Heartless A Shieldmaiden's Voice: A Covenant Keeper Novel Read online

  CAROLE USED TO fit in. Inside the car with the silver fins, plunked right in the middle of the front seat between her Mom and Gran, she had fit in perfectly. Her long legs were much shorter then, and stuck straight out in front of her on the green leather seat. That car was big and the inside baking hot. With the windows rolled down hot air blew over them spitting desert dust. It felt good. Carole could still feel it when she tried, could taste gritty desert sand between her teeth, and feel the blast of heat blow over her face. She could still hear the music and it made her heart starve to remember it. Mom drove, Gran wouldn’t. Gran said driving killed her music. Carole could still see Mom’s hair blowing half out the window and half in her mouth. She could see Gran’s tie-dye T-shirt flapping while she tapped out a rhythm against the dashboard in perfect time to her music.

  Music and bright colors had swirled through Carole’s head, although the old radio had been torn out and sold long ago. Mom sometimes kept her sunglasses inside the hole where it belonged. Even without the radio the music played, following them almost everywhere. Gran made music echo inside Carole’s mind and told her where it came from: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, or Gran’s favorite, The Mamas and The Papas. One time Mom snapped, “Mother? Please stop with the California Dreamin’! She hardly talks because she’s always listening to your head!” Carole enjoyed California Dreamin’ weaving through her head with the dancing kaleidoscope of colors. The music and colors were part of Gran, and just like the touch of her heart warming Carole’s, it belonged.

  There was never any hurry in that car; it was a peaceful place, a happy place. Sometimes they stopped for days and took the suitcase out. Carole had very vague memories of eating sprouts or hummus spread on bits of stale pita bread. Those memories involved crowds of people she didn’t know. She couldn’t recall faces, just names like Sky, Summer, and Rainbow. Mom sometimes painted pictures on walls or canvas. People gave her money to do it. They never stayed long before Mom would put her paints in the trunk with their suitcase and say, “Want to go, Carole?” Gran would add, “It’s waiting for us, Carole.” One time Carole had asked Gran, “What’s waiting for us?” Gran had looked out the windshield and gestured. “The skyline, Christmas Carole.” Gran often called her that, Christmas Carole, though Carole could not remember ever celebrating Christmas with them.

  She only remembered Easter, that one Easter. Carole remembered most of that whole day and in the right order. It had been very different than every other day. That morning Gran woke them up early. They were in a worn-out motel with orange carpet and lots of motorcycles parked outside. Mom made her take a bath in a tub that had dark cracks in it and black stuff in the corners. Carole had been afraid of that tub. Mom had been frowning so Carole didn’t argue. She tried not to think about what the dark stuff was, but the voices in her head had shouted at her. When she didn’t listen to the voices they put pictures in her head. Pictures of black dreams rolled through her head while she sat in the water. Black dreams about falling into dirty water where a lady couldn’t breathe and slimy dirt went into her mouth and nose.

  Gran had come into the bathroom holding a frilly dress and asked Carole if she thought it was pretty. Carole had asked what it was. Mom and Gran argued then and neither one smiled or answered her question. Gran kept saying, “He deserves to know” and Mom cried while she tugged the silly dress over Carole’s damp body. Then they were in the car again and Carole thought they were going to what was waiting for them, only this time in the scratchy dress that pouffed out and made her panties show unless she pushed it down. Sharp threads were digging into the back of her neck and her underarms, and she didn’t like the way it felt against her skin. It didn’t belong. It gave her a black dream about dirty food that a lady ate because there was no other food. Carole kept her mouth firmly shut to keep the dirty dress out.

  Patting her leg, Gran told her that today was Easter Sunday and that they were going to pray and sing. Carole smiled, careful to keep her mouth closed, so that the dirty dress couldn’t get in. She liked to pray, and she hoped they could have a campfire too. But this time it was different. They went inside a building to pray and it was very quiet and filled with statues and paintings that brought more black dreams to Carole’s mind, so many that she started to shiver and the faint echoes of California Dreamin’ faded instantly from inside her head. Gran took her hand and squeezed it. Her eyes looked like she didn’t want to be in that building either. Carole wondered if Gran had the black dreams too. She wanted to ask her, but couldn’t risk opening her mouth in the dress.

