“Have you seen Miss Carson?” she asked, her voice urgent.
Hank pointed down the hallway. “She’s headed to her room right now.” He followed her as she hurried away, his curiosity getting the best of him. Had something happened to Diana? Her father? She hasn’t gotten herself kicked out of the shelter, has she?
Sheila was turning the key in her door when they reached her. “Hello, Ms. Manriquez.” Hank raised an eyebrow at her sudden professional and friendly tone, but said nothing. “How can I help you?”
Rosa’s eyes were filled with fear as she glanced up and down the hallway. “Can we talk in your room?”
“Sure.”
As much as he wanted to follow the women inside, Hank had been brought up with a strict sense of chivalry, and began to excuse himself as Rosa followed Sheila through the door.
“Oh, no,” Rosa said, “you are part of this too. Please.” She gestured for Hank to enter the room, her expression still pinched with worry.
Sheila pulled out chairs for herself and Rosa as Hank perched on top of a table, his long legs easily touching the floor.
“Something hasn’t happened to Diana, has it?” Sheila maintained composure, but Hank could hear the edge of worry in her voice.
“No, but it might.” Anger replaced the fear in Rosa’s eyes. “And it will be all her papá’s fault.” She uttered the one Spanish curse word that Hank knew.
“But isn’t she with her father now?” Sheila voiced his question. Miguel Manriquez was supposed to have been released just before Christmas vacation.
“She should have been.” Rosa threw up her hands, her delicate features twisted in frustration. “But no. He says he got business in Mexico to take care of. Doesn’t make it back for Christmas. Still not back.” Her face was turning red. “So I have to pretend I’m not mad, that everything’s okay, and try to make a good Christmas for my niece, telling her that I’m sure her papá will be back soon, and with lots of presents.” Both hands curled up into fists, and she brought them down into her lap with a huff. “She’s strong, that girl. Didn’t even cry one tear. She was even laughing part of the time when we played games or watched cartoons. Like we were the only ones in the world.” She uncurled her fists and sighed. Sheila gave Hank a what-is-this-world-coming-to glance.
“So the problem is,” Rosa continued, “when I agreed to watch after Diana, I had to cut back on my work schedule quite a bit. Eddie, that’s my boss, he was okay with it for the two weeks I was supposed to have her. But when my lousy brother took off, man, stuff hit the fan. Eddie got mad. I’m not bragging or nothing, but he says I’m one of his best girls, and he’s gonna lose clientele if I don’t get back to work. So last night he told me I’d better work this weekend, every night, or..or else.” She looked down at her lap, obviously reluctant to say any more.
Or else? What would Eddie do? Hank thought, but said nothing. In fact, for a whole minute no one spoke because the principal interrupted them with a barrage of announcements over the P.A. system.
When the thunderous voice finally came to an abrupt stop, Sheila said, “Okay. And?”
Rosa rolled her eyes. “And I need a babysitter. Somebody who will keep Diana Friday through Monday. And you’re the only person around here that I trust.” She winked at Hank. “I hope the two of you didn’t have anything hot and heavy planned this weekend.”
Hank was ready this time. “What, like a chili cook-off?”
Sheila smiled for the first time that morning. Rosa closed her eyes and shook her head. When she opened them, she looked at Sheila with an intense, pleading gaze.
Hank wanted Sheila to say no. She had already gotten too involved with Diana, Hank believed. He’d mentioned it to Mrs. Kennebrew just before the break, and found out that she agreed with him. The families have to learn to be responsible for their kids, the older teacher had said, and the resources are out there. Sheila was making herself a codependent of the Manriquez family.
Besides, as he sat listening to Diana’s aunt weaving her tale, he became convinced that that’s all it was—a tale. She’d tired of taking care of her niece, wanted to get back to having the night life to which she was accustomed, and was trying to dump Diana off on the first person who might take her.
But he didn’t dare say anything out loud. He cast a warning glance in Sheila’s direction, but she ignored it.
