Island Angels

A Thousand Miles

In February, 1992, Brittany Belcher's life changed. First, her daddy disappeared. Then the angels came.

Brittany never saw wings or halos; yet, she knew them. They lived in every dirty place that she went with Mom and her sister, Blair—the food pantry, the welfare office, the trailer park. She felt them in the principal's office and on the nurse's cot. She saw them out the classroom window where she stared, hour after hour, looking for her daddy's truck.

Brittany only knew one human angel, and that was her mother's hairdresser, Delaina. After Mom had spent all their money, Delaina became the Belchers' rescue angel. Delaina helped them move into her step-brother's empty trailer. Delaina got Mom waitressing jobs, a new one every two weeks. And, when Mom became too sick and sad to work, Delaina babysat Brittany and Blair in her beauty shop. She gave Brittany scissors, and the child learned to give haircuts, perms, and color jobs. At ten years of age, she became a beautician.

Then, in August, Delaina arranged the ultimate rescue. An old lady, an island off the coast of Maine, a thousand-mile Greyhound bus trip...

That is where Brittany's story begins.

For the tenth time in as many minutes, Brittany rotated her rear end on the sticky vinyl bus seat. Comfort was hard to find when six-year-old Blair took up three-quarters of the double-seater—not with her body, but with her Garfield pillow, Holly Hobbie sleeping bag, and Tiffany, the filthy doll that she insisted was a Cabbage Patch. Ragged hair ends stuck out in pointy spikes around her T-shirt's neckband.

That haircut was not one of my better efforts, Brittany thought. She twisted her own waist-length hair.

Oh, for an empty seat! But Delaina had told them to stick together. Brittany was the oldest; it was her job to make sure they stuck. The family had boarded yesterday in Cincinnati and had roller-coasted all night through West Virginia's mountains. Now they were cruising the New Jersey Turnpike. Or were they in Delaware?

How many hours to Malisleet, Maine?

Brittany wanted to ask Mom, but that was not possible. Mom was out cold, clutching the tasseled fringes of her orange-and-brown afghan. Her mammoth body took two full seats.

Brittany shifted, only to lurch back with a thigh-crushing jolt as the bus hit a bump in the road.

"The wheels on the bus go round, and round, and round!" Blair shrieked. "The wheels on the bus go round and round, all through the"—

"Blair, cut that out!"

"Towns, and hills, and mountains!" Her voice crescendoed. "The wheels on the bus go round and round and rou-ound!" Higher and higher she squealed, bouncing on the seat, until Tiffany fell to the floor.

Brittany crossed her arms. "I'm not getting that for you."

The elderly woman in front of them handed her the doll. Her smile was over-lipsticked and crooked. Brittany smelled Fruit Loops on her breath.

"My doll." Blair snatched Tiffany from her hands. "She brings good luck."

"Are you travelling alone?" the lady asked.

"Mommy's sleeping. How come your hair is blue?"

"Be polite!" Brittany hissed.

"I don't like blue hair," Blair said. "Does the old lady we're going to live with look like that?"

Brittany didn't know. Delaina had arranged their new living situation without providing a single detail—no picture of the house, no map of the island, no address to send school records. They knew only that Mom would care for Opal Mildred, a woman nearly 100 years old. The girls would live in her attic.