Chapter 10

Haley’s turn:

I’ve heard that when you introduce a new member into a closed community, it takes a while for the hierarchies to realign and reestablish themselves.

New member. Diminutive, dark-haired, big-eyed, tawny. Camila. Property of Dave. He paid two hundred bucks for her, and we’ve chided him for not getting a receipt.

Fourteen. Headline stories abound about human trafficking and sex slavery and such, and our new sister Camila’s right there for real to show us that it happens.

No, she wasn’t a sex slave. Yet. Guatemalan virgins, though ... I read that in the proper marketing sequence, she’d have commanded a premium for the ‘virgin’ part, and frankly, I look at her and I look at Carlita and I know that Dave’s totally enamored with Carlita and SHE pulls off that ‘forest nymph’ thing very well. (Of course, Dave’s also quite enamored of zaftig Brindy, too, but that’s not the point of this conversation.)

Camila’s like that. Unfortunately, Camila’s not much of an English speaker yet. She’s trying hard, but she does not stray far from Carlita, native Spanish speaker, or Brindy, who’s turned Carlita’s English as a Second Language class into a Spanish as a Second Language class.

I think Mila (she smiles when we call her that) is starting to unfold. I don’t know how well I’d do under the circumstances – sold to some random dude after being basically dragged from my home country – but if there’s a place on the planet for her, this is it.

I think she’s recognized, in the week and a half she’s been here, that nobody here wants anything but the best for her. She’s not hiding behind Dave or Carlita or Brindy.

And today – Carlita and Brindy are on campus, I’m in the office, books open. I hear the front door open, then, “Hello. Maddie.” Mila. She’s tentative with her English.

“Hello, Mila. How are you?” Maddie replies.

“Good. Thank. You.”

“Haley’s back there, Mila,” Maddie says.

I hear footsteps and she appears at the door.

A couple of shopping trips have stepped her apparel up to the standards for our bunch. She’s in jeans and a colorful blouse, athletic shoes on her feet, her hair held back from her face by a couple of barrettes.

“Hi, Mila.”

“Hello, Haley. What. Are. You. Doing?”

“College work,” I replied. “Wanna sit with me?”

Her face lit up and she bobbed her head.

She sat silently for a minute, watching me scribble on a pad, then, “las matemáticas?”

“Math? Numbers?”

“Yes, numbers. Math?”

“Math,” I said. “In English, ‘math’ is short, ‘mathematics’ is long.”

“Yes. Spanish. Mates and las matemáticas. Carlita tells me.”

“Do you know math?”

Shiny black hair bounced. “I show you.”

We have whiteboards on the wall. I hand her a marker. She WANTS to show me.

One thing about it, I’m gonna come out of here knowing more Spanish than I did when I started.

That’s one thing I learned. Another thing I learned is that Mila’s not stupid. I could already tell some of that from her increasing grasp of English, but now I see that she’s got basic math down pat, too, at least as good, if not better, than what I remember of a lot of my classmates when I was in an eighth grade class, which is where she’d be if we put her in school appropriate for her age.

“Does Carlita know this?” I asked her.

“Yes. I show her. Now I show you. I am not... ignorante.”

“Ignorant is that word in English. And no, Mila, you’re not.”

“I am ... learn. Student?”

“You’re OUR student.”

“I will ... be student of many things, Haley. You are ... young girl. You can fly.”

“We all can fly, Mila. It is our thing.”

“I like flying...”

Okay. The eyes do it. I’m affected. I suppose Carlita weaponized that look and cut ol’ Dave off at the knees early in the game.

“Would you like to go flying today?”

“Is? Money?”

“Expensive? That’s what money is for. I can go flying with my new sister. Come on!”

We passed Maddie’s desk on the way out the door.

“Somebody’s excited,” Maddie noted.

I laughed. “We both are.”

It’s a little bit drab today, high, thin overcast, kind of cool and damp. Not a Stearman day. Mila jumps right into helping me push the little trainer out of the hangar. For what we’re doing, a hundred and fifteen horsepower and two seats is perfect.

She’s right there with me for the preflight. I explain as I go along, in English.

“I must learn English,” she says.

“I should learn Spanish.”

She shook her head. “America. English. Okay.”

She showed me she could open and close the airplane’s door and buckle her harness. I got in, kept the narrative up. I dunno, if she understood ten or twenty percent, she’s doing better than I would if somebody was telling me the same stuff in Spanish, but she kept smiling. I hope she understands what I’m trying to do.