“I—I suppose I could do it,” she said. “I could just take her home with me after school on Friday.”
“Thank you so much,” Rosa said as she stood up. “I owe you big. Oh, and there’s one more thing,” she added just before going out the door. “If my brother ever finds out about this, he’ll kill you.”
* * *
Sheila glanced at the innocent face sitting in the passenger seat of her Civic. Surely the loins who would bear such a docile, sweet child would not be capable of murder. She was certain that Rosa, who had not reappeared the entire week, was exaggerating when she gave her parting words. She probably just meant that Diana’s father might get upset. But Sheila had been hard-pressed to convince Hank of that, and he had spent the week trying to talk her out of taking Diana for the weekend.
He had failed.
“Why does it take so long to get to your church? Ours is only a little ways away,” Diana said as they drove toward north Fort Worth. She was commenting, not complaining. If every adult would take life in stride as much as Diana did, all wars would end.
“I feel like it’s the place where God wants me to be.” Sheila had visited other churches since Margaret invited her to Abundant Grace Church three years ago, but none felt like home as did AGC. “Anyway, we’ll be there in about seven minutes.”
“Oh.” Diana stared out the window. “How do you know if you’re in the place where God wants you?”
The whole weekend had been like that. Philosophical and theological questions about everything Sheila did that was different from Diana’s world. Sheila had known Diana was smart, but now she was beginning to think she had a genius on her hands. The girl had a perspective that saw way beyond what much older children, even some savvy adults, did.
“It’s hard to explain.” Sheila exited off the freeway. “Sometimes, I just know something, down in my gut. It’s like Jesus just put that knowing there. Other times, I have no idea what God wants, and He makes me struggle and scream and pray forever before I finally see it.” For the hundredth time in the past year, her vision as a missionary replayed itself in her mind. And for the hundredth time, she wondered if she had totally missed God, choosing the teaching profession.
“You look pretty sad about it.”
Sheila forced herself to smile. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about something else.”
Diana sat quietly a short while before she said, “Papá says that a lot to me.” She looked up at Sheila, her wide chocolate eyes brimming with tears. “He doesn’t tell me, but I know he’s talking about Mamá. She died because of me, you know.”
Sheila jerked her neck to look at Diana, swerving the car as she did. “I’m sure that’s not true.” Is it?
“She died when she was borning me.”
Diana’s mother died in childbirth. That explained a lot. Sheila reached her right hand over and rubbed Diana’s back. “Sweetie, that wasn’t your fault, you know that, don’t you?”
Diana just shrugged, not making a sound as giant tears fell onto her little blue dress. “Papá said he still loves me anyway.” Sheila waited for her to say something like, if he loved her, why wasn’t he taking care of her, or why had he done something to get himself thrown in jail, or why had he missed Christmas with her.
But she did not. As she gazed up at Sheila, she said, “I not cry ‘cause I think it’s my fault. I cry ‘cause I miss my Mamá.”
Sheila wanted to respond. She wanted to give the child some words of comfort. But she couldn’t. A repressed sob caught in the back of her throat, rendering her speechless.
Sheila missed her mama, too.
* * *
Judging by the way Diana stared wide-eyed at the band on the platform in the front of the sanctuary, Sheila surmised that she was used to attending a more traditional church. Sheila had offered to take her to children’s church, and stay with her a while there, but after seeing a gym full of strange children running around noisily before the services started, she had wanted to stay in the “big church” with Sheila.
That was fine with Sheila, although she wondered if Diana would understand much of the preaching. English was her second language, and although Pastor Scott’s style was simple and down-to-earth, his messages weren’t exactly geared toward a Kindergarten audience.
Every once in a while, Sheila glanced over at her to see if she was still paying attention. Every time, Diana’s eyes were riveted on Pastor Scott, her body still. And to Sheila’s surprise, at the end of the sermon when Pastor Scott gave the invitation to accept Jesus, Diana raised her hand. Sheila walked down with her, blurry-eyed. So there’d been a divine purpose to this weekend, after all.
