A Guide for Murdered Children

by Sarah Sparrow

  To free them both.

  * * *

  • • •

  The desolate farmhouse was an hour and a half northwest of the Twin Cities, in the unincorporated community of Jacobs Prairie, along Stearns County Road 2 near Cold Spring.

  The sixty-eight-year-old man who murdered Rhonda Whittle in 1984 was in the middle of attacking a fourteen-year-old runaway he’d met on the Internet and drugged at a motel when the wiry black yogi, his Ford Escort left a half mile outside the farm’s perimeter, began an unstoppable jog toward the house. His locomotion was so powerful that when he crashed through the heavy door, it broke off its hinges. The girl’s assailant jumped from the bedroom window and ran to his weathered old Mercedes turbo-diesel. (The cracked pink phone of the abductee still lay in the backseat along with her jeans and underwear.) The old man always left the key in the ignition and a weapon under the floor mat of the passenger seat.

  Ganesha sprinted through the house, ignoring the still unconscious runaway, her arms and legs tied to bedposts. Just then, the bathroom door opened. Standing there was a thirty-something woman with the sixty-something death’s head of a meth addict. She held out her hands in submission. “He said he wasn’t going to hurt her! I didn’t know, I didn’t know!” She shouted it over and over, as if repetition would inspire belief. Ganesha leapt like a tiger, butting her head until it pulped before jumping out the window himself.

  The old man dug beneath the seat for the gun, but it was tucked out of reach.

  He looked in the rearview as Ganesha appeared, muttering Crazyass nigger picked the wrong one to fuck with as he fired up the Benz and peeled out. He would circle back and run him over. While reveling over his escape and the anticipation of the kill, he was startled by a jolt—his pursuer had impossibly leapt atop the trunk and was holding on to the groove at the base of the rear window. Piece of shit fuckin’ nigger! The old man fishtailed, but at sixty-eight his reflexes weren’t primo and the ground was sludgy from the rain. He lost control and shimmied into a tree. Staggering out, he saw that his stalker had been thrown from the car. He went to open the Benz’s back door so that he could get the gun out from under the passenger seat but by the time he did, Rhonda was upon him.

  “Ain’t keep no money here! Ain’t keep no money here!”

  Rhonda smiled and the old man had his first real look at the assassin, a skinny, preternaturally calm young black, his scalp slick with blood from the bedroom battering.

  “What do you want?” he said, terrified.

  His pursuer answered in an eerie, little girl’s voice, “Please don’t hurt me please, Mister! I just want to go home! I want my Mommy.”

  The panicked quarry backed away (he was able to because Rhonda allowed him) and then ran—not to the house but toward the road bordering the eighteen-acre property.

  Seeing the approaching car, the old man quickened his faltering pace. Someone was either lost or trespassing—no one had visited in years, not by consent or invitation, except once when a cop asked some dumb questions—and for the first time in the decade he’d owned the place, he was glad of it. More than glad because he wasn’t in the best shape. He was having trouble breathing and his feet were so numb with cold that he was beginning to have trouble standing; the old man knew that if he stopped moving it would be the end. When he saw that two people were in the car, he grew hopeful. He scrambled toward them, yelling Halp! Halp!, and took a quick look over his shoulder.

  The nigger was gaining but taking his sweet time.

  “Halp!” he screamed, as Lydia and Daniel emerged from their car. “He’s trying to kill me!”

  Rhonda was on him in seconds.

  She held him down and whispered in his ear. The old man listened in horror, pivoting his head as best he could to mutely plead to the trespassing couple. They remained at their car, watching. In the anarchy of coming death, he feebly grappled with a question: Why don’t they help? Are they a part of it? They all come to rob and kill me? He ran out of the time required to solve such a riddle. His attention returned to the still-whispering assailant, blood from his lacerated scalp now dripping into the old man’s mouth, covering it in red lipstick like the smear of a mischievous child who’d broken into her mother’s makeup kit.

  Maya took a small step toward them, but her brother put his hand on her arm, gently holding her back.

  It was the old man’s turn to whisper, but only Rhonda heard his last words.

  4.

  Ganesha was listless while Daniel washed him in the tub.

  Lydia tended to the runaway, who was still asleep. She was joyous that the girl would live. She’ll never have to go to a Meeting, she thought. She’ll never be on the train having lemonade. She loosened the straps that bound her but didn’t remove them. Lydia worried that after they left, she might start thrashing and fall from the bed, hurting herself.

  Daniel dragged the dead woman to an adjacent room so the girl wouldn’t have to see that when she came to. He wore gloves—a chapter in the Guide warned about leaving evidence, though being a cop made his precautions automatic. He wasn’t sure how careful Rhonda had been but strongly doubted that the yoga instructor was in the fingerprint database of criminal offenders. When they thought he was in good enough shape to drive, they walked Rhonda to his car. Lydia had the temerity to ask him what all the whispering was about. The landlord Ganesha told her that Rhonda wanted to know the details of how she’d been killed. She wanted to know what the old man had done to her. The old man told her that she’d been drugged—apparently his M.O.—which was why Rhonda was so confused about what happened and kept bringing it up at Meetings. From the moment she was abducted to the moment she died, the little girl didn’t have a sentient thought.

