Children of Chicago

by Cynthia Pelayo

When Bobby had spoken to her, asking her for those keys, those were the most words they had exchanged in weeks. She had seen him in the house when they arrived from the cemetery, but he had disappeared at some point without a goodbye, slipping away in silence—just like he had when he left her the first time.

  Washington shook his head. “You’re your father’s daughter, but you have to live for something besides yourself. What’s done is done.”

  “I do live. I live for this job.”

  Washington pressed his lips together and reached for his jacket on the coat stand beside the door and put it on. He rubbed his chin and then said: “Now you know I’ve never brought this up, ever, but...”

  “You really don’t have to,” Lauren shut her eyes tight, as if doing so would prevent him from saying what he was about to say.

  “You don’t have to live like this. You can’t live with that much guilt. Don’t ever feel like you have to do this job, live this life. You don’t have to repay anything. You don’t have to redeem yourself. Having this job, this career, should not feel like penance.”

  Lauren felt her throat tighten. This job was her absolution.

  “Look,” Washington continued “I’m not saying that what we do isn’t important. It is, but you have to live for something else.”

  “I need to talk to that kid, Hadiya’s friend.” She said. “Officer Guerrero said he started screaming and broke down in tears when he read the graffiti. He knows something about it, Washington.”

  Washington laughed. “You didn’t listen to anything I said.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I didn’t because I need to do this.”

  Lauren turned around and looked at the remnants of her father’s funeral. Detective Van was standing next to a near empty tray of flan. She could not help but watch Van for a moment, wondering how this new partner relationship was going to go considering he did not trust her and thought her inadequate for the job. She’d heard when Van complained to Commander McCarthy about being partnered with her.

  “Lauren’s too young,” Van had shouted in McCarthy’s office. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She doesn’t belong here. And...”

  “And what?” Commander McCarthy had snapped.

  “You know...”

  “I don’t listen to gossip. I listen to facts. This better be the last time I ever hear you utter anything questionable about one of our own.”

  Now, Van was here in her father’s living room paying respects to the man whom he blamed for guiding her towards this life. Nearly everyone on the homicide team had a spouse, significant other, or children. These people had support. Both of Lauren’s parents were dead, and her husband had left her. Then there was the ghost of a sister she barely remembered. And the ghost of that memory was trying to not only break into the tragedy of the present but destroy Lauren’s life as well. Lauren was not going to allow what she had built her entire life to be destroyed by the past.

  “The boy was questioned. He said he went to visit Hadiya. Just a Sunday evening meet up with a bunch of kids,” Washington said.

  “I don’t think that’s all. I need to talk to him.”

  “He was already interviewed. There wasn’t much he said, and I don’t think he wants to talk about this again. There’s not much we can do. He’s not a suspect.”

  “Can you get him to talk me? I know you can.”

  Washington reached for a bottle of Bacardi on the side table and poured himself another drink.”

  “Weren’t you leaving?”

  “We parked down the block. I’ve got five minutes to finish this up before she comes looking for me.” Washington knocked the drink back, closed his eyes and shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t let this go.”

  “I won’t.”

  He placed the glass down on the table. “I did some digging and learned he spends some time at the Young Chicago Writer’s writing program before school.”

  “Where you’re on the board?” Lauren smiled. “Thank you!”

  “Wait,” he raised up a finger. “First, I’m no longer a board member since I’m retired and leaving this city. Second, he’s not going to talk to you if you just walk in there and flash your badge.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a minor,” he started counting fingers on a hand. “There’s no reason we should be interviewing him. You can get sued, get the department sued. You have been walking a fine line already. Do I need to keep going?”

  “Fine, what do I have to do?”

  “Volunteer. I know the director there.”

  “Volunteer? Doing what?”

  “Tutoring. Tutoring him early mornings before he goes to school. When I reached out to the director over there, Elizabeth, she said Jordan needs a new mentor.”

  Washington removed a faded brown leather wallet from his back pocket. It was stuffed beyond its intended capacity, slips of paper and business cards sticking out. He shuffled through a collection, mumbling to himself. “It’s here somewhere...ah...”

  He handed her a card with the name, Elizabeth Ryan, Center Manager.

  “Please help me understand what I’m supposed to do. I’m not a writer. I’m not a tutor. I can’t do either.”

  “If you want to talk to him this is probably your best way. Plus, you know a lot about literature and poems and all that. Look at Frank’s performance this Friday. I couldn’t even tell you what the name of that thing is, and you knew it right away. I didn’t even know it was a poem. I just thought it was a composition, a piece of music Frank was going to play on piano this Friday. What’s the poem even about?”

  “A child is on horseback with his father at night on their way home. The boy reports seeing strange beings and the father just attributes it to the boy’s imagination, that he’s seeing fog or mist or shimmering willow trees or the swaying leaves. The boy shrieks. The father checks and discovers his son is dead.”

