by Austin,Robin
“Warming a bench for the both of you,” he says in a rich timbre that lulls my agitated mind.
I ask him where he’s from, and he says Nigeria. “But I’ve been in America for five years.” He waves his widely spread fingers as a tiny celebration. I notice the gray hair at his temples, the slight creases around his eyes. If I’d guessed his age yesterday, I would have said early thirties. He’s much older.
“Were you once a dancer?” The words are out of my mouth before they form in my brain and I almost blush.
“We are all dancers.” He answers with a bow, extending his long, dark arm to the bench where Eunice sits. “I will be nearby for you.” He smiles then says, “No pigs,” touching a finger to his full lips.
Eunice is staring at a bush again. I want to make that warm connection, but stressful or not, I’m done wasting time.
“Hello, Matilda. I need your help. Do you think you could talk to me?”
Eunice continues to stare. I count my breaths and get to sixteen when she turns her head. As always, her saucer eyes are startling.
“I’m always willing to help the less fortunate. It is my Christian duty,” Matilda looks away.
“Thank you. I’m new here. Can you recommend a church in the area? I’ve heard the Methodist Church is quite nice. Would you recommend it?”
“The residents are not allowed to leave,” she says, not looking back at me.
“I’m not here full time,” I say, thinking she means me. “But that’s okay. I think I’ll stop by the church when I leave today. Do you know anyone I should ask for?”
I’m counting my breaths again, looking around for Aljala. “I think you can learn a lot in church. Songs, reading, history, faraway places.”
“You talk a great deal but say very little.”
I grab my notebook and write sarcasm and dry wit. “I’m sorry. I’m new at this. Can you help me out? Tell me how you’ve learned so many things that Eunice doesn’t know.”
Breath twelve, thirteen… tick tock.
“All the knowledge you’ll ever need is inside you. You hold all the answers in your heart, your soul. Listen and you will learn more than I can ever tell you. What difference does it make what I know? You know all that is known, Jan. Everything is already known.”
Matilda is staring at me with her twitchy eyelids and marionette smile. My throat is dry, my tongue feels swollen. These words can’t possibly be coming out of this woman who looks positively stark raving mad.
“Every—” My voice cracks as I start to speak, and I have to try again. “Everything except who you are and if I find that out, I can help Eunice. She needs both of us to help her. Together we can give her the life she deserves.”
“That’s very poetic, Jan. Did you practice it? In the mirror, I imagine.” Matilda is laughing, lightly, ladylike.
“Who are you Matilda?” My words sound like bones grinding together. She seems to consider my question, fusses with her wildly unkempt hair, adjusts her ratty sweater as if it is fine silk.
“If you want to help her… now that will be difficult. But if you must, you must….”
“Must what? Matilda. If you help the less fortunate, help Eunice.” I can feel her slipping away. She sighs, a dismal metallic snippet. I write dramatic.
“None of the others ever helped her. Not then, not now.”
“I want to help her now, but I don’t know how. I tried, but I upset her yesterday.”
“It’s not you. It’s not even those nasty pigs.”
Matilda’s right cheek twitches up, crunching her vision. If I saw her in a dark alley, I would run screaming in sheer terror.
“What is it then?” I whisper this question as though standing on the edge of that dark alley, then I’m back to counting my breaths. I’m almost to twenty and think Eunice may be sitting beside me.
“Ruby,” Matilda finally says. I jump at the break in silence, then start to write down rubies again.
“The baby comes to her, lays beside her on the bed. Cries for her momma as any child would do.”
Thunder claps in the distance, but I’m as solid as a rock. The scent of chlorine and pine fill the air. Residents scatter, tossed by the wind. I’m running out of time.
“Who’s Ruby, Matilda? Tell me who she is.”
Matilda stands. Her willowy body is no match for the weather, still she doesn’t attempt to steady herself or secure her clothes, which are being thrashed. Aljala is heading our way. The patients are screaming like wild animals, and the attendants are trying to herd them inside.
