“Miss,” he said, holding his cap in his hands. His head was white on top, like a tonsure.
Her eyes turned up, large in the soft light.
“I ain’t gonna tell no one about what you’re doin’,” he said.
“How do you know what I’m doing, Earl?”
“I don’t,” he said mildly. He pointed at the now glowering sky. “There’s a storm coming, miss,” he said. “Best you get back home. Unless you want to spend the night with me.” He had the audacity to crack a wink.
She didn’t take him seriously until she was halfway back to the motel and what had started as a few random flakes suddenly became a thick blur. Her windshield wipers, turned on high, beat frantically, and yet the snow fell insistently, softly, deadly.
Her hand reached for the radio. “Nothing like a spring squall,” the young-sounding man said. “Hold on to your hat and button up down south. Not a time to be watering the woods,” he joked. It took Naomi a moment to get it.
He sounded so close he could have been talking in her ear.
By the time she got to the motel she was crawling through whiteout conditions. Her hands were tight on the wheel. Behind her the mountains had disappeared.
“This is Jerome,” the kind old lady had said in their kitchen.
Naomi had pressed hard against the woman’s skirts, smelling the reassuring—foreign—adult female smell. With one hand she rubbed the fabric. Naomi knew that under the skirts was something that linked the nice old woman to her, and this felt profoundly comforting to her, because the old woman seemed strong. Like she would hit badness with her black iron skillet before she let it in the door.
But the boy standing in front of her, with the cap of jet-black hair, tight cheekbones, and wonderful dark eyes? Naomi had never seen a boy like that, of that she was certain.
“I’m Jerome,” the boy said, with a grin. He looked saucy. Even the way he stood, like he had a right to throw his arms all over the kitchen. Which smelled nice, by the way.
The old woman cut her a thick slice of bread, toasted it, smeared it with butter, and put it in a bowl. She poured a current of warm milk over it, scented with cinnamon and vanilla and sugar. She had held Naomi close to her the entire time. “You look like you need feeding,” she had said warmly.
They sat at the kitchen table. Papers she later learned were called bills. A clutch of pencils and pens in a holder. Pens! Paper! A bowl of apples. A window. Out the back screen door crickets sang.
Naomi ate the milk toast, feeling each bite fill her stomach, as the old woman and the boy watched. “My name is Mary Cottle, but you can call me Mrs. Cottle,” the woman had said. “Jerome is my foster son. I’ve taken care of a lot of children. I will keep you safe.”
The bowl was empty. Her spoon scraped the traces of milk, getting every last bit. She looked up at Mrs. Cottle and the boy called Jerome, his face hanging on her every expression. Her mouth wanted to apologize. Her mouth wanted to say a lot of things, but all of them ran from her like her memories had, leaving her feeling as empty as the bowl. Finally, she spoke.
“Safe?” she asked in her unused voice.
“Safe,” Mrs. Cottle answered.
There was a small bed with a bright quilt on it, and a sink with a toothbrush in a glass. Mrs. Cottle had found her some pajamas, stacked away in closets for times like this, and then tucked her in.
Naomi waited until they were all asleep and got up and wandered the house, examining it until she knew every door latch and way the windows opened, and she made sure all of them were locked. She found tinfoil and made balls she perched on all the windows, thinking she would check them in the morning, to see if anyone was trying to sneak in.
She stood by the front door late at night, looking out the window. The black sky extended as far as she could see. “Safe,” she had whispered to herself. “Safe.”
The sheriff who had brought her to Mrs. Cottle had made some efforts at an investigation—maybe it was more. From Naomi’s perspective they asked questions, dazzled by her blank innocence. Naomi couldn’t remember anything besides running across the fields, a warm fire, and the migrants who had brought her to the sheriff.
Asked more about the monsters, she shut down and became nearly catatonic, frightening everybody, especially Mrs. Cottle.
The migrants who had dropped her off had moved on, quickly, before they could be found. Maybe they were afraid of the law, the sheriff surmised. Naomi was like a child fallen from heaven, a young girl with pale skin and brown hair and hazel eyes.
Where had she come from? The town dentist, who had his big rust-colored chair in the same town building that stored the mail and served homemade ice cream custard, looked at her teeth and said he thought she was about nine. The doctor said someone had taken care of her—maybe a little too much, he had whispered to Mrs. Cottle, and they shook their sad heads.
She had no birthday, no beginning—and, she figured, no end.
Every night she stood on the farmhouse porch, the door within safe reach, and counted the stars. Somehow she knew how to count. Somehow she knew how to read—a little. Someone had taught her those things. That meant she could learn again.
The stars were bright and showed like warm little eyes in the heavens. Her mother was up there, she figured, watching down over her. Letting her know that it was now safe to remember.
But she could not remember. She stood outside on the porch until the cold drove into her bones that coming fall and winter. She stood out there every night for months, trying to unmake this puzzle in her mind. Who was she? Where had she been?
5
It took a very long time—she figured she had been snow girl for almost a year—but one day, with her hand on his chest, she showed Mr. B that she could be trusted.
It was a heavy wintry day and the snow moved like it was alive, forming and re-forming drifts as if at play. Mr. B pulled out a smaller pair of the funny shoes he had, like baskets for their feet. He wrapped her busted tennis shoes in warm furs and laced the rawhide straps tight around her ankles, his hand pausing as if in memory. And then he opened the door and let her out.
She had stood there, eyes wide, breathing in the essence of herself. Mr. B smiled. She ran and played in the snow, arms out, while Mr. B watched, his eyes carefully checking the forest, noticing how the snow filled in the drifts of her marks even as they were created. Finally he took her inside. She sat at the table, satiated.
But for some reason Mr. B got mad. He started to drag her to the cellar. She didn’t try to resist. It was as though she wasn’t even in the cellar anymore but outside in the wild, beautiful wonder of the snow.
After another long time he took her outside again. The waits became shorter, the times outside longer, and slowly, Mr. B stopped worrying so much. She learned to be patient, like a good snow girl.
She delighted in everything outside, especially learning to walk in the magic yellow baskets that keep you afloat over the snow. Mr. B demonstrated with his own strong legs: Don’t let your legs bow out. Roll your ankles in a little instead.
Soon her legs were strong, too. Like the pillars of ice on the mountain bathed by the yellow sun, the one she named the gold church.
Mr. B knew everything there was to know about animals. He knew how to find tiny tracks under the brush. He could read the flight of the hawks over the places where the animals hid. He knew where the snow was pockmarked with delightful holes under which he would find warm carcasses of meat and blood.