  “You see, I’m certain you’re probably the only one in the department who even knows that. Look, just call Liz. Tell her I sent you. That you’ve got fancy degrees in English and Literature and you want to be a writing tutor for at-risk kids, but you can only tutor early mornings. That should lead you to him.”

  “Really good detective work. Thank you, Washington. I appreciate this.”

  “Don’t worry about McCarthy. I’ll take care of him. Now, what are you going to ask this Jordan kid when you see him?”

  “I’m going to ask him why he’s lying.”

  CHAPTER 7

  On her way to her room, Evie stopped by the kitchen, grabbed a glass of water and a cereal bar. Her mother kept boxes of fruit and nut bars for when Evie got home from school. It was a small way her mother felt she was still actively parenting her teenager, making sure she had something to eat while she was away at work. She had stopped at the library a few blocks from her house to check something in the reference materials, and even getting home late from her usual time did not matter. No one was ever home when she got home from school. Normally, by the time Evie got home from school, her mother was starting her second job.

  Evie pulled out her phone from her jacket pocket and tapped on the glass to check the time. Her father would still not be home for a while either. He was nearing the end of his day at his job downtown. Her father got home first, around 6 p.m. and then her mother would get home a few hours after. Evie would see them in the morning for a few minutes, pouring coffee as they complained about how tired they were and how the house needed another repair they could not afford. Evie knew that money was tight because they had to pay for her school tuition.

  In her room, Evie hung her jacket in her closet and set her backpack on the floor with a thud. “Dammit,” she winced as she pulled out a notebook and her tablet. Evie set both on her writing desk. She thought about what Daniel said, about comic books being modern folklore. She also wanted to reread the Pied Piper story, and so she stood in front of her bookcase searching. It took her a mome
nt to find it, but then she plucked out her copy of Grimm’s Grimmest, containing nineteen of the darkkest of fairy tales, fiendishly illustrated.

  Evie spent as much time with the fairy tales as she did with their history. The brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm started collecting fairy tales in their youth, and many of these folktales, legends, and myths were told to them by Dortchen Wild who would years later go on to marry Wilhelm and live with the Grimm brothers for the rest of their lives. Evie loved their history, magic, mystery, and even the horror spun fantastically into those words. She flipped the pages, looking at the gory illustrations. First, seeing “The Robber Bridegroom,” where thieves dragged a young woman to their underground hideout, forced her to drink wine until her heart burst open, and then stripped her naked before hacking her body into pieces. She turned another page, the “Six-Swans,” where a wicked mother-in-law was burned at stake. She turned yet another page, and there was “The Juniper Tree” where a mother decapitated her stepson and fed him to his unknowing father. Then dear “Cinderella” in which the evil stepsisters chopped off their toes and heels, and forced their mutilated feet into a glass slipper to try to gain the love of a prince. Finally, she turned to the last story in this short collection of violent Grimm’s tales where, in “Snow White,” the evil queen was forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she died, all for attempting to poison her stepdaughter with an apple. Stepchildren, stepmothers, distant fathers, and heartbroken and lonely children always figured prominently in these tales.

  She turned more pages, searching for “The Pied Piper,” the story of the mysterious man dressed in a suit of pied who whisked an entire town of children away as revenge for not receiving payment for exterminating the town’s rats. Evie flipped back to the table of contents but did not find the title there. She was sure if it would be anywhere it would be in this collection of blood-soaked tales. She took a seat at her desk, turned to her tablet and searched The Pied Piper. The first search entry that came up was “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” but nothing appeared immediately associated with the Grimms brothers. The further down she looked she found that many had written about the Pied Piper; Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Robert Browning and more.

  She reached for her phone in her backpack and texted Fin. She and Fin had exchanged numbers on the bus and Fin made Evie promise that she would text her this evening. Fin said she wanted to reveal to Evie all that she knew about him, the man whom she had read about and now the man that she had seen. Fin told Evie on the bus as Evie got up to leave “You’ll see him too. You’ll see, and when you do that means it’s starting.”

  “What’s starting?”

  “Your new life. Everything you’ve ever wanted and more.”

  But life did not work that way, could not work that way, could it? Magical and enchanted keys, snow, glass, apples and mirrors? Strange creatures and beings that lurked in the woods, animals that talked and witches who blessed and cursed? Could it be true? And if there was an ounce in the power of this magic, what would Evie do with it?

  “Hey,” Evie started crafting her text message. “You mentioned Mr. Sylvan’s class and the Pied Piper. Didn’t the Grimm brothers write it?” She hit send and imagined not hearing back from Fin tonight, or ever.

  Evie’s phone vibrated in her hand. Fin responded.

  “There are tons of variations. Robert Browning’s is popular. It’s a poem. Read that one.”

  “Tons of variations of a guy who killed rats?” Evie responded.

  “Haha. He killed more than that. He killed all of the town’s kids. Read the poem.”

  Evie set her phone down and searched. It did not take more than a few clicks to find Browning’s version, a fifteen-stanza poem online.

  “Found it yet?”

  Evie looked at the text. She could feel Fin’s excitement radiating through her messages.

  “Looking at it now.”

