size—thought how the StairMaster had failed me so completely, what a waste! I couldn’t catch this girl, and at that moment she felt like the only person on this earth who meant anything to me.