by Torey Hayden
Jane Timmons painted a rather bleak picture of Sheila’s social behavior. I think I had already surmised that Sheila was no social butterfly. This had occurred to me clear back during the summer when she was working with Jeff and me, because there was never, ever any mention of friends, either male or female. I had never pressured Sheila on this issue, partly because I was not in a good position to do anything constructive about it, and partly because I felt her IQ interfered to some degree with normal peer relationships. This would be a difficult area to deal with, particularly in Sheila’s circumstances, and I had ended up feeling that time and maturity would probably be the best solutions.
“Say what?” Jane asked. “What was that? Superior IQ?”
“Yes, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. What IQ?” she asked.
Shock hit me. All that effort my colleagues and I had gone through the year Sheila was six to confirm her extraordinary giftedness, and it wasn’t in her records? “Sheila has an IQ over a hundred eighty,” I said.
“Say what?” Jane’s eyes widened. “One hundred eighty? You must be joking.”
“You have no record of it?”
“One hundred eighty? Sheila Renstad? Our Sheila Renstad? You’re kidding, aren’t you? Who told you?”
“I was there myself,” I said. “I know. I was working with her then, when the testing was done.”
Jane fell back in her chair. “Boy, nobody ever said anything about this to me.”
Filled with resentment at a system that treated lives with such appalling offhandedness, I went on down the hall with Holly, who unlocked the doors for me. Sheila, as always, was alone in her room.
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” I said.
“You’re telling me.”
“No, I mean it, Sheila. This is no place for you. Why are you even here? You haven’t committed any offenses. Why are you locked up? It’s your dad who’s supposed to be in prison.”
Sitting cross-legged on her bed, she looked up at me. “Yeah, well, welcome to my world.”
I pulled out the chair from the desk and sat down. A silence came then, sapping my sudden spurt of anger.
“What you get used to after a while, Torey, is that this is just the way it is. There’s no use fighting it.”
“I can’t accept that,” I said.
“I can. I’ve had to.”
Dear Mom,
What’s Jimmie doing now? He’s probably taller than me these days. I was figuring it out and he’d be at least fourteen. I can’t remember exactly any more if he was two years younger than me, or was it even less? Was it like eighteen months? I keep thinking about that, trying to remember. It’s weird, knowing you’ve forgotten about your own brother.
Jane Timmons had wanted me to take up the issue of Sheila’s asocial behavior with her, and it was an issue that no doubt wanted exploring, but not that afternoon. For these few hours at least, I wanted Sheila to feel she had control, so we tended to go as she led.
Gloom hung over her that afternoon, as it had on so many others. She lay back on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. I suggested perhaps we could go for a walk, but Sheila vetoed that. She wasn’t allowed off the grounds and she could see no point in making a circuit of the barbed-wire fence.
“What would you like to do?” I asked at last, when the silence had grown so heavy it threatened to squash me.
“Nothing, really.”
There was a quiet pause. She was still lying on the bed, but she brought one hand up to her forehead.
“Well …” She paused again, her fingers probing along her hairline. “Remember back when I was in your class?”
“Yes.”
“Remember how you always did my hair? I used to love that so much, the way you used to brush it and put it in styles.” She glanced over. “Do you … I mean, if I gave you … Well, it sounds stupid, but would you fix my hair for me?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
Sheila rose up from the bed and went to the dresser to get her hairbrush. Pausing in front of the small mirror, she gave her hair a few yanks with it and grimaced at her image. “If we got scissors, could you cut it for me?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said. “I’m not much of a hairdresser.”
She held out the brush to me. “I want to cut off these ends. Please, Torey? I’m fed up like I am.”
Gently, I started to work the brush, then the comb, through her hair. It was quite a mess, what with all the bleaching and dying done over the years. Borrowing scissors from Jane’s desk, I endeavored to do what Sheila asked of me. I trimmed away the last of the permanent and tried to do in as much of the dyed area as well. This brought her hair almost up to her shoulders in a not very professional blunt cut. Then I just brushed.
Sheila clearly enjoyed my activities very much and it occurred to me as I worked that, given her isolation at the ranch, it had probably been a fair length of time since anyone had touched her. This thought surprised me, but the more I considered it, the more I realized it was most likely true. Indeed, the thought crossed my mind that Sheila had probably spent most of her young life with little positive physical contact.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked.
“Me? Here? No way.”
“Have you ever had a boyfriend?”
She didn’t respond right away. She had her back to me, because I was still brushing her hair, so I couldn’t see her expression, but there was a sense of hesitancy. “No,” she finally said.
“Do you want one?” I asked. “Do you like boys?”
“Do you mean, am I a lez?” she asked, pulling away from me and turning. She made a face. “Just because I don’t have a boyfriend, you don’t have to think that of me.” She jerked right back from me. “You’re probably thinking now that’s why I wanted you to brush my hair. Shit. Give it here. Gimme my brush back.”
“Whoa, that’s not what I said. And so what, anyhow? I wouldn’t care. If I didn’t care about Jeff and his preferences, I wouldn’t care about you and yours. That’s a personal thing, Sheila. I was just asking.”
