Origin

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  I’m drawn into the film’s convoluted plot, which seems to involve shadows that come to life, and when the phone rings I nearly jump out of my skin. I hurry to answer, assuming it’s Keller, checking in again from work—worried, I suppose, that I’ll go AWOL. But it’s Sylvie, her voice tentative and lowered. “Alyce’s been watching me like a hawk,” she complains. “Without you and Margo around, she’s all on top of me. It’s like she can tell something’s up.” She gives me Junie Wilson’s phone number, and adds before we get off the phone, “I’m praying for you.”

  JUNIE WILSON’S VOICE has a quiet, rich timbre. When I explain who I am, there’s a pause, then she says, “I’m sorry. I’ve only recently started trying to answer the phone again. I forget how to do this.”

  “Have the police interviewed you?” I sit sideways in the dining room chair, the phone squeezed between my ear and shoulder as I open a notebook.

  “Oh well . . .” Her voice is so soft, I try to still my breathing in order to hear her better. “I suppose there’ve been one or two of them out here. They never stay very long, though, they scurry away. Lots of apologizing. I think I frighten them. I think people tend to be afraid of me.”

  “No—they’re police officers.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says, still quiet, though I detect a bit of steeliness now. “What happened to me—to our baby—it frightens other people, like they’re afraid they could catch it and it could happen to them.” She laughs once. “A mother’s grief. It’s too much for people. My neighbor said it really upset her, seeing me cry at Odile’s funeral, it was too much for her.”

  “Too much for her?”

  “Yes, people say all kinds of interesting things to me,” she says in her terrible, dry way. “They’re trying to be helpful. That’s what my mother tells me.”

  I consider this. I don’t want to be one of those people saying helpful things. “Junie.” I steady my hand on the notepaper. “I really don’t mean to trouble you. I have just a couple more questions—about the case.”

  “Oh, that’s fine.” She sounds as if she’s lightly sedated.

  “Have you ever heard of someone wearing a sort of necklace—or lucky charm—with a tooth on it?”

  “One of the other detectives asked me that.” She sighs. “I might’ve said that I thought it was a lucky charm.” She laughs again. “Is that what I said?”

  “There’s something in your interview transcript about that. Yes.”

  “Well, my mind isn’t really so . . . together these days. Memory’s blasted to hell. But the tooth thing, you mentioned, I was thinking—it might’ve been something my mother thought up. She’s very into inventing traditions and sayings and such.”

  “And she talked about a tooth on a string?”

  “I think so—it seems I remember her talking about how, if you want luck, put a tooth on a string. . . . Or am I just imagining that?” There’s a breath of a laugh. “ She was a bit of a hippie, I guess. In her younger days, that is. She talked a lot about inventing our own family culture—creating your own past, that kind of thing.”

  I let this information settle in. Some aspect of this reminds me of my own life with Pia—though the two women sound entirely different. On impulse, I say, “Junie, were you adopted?”

  There’s another pause and then she says, “Yeah, I was. How did you know?”

  “I didn’t.” I stare at the empty lined paper in front of me. There’s nothing in the interview notes about this. The color of the walls around me seems to brighten, the ivory paint taking on milky blue tints, and shadows of palm fronds dip across the ceiling. “I didn’t know.” I tap the pencil on the paper, leaving a row of dots. “Do you know who handled your adoption?”

  “A private agency—I think it was called New Beginnings. It was open.”

  “Your adoption?” I’m startled to hear all this. “So you know your birth mother?”

  “Oh sure.” Her tone is offhanded. “But she was a kid when she had me—fifteen or so. Then she got married and has this whole other family. We were never really all that interested in each other. I guess that’s sort of weird, huh? I’m just very close to my real mother—the woman who adopted me.”

  “Where were you born, do you know?”

  “At Upstate—like everyone in the world.”

  I draw a leaf on the paper. “Have you ever heard of Lyons Hospital?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Would you ask your mother—both of them—if you don’t mind? Ask if they’ve heard of it?” I spell the name of the hospital for her. Just before we hang up, I waver, unsure if it’s unprofessional to say, but finally I mumble, “I was adopted too.”

