Read Online Kiss of the Bees by J. A. Jance - Free Book Online Page A

grandmother is so deaf, she didn’t hear the baby screaming. The other kids from the village found her in the afternoon, after they came home on the bus.
    “Someone brought her into the hospital at Sells last night, but she’s still so sick that this morning they transferred her to TMC. I came along to handle the paperwork. By the time I finished, the ambulance had already left, so Gabe came to get me.”
    “How old is the baby?” Rita asked.
    “Fifteen months,” Wanda answered.
    “And what will happen to her?”
    “We’ll try to find another relative to take her, I guess. If not . . .” Wanda Ortiz let the remainder of the sentence trail away unspoken.
    “If not what?” Rita asked sharply. It was a tone of voice Davy had seldom heard Nana Dahd use. He looked up from his drawing, wondering what was wrong.
    Wanda shrugged. “There’s an orphanage up in Phoenix that takes children. If nobody else wants her, she might go there.”
    “Whose orphanage?” As Rita asked the question, she pushed the awl into the rough beginning of her new basket and set her basket-making materials aside.
    “What do you mean, whose orphanage?” Wanda asked.
    “Who runs it?” Rita asked.
    “It’s church-run,” Wanda replied. “Baptist, I think. It’s very nice. They only take Indian children there, not just Tohono O’othham children, but ones from lots of different tribes.”
    “But who’s in charge?” Rita insisted. “Indians or Anglos?”
    “Anglos, of course,” Wanda said, “although they do have Indians on staff.”
    Diana walked back into the living room carrying a tray. “Indians on staff where?” she asked as she distributed cups of coffee. In view of the fact that Rita Antone made her home with a Mil-gahn family, Wanda Ortiz was a little mystified at Rita’s obvious opposition to the idea of Indian children being raised by Anglos. After all, Rita had raised Davy Ladd, hadn’t she?
    “Running an orphanage for Indians,” Wanda Ortiz told Diana. “We were talking about the little girl I brought to TMC this morning. Once she’s released, if we can’t find a suitable relative to take care of her, she may end up in a Baptist orphanage up in Phoenix. They’re really very good with children.”
    “Do they teach basket-making up there?” Rita asked, peering at her nephew’s wife. “And in the wintertime, do they sit around and tell I’itoi stories, or do they watch TV?”
    “Ni-thahth,” Gabe objected, smiling and respectfully addressing his aunt in the formal Tohono O’othham manner used when referring to one’s mother’s older sister. “The children out on the reservation watch television, and those are kids who still live at home with their parents.”
    “Someone should be teaching them the stories,” Rita insisted stubbornly. “Someone who still remembers how to tell them.”
    After that, the old woman lapsed into a moody silence. By then Rita Antone and Diana Ladd had lived together for almost a dozen years. Diana knew from the expression on the old woman’s face that Rita was upset, and she quickly went about turning the conversation to less difficult topics. She wouldn’t have mentioned it again, but once Gabe and Wanda left for Sells and after Davy had headed off to bed, Rita herself brought it up.
    “That baby is Hejel Wi i’thag ,” Rita Antone said softly. “She is Left Alone, just like me.” Orphaned as a young child and then left widowed and with her only son dead in early middle age, Rita had been called Hejel Wi i’thag almost her whole life.
    “And if they take her to that orphanage in Phoenix,” Rita continued fiercely, “she will come back a Baptist, not Tohono O’othham . She will be an outsider her whole life, again just like me.”
    Diana could see that her friend was haunted by the specter of what might happen to this abandoned but unknown and unnamed child. “Don’t worry,” Diana said, hoping to comfort her. “Wanda said she was looking for someone—a