  They sat in a row on a hard wooden bench. Carole kept her mouth firmly shut and looked around wide-eyed and frightened. Then she saw rainbow lights dancing across the carpet, across the people in the benches, it was nearly as beautiful as what came with the music that Gran made. This light shone from colored glass that decorated the windows. The singing wasn’t singing like Carole was used to, it droned without a melody, but it touched her heart in the same place and the light coming in the colorful windows helped make it right. She might have liked Easter Sunday then, if not for her dress. Men in long dresses of their own walked onto the stage in front, chanting, and Carole craned her neck to watch them. They were very solemn and did not smile. They read and kind of not-good sang stories that made Carole remember more black dreams.

  One man, whose almost singing might have been nice if he’d smiled, was talking on stage when Carole felt her Mom’s heart moving. The touch of it strayed from her and Gran and went to that man’s heart and shone on it. He stopped his sort of song and looked around. It took him a few tries to finish his song and it was different then, not as good as before Mom touched his heart. Carole wondered why Mom ruined the man’s song. He had been happy and now he was upset.

  On the steps outside the building the men in dresses were talking to people and everyone was saying, “Happy Easter.” The man whose song had been ruined by her Mom turned to stare. When he looked at Carole she suddenly remembered him though she’d never met him before. Her young heart danced to his and she forgot about her dirty dress. She laughed because her heart and his went together and she tried to hug his leg. He knelt down to hold her away, grabbing her hands and squeezing them tightly. He stared hard.

  He looked so scared that Carole’s Mom told him it was okay and Gran told him they were staying in the skyline for Easter. That made Carole even happier. They’d never been to the skyline before, they usually just drove towards it. Gran lifted her up and held her and the scared man put his hand on her head and told her, “Happy Easter” in a shaky voice. Carole’s heart danced around his happily. He loved her, she could feel it, and it made her want him to be happy too and not scared.

  When they were back in the car Carole remembered she hadn’t said Happy Easter to him. She pushed her hands against the horrid dress, holding the ruffles safely from her mouth, and lifted her chin to announce, “Happy Easter! Happy Easter! Happy Easter!” She shouted her words and let her heart go with them, hoping he would feel it. Her Mom drove the car fast and the tires made noise. Gran told her to just drive back to the skyline. She kept saying, “Give him a chance. Give him a chance.” That was what Carole remembered of that day. It was the last time she sat in the car between her Mom and Gran. The last time she ever saw them. If they got to the skyline they didn’t take her. She didn’t remember how she got out of that car, but sometimes she dreamed that her blankets turned to metal and she couldn’t get them off.

  When Carole had woken up she was in a room that smelled like poison, with rows of beds that had bars on them as if she were a baby. There were boys and girls in most of them. She knew it wasn’t Easter Sunday anymore. There were ladies who took care of them and they told her she was sick and hurt. They didn’t answer her questions but she knew anyway. She felt it. Her heart already knew. Mom and Gran had gone just like in the black dreams. Something had come and hurt them and they were gone now. The ladies who worked there brought her food and tried to make her eat it, but she knew not
to. She knew it was all dirty and she kept her mouth closed tight. Black dreams clawed at her because Mom and Gran were gone forever, and her heart burned like fire. The nurses got very angry with her and stuck needles in her and tried to make her eat. Carole knew music and colors were gone forever, they died with Mom and Gran. None of the nurses or the doctors in that hospital even touched Carole’s heart, and they didn’t seem to notice when her heart tried desperately to find theirs.

  Then he came, the man in the black dress. He sat down in an old green chair next to her bed and asked her to please eat. She told him it was all dirty food. He looked at her like he believed her. He went away and came back with different food. Carole ate an entire loaf of hard bread, and soaked the crusts in good clean milk so she could chew them. The ladies who worked there said she was a willful child. He sent them away. He told her that they would not let him have her. He told her that they were sending him far away. He told her that they promised to take care of her. He told her that he loved her. That is what she always remembered about him. He loved her. She knew that before he told her, but she was glad he said it. He talked a lot, and his voice went inside her head without his mouth moving like Mom’s sometimes had. No matter how hard she tried later, Carole never remembered much of what he said. It was mostly about his duty and his oath, and that he loved her and that they would give her clean food, she remembered that part. He said he could do that much for her. He sat with her all of that day, until the ladies that worked there told him to go now.