  “Ah, were you?” she asks, unsurprisable, then adds, “Well, hello, sister.”

  I smile, invisible in the empty house, my near-empty sheet of paper before me. “Hello,” I say. Then I say, “And I am so sorry—about Odile.”

  “Thank you,” she says. And then there’s the first lilt of emotion I’ve heard during this conversation. “Thank you for saying her name.”

  CHAPTER 41

  IN THE DISTANCE, ONONDAGA LAKE IS FULL OF FLAT ICE FLOES AND the trees are rust-colored clouds. Now the bus is filled with pearly light, the thaw beginning on the streets, the snow beginning to retreat back into filigree. Everything is wet and thawing.

  In a single left-hand turn, the world can change from green palms and crimson hibiscus to a place like frozen glass, full of reflecting clouds.

  If Keller knew I was out on a bus, I’m sure he’d come after me. I’d had to wait for an interval between police cruisers, then I ran to the corner, hacking, and caught the number 17. I sit back in the seat, dry-eyed and ready. It seems to me that I’m done with waiting for the permission—of bowing to the bureaucratic processes—of the Lab, the court, the station. It seems as if I’ve spent a lifetime adhering to such codes and can no longer afford them.

  We wheeze to a stop at the corner of Second and Vine. Everything is trickling around us. The sun is out and the old snow glazes into a reflecting mirror. It’s the sort of day that could trick you into thinking it’s warm—into taking off your hat and gloves, unzipping your jacket. But I’m still plagued by fevers and chills, and beneath all that the cold is still there. I keep myself good and wrapped up, take another swig of Robitussin before I climb off, into the bright, stark air.

  SHE DOESN’T WANT to open the door this time. There is just the reluctant crack, a slice of shadow so that I sense, rather than see, her standing back, breathing lightly, eyes hard as beads. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she says, her voice a creak. “I got a call from your mama yesterday. I’m not supposed to be talking to you.” She starts to close the door and I move forward and place my hand on it. “But I want to talk to you.”

  “I’m not supposed to—whatever it is. I’m telling you—talk to your mother!”

  She tries to push the door shut, but I put my shoulder against it and shove it open. “Did Pia happen to mention that I work in law enforcement?”

  She flinches, her face bleached by the wintry light, her eyes near-slits. I walk in. She looks like a creature that sleeps underground all winter. Her hair is in a ratty knot on top of her head. She glares at me. “Stubborn child.”

  I don’t particularly want to see it, but now there’s an unmistakable clang of recognition: the cleft of her chin, the planes of her cheeks. The way her mouth extends in impatience. I do remember her. “Well, come in, then,” she says, adding, “if you’re going to be a bully about it.” Then she turns and walks ahead into her kitchen. “Where’s your bodyguard? I thought he was a cop!”

  “I don’t want to take up your time,” I say, following her into the kitchen.

  She sits at the table and looks at me. “Oh no? Oh really? Then what is it exactly that you do want, then?” Her voice
is all frost. “Sit down, sit down, sit down,” she says and pulls a cigarette out of her skirt pocket. She taps it unlit on the kitchen table. “So what do you want? Let’s do this quickly, if we must. Let’s get it over with.”

  Her change in tone from my earlier visit is startling, yet it seems more appropriate now. The luxury of pretense is over. The air in the room feels raw, without depth: I see everything too closely—the particles of grit around the burner ring on the stove, the pink capillaries on the surface of her eye. I stand at the table, gripping the metal back of the chair in front of me. “Have you heard about the Blanket Killer?”

  She pulls a plastic lighter out of her pocket and flicks it—no flame. “Oh no. No way. I don’t know anything about anything like that.”

  “Don’t you watch the news? The stories about a baby killer.”

  She pauses to gaze at me evaluatively. “I might’ve.” Then she taps the empty lighter against the table. “I suppose so.”

