The Tiger's Child

by Torey Hayden

  The phone rang a lot. Dr. Rosenthal rang three times to catch me up on things. Officer Metherson phoned once, as did Dr. Freeman, Alejo’s psychiatrist from the clinic. Jeff rang twice. And I telephoned Mr. Renstad late in the afternoon to see if he had heard anything. The police were at his house when I called, so I had another opportunity to talk to Officer Metherson. There was still no news.

  Making myself supper, I took it in front of the TV. That not holding my interest, I reread the newspaper and did the crossword. Restless, I toyed with the idea of going swimming at the health club. I could have used some exercise at that point and the thought of a hard workout and a soak in the Jacuzzi really appealed to me, but in the end I decided against it. Gathering my dishes up, I took them to the kitchen to wash them.

  A knock at the door.

  Sheila? The thought shot through my mind like a brightly sent arrow, lifting my spirits as it went. “Just a minute,” I called, lifting my hands from the soapy water and drying them. The knock came again, louder, more insistent. I hurried to open it.

  Jeff.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Now there’s a friendly greeting, if ever I heard one,” he replied and came on in. He glanced around. “So, this is chez Hayden, is it? I like your paneling there.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I just thought I’d come over. You’re by the phone, I’m by the phone. We might as well be by the phone together. You play chess? I’ve got my chessboard along. Could do Trivial Pursuit, but it isn’t much good with two people. But I’m wicked at Trivial Pursuit,” he said and grinned.

  “I just bet you are.”

  He scanned my bookshelves. “So where’s this book you’ve written?”

  “It’s not published yet. Won’t be out till next April, but that’s the manuscript over there.” I pointed.

  Jeff went over and picked it up, while I returned to the kitchen to drain the sink and finish cleaning up. A few minutes passed before Jeff wandered into the kitchen, the pages of the manuscript in his hands.

  “What’s this, Hayden?”

  “What?”

  “Right here, Chapter One, page one. ‘The article was a small one, just a few paragraphs stuck on page six under the comics. It told of a six-year-old girl who had abducted a neighborhood child.’” He looked up. “Is this Sheila?”

  A sense of horror came over me.

  He continued reading. “‘… she had taken the three-year-old boy, tied him to a tree in a nearby woodlot and burned him. The boy was currently in a local hospital in critical condition.’” Jeff paused to regard me. “You never told us about this.”

  “I didn’t think of it.”

  “Didn’t think of it, Hayden? She’s done this before and you didn’t think of it?”

  That wasn’t quite the truth. I had thought of it, at great length, in fact, particularly during the night when I’d been lying awake, but I wasn’t quite sure how it fit in. It sounded so horrible, that incident. It was horrible. Yet, did it have any bearing on what she was doing now? I doubted it. As with inadmissible evidence in a trial, to have mentioned it at this stage would only have prejudiced people without contributing anything useful. I said this to Jeff.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Be careful. You’re setting yourself up as judge and jury in this thing.”

  “So you think it needs to be brought out?” I asked.

  “Well, to Dr. Rosenthal, at least. I mean, this was hardly a small incident, was it? All the things you’ve told me about her, you never gave me the impression she was up to this kind of thing as a child. Sounds like she almost killed the kid.”

  “It was a one-off. A cry for help. She never did anything else like it,” I replied. That I felt was the truth, although this had been the one unspoken area between Sheila and me. When she was in my classroom we’d talked about every other aspect of her life, including her abandonment, her abuse and her difficulties adjusting to our expectations, but we had never once touched on that abduction. I’d thought of it often enough during those five months she was in my class, but I had never pressed the matter. I wasn’t a trained psychologist at that point in my career and I didn’t feel it was my place to press the issue, if Sheila showed no willingness to discuss it. And the fact was, she never did.

  Jeff was uncomfortable with this new knowledge. “She could do something,” he kept saying, as if it weren’t true that we all “could do something” if the circumstances were right. Then came the lawsuit side of the matter. “They could sue us, if something happened and we hadn’t told about this.”