  It never occurred to Ganesha or Rhonda to ask Daniel and Lydia what they happened to be doing there; nor did it occur to the siblings to pose the same question themselves. The excitement of the day superseded the meaning behind Maya’s mirage of an appointment near St. Cloud that crystallized into the powerful vision of a remote farm in Jacobs Prairie, sixteen miles away. But Daniel sensed that something was troubling her. He had an inkling of what it was but chose to let it go.

  At the gate, Lydia told Daniel to hang back because she wanted Rhonda to leave first. Rhonda waved to them as he drove out. On the highway, they stayed as close to him as they could, but when they got past the 94, he was swallowed up by traffic.

  “We lost him,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure? He was super shaky.”

  “Well, duh. But that’s probably normal.”

  “What the fuck is normal.”

  “I mean normal for right after a moment of balance. We’ll see him at the Sunday night Meeting.”

  “Ya think?”

  “No way he’s going to miss getting a birthday cake.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Twenty minutes outside Minneapolis–St. Paul International, the bossy little sister directed him to veer off the highway. She wanted to stop at Waite Park, “where Lydia’s parents are from.”

  “Not a great idea,” he said.

  He knew that Lydia hadn’t seen them since they came to stay, a few days after she killed the Tom Ford lookalike outside Tim Hortons.

  “I didn’t say I wanted to visit,” she said. “I just want to see the house.”

  “What’s on your mind, babe? Is there something about what happened back there that you’re having a problem with?”

  “A problem?” she said acidly. “Damn straight I’m having a problem. I’m having a problem that Rhonda killed someone he wasn’t supposed to.”

  “The woman?”

  “Yeah, the woman.”

  “I get that. And it’s a shame. But shit happens.”

  “Really? That’s just part of the deal? I don’t think so. Annie never t
alked about it. Annie never said, ‘Oh, by the way, sometimes innocent people die during the moment of balance. I’m sorry, Daniel, but it just doesn’t feel right.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” he said, trying to placate.

  “That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to make responsible parties accountable.”

  “I see your point.” He was drawing on a technique that he learned in couples therapy with Rachelle. “But shit, Lydia—you don’t know anything about that woman at the farm or the evil shit she was up to.”

  “And I don’t care. She could be the biggest scumbag in the world, but she wasn’t involved in what happened to Rhonda.”

  “Maybe she was.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it. She was not involved—which means she didn’t deserve to die.”

  “Blame it on the Great Mystery,” he said wryly.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Are you God now, Lydia? Is that what you think? That all of this—whatever it is that’s happened to us—makes us God?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  She’d been guiding him through the streets and finally told him to park. Lydia slunk in her seat. It was raining but the storm abated. She stole glances at a redbrick house.

  “Stay down,” he said.

  “Why should I?”

  “Oh come on,” he chastised. “The day’s been complicated enough.”

  “I’m still Lydia,” she sighed. “And I miss my mom and dad. Don’t you miss yours, Daniel?”

  “They’ve been dead awhile. Not a lot of love lost.”

  “Sometimes I miss them so much . . . and what about our parents? We never even drove by our old house in the Falls. Why haven’t we, Troy? For fuck’s sake, it’s five minutes from the substation!”

  “You know what the Porter said. It’s a distraction to our mission.”

  “I don’t care about our mission!”

  “You know you don’t mean that, Maya.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she cried. “But don’t you want to see it again, Troy? Don’t you want to play there? Don’t you want to see your room?” He solemnly touched her hand as she wept. “Don’t you want to see them again? Mom and Dad?—”

  “Maya—it’s time to go. We really need to get home.”

  “Home!” she said, bitterly. “Wherever that is.”

  As he pulled away, Lydia gazed longingly back at the house where she’d spent her childhood. “I guess I should be grateful—they had me a lot longer than Maya’s parents did . . .” He was about to turn the corner when she shouted, “Wait! Go slow, go slower, Daniel, please? I know that . . . I have a feeling I’m never going to see them again—” The sobbing overtook her and Daniel knew the best thing to do was get out of there. He sped through the intersection as she stared helplessly out the rear window.

  It didn’t look like anyone was home anyway.

  SAVASANA

  1.

  When they arrived at the Sunday Meeting, Rhonda was sitting in his usual place in the semicircle of chairs. (Daniel winked at Lydia, as if to say “Told you so.”) Thus far, José was the only one who had graduated, but his absence made the room feel empty. There hadn’t been any newbies in weeks and when Maya asked the Porter about that, she said, “It happens. Actually, when you and Troy got here, we had more customers than usual.”

  Then, in she walked—tousled, tiny, on edge.

  Maya caught a glimpse of her on the afternoon the Meeting had been disrupted; when Annie rushed outside to see about the fuss (and to rescue Bumble), Maya left her seat to watch the little drama from the door. Now the very same girl tiptoed in, looking about as peculiar, morose and defeated as could be. Annie appeared surprised, digging in her purse for the newcomer’s hibernating Guide, even before she stood to give her a proper greeting.