“Yeah, why? What business is it of yours, if I’ve got boyfriends or not? I don’t go asking you about what you’re up to, do I?” she responded tetchily.
“Okay, okay. Sorry,” I said.
“Hmmph,” Sheila snorted and climbed back onto her bed. “Jane put you up to it, didn’t she? Jane is so nosy.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
Silence. Sheila stared at the hairbrush in her hand. Bringing it up, she brushed through her hair on one side, feeling the ends I’d cut. The silence lingered, growing sad as it lengthened. I thought for a moment she was going to cry.
“No, I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said softly. “And no, I’ve never had one. I like boys. I liked Jeff. I thought he was a real dude and …” A pause. “But all it ever comes down to is fucking, Torey. And I’ve seen too many dicks already.”
“It can be a little more than that, Sheil.”
“I can’t have children. Did you know that? After what my uncle did that time. You remember? It was when I was in your class. I can’t have babies. So, what other reason would there be?” she asked.
Uncertain what to say, I just sat.
“What I’d like is someone just to cuddle me. Know what I mean? Someone who’d put his arms around me without expecting anything more in return, but I don’t think I’ll get that. So, I’ve just decided I’ll have nothing at all.”
Dear Mom,
I read in the papers this week where they found someone who’d got murdered 25 years ago and no one had ever known she was missing. Everyone just said she went away and nobody ever bothered looking for her. They thought she didn’t want to come back. I get so worried that something like this has happened to you. I want to find you. I want to talk to you and know you’re okay. I want to make sure that isn’t why you never came back.
When I came the following Saturday, I brought Sheila hair-care items I’d picked up at th
e drugstore. They were nothing much: a jar of deep conditioner, some styling mousse and a blue headband to keep her half-grown-out bangs out of her eyes. She greeted these gifts with delight.
“Wow! This is great!” She ripped apart the bag rather than opening it and lifted up the headband, shoving it into her hair. “I always wanted to wear one of these. Because I had bangs, it never made sense for me to have one, so I never got one. But this is great. Why’d you do it?”
I shrugged. “Thought you’d like it.”
“Yeah, I do. Thanks.”
A minute or two passed while Sheila inspected the items more carefully. She unscrewed the lid to the conditioner, fingered it, put the lid back on and then read the directions. “They’re probably never going to let me use this stuff here. They make you turn in everything. I reckon they think you’re going to smoke it or something. God knows.”
I sat down on Angel’s bed. She had at least two dozen small stuffed toys lined up against the pillow and my weight on the bed dislodged several. I leaned over and tried to rearrange them.
“I found out when my dad’s getting parole. On October twenty-eighth,” Sheila said.
“What do you think of that?”
She shrugged. Turning the mousse container over, she sprayed some out onto her hand, lifted it up and smelled it, then squished the foam between her two palms.
“Where’s he going? Will he have a job?” I asked.
“He’s going back to Broadview. He’s got friends in Broadview. See, that’s where he grew up. That’s where Grandma used to live when she was alive.” She rubbed the mousse into her hair.
This was the first I’d heard Sheila mention any other family members. I knew there were others, including her father’s brother, Jerry, who had so viciously molested Sheila when she was six. However, Sheila rarely ever spoke of anyone outside her very immediate family.
“Well, that’s good news anyway,” I said. “It means you can leave here.”
Curling her lip, Sheila conveyed a feeling of disgruntled uncertainty. “I dunno. I’m not sure I want to go back with my dad. I mean, it’s been about a million times now that he’s said he’s going to stop taking the stuff and he doesn’t do it. I doubt he will this time either and I’m so fed up with getting stuck in these shitholes.”
I didn’t say anything.
She looked over briefly. “Know what I’m thinking of doing? Going to find my mom. Seeing if I can live with her.”
“How would you do that?”
“Well, don’t tell anybody”—Sheila glanced around furtively, as if expecting to be overheard—“but I’ve been saving up my money,’cause my dad sends me some every once in a while. And last time when I was in town, I went in the library and I got the address of a newspaper in California. I sent them some money to take out an ad. An ad saying who I was and that I was looking for my mother.”
“California’s a pretty big place. One newspaper won’t cover much of it.”
“Well, yeah, I know. But as I get more money, I’ll take out more ads,” Sheila said. “She’ll see one of them, I’m sure.”
I regarded her. “And then what?”
“Well, I can talk to her then, can’t I? And maybe I can go live with her.”
“Sheil, I don’t think …”
She grimaced at me. “You’re going to say fuck it, aren’t you? I knew you would.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just saying go kind of slow on this.”
“I know what I’m doing,” she replied. “She’s probably going to be really grateful I’ve tried to find her. You hear about this all the time with kids who’ve been adopted and how their real parents are always so glad when they contact them.”
“Almost always.”
“And she’ll be settled and my brother will be there and …”
“Don’t get your hopes up too high, Sheil.”
Her shoulders dropped in an expression of exasperation. “I shouldn’t have told you. I knew I shouldn’t have told you. You are going to say fuck it.”
