The Savage Kind

by John Copenhaver

  “I have Great Expectations.” She gestured toward a bookshelf across the room. “I’ve wanted to reread it. It’s been so long. Your mother and I, we’d read to each other. She had a wonderful reading style. She could do the voices so well. She could have been an actress.”

  “You know,” I said, rising to retrieve the novel, “I want to study literature and be a writer.”

  “Your mother would be so proud.”

  I remembered the book’s distinctive brown leather spine with gold lettering. “Dad thinks it’s impractical. I can tell.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, ignore him. He thinks being impractical is a bad thing. But it isn’t. Sometimes being alive is impractical, but we do it anyway.”

  I smiled.

  “Promise me to be a little impractical in your life.”

  “I promise,” I said, pulling myself up on the bed again. I flipped to the first chapter and began. Pip, the main character, explains he’s named Pip because he couldn’t pronounce his family name, Pirrip, or his Christian name, Philip, as a child, and then he says:

  As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.

  I stopped and looked up. “How Pip feels about his parents,” I said, “that’s how I feel about my mother sometimes. Like I’m just interpreting a tombstone and getting it wrong or incomplete.”

  “Your mother was a wonderful person,” she said. “You have the right idea about her.”

  The oak branches just outside the window were swaying in a breeze and drew my attention. “But most adults aren’t who they seem to be.”

  I could feel her eyes on me. “Are you okay, dear?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing.” Her voice shifted down a register. “Remember, I can sense things.”

  “Judy,” I said. “She’s like Pip, too. She doesn’t know who her parents are—or were. She doesn’t even have gravestones to go by.”

  Sophie scowled. “I’d hoped you’d moved on from her.”

  “You have it wrong about her,” I said, trying to suppress my irritation. I didn’t want to quarrel. “Judy’s not dangerous. Not really.”

  “She is,” she said, deadly serious. “I’ve known creatures like her. Move on. Find new friends.”

  I couldn’t imagine dropping Judy and—what? Sip soda and quote Bible passages with Ramona? I wanted to ask Sophie why she hated Judy so much, but I feared the answer. Did she sense that Judy had touched on something deeper in me? Was that what she meant by dangerous? “Please, you don’t understand—”

  “Drop her. Promise me.”

  I didn’t know what to say, but I couldn’t make that promise, and I was annoyed that I was being asked to. I’d tried to call Judy to tell her about Sophie’s fall before I left DC, but what I really wanted to talk about was why she’d pushed me away. It had stung—it still stings—and it had felt like a turning point, but a turning point to what? Had she rejected me? Judged me?

  So, I lied to my aunt: “I’ll look for other friends.”

  After an hour of reading, she became drowsy and needed to rest, so I left her. To kill time, I wandered the house, stopping at the panel in the dining room that leads to the cellar, the vestige of the underground railroad I’d shown Judy. I popped it open and peered in at the musty gloom. I recalled her refusing to go down its narrow stairs. Why had she reacted that way? Perhaps it was the memory she had about the cats? Maybe it’d happened in a cellar.

  JUDY, NOVEMBER 8, 1948

  Philippa is miffed at me, but I don’t care.

  Right after I told her about the dream and the cats—the fucking cats—she tried to kiss me and then nearly nosedived four stories. I had to keep her from falling. What does she want from me? To be my lesbian lover? Sure, I feel something for her, something about the two of us, but… Jesus. It’s not like I don’t have enough weighing on me. Moira’s threat most of all: “I know more about you than you know about yourself.” Whatever that means? And now, after saving her life, Philippa has disappeared. I’ve searched for her everywhere. She wasn’t at school, and she wasn’t at home.

  Needing someone to talk to, I waited for Iris to get off work at Horsfield’s. It was almost 9:00 P.M. when she stepped out of the alley entrance and said, “You been out here long?” I was leaning against the wall, flicking my lighter, and soaking up the unseasonably warm night.

  “One of my two friends has vanished,” I said. “I get mean if I don’t have someone to annoy.”