  “They could sue us anyway, if they got the urge, just because we let Sheila in the summer program. She’s been a risk all along,” I replied. “But for pity’s sake, she was a little child when she did these things. I mean, when I was six, I used to steal Hershey’s bars from the grocery store. Does that make me a security risk now? Of course not. Because when I was old enough to know better, people expected me not to do it and treated me as someone who wouldn’t.”

  “This is rather different from Hershey’s bars, Hayden.”

  “No, the point is she shouldn’t be treated like a criminal now for something she did when she was a very little girl.”

  Jeff shook his head. “No, Hayden, the point is that this girl already has a history of abducting little boys and harming them, and if we don’t tell somebody we know that, we’re talking big trouble here.”

  In the end, Jeff won the argument and we phoned Dr. Rosenthal. He listened solemnly. No, please, not the police, okay? I’d asked, but Dr. Rosenthal gently made all the same points Jeff had. Consequently, half an hour later, Officer Durante was sitting at my kitchen table with Jeff and me.

  By the time everyone had gone home, I was well and truly depressed. What was it with this girl? She had so much to offer, so much promise, yet at every turn things went wrong. Running myself a hot bath, I tried to soak the problems away.

  The door again. Glancing at my bedside clock, I saw it was almost eleven-thirty. Officer Durante had said he was going to check up the details of the abduction in Marysville and if he had any questions, he’d come back to me. Wearily climbing out of bed and pulling on my robe, I went to the door. Didn’t this guy ever call it quits?

  It was Sheila. Sheila and Alejo standing in the dim light of the apartment-building hallway. “Can we come in?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” I said in surprise. “Yes, come in.” I stood aside to let them pass.

  Sheila flopped down on my sofa, with Alejo dropping down beside her. He looked as if he had recently been crying. His eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. Sheila just looked tired.

  “Where have you been? Do you know everybody’s looking for you?” I asked. “Do you realize the police are involved?”

  Sheila grimaced. “Could you make us something to eat? We’re so hungry.”

  I made them tuna-fish sandwiches, and when they’d devoured those, they moved on to peanut butter and toast. All the time, I was trying to puzzle out how to handle this situation. It didn’t seem inconceivable to me that Sheila might flee if I was too quick about telling everyone else she was here, but knowing how desperate Alejo’s parents were, I was anxious to let them know he was safe.

  Alejo answered the matter for me. I turned from putting the peanut butter away to find him sound asleep, face down on the table.

  “Come on, lovey,” I said and reached down to pick him up. Carrying him into my bedroom, I removed his shoes and slipped him under the comforter. He never really woke up.

  Back out in the kitchen, Sheila, sitting slouched down in a chair at the table, looked in about the same shape as Alejo. She braced her head with one hand, her fingers shielding her eyes from my view.

  “I’m going to have to call and tell them you’re here,” I said.

  “I know,” she murmured wearily.

  “Why did you do it? We were so worried, Sheila.”

  Looking up at me, her face crumpled. “Don’t be ma
d at me. Just do with me like you did with him, okay? Just say, ‘Come on, lovey,’ and let me know you’re glad to have me back.”

  By the time Alejo’s parents arrived, both Alejo and Sheila were asleep. I’d moved Alejo out to the sofa, because he was so far gone that lights and noise scarcely made him stir, and I put Sheila to bed in my bedroom. Alejo’s parents roused him briefly with hugs and kisses, but he was asleep again before they had him in the car.

  Officer Durante, just going off his evening shift, stopped by on his way home. I showed him the bedroom and he stood in the doorway, watching Sheila asleep in the darkened room. “Silly girl,” he murmured and turned back into the living room.

  “What’s going to happen now?” I asked.

  “Depends if the parents press charges or not. Depends what everyone does.”

  “Could it just end here?”

