Turtle Baby Read online

  TURTLE BABY

  NOVELS BY ABIGAIL PADGETT

  Child of Silence

  Strawgirl

  Turtle Baby

  Moonbird Boy

  The Dollmaker’s Daughters

  Blue

  The Last Blue Plate Special

  Bone Blind

  ABIGAIL PADGETT

  Excerpts from the Popol Vuh, translated by Dennis Tedlock, copyright © 1985 by Dennis Tedlock, used with permission of the Balkin Agency, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Padgett, Abigail.

  Turtle baby / Abigail Padgett.

  p. cm. ISBN 0-89296-580-0 1. Government investigators— 2. Women detectives—California—San Diego—Fiction. PS3566.A3197T87 1995 813'.54—dc20

  California—San Diego—Fiction. —San Diego—Fiction. 3. Child abuse— 4. San Diego (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  94-30948 CIP

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for her work on manic-depressive illness.

  To Dennis Tedlock, translator of the Maya Popol Vuh, for bridging two worlds.

  To Douglas Dennis (deceased), formerly staff writer, The Angolite, Louisiana State Penitentiary, for technical advice on Louisiana prisons.

  TURTLE BABY

  Prologue

  Daybringer

  The darkness behind the hills grew pale and silver, like the hair of an old woman brushed down from the sky. The Milky Way, which the Maya called the Sac be, faded and then vanished. Where before there had been that wide, white road above, now there was only a moist gray chill. A transitional queasiness in which night terrors were almost, but not quite, forgotten.

  Chac had followed the Milky Way all night, barefoot on the streets of Tijuana. A smooth brown stone, loaf-sized, hung in a sling between her thin shoulder blades from the mecapal cutting into her forehead. She could not put the stone down in the dark. That much was clear, a self-imposed rule she could not explain and did not question. The stone with its weight borne in the woven band across her brow kept her rooted in the world with her baby, Acito. This world, now. A place so lonely that at twenty-two she sometimes felt ancient and hollow. Used up. Disconnected from everything except Acito. Just the ghost of a ruined Maya Indian, following a road in the night sky.

  But it was all right. The burden of the stone kept her away from the drug, the white powder that was like a warm, blind wind in her veins. She had not used heroin in over two years, but the fear she felt now made a hunger for it shriek in her bones. A fear of the loneliness she endured before Acito's black eyes told her how pretty she was. How needed.

  Chac had not known that she was alone, or cared, until those eyes melted the walls around her and called her back. Now there was nothing but fear of losing him. And now, unless she was smarter and more careful than she had ever been in her life, that was going to happen. She was going to lose him.

  But the stone kept her feet on the road of rutted dirt and her mouth breathing darkness in and out for Acito, just as her mouth had breathed air for him when he lay curled and squirming in her belly. She wouldn't give up, wouldn't break. Only a few more days and she could escape with her baby. There would be money. Just a few more days.

  For now, light had come, and her burden could be put down. She'd made it through another night. On the potholed street a stream of fluid splashed to the ground from between two gnarled feet visible beneath a corrugated tin wall. The city called "Aunt Jane" was waking.

  Chac raised the woven strap from her forehead and placed the stone from its fabric sling on the ground near a pile of old tires. She had left hundreds of stones in the streets of Tijuana, each a relic of her survival and a prayer for her baby's future. Each a burden of time carried honorably, as befit a Maya woman.

  "My white nun," her father, Tomas, had called her the popular name for the cream-colored orchid that grew in the Peten rain forests of Guatemala. "My little white nun."

  And her mother, Josena, had called her mi chica linda, "my pretty girl," so that she would know she was a fine little girl and not just an animal born to slavery in the baking fields of the fincas. Her mother, who wore the purple-embroidered white huipil of their village near Lake Atitlan, even though she was from Coban where the traditional loose blouse was made of lace and embroidered in many colors.

  "What you are hides in your heart," Josena Bolon had told her nine-year-old daughter only days before a soldier's bullet tore through Josena's heart. "The dress you wear is like a mask for your soul. If you wish to keep secret what is inside, cover yourself outside like all others about you and make no noise."