  “Where’s Miss Strawberry?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. She’s upset. I’m getting the silent treatment.”

  Iris gazed at me with her large skeptical brown eyes. Despite her kitchen-heat frizzed hair, she looked shower-fresh, her face tawny in the streetlight. “Well,” she said with a weary huff, “you can walk me to my bus, I guess.”

  As we strolled, I noticed that her long arms and legs moved as if each motion was in sync with a dreamy tune in her head. I wondered if her unshakable poise was a result of her professional training. Doctors, especially surgeons, need cool dispositions and dancer-like control over their bodies, right? Poking around in somebody’s guts is a tricky business. She’ll make a great surgeon if she’s allowed to be one. It’s not going to be easy.

  After a block or so, fearing we’d be at her bus stop too soon, I started yammering. I told her that I was adopted, that I didn’t remember much of my early childhood, but that I was beginning to. I showed her the scars on my arms. She guided me over to a lighted window display at a women’s boutique. A gown-laden mannequin, who had more blood surging through her veins than Moira Closs, gazed down at us. “They look like cat claws,” Iris said, holding my arms and turning them over in the sickly glow, “not that I’m an expert, but they should’ve healed. These scars mean that they were infected. You must’ve tangled with some pretty nasty cats.”

  I shivered; I felt like someone was watching us. I glanced around. Was it Halo lurking again? I scanned the street, but didn’t see anyone. “I don’t know,” I said, sliding my sleeves down.

  “What does Miss Strawberry think of all this?”

  “Not much. She’d rather focus on Cleve’s murder.”

  “Are you guys still harping on about that?”

  “Moira Closs threatened us, and she has a mysterious grudge against Miss M.”

  “Jesus, girl.” She wagged her finger at me. “My father told me that Mr. Closs—the dead boy’s grandfather—was a tyrant.” I remembered the grim, owl-eyed portrait over the fireplace in Moira’s study. “He told me a story about a time when workers, both Negro men, had parked a Capitol City Hardware delivery truck in Adams Morgan on a steep grade. The truck’s brakes gave way, crushing one of them to death and breaking the other’s legs—and Mr. Closs threw a fit, screaming stupid nigger this and stupid nigger that, and instead of offering support for the dead man’s family, accused the men of incompetence. Once the living man recovered, his wages were garnished to pay for the repairs. The Closses, they don’t play fair, my friend.” She started walking again. “So, tell Miss Strawberry to turn on her pretty little heels and head in another direction.”

  I smiled. “Everyone keeps telling us to turn around.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Well, listen to them.”

  “Moira might know something about me, about who I really am.”

  She regarded me, her big eyes softening. “You are who you are,” she said, lowering her chin and lifting her eyebrows. “It doesn’t matter who you were. Don’t get too wrapped up in the past. It’s more important who you become.”

  I appreciated her directness and her kindness. Right then, I needed to feel like someone was watching out for me. And yes, I heard what she said, but I didn’t agree—and still don’t. All of us are what we remember. It’s not what happened to us that makes us who we are; it’
s what we remember about what happened to us. Maybe Philippa’s aunt was right: Memories, like dreams, are guideposts pointing us to the future. If I don’t find a way to fill in the gap of my childhood, that blank space will continue to draw me into the shadows. No past, no future. Philippa is the only one who understands that emptiness.

  I waited with Iris at the bus stop. We chatted about the election. She was thrilled, although she didn’t especially trust Truman. I told her about seeing J. Edgar Hoover at the Closses and asked what she thought of him. She called him “an arch-racist with a Napoleon complex.” After the small talk died out, we smoked together in silence. Once the bus scooped her up, I walked home, wanting to call Philippa, but it was too late to ring her.

  PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 10, 1948

  As I entered school this morning, Judy caught me by the arm, groaned, “Where have you been?” and told me to meet her after school. When we rendezvoused, she commanded me to follow her. I understood where we were headed: Sousa Bridge, where Cleve’s body was discovered. The journey was unlikely to yield much new information, but it was necessary to make all the same. We trudged down 17th Street, and I walked a step or two behind her, feeling detached from her, having flashes back to our romp through Harper Cemetery, playing at being Catherine and Heathcliff.