  THEY’D GIVEN CAROLE clean food back when she’d lived in the orphanage, but that had been years ago, and it seemed like she’d been hungry since she’d been dumped into foster care. She glared out her social worker’s car window at barren desert whipping past. The thought of good clean food made her stomach snarl. Real food—the kind the voices approved of—was harder to come by in foster care. It was expensive. So my father didn’t even do that much for me. The voices in Carole’s head criticized that thought, calling it ungrateful. She pressed her lips together. Maybe it was her fault the orphanage had tossed her out, maybe not, but it made no sense to argue with the voices in her head. If they had to be there, she certainly wasn’t going to talk to them. Marsha exited the freeway fast, and a shiver rippled down Carole’s back. She hated cars. But I can’t walk all the way to Roswell and back in an evening, she thought, turning to look at her social worker. Learning more about schizophrenia would require a car.

  Marsha drove craning her neck over the steering wheel like a turtle, focusing her gaze out the windshield while simultaneously twirling the radio dial. Always in search of a song called Mississippi Cotton Pickin’ Delta Town by what had to be the only African American country-singer, it astonished Carole how often Marsha found that song.

  “I need a ride into Roswell,” she said over the flickering static and choppy music as Marsha swirled the dial back and forth.

  “Is that right?” Marsha had a drawl. “I need a week where you’re not getting suspended from another school.” Marsha had a look that could see right through you.

  “I need to go to a library there—for research,” Carole explained, trying to make it sound like homework.

  “Mmmhmmm?” Marsha’s root-beer brown eyes widened, calling Carole a liar without a word.

  “It’s a medical library.” Carole decided honestly was her only chance.

  “You want to go to a medical library in Roswell? What for?” Marsha squinted at her, grabbing giant sunglasses off the dashboard and jamming them on top her head where they perched looking like an extra pair of unblinking eyes peeping out of her afro.

  Carole stared at her lap. Her jeans were threadbare, one boney knee poked through.

  “You don’t have a medical condition, you have a communication condition,” said Marsha.

  “There could be a reason I communicate by fighting.” Smoothing the soft threads around the hole in her jeans, Carole came as close to the truth as she dared. Marsha was her only hope for a ride into town.

  “You seem so much older than sixteen. Sometimes I think we still have your age wrong. That nun at the orphanage really had no idea when your birthday was.” Marsha turned the car radio off just as it passed over California Dreamin’ and a surge of relief went through Carole. In the twelve years since Mom and Gran had died she still couldn’t bear to hear it. It was wrong anyway. Drug induced memory or not, there were no colors with the flat static sound, and without the loving touch of a heart like Gran’s or her Mom’s she couldn’t bear to hear it.

  “I’m almost seventeen,” she supplied, “at Christmas. Sister Mary Josephine said my birthday was at Christmas.”

  “Did she now? By older I meant you’re a smooth operator. If you think I’m driving you into Roswell so you can run away, you can forget it. You’ve been in foster care for over five years now, in seven different homes not to mention the four group homes, and I guarantee you every last place has been better than the streets. Don’t you run on me now.”

  “I’m not going to run,” Carole promised.

  “Hmpf. Well, then I can tell you that I’m not taking you out of Pine Hill High, despite the fight. You’re not going to blow through every high school in my jurisdiction. Pine Hill is suspending you for two weeks. That means you’ll be Martin’s slave at Happy Acres in the meantime. And do not get yourself kicked out of Happy Acres, because this is the longest you’ve been anywhere and the next stop is Detention Home. D.H. is better than the streets, but only because they have ice.”

  Carole looked out the window as they turned off the paved road towards Happy Acres. It was bumpy dirt road the rest of the way, and Marsha now drove her new 1986 Ford Taurus slower than the school bus usually went. The dust billowing around and trailing the car created a personal dust storm. They had to roll the windows up.