  Chac's mother had taught her to speak and read Spanish, and explained the dishonor of a woman who would sell her body to a man. A dishonor to the woman's soul, which was like the surface of water, a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds.

  The rhythm of her long arms swinging at her sides as she strode toward Chris Joe's little room reminded Chac that she was still alive in spite of all that had happened. She had dishonored her soul in ways her mother could not have imagined. She had sold her body to a hundred faceless men who stank and dripped sweat and then were gone. She had sung for them and straddled them, her mind afloat on the sky she'd pumped from a needle into her arm. But not one of them had touched her secret self, hidden inside. No one had touched that self, ever, except Acito, whose eyes were like her father's.

  With his eyes Acito had told her she was that white orchid again, the monja blanca. She was his mother. Acito had given life to her, as much as she had given life to him. They were bound in that giving, equals even though he was new and helpless, waiting for her to set the terms of his world.

  And she would. Soon. There was already money, saved in a San Diego bank under the name Elena Rother. She had chosen the surname in memory of a missionary priest murdered, like her mother, by Guatemalan soldiers. The Maya had sent his body back to Oklahoma for burial, but had cut out his heart, which they loved, to keep near Lake Atitlan forever.

  Soon there would be a contract with an American recording company. Enough money to ensure that Acito's belly would never be swollen with starvation or with the million white pinworms Chac had seen kill her little brother on a hot afternoon while their parents worked in the finca. They'd buried him in a cardboard box beside one of the fields at night, so the foreman wouldn't know. That night Josena Bolon had chewed her hands in the dark to muffle her sobbing, and weeded coffee plants the next day as if nothing had happened.

  The American record company would give enough money to shelter Acito, keep him clean and safe. The money would send him to school where he would speak English and play games. He would grow in a place with no white worms, where soldiers would not come and blast out the heart of his mother. Only a few more days.

  Until then Chac would carry her fear like a stone on her back, and keep her baby hidden where no one would find him. Away from her. Over the border in America where brown-skinned people lived in hidden webs across the two great cities of San Diego and Los Angeles and moved by night, always telling softly where they were, where they would be tomorrow. Chac could find her baby in that web at any time, but most Anglos couldn't even see it. Acito was safe there, she was sure.

  Chapter One

  "Let it be this way; you must go."—Popol Vuh

  "How does this look?" Bo Bradley asked from a kneeling position atop her desk in the offices of San Diego County's Child Protective Services. "Can't you just hear that sax?"

  Bo's officemate and Spanish-speaking child abuse investigator, Estrella Benedict, turned to glance at a five-by-seven enlargement of a black man in suspenders and a dated tie, playing a saxophone. "Who is it this time?" she sighed, conveying
an absence of interest that could, Bo thought as she positioned the Xeroxed photo among others pinned to her bulletin board, almost be construed as hostility.

  "It's Charlie 'Yardbird' Parker, probably the greatest jazz composer and alto sax improvisationist of all time. Just looking at him makes me long for New Orleans." Bo sat on the edge of her desk and gazed into the yellow-edged acoustical tile of the ceiling. "Steamy nights, jazz riffs drifting from a hundred musty doorways, the scent of bourbon, chicory coffee..."

  "Bo!" Estrella choked, dabbing her upper lip with a tissue.

  "... mixed with pungent Creole spices and crawdads boiling in brine."

  "Please stop talking about food!" Estrella had placed both hands over her mouth and looked wildly at Bo through moist, dark eyes. Beneath a dusting of peach-colored blush, her cheeks were suddenly pale.

  Alarmed, Bo slid off her desk and crossed the closet-sized room in one large step. "Es, are you sick? You look like you're going to toss your cookies. Here's the wastebasket. I'll go get some wet towels for your head. Don't worry, I'll drive you home and then pick up Henry so he can get your car later. Should I get Madge? Es, what's the matter with you?"