  She was short and malformed. It seemed like she didn’t have any shoulders, let alone a collarbone, and was very, very young, at least as far as Meeting standards went. She nodded a painfully shy hello to the group so they’d at least stop staring. Maya was instantly charmed, in spite of herself. When it came “Winston’s” turn—the name Annie introduced her by, though Maya heard the girl call herself “Honeychile” on the day she trespassed with her school friend—she candidly explained what was wrong with her. “I lisp on account of my still having baby teeth.” Then she puffed up her chest and proudly announced, “I have the same thing as Dustin, from Stranger Things.” No one but Violet (who blurted out, “I love that show!”) seemed to know what she was referring to. Winston-Honeychile went on to share her puzzlement at “whatever the fudge happened to me,” adding that she thought it was “really scary but kind of cool.” Annie told her they’d talk more about it privately when the Meeting ended.

  Maya found herself paying extra-close attention to Dabba Doo when it came his time to share.

  He wore his customary professorial tweed ensemble—and was shoeless, as usual. It was Maya’s opinion that all children liked to go barefoot; she idly wondered why Dabba Doo was the only one who had the brilliant idea. (She got the feeling Annie would put a stop to it if any of the others followed suit.) He told the room that he was becoming depressed—“not really depressed but a little worried. Not worried, but . . . concerned”—about the fact that he’d been there for so long yet didn’t seem to be any closer to “crossing the threshold.” He was afraid that he’d reached an impasse. Maya and Troy exchanged glances because Dabba Doo was expressing the same fears they were having themselves. “I can’t help but feel,” he said, “that the passion I had in the first months about reaching my moment of balance is beginning to fade. It pains me even to say it! But I do feel caught between worlds, so to speak—I seem to be half who I used to be and half Dabba Doo—half landlord, half tenant! I find myself sitting at home waiting for that child to just take over and give me marching orders! But he won’t, he won’t, he won’t. The boy just won’t, and I’m starting to worry he may never . . . oh, I know he’s here, it’s not that he’s gone away. I feel his feelings, think his thoughts, I even eat his precious gummy bears—which by the way, I have always loathed! But I only eat the green ones.” Everyone laughed. He turned to the Porter and said, “All that opens up a hornet’s nest of questions, doesn’t it?”

  She smiled uncomfortably (so it seemed to Maya) and said, “I think it’d be best if we spoke after the Meeting”—an aside that was on its way to becoming code for the Deep Shit Ahead zone.

  “I guess I’m kind of having the opposite problem,” said Violet. Annie actually sighed with relief—at last, some good news! As the young woman spoke, Lydia assessed her perfect Scandinavian features with a covetous adult eye; she’d always wanted to have that kind of beauty. “I’ve been feeling so strong and confident . . . what’s the word? Resolute. I think my moment of balance is getting really close. It’s just a feeling but it’s really, really strong . . . All I can say is, you better get my birthday cake ready, Porter! And can it please be angel food?”

  Everyone oohed and ahhed, spontaneously volunteering the kind of cakes they wanted for their birthdays. After refreshments (“Winston” sat alone with her untouched lemonade and cookies), they read aloud from the Guide for a while. Then it was time for Rhonda’s birthday speech.

  He wore a skullcap to cover the gashes on his head. So much seemed to have gone wrong of late that Annie could hardly conceal her thrill that a moment of balance had been achieved in the midst of “haywire”—that another one of her children had lost their blueness and would soon be reboarding for the final voyage.

  “I want to bless everyone in this room,” he said, before turning to Winston, who stared timidly at the floor. “And I’d like to say a few words of welcome to the newcomer. It is scary at first but then gets cool, like you said. It gets very cool. So, trust the process. And trust the Porter. She’ll take care of you. Annie takes ca
re of everyone!”

  Maya caught Dabba Doo smiling at her and bashfully smiled back.

  “It was wonderful having you here,” said Annie. “You were—are—a lovely, supportive presence.”

  “Back at ya,” said Rhonda.

  “Now, who would the landlord Ganesha wish to thank?” she said.

  “Well, I’d like to thank my guru, the man who put me on the path to Kriya Yoga. Annie, I know you’ve said before that what we do in this room isn’t related to the spiritual—not directly—but I can’t help believe there’s karma here too. There: I said it! Whatcha gonna do, throw me out of the Meeting?” The room tittered, without exactly knowing why. “Too late for that! I guess I’ve already thrown myself out . . . And of course I want to thank—and say goodbye—to my folks, who gave birth to me. Would never have gotten this opportunity without ’em. And I especially want to thank my twin brother, who’s more or less doing life without parole. God bless you, Curtis. May you find peace in the madness of incarceration, and I know that’s possible. Because we’re all in some kind of prison. Most of the time it’s our heads. But even our bodies are prisons . . . So I guess it’s time to say goodbye to this body. I’m so grateful I had these extra few months to honor it.”