Policewoman

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  “The kids are in there, Apartment 7, with a Mrs. Santiago. Two little ones, the girl is about four months old, the other, the boy, is three years old. The dead ones were four and five years old.” He said it flatly, and his face was pointed to that corner; then he walked away.

  May looked at me, her face calm and relaxed. “The bodies are gone. Relax. Come on, let’s go get the others.”

  I knew where the burned bodies had lain, and what the peculiar odor was, and I tried to avoid that corner, which drew my eyes like a magnet.

  Mrs. Santiago was standing in the doorway with her husband and three little children, and they moved aside with many fluttering, nodding motions, extending their arms into their home for us.

  “Sit, please, please take this chair,” Mrs. Santiago said, removing a small girl who was leaning against the old straight kitchen chair. “The little ones,” she said, her eyes darting toward another room, “they are in there. I dressed them in some warm clothes. I dressed them in my babies’ clothes.” She said it carefully, her eyes on my face, her head nodding.

  “Please, er, lady, please,” Mr. Santiago spoke. “I don’t speak so good English. Please, lady, what you do with the kids?”

  “We are going to take them to the Foundling Hospital. They’ll be okay.” May’s voice sounded harsh against their soft sounds, and she didn’t even look at them, but lighted a cigarette, ignoring, or not seeing, Mr. Santiago’s effort to dig a match from his pants pocket.

  “You like some coffee?” Mrs. Santiago leaped to her stove, which was next to a small sink. This apparently was the kitchen-living room, for there was a sofa and television set against one wall.

  May looked up at me. Her face reflected her distaste: she wouldn’t touch anything in this room. She shook her head and began making entries in her memo book.

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Santiago, I don’t drink coffee.”

  One of the small boys, with tremendous eyes and a runny nose, was regarding me over the top of the table. I smiled at him, and he retreated to his mother’s skirt, peeking shyly out at me.

  “We have to wait for the sergeant; he’ll be back in a minute,” May said to me, ignoring the people whose home we were in.

  It seemed hours before we heard a commotion in the hallway. The firemen were clearing out the last of their equipment, and we heard a shrill voice scream hysterically. May motioned to me to stay where I was, and she went into the hallway. I watched her talking to the sergeant and to a tiny woman with wild hair and a bright red-purple dress. I could feel the hair on my arms tingle and a chill go down my spine. May put her hands on the woman’s shoulders and held her against the wall, and the woman twisted violently from side to side, her voice piercing like razors rubbed on glass. Then she seemed to slide down, as though her legs were rubber, but May pulled her up again, and the woman stopped screaming and was gesticulating and talking in a combination of Spanish and English. When I turned and surprised Mrs. Santiago, who was watching me, she smiled, but it was a heavy, weighted smile, an automatic smile. She turned in what seemed desperation to a little girl about seven years old.

  “Carmen,” she said, “give the lady some pretzels.”

  The child silently offered me a tall stick of pretzel from a plastic water tumbler, and I thanked her and took a dry, sticking bite.

  May came back, ignoring the Santiagos, and sat down at the table. “The son of a bitch,” she said. “The crummy little son of a bitch.”

  “Was that the ... the mother?”

  May looked up at me, her mouth tight and narrow. “Yeah, I guess you could call her that. You know what that was all about? Well, listen, kiddo, and learn something. That bitch out there was out all night, making her living. She left those kids alone, and they found some matches and set themselves on fire. Two of her kids are dead, and do you know what’s bugging her? Hold onto your hat. The ones who are dead, well, she was getting Welfare checks for them. The others, the ones in there, well, her ‘husbands’ are responsible for making regular payments. She got a court order, but of course they don’t come through. The fathers of the two dead ones are in Puerto Rico,” she slurred the last words, her sarcasm heavy and mean, “so Welfare paid for them. And do you know what that slob out there wanted the sergeant to do? Guess, go ahead, guess.”

  I couldn’t imagine, but May didn’t wait for me to try; she spoke so matter-of-factly, assuming that I would have guessed it anyway.

