Free Cross Current by Christine Kling

into a tight little knot. “No maman."
    “You don’t have a mother? Is she dead?”
    Again, just the lifted shoulders, more questions she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
    She pointed to herself. “ Restavek ,” she said very quietly, refusing to look at me.
    “ Restavek ? ” I repeated the word and she nodded. “I don’t understand. I don’t speak Creole. Can you say that in English?” 
    She shook her head and then yawned, her wide mouth showing several gaps where teeth should have been. She slid down, pulled the covers up tight under her chin, and closed her eyes.
    “Okay, you sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe we can talk some more then.”
    At the nurses’ station, I couldn’t get anyone to talk to me. The nice Haitian nurse was not around, and the busty young woman at the desk was far more interested in her manicure than in helping me. When I finally succeeded in getting her to acknowledge my presence, she told me with a flip of her blond hair that I was not next of kin, and therefore she could not speak to me about the girl’s medical condition.
    “She has no next of kin,” I said. “Does that mean nobody gets to find out how she’s doing?”
    The young woman stood up and tugged at the hem of her uniform. The pink polyester was straining at the seams to contain the bust that was perched at an unnatural height, somewhere above her armpits. Her name tag said “Jenna.” 
    “I have orders from Dr. Louie not to talk to anyone about her, and I have to do whatever Dr. Louie says.”
    I wondered how far Dr. Louie took that willingness of hers.
    I stopped off in the lobby at the McDonald’s to grab a burger and fries for the ride home. So many hospitals I’d visited lately had fast-food franchises right on the premises, so I no longer found it ironic to be eating heart-clogging grease a few floors beneath the cardiac surgery suites. I couldn’t resist the smell and had just taken a mouthful of hot french fries out of the to-go bag when a perfectly coifed young Hispanic woman approached me just outside the hospital entrance, identified herself as Nina Vidal from Channel 7 News, and asked if I was the one who had found the little girl. I wondered for a minute how she had recognized me, then realized that the salt-stained deck shoes and the Sullivan Towing and Salvage baseball cap were pretty good clues. I acknowledged that I was the one, and I tried to continue on around her. She stepped into my path again.
    “We’ll be doing a live feed from here when we go on air at eleven,” she said as she pointed at the van with the long, extended antenna mast. “Would you be willing to wait around a few minutes and answer some questions for our viewers?”
    I swallowed the ball of starch in my cheek. “Sorry. I’m headed home to bed. It’s been a long day.”
    She continued to follow me out toward the parking area. “What do you know about this child? Can you confirm that she was not alone in the boat? We understand there was a dead woman. Do you know her identity? Do you know if she’s connected in any way to the other victims?”
    I stopped and turned to face her. I was about to tell Helmet Hair what I thought she could do with her extended mast, but I reconsidered. “Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only know that there’s a sick, scared little girl up there.” I pointed to the upper reaches of the hospital. “Just tell your viewers that she’s a really sweet kid, she’s got the face of an angel, and our government shouldn’t send her back to the streets of Haiti. Okay?”
    She rolled her eyes and murmured something under her breath as she headed back to the van.
     
     
    There was nothing left in the bag but some greasy wrappers by the time I pulled my old Jeep into the drive at the Larsen estate. The canvas top on my vehicle was probably the third or fourth one she’d had since her original owners bought her in 1972, but the wind and Florida sun had done their damage, and