“Tell me who she is. Tell me so I—”
“She’s just a ghost now.”
The woman’s short hair is lifted straight up by the wind. I stand and take two steps back as her eyes meet mine.
“You see her too, Jan. We know you do. You see our baby girl… killed straight out of the womb so long ago.”
Chapter Nine
§
As Aljala hurried Eunice inside, I stood in the rain watching her go until I was drenched. Then I drove too fast through the iron gates, running from the portal I’ve always managed to avoid going through.
A ghost. A dead baby. Killed? I knew Matilda would spin me in circles.
Having already checked out of the hotel, I stop at a gas station and use the restroom to change into dry clothes. “What just happened?” I ask my disheveled reflection in the mirror. You see her too, is the only answer I hear.
In my car, I fill pages with words I don’t want to forget, but wish Matilda had never said.
I lied. I never wanted to help Eunice. I wanted to help myself. Crack the Eunice code, write my redeeming story. Reclaim my self-respect, which I’d left on Ashland’s doorsteps thirty years ago.
The effort to stay on track now is exhausting. I’ve wobbled off the rails, but I don’t want to hole up in a room next to Eunice and Matilda, so I need to change directions and fast.
Transient visual obscurations, I remind myself. They’re not uncommon after a traumatic brain injury, one neurologist told me a couple of years after my accident. He was smugly satisfied with his explanation of the orbs and flashing lights I’d reported to him. I never told him about the shadows. By the time I saw that particular doctor, the shadows were no longer just spots in my peripheral vision.
After Matilda’s comment, the comment of an apparently savant alter personality, blaming damaged nerve fibers no longer seems plausible. My decision is made: change directions, don’t kill my career over an alter personality’s dark fairy tale.
I check my directions to the Ruston United Methodist Church and pull onto the highway just after leaving Rodham a message. I want to pick up the medical release prior to my leaving town for the weekend. I don’t expect a return call and I won’t keep asking. I’m almost certain Joyce will sign a release without a single question about her sister or a single word to anyone at Ashland.
When I was talking to Rodham, I recalled that Matilda had referred to herself as a good Christian woman. As soon as I did, I figured I had my story’s angle or close enough. The church visitors had won Matilda’s trust, read to her, taught her language skills, and the ability to reason. As their time was spent with all the patients, the staff wouldn’t have recorded their visits in any one patient’s chart.
That story won’t serve up quite the accolades Palmer hopes to gain, but every good story deserves an equally good spin. I could do that with the church visitors, but I wasn’t going to spin a dead child into the mix. Preposterous, I silently scream. Matilda also said she’s been to Rome and Paris. Why even consider the impregnation of a mentally ill patient in an institution? Yeah, that could never happen. Not even with a rapist running the place.
I turn on Houser Street and see the Methodist Church. It’s taller than it is wide with a soaring steeple that all but disappears into the massive gray clouds that stroll slowly overhead. The marquee on the front lawn announces worship and Bible school times, assures all that they are welcome regardless of race, gend
er, sexual orientation, or economic status, and that the Pancake Dinner is on Wednesday.
I park at the curb and step out to read the small letters at the bottom of the sign: Pastor Leroyce E. Davenport. Holy crap. I either have a prayer in hell or a earthbound nightmare unfolding on Houser Street.
The doors are unlocked and I walk in. At least twenty rows of pine pews flank thick green carpet that leads to a sturdy altar. An ominous cross going to the top of the cathedral ceiling is bolted behind and glowing golden light from some unknown source. An organ sets to one side of the pulpit, a table of glass encased candles to the other. The sweet smells of frankincense, rose water, and old wood wage battle.
I knock at a door to the side of the entrance labeled office, wait, then try the handle. I’m greeted by a silver-haired woman wearing glasses attached to a jeweled chain. She looks surprised but happy to see me.
“Good afternoon, I’m looking for Pastor Davenport. Is he here?”