“I’m not, Sheila. I’m just saying—”
“I do know, Torey, but it’s not going to be like you think. Shit, I don’t want to stay with my father. And I sure as hell don’t want to stay here. I want to be with her. She probably will be grateful I’ve gone to the trouble to find her. That was a long time ago. It might even have been an accident. I might just have fallen out of the car. Maybe she didn’t notice until it was too late. She’s probably going to be happy to know I’m okay.”
Chapter 29
Dear Mom,
I want to live with you. I’m fed up living with Dad. It’s not that anything bad’s happened, because nothing bad’s happened for a long time, it’s just I get so sick of his ways. Of worrying about him and worrying about the booze and worrying about the stuff and worrying what’s going to happen to our money and worrying about if he’s going to get in trouble again and worrying what’s going to happen to me, if he does. I want to be with you and Jimmie. Please, couldn’t it be that way for a while?
“Can you get me out of here?” Sheila asked when I arrived for my usual Saturday visit. “I’m going nuts in this place.”
“You mean find you another group home?” I asked.
“No. God, no. Just get me out. Take me out. I haven’t been off the grounds in, like, about three months,” she replied. “I want to go to your house. Will you take me?”
“I’m not sure if Jane will let me. You haven’t got a very good track record.”
“Hah!” she said with delight. “I’ve got a very good track record. I can run faster than any of them.” She snickered at the pun.
“Yes, well, I’m afraid that’s just what I mean. And Jane won’t be conned into giving you another opportunity.”
Sheila gave a low, exasperated moan. “I wouldn’t run away from you, Torey. You know that.”
I didn’t know that, to be honest. Not that I thought Sheila was lying. Of all the tricks I knew Sheila to be capable of, she had always been remarkably truthful with me. I had no reason to doubt her honesty now; however, she was a born opportunist. Whether or not she could resist the temptation of running away when the chance presented itself, I wouldn’t like to judge.
“Come on. Please? Won’t you just try?” she pleaded. “I’m so sick of it in here.” A brief pause and she brightened. “I could cook for you. Remember? Like I did the last time? You liked that, didn’t you? Please?”
“If I do ask, you know what it’s going to mean?” I replied.
“What?”
“The point system. You’re going to have to earn points.”
With a dramatic swing of her arm over her eyes, Sheila fell back on her bed. “Oh, shit, not you too. God, Torey.”
“You’ve got to cooperate, Sheila. You could have probably been out of here months ago, if you’d done what you were supposed to.”
“God. Played their stupid game? Collected shitty little—what are they? Fucking golf tees or something? You think I’m going to let someone regulate my life with golf tees, for God’s sake?”
I eyed her. “You will if you want to come home with me.”
“Shit, Torey. I thought there was more to you than that.” An angry frown on her face, she fell back on the bed again.
The tiger was stirring. Quite abruptly, I realized Sheila was fighting back. Delighted, I egged her on. “We’ll get Jane in here. We can set up a point program and as soon as you’ve completed it, we’ll arrange a weekend at my place. How does that sound?”
“Shitty.”
“Very well. Have it your way.”
Sheila sat up. “I didn’t mean that. God, you’re in a mood today. What’s the matter? You on the rag or something?”
I smiled blandly.
She bared her teeth at me in an expression of irritation before crawling to the end of the bed to snag a piece of paper. “Okay, so get Jane then. Let’s get this fucking thing out of the way.”
Her mind applied to the project, Sheila ea
rned her points swiftly. Jane was stunned, which, I suspect, was just the reaction Sheila was hoping to elicit. Indeed, as her depression lifted and Sheila increasingly became a force to be reckoned with around the group home, Jane appeared a little bit alarmed by what had been awakened.
Two Saturdays later found me in the car with Sheila, tooling back to the city. “God, this is great,” Sheila kept saying. “Trees. Look at all these trees. That’s what I miss so much out there. It’s like a desert there.”
Back in my apartment, Sheila went through it room by room. “Geez, it’s weird being back here. Know when I was last here? That night with that little boy. Alejo. Geez, like déjà vu. No, no, that wasn’t the last night, was it? I came over and cooked for you. That was afterward. God, Torey, it feels like a lifetime ago.” She paused and looked back at me. “Remember how I was telling you the other week how I could sort of shut off parts of my life? Make them feel like they happened to someone else?”
I nodded.
“That’s what happened here. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t try to forget this, but now that I’m back, that’s how it feels. Like really déjà vu. Like I’m visiting some former incarnation, because … like I don’t think I’ve ever gone back to a place where everyone else is still carrying on their life, just the way I left them.”
Wandering into the kitchen, Sheila caught sight of a group of photographs stuck up on my refrigerator with magnets. Pausing in front of them, she examined them carefully. “Those are pictures from my camping trip,” I said. “Look. I caught the largest trout.”
“Who’s this guy you’re with?”
“Hugh. You’ll meet him later on, because he’s taking us out to dinner tonight.”
“So, he’s the current fuck, is he?”
“Not quite the way I’d put it,” I replied.
“You do fuck him, I trust.” She was still studying the pictures.
“That’s one of those questions, Sheila, that falls into the ‘personal’ category.”
She turned. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Well, yes …”