  “How’s it going at Happy Acres?”

  Carole shrugged. The character building camp was visible in the distance, barely discernible from the junk yard next to it. Happy Acres was run by a group of Jesus freaks who were determined to show heathen foster children the error of their ways. It consisted of half a dozen dilapidated trailers, a garden and a pasture for Martin Happy’s latest obsession.

  Marsha’s look could also stare words out of you, and she apparently didn’t need to look out the windshield while driving to employ the talent on Carole.

  “It’s going good,” Carole admitted, wishing the woman would look away or at least put her sunglasses on. Her probing gaze always whipped the voices into a frenzy.

  “Act normal! Average! Typical! She sees too much!” Carole really had no idea how to do that, and her uncomfortable writhing only made Marsha stare harder.

  Marsha stopped her car right in the middle of the desert road shoving the gear into park. Twisting her thin body to face Carole, she demanded, “The boys aren’t bothering you?” Her tone dared Carole to lie.

  Staring straight ahead, Carole asserted, “I can handle the boys. I like Happy Acres.” She refused to look Marsha full in the face.

  “Well, Hallelujah and thank you, Jesus! Am I to understand, Miss Carole, that you are actually trying not to get kicked out of someplace?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh.” Marsha turned, put the car back in gear and continued her painstaking journey. When she finally parked in front of the ramshackle hodge-podge of trailers that was Happy Acres she gaped through the windshield.

  “What are those things?”

  “Emu, they’re Australian birds,” Carole said. “Mr. Happy is starting a farm.”

  “Is that what you like here? Those things?”

  Smiling faintly, Carole pointed to a second fenced-in area. “No. I like the garden.”

  “The garden? I thought maybe you wrestled those birds. Good luck, Carole, I hope I don’t see you again until after graduation. I’d appreciate it.”

  MARTIN AND ELSPETH Happy did not believe in boys and girls mixing together unsupervised. There was a boy’s trailer and a girl’s, with the
commissary, the study trailer, and the Happy’s trailer separating them. Despite their vigilance, every single night a boy or two ended up in the girl’s quarters. Carole made it a point to run in the desert until everyone was really asleep. Even if she could have resisted the urge to ruin the romance of the week, she couldn’t sleep through the ranting of the voices in her head condemning late night kisses and worse. “It is wrong. You must never…” So she ran under the desert moon.

  Since she’d been suspended from school anyway, Carole didn’t bother returning to the girl’s trailer until nearly four in the morning. She climbed through the window and quietly dropped her shoes on the floor, nestling into her cot conveniently located right beneath that open window. She slid the sheet up to her chin and closed her eyes. Sensing a boy’s approach she peeked beneath her lashes and waited. He was hardly stealthy; the trailer floor creaked with each step. The six-year-old girl in the next bed opened her eyes. Donald Hitte became visible in the light of the alarm clock. He had long black hair and a pretty smile. Heather Carr, who he had abandoned in the next room, certainly liked when he visited her at night. Confidently he lifted Carole’s sheet and slid beneath. Placing one long finger over her lips, and spoiling his chance for a fair warning, he whispered, “Shhh, Sugar. Heather will hear, and I don’t want her coming after my favorite girl. You know how she is.”

  Carole rolled onto her side to face him, muscles tensing. Putting his free hand on her stomach, Donald ruined any chance for mercy by then moving it up towards her flat chest. Carole really didn’t care how easy it would be to send him away with sharp words. She folded into a ball and threw her arms and legs out as hard as she could. Donald sailed across the little room, right over the wide-eyed six-year-old, and into the bedroom wall. The trailer shook with the impact.

  Carole hurtled out of the bed and followed, landing on him with all she had. Part of her wanted to hurt him, and though the voices were shouting to stop, Carole followed her instinct. Grabbing a handful of his hair she shoved his head against the thin wall, leaving a slight dent. She hissed into his ear, “Next time you touch me I will kill you.” Then she stood, and tucked the sheet around the six-year-old, tossing over her shoulder, “For now I think I’ll let Heather deal with you.”