Kaye applied makeup to Mitch in the morning. He clumsily painted her face with foundation and she touched up in the rearview mirror.
“We’ll rent a room today in a motel,” Mitch said.
“Why take the risk?”
“We look pretty good, I think,” he said, smiling encouragement. “She needs a bath and so do we. We are not animals and I refuse to act like one.”
Kaye thought about this as she nursed Stella. “All right,” she said.
“We’ll go to Arizona, and then, if necessary, we’ll go to Mexico or even farther south. We’ll find someplace we can live until things get settled down.”
“When will that be?” Kaye asked softly.
Mitch did not know, so he did not answer. He drove back along the deserted farm road onto the highway. The clouds were breaking up now and brilliant morning light fell on the forests and fields of grass to either side of the highway.
“Sun!” said Stella, and waved her fists lustily.
EPILOGUE
Tucson, Arizona
A plump little girl with short brown hair and brown skin and sweated streaks of powder on her face stood in the alley and peered between the dust-colored garages. She whistled softly to herself, interweaving two variations of a Mozart piano trio. Someone who did not look too closely might have mistaken her for one of the many Latino children who played along the streets and ran through the alleys.
Stella had never been allowed to go this far from the small house her parents rented, a few hundred steps away. The world of the alley was fresh. She sniffed the air lightly; she always did that, and she never found what she wanted to find.
But she heard the excited voices of children playing, and that was enticement enough. She walked on red concrete squares along the stucco side wall of a small garage, pushed open a swinging metal gate, and saw three children tossing a half-inflated basketball in a small backyard. The children paused their game and stared at her.
“Who are you?” asked a black-haired girl, seven or eight.
“Stella,” she answered clearly. “Who are you?”
“We’re playing here.”
“Can I play?”
“You got a dirty face.”
“It comes off, look,” and Stella wiped at the powder with her sleeve, leaving fleshy stains on the cloth. “It’s hot today, isn’t it?”
A boy about ten looked her over critically. “You got spots,” he said.
“They’re freckles,” Stella said. Her mother had told her to tell people that.
“Sure, you can play,” said a second girl, also ten. She was tall and had long skinny legs. “How old are you?”
“Three.”
“You don’t sound three.”
“I can read and whistle, too. Listen.” She whistled the two tunes together, watching their reactions with interest.
“Jesus,” the boy said.
Stella felt proud at his amazement. The tall skinny girl threw her the ball and Stella caught it deftly and smiled. “I love this,” she said, and her face flushed a lovely shade of pale beige and gold. The boy stared after her with jaw agape, then sat down to watch as the girls played together on the dry summer grass. A sweet musky scent followed Stella wherever she ran.
Kaye searched all the rooms and the closets frantically, twice, calling out her daughter’s name. She had been absorbed reading a magazine article after putting Stella down for a nap and had not heard the girl leave. Stella was smart and not likely to walk out into a road or get into any obvious danger, but the neighborhood was poor and there was still strong prejudice against children like her, and fear about the diseases that sometimes followed in the wake of SHEVA pregnancies.
The diseases were real; ancient recurrences of old retro-viruses, sometimes fatal. Christopher Dicken had discovered that in Mexico three years ago, and it had almost cost him his life. The danger passed a few months after birth, but Mark Augustine had been right. Nature was never other than two-faced about her gifts.
If a police officer saw Stella, or somebody reported her, there could be trouble.
Kaye called Mitch at the Chevrolet dealership where he worked, a few miles from their house, and he told her he’d come right home.
The children had never seen anything quite like this odd little girl. Just being around her made them feel friendly and good, and they did not know why, nor did they care. The girls chatted about clothes and singers, and Stella imitated some of the singers, especially Salay Sammi, her favorite. She was an excellent mimic.
The boy stood to one side, frowning in concentration.
The younger girl went next door to invite other friends over, and they in turn invited others, and soon the backyard was filled with boys and girls. They played house, and the boys played police, and Stella provided sound effects and something else, a smile, a presence, that soothed and energized them at once. Some had to go home and Stella said she was glad to meet them and smelled behind their ears, which made them laugh and draw back in embarrassment, but none of them felt angry.
They were all fascinated by the gold and brown dapples on her face.
Stella seemed completely at ease, happy, but she had never been among so many children before. When two nine-year-old girls, identical twins, asked her different questions at once, Stella answered them both, at once. They could almost understand what she said, and they broke out laughing, asking the funny plump little girl where she had learned to do that.
The older boy’s frown changed to determination. He knew what he had to do.
Kaye and Mitch called her name along the street. They did not dare ask the police for help; Arizona had finally gone along with the Emergency Action and was sending its new children for special study and education in Iowa.
Kaye was beside herself. “It was just a minute, just—” “We’ll find her,” Mitch said, but his face gave him away.
He looked incongruous in his dark blue suit, walking on the dusty street between the small old houses. A hot dry wind soaked up their sweat. “I hate this,” he said for the millionth time. It had become a familiar mantra, part of the bitterness inside him. Stella made him feel complete; Kaye could still give him some of the old life. But when he was alone, the strain filled him to the brim, and in his head he would say over and over how much he hated this.
Kaye held his arm and told him again how sorry she was.
“Not your fault,” he said, but he was still very angry.
The thin girl showed Stella how to dance. Stella knew a lot of ballet music; Prokofiev was her favorite composer, and the difficult scores came out in complexes of piping and whistling and clucking. One little blond boy, younger than Stella, stayed as close as he could to her, brown eyes big with interest.
“What do we want to play now?” the tall girl asked when she grew tired of trying to stand enpointe.
“I’ll get Monopoly,” said an eight-year-old boy with the more familiar kind of freckles.
“Or maybe we can play Othemo?” Stella asked.
They had been searching for an hour. Kaye stopped for a moment on a broken patch of sidewalk and listened. The alley that ran behind their homes opened onto this side street, and she thought she heard children playing. Lots of children.
She and Mitch walked quickly between the garages and board fences, trying to catch Stella’s voice, or one of her many sounds.
Mitch heard their daughter first. He pushed open the metal swinging gate and they entered.
The small yard was packed with children like birds around a feeder. Kaye noticed immediately that Stella was not the center of attention; she was simply there, off to one side, playing a game of Othemo, with decks of cards that made sounds when pressed. If the sounds matched or made a tune, the players got to discard. The players who emptied their hands first won. This was one of Stella’s favorites.