She says she’s sorry that he’s not. Tells me he’s gone to see the Ennis family, this part with a frown as if I know of the family’s apparent plight. She has no idea when he might return, introduces herself as Shirley and says she’ll be leaving soon, then asks me to come back on Sunday.
“By chance, do you know the Pastor’s age?”
She tips her head and her glasses trail down her nose before she pushes them back up. I give her just enough information about my purpose in town to ease her suspicions. The mention of Ashland greatly pacifies her concerns, and she mumbles some regrets that the church members stopped visiting.
“How long ago did the members stop visiting?”
“Oh, let me think. All these math questions.” She laughs and settles into her chair. “I’m not sure about Pastor, probably in his mid to late fifties. It’s hard to tell with their color you know, their skin is so much nicer than ours. Not a wrinkle on the man. As for the visits?” she cringes. “After the scandal with that so called doctor… well, I’m ashamed to say that we stopped back then.” Shirley raises her eyebrows and I nod.
“Do you know the Blackwells by chance? Bob and Martha?”
Shirley crunches her nose and shakes her head.
“It’s been a number of years since they visited Ashland, but perhaps they have family members who come to the church.”
Shirley tells me she can’t recall anyone by that name even though she’s been a member of the church herself for almost sixty years.
“And Pastor Davenport? How long has he been here?”
“He came, oh my. That was just after Pastor Clarkston died. Cancer,” she says with another frown. “Of course, it was God’s will to take him home. Let’s see, what was your question? Oh, yes. Pastor came just before the funeral. Gave a lovely sermon even though he never even met Pastor Clarkston. That’s the way he is. Such a kind man. That was in 1978, no 1979.”
She tells me to come meet the Pastor on Wednesday evening at the pancake dinner, which she says they’re taking donations for at the moment. I agree to do so and give her ten dollars. She promises to check their records to see if anyone by the name of Blackwell ever attended services.
It’s close to two when I pull onto the highway to make my journey home. When I called Rick this morning, I told him I didn’t know what time I’d be leaving Ruston. He said he was sorry for not calling me back when he got home last night. I didn’t bother to tell him it wasn’t me who called. He gave some explanation neither of us was interested in, then told me he’d be home right after work.
Our conversations remind me of the box step I learned in grade school: forward, side, together, eyes ahead, watch those toes. I turn onto the interstate and settle back for the long drive.
My timeline is still getting pieced together. But I don’t have to check my notes to know that Kaufman’s first mention of Matilda was in October 1981, or that her escape to the woods was just two months later. Leroyce Davenport wouldn’t be the first man of the cloth to engage in extracurricular activity with his flock. But at Ashland?
I suppose anything could have gone on under Kaufman’s wandering eyes and hands, but name and opportunity doesn’t make the man guilty. Eunice was still a child. She could have latched on to anyone who was kind and caring. I can only hope if the Pastor did have contact with her, that was his approach.
Of course, it doesn’t matter. Whatever happened can’t be undone and can’t be made right so many years later. Even if there was a pregnancy and the death of the baby, how much could Eunice bear to revisit? How much more should she have to revisit? She’s suffered enough over the years and that may be reason enough to leave this be. I barely persuade myself.
At what should be a half hour from my exit, traffic slows then stops completely. A baby girl. A child with a name. The baby, the name existing only in the mind of Matilda?
If true, the pregnancy had to have been when Kaufman was still at Ashland. Eunice was too young before he came, and there was too much scrutiny, too many new regulations afterwards. Eunice would have been thirteen or fourteen, her violent stage and escape to the woods. Only an idiot would think that a coincidence. If she did give birth, she would have been sedated, given a cesarean. The baby would have been hurried away and put up for adoption… surely not killed.
Rodham’s probably right. Matilda can’t be trusted. Who knows all the tales she’s capable of telling? Idiot or not, I’ve made my decision. I’m letting this go, period.
I turn on the radio hoping to hear a news report of the backup. There’s nothing but weekend sports events, and I turn it back off. The rain is just enough to require monitoring of the windshield wipers: fast, slow, off, repeat.