As he always did during an altar call, Pastor Scott instructed the handful of people gathered at the front to lift their hands to pray with him. What usually followed was a prayer initiated by the pastor and repeated by those who had responded, who then were shepherded to a back room for exhortation on how to begin and grow in their newfound faith. Sheila wasn’t expecting anything more that morning, and was unprepared for what happened.
As soon as Diana’s little hands shot up straight in the air, she was pushed backward by an unseen force which almost knocked Sheila down. She somehow maintained her balance, caught Diana’s shoulders as she fell, and guided her to the floor.
Diana lay there a full twenty minutes, her eyes closed and an angelic smile glowing on her face. The presence of the Lord was so strong, Sheila could only kneel and weep and pray, and remember what had happened to her three years ago.
Sheila had at first been insulted when Margaret invited her to a revival meeting. She had a strong faith in God, believed in Jesus, in spite of what had happened a year earlier, and didn’t want to go to some church where the preacher shouted and pressured people to “convert.” But the more she thought about it, the more intrigued she was. She felt almost as miserable as she did the day of the accident. Margaret said the preacher was going to pray for people, and God knows she needed prayer.
So she went. Surprisingly, she found she enjoyed the preacher’s message. At the end, he pressured no one to do anything. “If you have a need in your life,” he said, “something only God can fix, come to the front and I will lay hands on you and agree it’s done.”
Sheila marveled at the number of people who walked up with her, feeling less self-conscious. Never having experienced this phenomena in the church where she grew up, she watched to see what everyone else was doing. They lined up in a single line, facing the pulpit. Sheila found a space in the line. They lifted their hands. Sheila did the same.
One by one, the preacher began placing his hands on people’s heads. One by one, they fell backward, caught by an usher who stood vigilantly behind the line.
He’s pushing them down, she thought, and nearly left the line of people. But her curiosity got the better of her.
When the preacher came to her, she determined to stay standing. “Bless her, Jesus,” the man said, and lightly touched her with one finger on the forehead. He walked away. She was still standing.
A second later, she crumpled to the floor, and began to weep uncontrollably. After a couple minutes, the weeping changed to laughter. She was eating breakfast the next morning when she realized that the acute pain she had carried for a year was gone. God had touched her.
Sheila’s mind returned to the present when she heard Pastor Scott ending the service. She glanced up at him, and he returned with a look as awestruck as she felt. She heard someone else walk up behind her, and turned to see Margaret, wearing a similar expression of wonder.
“Boy, was I wrong.” Margaret had taken Hank’s side on the issue of Sheila’s babysitting Diana for the weekend, saying that Sheila was stepping into dangerous territory, that she needed to pray more before deciding to do it.
Sheila stood up. “You’re allowed to be wrong once a year.”
Margaret laughed as she hugged Sheila, saying, “Oh, dear, you mean I’ve got to be perfect for the next eleven months?”
Most of the congregation, including Margaret’s family, had ambled out by the time Diana sat up, and she couldn’t even talk until they were in the car.
“Jesus said He’s gonna heal my papá.” Diana looked at Sheila, who went numb with shock. “But teacher, Papá’s not sick.”
Sheila sucked in a breath and raised her eyebrows. “Did you. . .see Jesus?”
“Sí, maestra. He was standing right in front of me. You didn’t see him?” She sounded surprised.
“No. You had a vision.” Lord, why haven’t you ever appeared to me?
“Oh, like the Virgin of Guadalupe.”
“Kind of, yeah.” Sheila gripped the steering wheel in an effort to control the tide of emotions rising within her. Diana had had a vision. A five-year-old. Who knew nothing about the workings of the spiritual realm.
No, check that. Sheila had heard that children and animals tended to be more in touch with the spiritual world than the vast majority of adults.
“So what did He mean about healing Papá?”