  He shrugged affably. “Possibly.” He met my eyes. “Is she really such an okay kid?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, tell her to smarten up.”

  Chapter 24

  Sheila roused late the next morning and stumbled out into the living room like an old she-bear just coming out of hibernation. It was past eleven o’clock and I was sitting on the floor reading the Sunday newspapers. She flopped into the armchair and regarded me amidst my sea of newspapers.

  “God, how many papers do you get?” she asked and sleepily rubbed her face.

  “You want some orange juice?”

  She yawned and rubbed her face again. “I’m all stiff. I don’t think I moved all night.” Then suddenly, realization crossed her features. She glanced around my apartment, then back at me. “I almost don’t remember how I got here,” she murmured. “But then again, how could I forget?”

  “Yes,” I said, “we have some serious sorting out to do.”

  “Yeah,” Sheila muttered, “heap big trouble, eh?”

  The one person I hadn’t called the night before was Sheila’s father. I know I should have, but it was very late by then and I reckoned he probably wasn’t losing any sleep over his daughter’s absence. However, once Sheila was up and moving, I insisted she phone him.

  “Do I have to go home right away?” she asked, when I made it plain that she was doing nothing else until she let her father know where she was.

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “Couldn’t I just stay here for a little bit? Please?”

  “Look,” I said, “we’ll get you sorted out first, all right? You have a shower and clean up. I’ll make you some breakfast and then we’ll see what’s going to happen with this mess. Then maybe I can run you home later on. Okay? But phone your dad now.”

  Begrudgingly, Sheila agreed.

  There was something unusually defenseless about Sheila that morning. Perhaps it was just the rigors of her experiences with Alejo leaving her so tired and hungry. For whatever reason, she left her neediness undisguised.

  One of the most poignant moments came when she went in to get cleaned up. She had no clean clothes, so I suggested she put on an old jogging suit of mine, while I washed her things. Hearing she was out of the shower, I came into the bathroom to collect the dirty laundry. Sheila stood in front of the mirror, her hair dripping wet.

  “Do you like my hair like this?” she asked, as she pulled the comb through.

  I hesitated, wondering whether to lie for politeness’s sake or gently tell the truth.

  “You don’t, do you?” she replied, reading my hesitation. “You think it looks stupid.”

  “No, not really. It’s just that I always thought you had very beautiful hair. I’ve always wanted straight hair myself and had to put up with curly, and yours was so shiny and nice.”

  Pulling her hair back from her face and into a ponytail, Sheila regarded her reflection. She looked much more like her childhood self that way. For the first time, I saw the little girl I’d known looking back at me. “I don’t know why I do this, why I make myself look like I do. Nobody likes it.”

  “I think you’ve got quite a good fashion sense,” I said. “I rather like it. It’s different, but there’s nothing wrong with being different, and it is quite good.”

  “I wanted you to like me so much,” she said quietly. “I want everybody to like me, but then just as I get to where I think I can do that, I stop myself. I don’t know why. I think, I can put this on—like it’s some dress or something—and everyone will think it’s very pretty. But then some other part of me stops me. I put it away and try something different, something I know is going to drive everyone nuts. I know what to do. I want to do it. But I never can.”

  I smiled gently. “That’s just being a teenager. It goes with the territory.”

  “No,” she replied. “Maybe in most cases, but not in mine. Because I’ve done it all my life. Even when I was little, even when I was dying inside for people to like me, I never could do those things that would make it easy for them.”

  Afternoon came and with it the need to confront and resolve Alejo’s abduction. The phone had been ringing all morning and it was finally decided that everyone, including Sheila, would meet at the clinic. Feelings were still running high and I sensed that police action remained a distinct possibility, but I took it as a good sign that everyone wanted to meet and talk the matter through before turning it over to the authorities.