  “Cool. Read it. Do it now.”

  A nervous laugh escaped Evie’s mouth. It felt almost like Fin was standing behind her, encouraging her to look at something, read something forbidden.

  Evie grabbed her phone and turned the screen face down on her desk forcing herself to concentrate on the words on her computer.

  In Browning’s version, he introduces the town of Hamelin, a place so overrun by rats that the townspeople demand their mayor and officials put a stop to the public nuisance. During a council meeting to discuss the rodent problem, a stranger appears. He is tall, gangly, wearing a suit of pied—multicolored—with a flute hanging around his neck. He says he would rid them of their troubles.

  “Please your honors,” said he, “I’m able,

  By means of a secret charm, to draw

  All creatures living beneath the sun,

  That creep or swim or fly or run,

  After me so as you never saw!

  And I chiefly use my charm,

  On creatures that do people harm

  After a payment amount was agreed upon, the Pied Piper stepped outside and began to play his flute. Immediately, the rats came from everywhere, following him down streets as he played and danced. He led them to the river, and the rats continued moving forward, on into the water, not caring that they went deeper and deeper into the water, not caring that they had no need or want to reemerge to the surface. And there, they drowned.

  When the piper went to collect his payment, the townspeople dismissed him, saying they would never pay a vagrant, breaking their verbal contract. With that, the piper left, only to appear early the next morning, when he again played his flute. But this time, it was not rats that appeared by his side. It was all of the town’s children who walked towards him, and silently stood beside him, hypnotized by the music. The adults were frozen in place, unable to interfere, and watched in horror as the stranger led all of their children away; kidnapped during the day, as the sun shone down on them, and the watchful eyes of their loved ones.

  Evie reached for her phone.

  “What does that mean?” Evie text Fin. “I chiefly use my charm on creatures that do people harm?” She sighed as soon as she sent that. She felt silly for doing so. It was a story, that’s all it was. So why did any of this matter?

  While she waited on a response, she finally located the Brothers Grimm version, “The Children of Hamelin.” Evie read quickly. This version read more like a news article than a fairy tale, about a small town in Germany who had lost its soul in losing its children.

  Evie looked at her phone again. A sinking feeling grew in her stomach. What if Fin was at home right now laughing at her? What if Fin was texting, or was with, Mo telling him how stupid Evie was to be taking such a deep interest in fairy tales? She stood up, tossed her phone on her bed and did all that she could do—pace her room.

  Browning’s poem was beautiful and lyrical, but still, it told a story of what happened. The Grimm’s version felt very real, reading like it was pulled from a newspaper or official account. There was something here. Evie wanted to believe in it so much she balled her hands into fists and willed for this to be true. The brothers had themselves said that the meanings of the tales had been lost long ago, but that one could still feel their substance because these stories were not insubstantial fantasy.

  Evie stopped and stood in front of her bookcase and the titles at the top row were all screaming at her; The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Off With Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, The Irresistible Rise of the Fairy Tale and more, so many more. Some people spent hours playing video games, on social media scrolling and buying into the culture of content and consumption, but this is what Evie did, she poured over the historical fact and fictions of fairy tales. She knew more than Mr. Sylvan could ever teach her. Folktales and fairy tales exist on the same line, but folktales bend towards the naturalistic while fairy tales bend towards the supernatural. Yet, Evie knew that the stories collected by the Grimm
s ran the gamut from folklore to literature. Evie also knew words were edited, with Wilhelm in particular editing them again and again, trying to improve upon the source material, but why? And how? The Grimms brothers altered the telling of these tales by their very presence, being present to have the stories told to them so they could be recorded. The stories were then edited, and then the stories were edited again for younger audiences. What was omitted or changed will never truly be known, but this was a game of telephone across generations, cultures and languages, a game Evie felt was still being played. She believed that fact and fantasy were blurred on these pages.

  Still, hundreds of years had passed and the real meaning of all of these fairy tales it seemed had still not been unearthed. This process seemed exhaustive, as exhaustive as the Aarne-Thompson-Uther-Index, a system like the Dewey Decimal System but with wolves. This massive catalogue includes classifications for over 2,000 fairy tale plot types across seven categories; animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, realistic tales, tales of the ogre, anecdotes and jokes, and formula tales. This was not something Evie could look up online. She had to actually go to the library and sift through the catalogue in order to find it, ATU 570, The Rat-Catcher.

  The phone vibrated on top of the comforter. She reached for it, and there was Fin with another message.

  “You found the story then?!”

  “It’s crazy. I wonder if that’s what he wanted all along. The kids?”

  Evie covered her eyes with both hands. “Ugh, this is so dumb,” she said to herself as she hit send on the message, but as soon as she sent it, Fin responded.

  “He did that because the town’s people failed to meet their obligation. They wanted someone to come in and solve their troubles. The Pied Piper appeared and promised to get rid of their problem. For that, they promised to pay him. They did not. He took payment in another form. Their kids. You always have to settle your debts. You always have to pay the piper.”