Because It Is My Blood Page 9

  “This girl is having a seizure!” a guard called.

  As all attention turned to Mouse, I was able to slip past everyone.

  I ran outside on bare feet. It was late October now and maybe 50° out but I barely noticed the cold. I had to get to the gate. Simon Green had promised to bribe the guard who watched the gate, but just in case, he had given me a syringe with one dose of tranquilizer at the same time as he’d given me the handcuff key. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use the syringe, but if I did, I knew to aim for the neck.

  I ran through a dark patch of grass, trying not to wince as burrs pierced my feet.

  Finally I reached the cobblestoned driveway that led to the gate. Someone had left the gate wide open. I looked in the guard’s station. No one was there. Perhaps Simon’s bribe had worked or maybe the guard had simply been called to the girls’ dormitory.

  I was almost to the shore when a voice called my name. “Anya Balanchine!”

  I turned. It was Mrs. Cobrawick.

  “Anya Balanchine, stop!”

  I debated whether to run back and try to tranquilize her or just take my chances and keep moving forward. I looked up and down the shoreline. The rowboat that was to take me to Ellis Island wasn’t there yet, and I must confess that the idea of tranquilizing that woman appealed to me.

  I turned around. Mrs. Cobrawick was running toward me. I heard the sizzle of a Taser.

  “Stop!”

  Her Taser would trump my syringe.

  I started running for the water.

  “You’ll drown!” Mrs. Cobrawick yelled. “You’ll freeze to death! You’ll get lost! Anya, it isn’t worth it! You think you’re in a desperate situation, but all of it can still be worked out.”

  I could see the floodlights of Ellis Island. I knew that it was over a half mile away, and having lived in a time of extreme water restrictions, I was not the most experienced swimmer. I knew enough about swimming to know that a mile in the water was going to feel like ten miles on land. But what choice did I have? It was now or never.

  I dove.

  Just before my head hit the water, I thought I heard Mrs. Cobrawick wish me luck.

  The water was freezing. I could feel my lungs constrict.

  The way my hospital gown was billowing out, it felt like it was drowning me. I untied it. With nothing but underwear on, I started to swim in the darkness.

  I tried to remember everything I had ever read or heard about swimming. Breathing was important. Keeping water out of your lungs. Swimming straight, too. Nothing else was coming to mind. Hadn’t Daddy ever said anything about swimming? He’d said something about every other subject in the world.

  I ignored the cold.

  I ignored my lungs and my heart.

  I ignored my aching limbs.

  And I swam.

  Breathe, Anya. Go straight. I kept repeating this to myself as I paddled my arms forward and kicked my legs.

  I was almost three-quarters of the way to Ellis Island and completely exhausted when Daddy’s voice popped into my head. I don’t know if this was something he’d actually said to me or if I was just losing my mind. What the voice said was: “If someone throws you in the pool, Annie, the only thing to do is try not to drown.”

  Swim.

  Breathe.

  Don’t drown.

  Swim.

  Breathe.

  Don’t drown.

  And what felt like an hour later, I was there.

  I coughed when I hit the rocks. But I had to keep going. At this point, I knew I was probably behind schedule and I didn’t want to miss my second boat. I used my rubbery arms to scale the rocky cliff. I could feel my limbs and naked stomach getting cut on the sharp stones, but somehow I made it.

  When I tried to stand, my legs were slick and useless. There was a sick, wet feeling in my throat and lungs. And yet I was alive. I ran across the shore until I found the boat that would deliver me—a motorboat with the name The Sea Quill painted on the side.

  The sailor averted his eyes upon seeing my partial nudity. “Sorry, miss. There’re clothes for you in the bag. I didn’t know you’d come upon me nekkid, though.”

  The sailor started the boat and we headed for New Jersey. “Worried we missed each other,” the sailor said. “I was about to leave.”