  At home with me, Sheila was visibly worried. If the term “clingy” could be applied to a fourteen-year-old, that’s what she was, trailing after me from room to room in the apartment. She worried about her hair and her clothes, bit her fingernails and wrung her hands, although she never directly addressed the matter on any more than a superficial level.

  “We’ll take it one moment at a time,” I said, as we got into the car.

  “I was just trying to do what I thought was right,” she murmured. “That’s what’s so awful. I wanted to do the right thing.”

  “I know, lovey.” Putting the key into the ignition, I reached across the seat to her. “Come here.” I drew her in close in a hug. The years melted away when I did that. Suddenly she was tiny again and the need to protect her made me feel tigerish.

  The hug had the same effect on Sheila. She looked at me as I started the car and pulled out of the drive. “Know what that reminds me of? Remember that time I got into that teacher’s classroom and wrecked it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember afterward? You took me into that little teensy room and I can remember sitting on your lap. I was so scared. What happened? Did the principal whack me or something? I don’t really remember that, but I remember it being afterward and you took me in there and held me on your lap.”

  I nodded.

  “I felt so horrible. Just empty inside, like someone had pulled all my guts out. And then you held me. It was dark in there, I can remember that, and I can remember laying against you and feeling your arms, and how you just slowly sort of filled me up again.”

  Looking across at her, I smiled. “Yes, I remember that well.”

  A silence came then. It was bright and sunny, the kind of summer day meant for going out on the lake or having a church picnic, and it contrasted sharply with the tense mood in the car. I was watching the traffic and thinking loosely about picnics and how hot it might get, while at the same time never losing completely the reverberations of Sheila’s earlier conversation.

  “You remember that well,” I said suddenly, as the realization dawned on me. “I mean, given how little you were remembering.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “It comes back to me. Not in continuous memories, but jigs and jags of it. I don’t know why. Things just turn up in my mind.”

  The meeting included the Banks-Smiths, of course, along with Dr. Rosenthal, Jeff and Dr. Freeman, as well as Sheila’s father. Much to their credit, Mr. and Dr. Banks-Smith greeted Sheila with calm understanding. Dr. Rosenthal presided over the small group around the conference table, his soft-spoken civility contributing significantly to the overall composure of the gr
oup, but Mr. and Dr. Banks-Smith impressed me.

  From them we heard that Alejo was home, tired but safe and happy. He had spent a good night, eaten well that morning and was enjoying cartoons now at his grandmother’s house. Dr. Freeman had stopped over just after lunch to chat with Alejo and he felt that Alejo was none the worse for his ordeal. Indeed, he said he found Alejo friendly and chatty, wanting to show him a new toy.

  “What we need to understand, Sheila, is why this happened,” Dr. Rosenthal said.

  Sheila, beside me, lowered her head. She didn’t speak.

  “It was wrong. I can see you know that already. Taking Alejo caused his parents a great deal of worry and we were very worried for your safety, as well as Alejo’s.”

  “I know I caused a lot of trouble,” she mumbled, her head still down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  “Why did it happen?” Dr. Rosenthal asked.

  “Because I thought …” She lifted her head and looked pointedly across the conference table at the Banks-Smiths. “Because I thought they were going to send Alejo away.”

  “So you thought taking him would be better?”

  Sheila nodded.

  “Do you still think that?” Dr. Rosenthal asked.

  For a long moment, Sheila didn’t answer. Hands in her lap, she twisted them and watched as her knuckles went white. Then finally she looked back over at him. “Yeah, I still think so.”

  “What were you going to do with him?” Dr. Rosenthal asked Sheila.

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I wasn’t going to hurt him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “No, I didn’t think you would,” Dr. Rosenthal replied.

  Taking a deep breath, Sheila looked up. “I’m already in trouble, so I might as well say what I think.” She turned to the Banks-Smiths. “Don’t send Alejo back. He can’t help the way he is. He’s just a little boy. He doesn’t know that not being smart isn’t acceptable, that because things happened to him to make him damaged, he isn’t as good as other boys.”