  It was an overcast and humid day for November, so I shrugged off my sweater and draped it over my arm. For a while, we didn’t speak, and I studied Congressional Cemetery on the right, its headstones, obelisks, and statues mocking the houses on the other side: “When you die, at least you won’t have far to go.” I thought of Aunt Sophie—about her illness and my frustration with her: She was so fixed in her dislike of Judy. Then, my annoyance with my friend rose up: Wasn’t she the slightest bit curious about where I’d been? Did she care? Before I could follow that train of thought, she broke her silence and said, “I’ve had that goddamn dream three nights in a row.”

  “About the cats?”

  “What else?” She kept looking ahead as if she were watching her dream projected on an invisible screen. “Every time, it becomes clearer. Last night, I woke up, and the skin on my arms stung like a thousand little paper cuts.” She shoved up her sleeve. Her scars seemed raw as if recently irritated by rough wool or nervous scratching. When I was a girl, I surprised Sophie’s cat while he was eating. He ripped into my forearm, but my wounds didn’t scar. “I could hear their yawling and feel them swatting me as I kicked them away. I could smell cat piss.” Her voice wavered; it was real for her.

  “Is it happening in a cellar?” I asked.

  A trace of relief fell over her face. She seemed grateful that I understood some part of what she was telling me. “That’s why the light is faint and comes from above,” she said. “I’m remembering ground-level windows, like in Miss Martins’s apartment. How did you know?”

  “Your reaction to Sophie’s cellar was… visceral.”

  “I hate going below ground level. It’s like being buried alive.” Judy nodded toward the cemetery. “Why would anyone want to be dropped in a hole and covered with dirt and bird shit? I want a Viking’s funeral. Plop me on a pyre and send me out to sea.”

  “What were you doing in a cellar?”

  “I don’t know. It must’ve been when I was really young.”

  “Was it at Crestwood?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a touch of desperation. “I’m not sure what to do. I need your help, I guess.”

  She seemed to have transformed from a confident avenger to… what? An introspective and self-interested sad sack? I just couldn’t dredge up sympathy for her. I wasn’t in the mind to. She hadn’t even asked me what I’d been up to for the last few days, and I was still waiting for an apology for her rebuffing me on the roof. But like after our first kiss, she seemed uninterested in talking about it, like it hadn’t happened at all. It made me crazy, as if I’d just imagined the whole thing. If the first time hadn’t been life-changing, then the brush off shouldn’t be heartbreaking. Right? But that first kiss was life-changing or something like life-changing—and her rejection stung. So, in a snide tone, I said, “Well, I guess I’m not getting the cold shoulder anymore.”

  Judy rolled her eyes. Not the right response.

  “You pushed me away,” I said, not hiding my anger. “It hurt.”

  Judy stopped and turned to me. Her expression wasn’t biting, as I anticipated. Her big, sinkhole eyes wandered over my face trying to decipher me. What was she thinking? Was she going to shove me away again? “Look,” she said, “you don’t have to help. I understand. It’s just that these dreams are happening for a reason. What Miss Martins said to me on Saturday set them off—no, it’s not what she said, it’s how she said it.”

  She was too preoccupied with herself to see me—but what could I do? So, resigned, I said, “What do you mean?”

  “There was something in her voice, like I was especially important to her.”

  “We are her favorite students.”

  “Come on, that’s not it. And then Moira: ‘I know more about you than you know about yourself.’ What does that mean?”

  “She’s trying to scare us.”

  “No, you don’t get it,” Judy snapped, shook her head, and started off down the sidewalk. Miss Martins and Moira Closs had sunk their claws into her. I wondered if I should be worried.