  In the three years they'd shared an office, Estrella Benedict exhibited a robust vitality that simply ignored the possibility of ill health. She'd never even had a cold. Bo entertained the possibility that her best friend might be dying. Probably food poisoning, she thought. Or maybe something worse. Some exotic, foreign disease contracted from the migrant-worker population that comprised Estrella's Spanish-speaking caseload. Malaria, maybe. Or leprosy. A weak but encouragingly familiar grin pulled at the white-edged lips.

  "Don't overreact, Bo," Estrella warned. "I'm not dying, I just need a Coke or a 7-Up, something carbonated, okay? And it'll help if you stop describing cooked crustaceans."

  "I'll get the Coke," Bo agreed, sprinting out the door and through the two-block maze of carpeted ramps leading from the court investigators' hallway, past the adoptions office, the typing pool, record room, and glass-enclosed child abuse hotline control center, to the deserted cafeteria. The soft drink dispenser was, as usual, out of order.

  "It's an emergency," she told the humming machine, and folded her left hand deftly through the catch-tray at the bottom, found a rack she hoped held anything but root beer, and bent the sliding aluminum bar just enough to grab a cold can. Sprite. It would do.

  Their unit supervisor, Madge Aldenhoven, had commandeered Bo's office chair and did not allow it to swivel in the direction of the door when Bo returned with the

  purloined soft drink. A new case file lay in the supervisor's lap, obscuring the detail of a stitch-pleated skirt in khaki twill saved from its serviceable look by the addition of a wide red tartan scarf at the waist. With a crisp white blouse and penny loafers, Madge lacked only the pith helmet to complete a Miss Jean Brodie look that Bo found herself envying.

  In this lifetime, she mused, there would be no more bright scarves at her less-than-lithe waist. Not even with the new medication Dr. Broussard had prescribed for the manic depression. Something called Depakote, which was really something called valproic acid. Fewer side effects than lithium, at least for Bo, but still the weight problem. An annoying reality, but not exactly the end of the world.

  "An eight-month-old boy, poisoned," Madge was explaining to Estrella, "probably a household substance. Clear negligence on the part of the baby's caretakers, whose name is Cruz. Natalio and Ynez. They told the intake worker at St. Mary's that the baby's mother is a singer in Tijuana named Chac, who made arrangements for them to care for Acito, as he's called, about three months ago, but they don't know anything else about her. She visits the baby frequently, was just there this morning, in fact. St. Mary's put a hold on the baby, who fortunately survived, but we need to file a petition right away. There's no telling when the mother will show up again. I'd like you to complete the initial investigation today."

  "Sure," Estrella answered. As she reached to take the case file from Madge, Bo noticed a quivering of narrow gold bracelets circling Estrella's wrist. "Uh, excuse me. I'll be right back."

  Tossing the manila file folder on her desk, Estrella hurried out, leaving a trail of spicy perfume in the air. In seconds Bo and Madge Aldenhoven heard the click-bang of the loose pneumatic closer on the women's room in the hall.

  "Is Estrella sick?" Madge succeeded in making the question sound vaguely ominous.

  "Probably gout," Bo answered, jamming her hands into the pockets of long, partridge brown knit culottes that with huarache sandals either created an illusion of slenderness or made her look as if she were standing in a hole. Bo wasn't sure which. "I hear it's going around."

  Madge sighed. "I assume that you are taking your medication, Bo, and that this puerile attitude so unbecoming in a woman your age is actually you and not the 'disability' you claim to have."

  Bo couldn't decide whether to take offense at the "woman your age" part, or the more serious slur on the concept of brain disorders deserving equal footing with, say, congenital hip displacement. Since coming out as one of the fifteen million Americans treated yearly for severe depression or manic-depressive illness, Bo had noticed a new chill cloaking the already strained relationship she endured with her supervisor.

  "The pills are in my purse, bottom drawer on the left," Bo intoned. "Since you're so interested, let me explain that this particular medication, actually an acid, seems to complement the inhibitory qualities of another acid, naturally present in the brain, whose name is gamma-aminobutyric—"

  "I haven't got time for this, Bo," Aldenhoven snapped, rising from Bo's chair. "Tell Estrella when she returns that I'll need to give her case to someone else immediately if she's not up to it. I want that petition filed today."

