The Salt God's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

it.
    â€œChild, what in the damn-ass are you doing?” Dolly cried, yanking me back.
    Suddenly, we heard a pop . Two shots rang out. Blood splattered across our bare legs.
    We looked up.
    Dr. Brownstein stood on the balcony. She had spotted the sea lion and would later tell us that she had been trying to protect us, not knowing whether the creature was a threat. At over eight hundred pounds, he had most likely become disoriented in the changing current. Though most of the sea lions usually stayed on the white buoy cans that marked the fishing lanes, or floated on the platforms of oil rigs, this one had come in with the storm. In distress, he had climbed onto the beach, seeking refuge or food.
    Now, blood spilled across the wet floor of oyster shells, near the yellow Volvo.
    Dolly and I began to cry. Dr. Brownstein ran down the stairs toward us.
    â€œGirls, are you okay?” she said. She held a blanket from one of the rooms and threw it over the animal. “Go, hurry on, now. Get going,” she said.
    My mother stood open-mouthed in the doorway, her hair blown back, her eyes rimmed in dark coal. She stared at her
crying daughters and the wet heap beside the car. She ordered us inside.
    I stood there for a moment. I imagined how we looked from all angles, from a stranger’s eyes. Dolly and I, the sea lion lying in a blanketed hump, and Dr. Brownstein. My mother in the doorway, holding her head.
    Within minutes, she was frantically packing our things, stealing motel sheets and towels, shoving them into our station wagon, and sweeping branches off our windshield with her hands. Dr. Brownstein watched from the lobby, holding the telephone to her ear. My mother screamed at us to get ready, for ruining her life, for costing her a new job as the motel housekeeper, which she hadn’t even applied for yet. “You could have been killed, Ruthie!” she cried, as we peeled out of the parking lot, leaving Dr. Brownstein alone with the sea lion. “No job. No cash. You girls will not be satisfied until you have ruined my life,” my mother cried.
    Dolly slammed into me, her hot breath on my neck. “She’s going to crash this car. Get ready to jump out, open your door. I’ll say when.”
    I held my breath and shut my eyes. We had grown used to this, careening back and forth in busted seat belts. I knew to have my hand planted on the door handle, ready to jump.
    â€œDamn fool, just like your father. Do you want them to take you from me? You’d never survive without me. This is why I try to protect you. You could have been hurt. Is that what you wanted? For them to try to take you from me?”
    â€œI thought it was a dog,” I whispered. She would leave me again.
    Now I had to wait for it.
    I knew who them was, the people we avoided. Dolly and I had to talk to them after I fell out of a two-story window into a pool. Dolly and I had been chasing each other around, and I had tumbled right through the screen. Someone had called Social Services, and my mother had to go to court. All I remember is
that she bought a navy suit from a thrift store and put her hair up in a bun with black bobby pins. That’s when the story about homeschooling originated, and after, our instructions to carry book bags whenever we left the car, which she filled with old tattered schoolbooks from garage sales.
    â€œWho walks toward a wild animal?” Dolly hissed. I slumped into the backseat as we watched the people on busy Second Street. Life had continued here, just a few blocks from where we’d been holed up in the motel, pretending life had stopped, an excuse not to keep moving. People were sweeping water and debris off the sidewalks. Some were riding bicycles. Others were shopping. The ice cream shop was open, and two young boys sat on a bench, staring at Dolly and me as we slowed at a light. “It’s so sad,” Dolly said. “That animal probably had a family to support.” I