  “That’s right. She wanted the sergeant to put in the report that it was the other two who got killed, who burned to death, so that Welfare would go on with the payments. ‘What’s gonna hoppen to me?’ That’s what she said. ‘What’s gonna hoppen to me?’”

  Even the smallest child in the room, though not comprehending her words, was frightened by her face, which was contorted and furious. She turned abruptly to Mrs. Santiago. “All right, get the two of them ready. We’re going to take them now.”

  Mrs. Santiago bobbed up and down, with a kind of bowing motion, and rushed into the other room. She came back carrying a small pink bundle and holding the hand of a little boy with long black hair falling in ragged bangs over his eyes. His eyes were black and wide but tearless, and he walked with her soundlessly.

  “Raymond,” she said softly. “This is Raymond.” And she stood, hesitantly, not sure where she was to entrust the child. “And the little one, she sleeps, is Conchita.”

  I put my hand out and Raymond came to me, but May stood up. “You take the infant. Come on, sonny.” The little boy went immediately to May and put his hand out. She arranged her pocketbook and scraps of paper; then, without looking at him, she reached her hand behind her, and the little boy trailed along.

  “Listen, you people,” May said, turning at the doorway, her face hard, her voice ugly and cruel. “This is what happens when you go out all night and leave these kids alone. You hear?”

  Mr. Santiago’s slender body was rigid and his dark eyes blazed with some strong feeling. He swallowed hard, but his voice was soft and broken.

  “The fireman, he came and said this to us. We never do such a thing.” His voice had taken on a different quality: not exactly of defiance, but more like pride. “My wife, no work. She stay home with the kids.” And then, seeing May’s unmoving face, his voice wavered. “My wife,” he said, turning to the small woman at his side, “she saved these two. She went into the fire and she took these ... these two out!”

  May regarded him blankly, with no indication of having heard his words or seen his face. “Yeah,” she said, walking into the hallway, not turning back, “you never do such a thing. Not you!”

  Mr. Santiago’s slender body trembled, his mouth tightened. I held the baby in my arms and started toward the door.

  “These little ones,” Mrs. Santiago said, “I dressed them in my babies’ clothes. They can keep them. You don’t have to bring them back.” It was no small sacrifice.

  The plea was etched into her small face: We are not like that one out there. I am a mother, not she. Her face was soft and sorrowful, the eyes pained and sensitive.

  “Yes, Mrs. Santiago. Thank you.” I waited a moment, then the words tumbled out. “You ... you are a good woman. I mean that.”

  They said nothing, and perhaps I had offended them, giving them my blessing and my judgment, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  We passed the mother of the dead children in the hallway, and May said a few brisk words in Spanish to her. But the woman didn’t answer or look at the child as he walked past her, sucking his thumb, or at the sleeping baby in my arms.

  In the car, May stood the boy up by the window and he gazed silently out at the street.

  “These people,” May said. “Boy, these goddamn people, they should have stayed where the hell they came from.”

  I put my finger to my lips, nodded toward the boy.

  “Him?” she said. “No speaka English.” And she stared past the boy’s head, not touching the child with any part of her.

  The little
boy said something in Spanish, in a high-pitched, babyish voice. May shook her head and answered him briefly.

  “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”

  “Hunter College special,” she said, and this surprised me because none of the rough edges had been honed, none of the finish was there. “He wants to go to the bathroom—he’d better wait.”

  The child began rocking back and forth from one foot to the other, humming to himself.

  I looked at the infant in my arms. Her skin was a delicate beige, her nose tiny and her small lips, pursed in sleep, moved in and out in a sucking motion. “She’s a lovely baby,” I said, but May didn’t seem to hear.

  At the Foundling Hospital, a sister led us into the Administration Office. There was a hushed, calm quality in the building. It was a separate world unto itself: safe, apart. The huge headdress of the nuns seemed to frighten Raymond, and he leaned heavily against May’s legs as she sat on the chair. She pushed the boy’s shoulder and he stood upright, jiggling. The Mother Superior took down all the details without comment, then spoke into an intercom on her desk and another nun appeared, dressed in a crisp white habit.