  In the canvas bag that had been provided for me, I found boys’ clothing—a dress shirt, a newsboy cap, a pair of gray pants with suspenders, and an overcoat—and then I found a large piece of gauze, a pair of round spectacles, a fake ID for one Adam Barnum, some money, a mustache and spirit gum, and finally, a pair of scissors. I put on the clothes first. I twirled my hair into a bun and concealed it under the newsboy cap. It didn’t feel right. I asked the sailor if he had a mirror. He nodded toward the cabin down below. I descended, taking the scissors, the gauze, and the mustache with me.

  The illumination in the cabin consisted of a single bulb, and the mirror was only six inches in diameter and pitted from the sea air. Still, it would have to do. I applied the spirit gum to my upper lip and stuck on the mustache. I looked less like myself, but I could still see that my current disguise was unconvincing. The hair would have to go.

  I spread out the bag so that it would catch the clippings. I rarely had my hair cut, and I had certainly never cut it myself. I thought of Win’s hands on my head, but only for a second. There was no time for sentimentality. I picked up the scissors and in less than three minutes all I had left was one inch of wavy hair. My skull and neck felt naked and cold. I looked at myself in the mirror. My head looked too round and my eyes too large, and if anything, I looked more babyish. I donned the hat again. The hat, I felt, was going to be key.

  In the hat, I did not look like Anya Balanchine. And if I squinted I could even see where I looked a bit like my brother.

  I tried on the glasses. Better.

  I backed up in an attempt to see more of myself in the tiny mirror.

  The clothes were boyish enough, but something was off.

  Ah, breasts.

  I unbuttoned my shirt so that I could wrap the gauze tight around my chest—the bandage stung against the places where the rocks had lacerated my skin—and then I buttoned myself back in.

  I studied myself.

  The effect was not awful, but it disturbed me. It might seem silly, but I had spent most of my life as someone people had called pretty. I was no longer “pretty.” I was not even handsome. I was somewhere between homely and ordinary. I thought I would pass as—what was my new name?—Adam Barnum.

  I wondered if I should keep this up the whole time I was in Mexico or if I should only try to do this while I was in the process of escaping. I suspected the disguise worked best if you didn’t consider me too closely.

  I climbed the ladder back up to the main deck. I threw my hair clippings overboard.

  Upon seeing me, the sailor started. He picked up his gun.

  “Captain, don’t shoot. It’s just me.”

  “My word, I didn’t recognize you! You were such an attractive little thing ten minutes ago and now you’re plain as mud.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I crossed my arms over my chest.

  At Newark Bay, there were hundreds of shipping containers and boats. For a second, fatigue set in, and I despaired of being able to find the right ship. But then I remembered Simon Green’s instructions—row three, cargo ship eleven—and I quickly found the shipping vessel that was supposed to take me to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, on the west coast of Mexico.

  Simon Green and I had decided on the shipping vessel for three reasons: (1) because the authorities, if they bothered to look for me, would probably go to the airports, the train stations, or even the passenger-ship docks, (2) because my family had many connections with exporters, which made it easy to find a shipping vessel that would harbor me, and (3) security was notoriously lax on cargo ships—I kept my head down and no one even asked to see Adam Barnum’s ID.

  The only problem with this plan was that a
passenger on a cargo ship was basically cargo. The first mate pointed me to a room set up in an opened rusty metal container with a cot and a bucket and a box of old-looking fruit—still, it was fruit!—and no windows.

  “Not exactly luxury,” she said.

  I took in the room. It looked slightly more commodious than the Cellar at Liberty.

  The first mate eyed me suspiciously. “Have you no luggage?”

  I lowered my voice to what I thought was a plausibly boyish register and informed her that my things had been shipped in advance. They hadn’t, by the way. I was a person without a single possession.

  “What takes you to Mexico, Mr. Barnum?”

  “I’m a student naturalist. There are more plant species in Oaxaca than anywhere else in the world.” Or so Simon Green had told me.

  She nodded. “This boat doesn’t actually have docking privileges in Puerto Escondido,” she told me. “But I’ll have the captain stop the boat and one of my crew will row you the rest of the way there.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “The journey to Oaxaca is about thirty-four hundred nautical miles, and assuming a vessel pace of fourteen knots, we should be there in approximately ten days. Hope you don’t get seasick.”