This isn’t her first flight in a light plane, so the ritual of taxiing and run-up and take-off are familiar.

What was new, though, was me telling her to take the yoke in her hands. Gotta start somewhere. My best Spanish. “Manos aqui“. That’s a significant portion of my Spanish vocabulary.

She looked at me when I said it. “You. Hands here.” I smiled encouragingly.

She did.

“Now we fly. Mila flies.”

She’s picked up ‘left’ and ‘right’ and other directional words and at three thousand feet we make our wobbly way though the skies until...

“You, Haley. I have learned. You show me.”

The hour we spent was fun for me and her both, as evidenced by the way she bounced out, smiling, and skipped over to Carlita and Brindy.

Conversation in rapid-fire Spanish that I haven’t a hope of following, but I assume that it was good because everybody was smiling.

Mila turned around, tossed her arms around my neck, kissed my cheek. “Thank you, Haley. My first flying lesson.”

It’s going to be interesting at the Johnson household. Mila’s fourteen, same age as Carlita was when she snagged Dave. Dave’s payment for ‘official’ documents from the Guatemalan government turned Carlita eighteen overnight. And Carlita tells me he’s doing the same for Mila.

“It is much easier for decisions to be made and worked out if she is eighteen,” Lita said.

“Does she know that?” I questioned.

“Yes, we have talked. She knows what it means, she knows that Dave is spending money to take care of her as he did for me.”

“Uh, Lita ... How’s she react to your family arrangements?”

“She’s okay,” Carlita said. “She asked questions. We told her that many women and men marry the incorrect mates. Dave is correct for both of us, and so are we for each other.”

“She understands that you and Brindy...”

“She sees us share kisses. We don’t get to run around our home without clothes, though. We did that sometimes...”

I smiled. “So do we ... not so much as we once did, though.”

“I do not know if Mila should see that. We have privacy with ourselves, but she has her own bedroom.”

“The language barrier...”

“She is learning very fast.” She laughed. “Of course, so is everybody around her. I should have taught Dave more Spanish. I did not know how he would ever need it if I spoke English well.”

“Funny how things change.”

“It is funny. Camila fits with Brindy and me and Dave. She is seeing us as family.”

Brindy’s turn:

Dammit, Dave. You’re nuts.

‘I bought this waif’, indeed.

Strong resemblance to another frightened waif a couple of years ago, except this one didn’t have Carlita’s advantage of learning English at a missionary school. Gives my Spanish a workout. It’s really hard. I mean, I’ve been working with Carlita in her English as a Second Language class. It’s fun, my bad Spanish provides some help to people who see learning another language as a goal and a set of problems.

Now Mila is here and we want to keep her.

“Where would I go?” she says. “Look at me. I have a home. I have food. I am clean, and I am loved here.”

“You are loved here,” Carlita tells her.

“I love my new family,” is Mila’s reply.

It’s working. Evenings, she watches TV with us. Dave does his recliner thing and either I or Carlita usually sit with him. It’s a double recliner, and the three of us can fit and be very friendly, but we do not do that in front of Mila.

She knows that we all sleep together, though, and last night, for instance, Carlita was sitting next to Dave. I sat on the sofa. Mila sat on the sofa.

I turned sideways, lounging. Mila slid over, eyes questioning.

“Is okay to be near you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

I realized that kids need hugs. I extended an arm, letting her nestle against me.

“Abrazo,” Mila said.

“Hug,” said Carlita, who saw the proceedings. Switching to Spanish, she said “You can always get hugs from any of us. And most of the people in the neighborhood.”

“Even Dave?” she asked.

“Dave, would you hug Mila?”

“I would hug Mila,” Dave said in English.

“It would not make my sisters angry if I hugged Dave?” Mila asked.

“Family hugs each other,” Carlita said. “It is normal.”

Carlita left it there. Me, I think I would have expounded a bit because I know what hugging Dave leads to. I know what hugging Carlita leads to. But no ... not Mila. She’s too young and innocent, right?

Haley’s turn:

I’m just leaving an office on campus when my phone tinkles the ‘Cindy’ tone.

“Hey, sister!” I chirp.

“Hi. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“Nah ... Fourth semester engineering course is gonna be behind me in a few days.”

“Great! Lemme ask you something...”

“Sure.”

“Are you up for an aeronautical adventure?”