After Rick and I married, I pretended my– our life was wonderful. The ideal couple, the perfect careers. Rick got a mid-level position at a brokerage firm. It paid well and we bought a house, then the questions started. How many children did we want? When was I getting pregnant? Didn’t we want children? Rick always answered that he did. Then the whispered, can’t you get pregnant? The sins of the barren woman.
Finally, the questions stopped. Friends’ baby showers came and eventually stopped too as we all grew older. “Well, at least you have your career.” Those words were my mother’s.
The driver behind me lays on his horn, and I’m surprised to see that traffic has moved without me. I pass three vehicles on the side of the road, all badly damaged and empty. How quickly and unforeseen our lives change. If I’d left Ruston twenty minutes sooner, one of those cars could be mine. Just exactly where would I be now? In a taxi, a police car, an ambulance on the way to the morgue? The irritated driver behind me passes too quickly and road spray obscures my windshield but unfortunately, not my thoughts.
The house is dark and quiet when I unlock the door. Rick’s car isn’t in the garage. There’s no note on the kitchen counter. After a shower, I change into sweats, gather my papers around me, and write Ruby on a blank page then scribble over it.
I check my phone– the fifth time since leaving Ashland. I press speed dial and hear my mother’s tired voice. More tired even than the last time we spoke.
There’s no way to write the story behind the story, Dad. What do I do? I want to ask him this, but she says he’s resting. It’s barely past six. He’s fine, she tells me before I have a chance to ask. Just resting is all.
“But what do I do?” I ask, after I disconnect.
It’s half past seven when I see headlights through the living room window. I’ve already eaten, already decided to skip the pancake dinner on Wednesday, forget all about getting the medical records. What good will it do to know?
I’ll run my ideas by Palmer on Monday: visits from the church and her brother, educational shows on television, the internal and external communities that rallied around, the safe, structured environment that healed the wounds of the past. Warm, fuzzy, people pleaser, profit making article.
Before next week’s end, the assignment will be complete. No one believes everything they read anyway.
> “You’re home. I thought you’d be late. I stopped by the gym.”
My husband is a handsome man. Over six feet, a strong square jaw, mischievous gray eyes, and straw colored hair that’s messy even when combed. There was a time when we made such an attractive couple. A head-turning couple.
He leans in to kiss me, leaning far so as not to get too close. I inhale the sweet scent of lilacs before he pulls back.
Chapter Ten
§
I wake up with the sheet wrapped around my legs, one foot folded into the layers. My forehead is damp, my throat so raw I feel as if I’ve been screaming. The space beside me is cold. This scene has played out for years. I can hear the shower running, smell the coffee downstairs. I untangle myself and go for caffeine, to sit alone at the table. For Rick, Saturday obligations can’t be ignored.
I’ve decided to take the day off, clear my fraying mind. Tomorrow I’ll write what I can of Eunice’s story, the story I’m being paid for, less the holes I’ll plug next week. Then I’ll produce the enchanting soft sell they want and be done. In today’s market, I’m convinced being a great reporter is more about hype than substance. Plus, I already have a lead on my next assignment. Something with a little more sizzle.
After my father sold the paper, he wrote a book on the history of journalism. He couldn’t find a publisher, couldn’t get an agent. He started drinking, but that was put to a quick end. My mother is indomitable– moxie, my dad calls it. All her ducks quack in a regimented row. Accepting and forgiving, but no bullshit is she.
While I was in LA, Dad started teaching night classes in journalism at the local community college. Sometime later, a year maybe longer, my father moved out of the house. My mother’s ducks fell over, went silent. I found out about their separation from a friend. Neither of my parents spoke of their time apart, as my mother once let slip. Dad quit teaching, they sold our home, they did a do-over.
I can hear Rick’s quiet steps coming down the stairs. He’s wearing sneakers, what you’d wear to go jogging or to a baseball game.