Sheila bit her lip. Help me say this right. “There are different kinds of sicknesses. Some people are sick in their body. That’s the kind of sickness we usually think about. But many people are sick in their mind or their feelings. They’ve had something happen to them that hurt them so bad that they don’t think or act right. They might be hurting inside so bad because of what happened to them, that they don’t know how to love themselves, or treat other people right.”
Diana took so long to respond, that Sheila thought her explanation had gone over her head. But she finally nodded.
“Sí. I know what you mean now. That’s the kind of sickness Papá has.” She gave Sheila a sideways glance. “When do you think Jesus will heal him?”
Probably not as soon as we would like, Sheila felt tempted to say, but she knew better. “As soon as your Papá is ready.”
CHAPTER 12
No one was going to mess with his daughter. He was Diana’s father, and he would be the one to decide whether she needed to be going to church or not.
Miguel Manriquez seethed as he marched down the sidewalk. That teacher had no right. Rosa had no right. . . .He pushed his hands deeper into his coat pocket, shivering from the bitter cold. So he’d gone to Mexico for a couple of weeks. That didn’t mean he was giving over his parental authority to his sister.
He and Rosa had argued loudly about it the day he returned, two days after Diana’s teacher had apparently taken his daughter to church. Rosa had accused him of endangering her employment; he had bitingly insinuated that what she did, did not count as a real job. She had accused him of being selfish; he had accused her of being negligent. She had accused him of running away from reality. . .he had said nothing.
The truth was, in Mexico he had run into the harshest reality of all.
He was dying.
How was he to tell his only sibling, let alone his five-year-old daughter?
During his stint in jail the pain in his side had become so unbearable that he knew there was something very wrong, and he had gone to Mexico because the doctors’ fees were so much less than in the States. Of course, because of the lower fees the test results took that much longer to come back, and Miguel refused to leave until he had them.
Armed with pain medication, Miguel recrossed the border, trying to figure out what arrangements he could make for Diana. Rosa, as long as she stayed in that less than respectable job, was out of the question. As much as she loved Diana, she could not be there any hour of the day or night for her. And he shuddered to think what one of Rosa’s many boyfriends of questionable character mi
ght do to his daughter.
No, he needed to find someone who would love and nurture Diana, give her the safe environment that he and Rosa never had.
As long as they’re not religious. He didn’t want Diana being taught a bunch of lies.
He turned up the sidewalk leading to the front door of the school. He would make sure Sheila Carson never touched his daughter again.
* * *
Spring Break couldn’t come soon enough for Sheila. No, she didn’t need a week off, she was ready for the summer.
Forgive me, Father. She was supposed to be rested, refreshed, ready to face a classroom full of little bodies again after the two-week reprieve. But after only a week back at school, she was already weary of the discipline, the routine, the same old curriculum. And no matter how many times she fought against it, one little nagging thought kept jumping back into her mind: I don’t belong here. It was more persistent than ever, following her around every minute of the day.
Maybe it was because she had finally fulfilled her purpose in being at the school. Maybe her only reason for being there the past four years was so that she would take Diana to church so she could be saved.
She shoved some paperwork into her bag, preferring to take it home and do it rather than sit one more minute in the classroom. Then she remembered. She was going to write the poem of the week out on a chart paper, but hadn’t gotten around to it, and didn’t want to have to do it the next morning at seven-thirty.
Sighing, she threw her bag into a chair and headed for the chart paper hanging at the front of the room. She’d only made it halfway when she heard the door bang open. Startled, she whirled around.
A wave of shock and fear surged through her when she saw the intruder.
Diana’s father.
“Who do you think you are?” he demanded in Spanish, red-faced and jabbing his finger toward her.
Two thoughts flashed through Sheila’s mind in the ensuing moments. First was a prayer for protection and help. The hostility in his tone made her wonder if Rosa hadn’t been exaggerating after all. The second was the realization that the man standing before her, despite the angry scowl, was much better, and younger, looking than she had remembered when she’d seen him in the jail. Of course, the highest paid fashion model would have trouble maintaining her beauty in one of the orange county jail uniforms.