  "Why? We've got forty-eight hours to do the initial investigation. The baby's safe. What's the rush?"

  But Madge Aldenhoven was gone.

  Bo stared at a photograph of Georgia O'Keeffe in profile over her desk until Estrella came back, her normal coloring restored.

  "Es, you must have the flu or something. I think you should go home. Madge said..."

  "Bo, I have a beet of news," Estrella began, her accent deepening with nervousness. "I ... Henry and I ..." She leaned against the desk and took Bo's hand. "We want you to be a godmother."

  "Godmother," Bo repeated blankly. "You go to the bathroom, come back, and tell me you and your husband want me to be a godmother. Rejecting the devil and all his works, that sort of thing?"

  "I mean the godmother," Estrella tried again, her free hand unconsciously touching the belt of her poppy red shirtwaist.

  The subtle gesture was, Bo realized, absolutely poetic.

  "Es," she yelped, leaping up to hug her friend, "a baby! When did you find out? God, that's great. Henry must be thrilled; he's wanted to be a dad all along. No wonder you're barfing, it's morning. They say that goes away after a while, right?"

  Estrella attempted a game smile and then burst into tears.

  "Oh, Bo, it's awful. I just feel awful. I've been sick for days and then last night we did the pregnancy test thing and it was positive and Henry's so happy, and my whole family's delirious with joy and I should be, too, but I just want to crawl in bed and never get out, and I don't know if I can keep working and I have these weird dreams. It's awful, and there must be something wrong with me because—"

  "Ah," Bo interrupted, leading Estrella to her chair and popping open the Sprite. "This has a familiar ring. Hormonal changes with pregnancy and all that."

  Estrella took a sip of the Sprite. "Huh?"

  Bo grinned conspiratorially at a picture of Edgar Allan Poe on her bulletin board. "It's not the same, but we ..." She gestured at the collage of photos above her desk. "... can relate."

  "Bo, I'm not crazy, I'm pregnant," Estrella began and then grimaced at the faux pas. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say 'crazy.' You know what I mean. Those people you're collecting, they were all..."

  " 'Crazy,' occasionally
," Bo conceded. "Mood-disordered, guests of the best psychiatric hospitals of their times, a few suicides. But my point is, it's a matter of degree. What you're going through is because of a big change in your chemistry. It's affecting your brain, but you'll adjust to it after a month or so. In the meantime, I'm going to help."

  Estrella examined a mummified fly in a gauzy web decorating the upper corner of the office window. "There's nothing you can do. I've got myself into this, but ..." She mashed the heels of her hands against her eyes, smearing mascara into the semblance of a narrow mask. "I mean, I thought I wanted this, but now ..."

  "You look like the Lone Ranger." Bo grinned. "And of course you want this baby. Just try to ignore any negative thoughts until you have a chance to adjust."

  "How do I ignore my own thoughts?"

  "That's the hard part," Bo agreed. "Poe drank, O'Keeffe painted, Hemingway blew his head off. For you I suggest a day in bed with a stack of magazines. Meet me back here at three thirty. I'm going to do the preliminary investigation on this case for you."

  "Since when do you speak Spanish?" Estrella's look gave new depth to the term "skeptical."

  "I don't need to, just to get records from St. Mary's, take the required look at the kid, and glance at the house where these people were keeping him. Besides, I can say, 'Donde esta otra cerveza?' with the best of them. Trust me."

  "Where is another beer? Such a useful phrase in child abuse investigations. Bo, it won't work."

  Bo grabbed the case file and stuffed it into a briefcase on her desk. "Yes, it will. My cases are caught up, I'll tell Madge I'm going out to check on that new family crisis intervention center that's halfway to Los Angeles, and you'll go home and relax until three thirty when you can draft the petition from my notes, go over to court and file it, and call it a day."

  Estrella actually smiled. "I owe you one, Bo."

  "How many times have you and Henry helped me over rough times, Es? Ten? Twenty? How about pretty much consistently, all the time, for nearly three years! I know it's not easy being friends with somebody like me. Let me do something for you for once, okay?"