  The boy was staring at the huge crucifix over the Mother Superior’s head, sucking on his thumb in loud gasps. The Mother Superior said, “This is Raymond. Raymond, say good-by to the nice ladies and go with Sister Margaret Mary. She will give you a nice supper.” Her voice was flat and even.

  The boy stiffened as the nun approached, and he looked around the room, his eyes wide and shimmering.

  “Come,” the sister said softly. “We will give you some nice scrambled eggs, Raymond. Do you like scrambled eggs?” Raymond began chewing on his thumb. The sister smiled. “Don’t eat the thumb, child. I’ll give you some food.”

  “He doesn’t understand English,” I said, still holding the sleeping infant.

  The Mother Superior nodded. “We have sisters here who speak Spanish. He will be fine.”

  “He has to go to the bathroom,” I said.

  The Mother Superior smiled, tapping a pencil on her desk. “It is routine, Policewoman Uhnak. Bathroom, hands and faces washed, light supper and sleep. He will be fine.”

  Raymond, tears sliding down his cheeks but soundless, took hold of the sister’s long flowing garb, and she reached for the baby. I stood up, looking at the tiny, unguarded face. “She’s asleep, sister. She’s been asleep the whole time.” And still I held the child and the sister patiently waited.

  May stood up suddenly and pulled the infant from my arms and thrust her at the nun. The jolting transfer startled the infant and there was a sharp intake of breath and then an indignant cry from the small bundle. “Come on, Uhnak, she isn’t yours and we don’t have all night!”

  I could have killed her then, at that moment. In this quiet, peaceful place, founded on and filled with unquestioning devotion, I felt a greater urge toward physical violence than I knew I possessed, and I didn’t answer her or even hear the Mother Superior bidding us good-by.

  When we got back in the car, the driver glanced over his shoulder at me in the rear seat. “Plenty room up front.”

  I shook my head and he shrugged and started the car. May was talking to him. They were deciding where to go: Chinatown for chop suey or to an Italian joint. They decided on the Italian joint. I sat at the table with them, listening to them go over the menu, evaluating one dish against another, selecting a nice red wine, looking at their watches to judge how long we had. The driver excused himself to make a ring, and May pushed the menu at me, but I shoved it hard back at her. Our eyes were riveted on one another.

  May took a deep breath and put the menu down and put her palm flat on it. “All right,” she said, her voice low and irritated. “It was a stinker. The whole night, the whole thing, the whole bit.” And then tightly, through clenched teeth, accusingly, “I was there, too, remember?”

  “Were you?”

  For the first time, some trace of emotion came to her voice, some signs of life. “Oh, yes, Dorothy. I was there, too. Every minute of it and every step of the way. But there was one big difference. You see, I’ve learned a trick. Be my guest, benefit from my vast and superior experience. A very simple trick. Just this—you never look at their eyes. You never look at their faces.” She looked down at her hands, straightened the fingers out, then looked back at me. “You see, in that way, they can’t haunt you. You can’t remember what they look like, and so you forget them. Just like that!” She snapped her fingers almost in my face. “Voices are very easy to forget, and words—they don’t mean a goddamn thing. Don’t look at their eyes and you’re home safe. Now, are you going to order something or are you going to sit there and watch us make pigs of ourselves?”

  I ordered ravioli and ate a little of it and drank two glasses of the wine and got very dizzy, and May typed up our report at the office before we went home.

  Tony was half asleep when I got home, and I talked him awake, trying to tell him about it—how it was. He listened quietly, understanding my need to put it into words, to try and get it all out, to purge myself of it.

  “I have to look in their eyes,” I said. “Isn’t it stupid—I can’t help it. I have to carry it all around with me.”

  He said all the comforting words that had no meaning, that didn’t penetrate. There was just the sound of his voice, concerned, weary, trying. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. It was all there was.

  The next night, I was off duty and we went to some friends’ house for a social evening. Our host, an enthusiastic, energetic long-time friend, introduced us to another couple we hadn’t met before.

  “And I’d better warn you,” he said, smiling, “Dotty is a real honest-to-God policewoman—carries a gun and everything!”