  I had never been on an extensive sea journey so I didn’t yet know if I was prone to seasickness.

  “We should depart in about forty-five minutes. Gets pretty boring out there, Mr. Barnum. If you want to come play cards with us, we do Hearts in the captain’s quarters every evening.”

  As you might expect, I did not know the rules to Hearts, but I told her I would try to play.

  As soon as she was gone, I closed the door to my container and lay down on the cot. Though I was exhausted, I could not sleep. I kept waiting for the sirens that meant I would be discovered and returned to Liberty.

  Finally, I heard the ship’s horn. We were leaving! I lay my shorn head on the flat bag of feathers that must have once been a pillow and quickly fell asleep.

  VI

  I AM AT SEA; BECOME FAR TOO ACQUAINTED WITH THE BUCKET; WISH FOR MY OWN DEATH

  FOR THE TEN DAYS OF MY JOURNEY, I did not have opportunity to play Hearts or any other game, aside from a game I affectionately dubbed Race Across the Container to the Bucket. (Yes, readers, I was seasick. I see no need to trouble you with the details except to mention that, once, I threw up so hard I sent my mustache flying across the room.)

  This current plague did not allow me to sleep very deeply, but I did have hallucinations or, I suppose, waking dreams. One vision I had revolved around a Christmas pageant that was being staged at Holy Trinity. Scarlet was the female lead, of course. She was dressed like the Virgin Mary and she was holding a baby with Gable Arsley’s face. Win stood by her side, and he was supposed to be Joseph, maybe; I couldn’t tell. He was wearing a hat again and instead of his cane, he had a staff. To one side of him was Natty, carrying a box of Balanchine Special Dark, and next to her was Leo with a pot of coffee and a lion on a leash. Somehow I was the lion. I knew this because of my shorn mane. Natty scratched me between the ears, then offered me a piece of chocolate. “Eat one,” she said. And I did, and a second later, I was awake and running across the room again, to reacquaint myself with the bucket. I had no idea what I was throwing up at this point—I hadn’t eaten much of anything for days. My abdominal muscles hurt and my throat was terribly sore. It was lucky I had cut off all my hair because there was no one to hold it back for me. I was friendless and a fugitive, and I suspected there was no one more dejected and wretched in the whole world than Anya Balanchine.

  VII

  I BEGIN A NEW CHAPTER; AT GRANJA MAÑANA

  AN ENDLESS TEN DAYS LATER, we arrived in Oaxaca, where, along with a sailor named Pip, I was transferred into a small dinghy.

  As we approached the shoreline, my seasickness began to resolve itself only to be replaced by a homesickness such as I had never known before. It was not that the coast of Oaxaca lacked charms. The rooftops were dotted in promising shades of orange, pink, turquoise, and yellow, and the ocean was bluer and better-smelling than any water you’d find in my hometown. In the distance, I could make out mountains and forests, green, so green, with icy swirls of white. Were these swirls clouds or mists? I did not know—the icy swirl was not a meteorological phenomenon that we city girls were familiar with. The temperature was 67°, warm enough that the chill I had experienced since swimming to Ellis Island ten days ago at last began to fade. Still, this was not my home. It was not the place where my sister lived or where my grandmother and parents had died. It was not the place where I had fallen in love with the planet’s most inappropriate boy. It was not the land of Trinity and of buses with my boyfriend’s father’s picture on the side. It was not the land of chocolate dealers and drained swimming pools. No one knew me here and I knew no one—i.e., Mr. Kipling and Simon Green’s plan had worked! Maybe the plan had worked too well. I could die in this boat, and no one would care. I would be a mysterious body with a bad haircut. Maybe, at some point, a local cop would get the idea to use that tattoo on my ankle to identify me. But that was the only thing that identified me, this body, as Anya Balanchine. That regrettable tattoo was the only thing separating me from oblivion.