  I slip in between the chair and table and sit; I place my hands flat on the table. “Myrtle, listen. Someone’s been trying to kill me, and I think it’s the same person who’s been killing the babies.”

  Myrtle turns her face to me, open and stark-eyed. I tell her about the stay in the hospital and the poisoned sheets. She keeps shaking her head. “I didn’t know.”

  “I know you didn’t, I know. But you might be able to help me now. You could tell me about when you used to work with the babies—at the little hospital? Did you work with the Wilson family? A baby named Junie Wilson?”

  She shakes her head. “Not that I know of. Of course, the parents often changed the babies names after they got them.”

  “How about Erin Cogan? Tina Abernathy?” She shakes her head; I try to look at her eyes, but her gaze is lowered. “What about New Beginnings Agency?”

  “Well, yeah—that one I know of.” She smiles slyly. “You might say they were sort of my competition. They took over a lot of the business after Lyons Hospital closed. They were all, you know . . .” She moves her fingers in the air. “Touchy-feely? They did all those open adoptions. All that sort of nonsense.”

  I’m interrupted by a fit of coughing; she wants to make me tea, but I wave her back down. “Please, I need you to tell me as much as you can remember from that time—about that hospital.”

  She rests her chin on her hand for a moment. “What can I say? It was just this group of nuns. A private Catholic hospital, you know? The main person was this old girl, Mother Abbé. She was the one I worked with.”

  I nod. “Is she still alive?”

  Myrtle sits forward, frowning in concentration. “I remember I heard she passed on—just a little after the hospital closed up shop. I think it killed her, losing that place. Funny.” She rubs her fingers back and forth over her forehead, as if working through something. Finally she says, “What we did, probably some people would think it was wrong, but we all thought we were doing good.” Her face propped in the V of her fingers, she says, “Mother Abbé sent certain babies to me—the unusual ones, some emotional problems or physical defects, that sort of thing—the type who might be difficult to place—but always very pretty babies. And I would find homes for them.”

  “What do you mean?” I sit back in my chair. “How’d you do that?”

  “Well.” She sighs and stares out the kitchen window. “To tell you the truth, we just skipped the adoption agency stuff. The formalities, the counseling and paperwork, home visits. I used to work for an agency and I couldn’t stand how long and expensive the process was. So after a while I decided to go out on my own. Do things my own way. I was more of an expediter, you might say.” Her glance drops to her lap. “I charged a fee and the couples got their babies.”

  I hear my voice as if it’s coming from another room—not quite recognizable as mine: “You mean you were—well . . .” I consider this. “You mean you were selling the babies.”

  “I’m sure that sounds horrible to you.” She doesn’t meet my gaze. “It’s not exactly the right way to put it. There was nothing sleazy about it—we were very professional and we really cared about the babies. You have to understand, we thought we were doing good. The courts could tie up adoptions forever with all their endless red tape. And like I said, Abbé’s favorites were the ones who were somehow damaged or different—the sorts of babies who’d get shipped to orphanages, where they didn’t have any hope of receiving adoptive parents.” She gestures around her. “And look at this place! Obviously, none of us were getting rich doing this—but we had to at least cover our costs, didn’t we?” Her eyes flicker to mine, then fall immediately. “Yeah, and sometimes there were problems—like with you. You had hardly any paperwork or medical history, no birth certificate. And obviously, the more of that sort of paperwork you have to generate, the more the authorities start to watch you, so . . .”

  “So you let Pia and Henry take me without any hope of ever legally adopting me?” I say slowly. “Is that what you’re saying? And that’s why they never talked about where I came from.” I hang on to the edge of the table as waves of heat rush over me. “Why did they have to go to you in the first place? Why couldn’t they have just gone through the normal channels?” I ask angrily. Mostly this seems like a rhetorical question to me, but then Myrtle is saying, “Your father told me . . . the agencies said Pia was emotionally unstable—clinical depression. He mentioned something about an attempted suicide,” she murmurs. “But it was a long time in the past.”

  “But you decided that was good enough for me anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, Lena,” she says quietly. “We thought Pia was better for you than no mother at all.”

