Seconds later, it was wrenched open and the doll sailed over my head, smacking against the wall opposite, its ceramic face shattering in pieces on the floor.
Guess she didn’t like the doll.
In a salad of languages including Old Norse, I chattered through her door, filibustering at her about anything I could think of: how I wished she could have met Andy, the things I liked to do when I was her age, even Greenlandic history. I asked her what had happened to her, who her family was, what was the last thing she remembered. All the while I stared down the hall at Wyatt’s screen saver, a narwhal floating in outer space.
Maybe it was only to get me to stop talking, but after an hour, the door creaked open. I smelled her before I saw her. A rank, acrid taste—unwashed hair and skin, the memory of leather—filled my mouth. Her clotted breath came rough in her throat as if her nose was stuffed up. Had she been crying? It all broke my heart a little bit. As tall as I was crouched on the floor, she stood inches from me, a small, somber-faced child backlit by morning sun.
Very softly she whispered, “Stahndala,” and again, “stahndala.”
I pointed at her. “Are you Stahndala?” I said in English. “My name is Val. Val.”
Her face screwed up in confusion.
I motioned for her to come out. Fear in her eyes, wild black hair sticking up every which way, she took a few steps into the hall, glancing both ways. Santa’s reindeer led by Rudolph, his nose a puffy red ball sewn onto the loose knit, flew diagonally up the sweater. Her tiny toes, blackened with grime, poked from under the ragged hem.
“Stahndala,” she whispered hoarsely.
She looked at me with such pleading in her dark eyes; I simply wasn’t ready for it. The frank reality of her, this girl from ice. Just a child, but from what world, and how could I possibly enter it? Who are you, dear child? I drew in a sharp breath, uttering a little cry. What should I do? I had no children, no nieces or nephews. Sure, if you were eighteen and wanted to major in Latin or Greek, I could handle it, but this?
Maybe—the toys. I’d brought some, but they were in the front room and I’d have to walk past her to get them and she would run, I could see it. Very slowly, repeating the word she’d said to me, stahndala—which I now know was the exact wrong thing to say to her—I ventured a few paces toward the front room. Which is when I remembered I’d stored them in my bedroom. But she hadn’t budged. Stood like a ghost of a girl. I sat in Wyatt’s swiveling desk chair, glanced furtively around. Grabbed one of those stupid get-rid-of-tension rubber balls next to his computer.
I held it up and said in Danish, “Let’s play.” Rolled the ball to her. It bumped along the rug.
She watched until it came to a stop at her feet. Looked up at me. I motioned for her to roll it back. Her face said, Why are you doing this weird thing? Desperate, I took a pen and rolled it over to her. Then another. Tears welled in her eyes.
Bit by bit, so as not to startle her, I reached down toward the pile of her new clothes, holding them up one by one, but the tears kept coming, with little gasps for air now as she began to sob. I got down on the floor and upended the box, praying Wyatt had snagged some toys, too. Of course not. I tossed the deerskin boots on the floor.
She stopped crying and said something. Three words. Said them again.
“The boots?” I whispered. They were real deerskin, not the fake awful crap. “You want the kamiks?” The Inuit word for skin boots. I held them up.
She hazarded a few steps toward me, then ran and ripped them out of my hands before fleeing back to her room. But she did not slam her door shut.
Cautiously I approached her room.
She faced her window wearing the boots, shoulders shaking, hands flat against the icy pane.
“Hey,” I said. “Hey,” and sat down on her bed. “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.”
She whipped around and spouted several long sentences, each word polysyllabic and complex. What is this language? It was so eerie and beautiful it gave me chills; it was more like Greenlandic Norse than anything, but with a modulation, like Mandarin or Japanese. She wiped her eyes and plopped down on the tattered rug as if giving up on me, on everything. Stretching the cheap sweater over her knees, she dropped her chin between them, sullenly playing with Rudolph’s red nose.
I approached her with slow, measured movements. She stiffened and glared up at me but didn’t run. With zero plan at the ready, I sat down cross-legged in front of her. She watched my every move, scooting back toward the wall behind her. I made small noises of comfort.