  The girl hunched forward, brightly eager for some new experience, to hear some exciting inside stories.

  The man, a carefully groomed, well-made collegiate type in his thirties, grinned knowingly. His name was Marty and he said, arching his eyebrows: “Listen, I know about cops. I know all about you cops!”

  Tony passed a wordless message to me—of sympathy, complete and whole.

  “Do you really?” I said coldly. “Marty, you don’t know anything.”

  And I proceeded to be a very poor guest: a silent, uncommunicative guest, much to my host’s dismay, for I had apparently been heralded as a good storyteller.

  But I told them nothing.

  4

  “I shall serve the law; I shall serve the people”

  IN MY FIRST FEW months as a police officer, I had been almost totally removed from the main functions of the police: prevention of crime, detection and apprehension of criminals. I had seen apprehended persons once they were in detention, but I had not taken an active part in what I considered the real job of the police. So I was filled not only with anticipation but with a good deal of apprehension when I was assigned to work with a detective in the Bronx.

  Bill Bayreuth was a tall, lanky, monosyllabic man with a face as creased and reddened as old leather. He looked like a cowboy and carried himself with a slouching long step as though his feet resented the pavements and he were searching for flat space. He was the kind of man who didn’t speak unless he had something to say, and since he had nothing to say, he was for the most part silent. When we met the group of high school girls outside the main entrance of the all-girls school in the Bronx, he told me, partly in abrupt gestures and partly in quick grunts, where he would be, what our signals were, and what our procedure was to be.

  I stood with the group of five girls, a part of them. When I had been a high school girl, we had worn moccasins and white bobby socks, a little lipstick and a fresh, clean look: we had looked young. These girls were all sixteen years old, all remarkably similar in their dress, hair style, make-up and their long disheveled bangs painstakingly arranged to touch the corners of their pale-shadowed eyelids which were heavy with eyeliner. Their lips were blanked out with pale lipstick, and they all looked wan and tubercular. Dressed s
martly, their feet easy in medium-height pumps, their manner belied the outward sophistication. Their faces were animated and they spoke in bursts of giggles, dangerously close to hysteria. Hearing their voices, their gasps of breath and words, I felt somehow very old, though there were not that many years between us. I had never realized sixteen was so young, and I wondered if I had sounded like that, if I had been given to shrill and unexpected bursts of senseless, irrational gasps of laughter followed immediately by serious, almost solemn composure.

  “Policewoman Uhnak, do you think he’ll show up today?”

  They all became silent, mouths opening, eyes focusing on my face intently.

  “Well, I think well just wait and see.” I was sure I sounded just like one of their teachers, so old and wise and calm and patient. “But remember, please, don’t any of you do anything. My partner and I will take care of it.” That sounded fine: nothing to worry about.

  They all nodded, seeming to gain reassurance from my attitude toward the situation. The girls all had that sharp sense of here and now—a keen awareness of the moment, a feeling of excitement and at the same time dread. I shared this feeling but knew it must be concealed from them, because their control would reflect my own. They were leaning on me fully, without question. Strangely enough, this gave me a certain confidence.

  “My mother was a wreck this morning,” announced one girl, blowing a strand of black hair from her mouth. “Why, she didn’t want me to come to school today, but I told her I had to.”

  The others nodded, and it seemed that all the mothers had had the same idea. We had sat with the mothers and some of the fathers the night before, in the home of one of the parents, a doctor. They had all described, with strong emotions, the molestations their daughters had suffered at the hands of the man we were awaiting. They had all been quite verbal and vehement, and some of the fathers, comfortably seated in back of a coffee table laden with expensive pastry, had threatened to take matters into their own hands. Wives had reached beautifully manicured hands to the abundant, thick masculine shoulders and admonished restraint. Bill had explained that their daughters would be under police protection; that they would all be asked to come to court, after we apprehended the man, to press complaints, and that in all likelihood the culprit would plead guilty; they had nothing whatever to worry about. The parents had agreed to have the girls meet us at school, had agreed to follow through with complaints. And yet, each mother, this morning, had tried to keep her own daughter at home.