  “How convenient,” I manage to say. I’m angry now, and full of energy, and I say, “Myrtle, I want to know where I came from. I want to know why no one has ever talked to me about my past.”

  She lifts her face and says very quietly, “Well, Lena, you were abandoned.”

  I can feel the cold iron of the chair all the way into my bones. “What do you mean?”

  Myrtle is shaking her head again. “That’s all I know. Really, I’m telling you the truth. According to your admissions chart, you were abandoned. You were admitted to the hospital when you were a baby. You had bronchitis and frostbite. Maybe pneumonia. I can’t remember exactly.” She rubs the outer corner of her eye. “Pia was so concerned that you never learn about your past—she was so damn sensitive and terrified of everything—that I remember. You were such an odd little creature. And she was afraid that even just knowing these things would be too much for you. Well, and of course she wasn’t so eager for you to find out about . . . our financial arrangement.”

  “I was admitted as a baby?” I’m struggling to take this in. “How old?” My voice is smudged. My peripheral vision quivers, the clock over the stove leaves a trail.

  “You were a newborn.”

  I smile and shake my head, feel the fringes of relief start to gather in me—she can’t be right—her timing’s off—I wasn’t a baby. She must have me mixed up with another one of her children. “No, no,” I say breathlessly. “It’s not possible. I was already walking when I left the forest. . . .” Then I notice her look.

  “Forest? What do you mean?” She turns her head, studying me. “Are you talking about that old fantasy—monkeys in the jungle . . . that stuff?”

  I don’t speak.

  “I remember something about that,” she says slowly. “Years ago. Pia told me—you frightened her, when you started talking about that monkey-mother.”

  My throat feels desiccated. The notion that Pia would’ve discussed with anyone my time in the rain forest is nearly beyond belief—she who had forbidden that I ever speak of it.

  I can see Myrtle’s pale, silent form in my margin of vision. She says quietly, “You actually still believe it.” I turn to look at her again and she says, “I’m sorry, de
ar. I had no idea.” She stands and takes my wrist. “I’m going to show you something.”

  We leave the kitchen and climb the five steps to the second floor, with its big dormitory-style bedrooms. They are doused in shadow, airless as monasteries. For a moment, I seem to see silent forms rush past the door: bowed heads, hands pressed together. I close my eyes. The smell of the rooms enters me, moving in ripples of pre-memory. We’re in the pink girl’s room, only now the color looks drab. Myrtle pats the bed against the far wall, gesturing for me to sit while she moves to a closet. “You were one of my darlings. This was your bed right here. Right where you’re sitting.” She opens the closet door and an image comes to me: a hand rubbing a bar of white soap over my bare arms. There is a stench; I know the soapy hands will save me. Myrtle disappears into the closet and I can hear her rummaging around. “It’s very important, Lena—very important—that you let yourself know what you need to know.” There’s a sound of something dropping, something with weight. She puffs and steps back, and she’s holding a cardboard packing box in her arms. She places it beside me on the bed and stands, one hand on top as if keeping it from springing open. “You see—I save everything. A little something from all my children. I can’t part with my past. I filled up all the closets with your toys and clothes. These are my history boxes.” She swings her other hand at the closet door, lets it fall back loosely against one side. “That’s how I’ve always been.”

  The box emanates distinctive odors and associations: the damp bars of a crib, confinement, and rocking. My hands rise: white, curling fingers fumble at the box, the cardboard warped and humid. My vision trembles and I flinch: there are voices inside, murmuring prayers, the sounds of clicking beads, incense. I try to inhale, but the air won’t come. Myrtle reaches in and removes two naked Barbie dolls. “These belonged to Lucy and Mary,” she says, holding one by the legs and touching its blond hair. She reaches in again and for a dreamy moment I wonder if she will produce a tooth on a string. Instead, she pulls out something soft and large, molting in places—a toy stuffed monkey. The monkey has a flat face with glass button eyes and its fur is matted. It has a hard plastic nose and long, curved arms and a musty smell. I take it gently.