  After following 17th Street and crossing several lanes of traffic, we were on the bridge, leaning against the tall railing, peering through its slats at the murky green water and the mess of weeds and shoreline silt. My eyes fell on a large white object, partially concealed by feathery grass. It was obviously debris, a piece of a cardboard box, but for a moment, I saw it as Cleve’s bare torso, pale in the sunshine with the word written on him in bright red: “AHKA.” Neither of us knew the body’s exact location, so there wasn’t much to learn from studying the scene, other than the eerie contrast between the whirring traffic behind us and Anacostia’s peaceful shore. Something extraordinary and horrible had washed up there, but today it was business as usual. I glanced at Judy’s profile. Her hands were gripping the metal slats, and she had a far-off look, not, it seemed, taking in the scenery or even thinking about the murder. Something had entered her expression in the place of anger: Sadness? Relief? Even wonder? Without turning to me, as if she knew I was waiting for her to speak, she said, “What if…” She pulled on the slats and swung back a little. “What if Miss M is my mother?”

  I knew it was impossible—or at least highly improbable—that our English teacher was her long-lost birth mother. Of course, I understood why her mind would go there. Who could blame her? She’d been through a lot, and Miss Martins was a sort of mother figure to us. Still, it frustrated me. She’d banished the brash, cynical Judy and, in her place, inserted a sentimental little girl, pining for her mother. I missed her barbed wit, her daring. I needed the Judy who stood up to the Closses, who fought with Bart and Edith, who spat malt all over Ramona and humiliated Roy Barnes—the Judy who might have bombed cats with bricks. I could forgive her for being cruel, but this new Judy was inexcusable.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “It seems… farfetched.”

  She glared at me. “I’m sure of it.”

  “So, why do you need my help?” I said, letting my exasperation bleed through.

  “Over the years, Bart and Edith have refused to tell me who my birth parents are. I’ve asked many times, but they tell me that I shouldn’t know for my own good. During one of these talks, Bart, who was sloshed, warned me to leave his desk alone. I hadn’t said a thing about his desk, but in the soaked sponge he calls a mind, he must’ve thought I had. That was a year ago. The point is that something is hidden in there. I didn’t want to know what it was until now, until I thought my mother could be more than a deadbeat or wino.”

  “And you want me to help search for it?” I liked this Judy much better.

  “I read in True Crime magazine about how to pick a lock with bobby pins. I need
you to stand watch. If B and E catch me, and there’s nothing in the desk, it could ruin our chances to look at other places.”

  I didn’t want to get in even more trouble with Judy’s parents. If we keep snooping, Dad will find out, and he’ll drive a wedge between us. But with Judy back in the saddle, it didn’t seem to matter. She’d make anyone feel invincible. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  Mr. Peabody kept his study door locked at all times. Because of its location at the end of a poorly lit corridor at the back of the house, it served as his hideaway, according to Judy. It was his refuge from Edith, from reality.

  With True Crime and two bobby pins, Judy unlocked the door and opened it. I peered in. A colossal mahogany desk dominated the room. The walls were cluttered with oppressive hunting scenes. Glossy cracked varnish spread across them like old spiderwebs. A small, worn leather couch, Bart’s napping spot, stretched under a line of half-shuttered windows. The peppery odor of pipe smoke lingered. Judy waved me away: “Go, stand guard.”

  Per her orders, I stationed myself at the entrance to the corridor, just under the main staircase, to keep an eye on the front door. If Bart or Edith came home, I would dash down the hall and alert her. If we had to, we could escape from the study into the kitchen through a servant’s door that was catty-corner to the study. The kitchen has access to the alley in the rear—a clear escape route.

  I waited, obsessively tracing the ornate plaster molding on the ceiling with my eyes. Then—a door squeaked somewhere behind me, followed by footfalls and distant murmurs. Wait, behind me? I crept a step or two down the corridor toward the cracked study door, light spilling out from around its edges. Someone—or several someones—were in the kitchen. They must’ve come in from the alley. The Peabodys rarely used the back entrance. Judy had noted this several times when she had sneaked me in to avoid painful small talk with Bart and Edith.

  I tiptoed to the study but didn’t know how to signal to Judy without drawing attention to myself. After all, the kitchen door was just a few feet away. Through its thin wood, I recognized a male voice—Mr. Peabody.