  I wanted to cry, but I feared appearing unmanly to the sailor. Though I had not yet seen myself in a mirror, I could sense how awful I looked. I could see (and smell) the flecks of vomit on my one suit of clothes. My hair I did not wish to consider. I did feel my much abused mustache slipping off my face. I would discard it as soon as the sailor and I parted company. If I were to pass as a boy—I didn’t yet know what story had been told Sophia’s relations—it would have to be one without facial hair.

  We were nearly to the shore when the sailor said to me, “They say the oldest tree in the world’s here.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s … interesting.”

  “I mention it because Captain said you were a student botanist.”

  Right. That whole lie. “Yeah, I’m going to try to see it.”

  The sailor studied me curiously, then nodded. We had reached the beach of Puerto Escondido, and I was glad to be quit of that boat and of boats in general.

  “You got someone meeting you?” the sailor asked.

  I nodded. I was supposed to meet Sophia’s cousin, a woman named Theobroma Marquez, in the Hotel Camino, which was supposedly in a shopping area called El Adoquin. I was unsure of how to pronounce any of this, of course.

  I thanked him for the ride.

  “You’re very welcome. Word of advice?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Keep your hands in your pockets,” the sailor said.

  “Why?”

  “Boys’ hands don’t look like that.”

  Well, this boy’s do, I wanted to say. I mean, what if I really had been a boy? What business was it of his? I felt outraged on slightly effeminate student botanist Adam Barnum’s behalf. “Which way to El Adoquin?” I asked in my most imperious voice.

  “You’re almost there. El Adoquin runs parallel to Playa Principal.” He pointed me in a direction, then rowed away. As soon as he was gone, I ripped off my mustache and stuffed my incriminatingly girly hands into my pockets.

  I walked toward the town square. My clothes were heavy, appropriate for autumn in New York, and I began to feel light-headed from the humidity. The fact that I hadn’t eaten anything aside from a past-prime apple in several days may also have contributed to my light-headedness. My stomach was acidic and hollow, and my head throbbed.

  It was Wednesday morning, and despite my disheveled appearance, no one much noticed me.

  A funeral procession traveled down the street. The coffin was covered in red roses, and a puppet skeleton controlled by sticks was held in the air. The women wore black lace dresses to their ankles. An accordion was wailing, and everyone sang a discordant song that sounded like musical weeping.

  I crossed myself and kept walking. I passed, of all things, a chocolate store! I had nev
er seen one out in the open like that. In the window were stacks of small, puck-like disks of chocolate wrapped in waxy papers. The exterior was paneled in rich mahogany, and inside were red stools and a bar. Of course, it made sense. Chocolate was legal here. As I was looking in the window, I caught sight of my own reflection in the glass. I pulled my hat farther down over my head and resumed looking for the hotel.

  I quickly identified the Hotel Camino, as it was the only hotel in the area, and went inside. At this point, I could tell that if I didn’t sit down, I was going to pass out. I went into the hotel bar and scanned the room for Theobroma Marquez. I looked for a girl who resembled Sophia, though aside from her height, I found I could barely remember anything about her. The bartender had not yet come on duty. The only one there was a boy around my age.

  “Buenos días,” he said to me.

  I really was on the verge of fainting—rather Victorian of me, I know—and so I sat down at one of the tables. I took off my hat and ran my fingers through my hair.

  I became aware that the boy was staring at me. It made me self-conscious so I put my hat back on.

  The boy came over to my table. He was grinning, and I felt as if I were the punch line to some great joke. “Anya Barnum?” That settled it. I was relieved to know that I was a girl, but not a Balanchine. This seemed a fine compromise. He offered me his hand. “Theobroma Marquez, but everyone calls me Theo.” The name was pronounced Tay-oh. I was also relieved that Theo spoke English.

  “Theo,” I repeated. Though he was short, Theo looked sturdy and strong. He had eyes so brown they were almost black, and dark eyelashes like a horse’s. He had stubble that indicated the beginnings of a beard and mustache. It was sacrilegious to say it, but he looked a bit like a Spanish Jesus to me.

  “Lo siento, lo siento. I did not recognize you at first,” he said. “They said you would be pretty.” He laughed as he said this, not in a mean way, and I didn’t feel all that offended that I’d just been called ugly.