The Child Finder

by Rene Denfeld

Then Naomi told her she still hadn’t found anything. Not a single sock, not a shoe, not a sign.

  “I didn’t know it would be harder now,” Madison’s mother said, weeping.

  Between them two cups of tea steamed. A plate held untouched banana bread.

  The mother wiped her eyes. “If we don’t get her back I don’t know what I will do.”

  “You’ll find a way to survive.”

  “You said before if she comes back she will need me. I’m afraid I won’t be able to help her.”

  Naomi smiled at her. “You need to stop believing that innocence can be lost.”

  “Are you still innocent?” the mother asked, her voice hopeful.

  “I’m as innocent as the day I was born. Maybe even more so. No one can take that from me.” Naomi put down the tea. “I’m a child just like your Madison, if she is alive. Do you want us?”

  The mother’s eyes were glassy with hope. “Yes,” she breathed hoarsely. “I want you.”

  “Then good.” Naomi spanked her hands together, brightly, startling the woman. “Because that is exactly what we need.”

  “And what about you?” the mother asked later, putting the cups in the sink while Naomi wrapped the banana bread in Saran Wrap.

  “What about me?” Naomi was tired again. She wished she could crawl into Madison’s bed and sleep a million years. She would wake up a different person, one less conflicted, one who knew more than the beauty of her own heart.

  “Do you want children?” Madison’s mother turned from the fridge, reaching for the bread.

  “I . . . don’t know,” Naomi said, feeling surprised as she always did when this question came up. She was going to be thirty soon. She had no idea how women figured that one out. The past stood as the barrier, the dreams the key that might unlock the riddle.

  “I guess the children you find are sort of your children.”

  “We will take over the world someday,” Naomi said simply.

  “You didn’t answer if you wanted children.” The mother put the banana bread away.

  “I don’t do this because I want children,” Naomi said, knowing what the answer was but not knowing why. “I do it to atone.”

  The mother took a deep breath. Naomi tilted her head at her. She suddenly recognized what Madison’s mother wanted.

  “You can try again,” Naomi said softly.

  “I— He doesn’t want to.”

  Naomi knew people would bankrupt themselves, morally as well as financially, to rescue their children, when what they needed to do was the opposite. They needed to rebuild, to re-create.

  “Take care of him, take care of you,” she said. “If your marriage is strong he might change his mind.”

  The mother lifted her eyes. “I’m afraid it might be too late.”

  “For another child?”

  “For the marriage.”

  One day, during one of her visits, Jerome had turned to her in the farmhouse kitchen—warm light of yellow safe place arrived—and asked her this simple question:

  “Why do you often call them just the mother or father?”

  “What do you mean?” Naomi asked. She had been talking about her work, her cases, taking care never to tell anything private.

  “When you talk about the parents you usually don’t mention their names,” Jerome had said, and Mrs. Cottle, coming in the kitchen, had nodded her head.

  “It’s true, honey. Now, Jerome, sweetheart, would you be so kind as to get that sugar? Just fetch it from the shelf.”

  Naomi had realized they were right. She used names for other people but often not the parents of the missing kids.

  Madison’s mother had a name: Kristina. Her father had a name: James. They flowed from others’ lips but not her own.

  When you are born from nothing you have no name. What the Lord gives He takes away. And when the Lord gives you fetid earth, raw insects, and worms, you will claw the dirt in your hunger rather than perish.

  There is nothing left but yourself—and the wide, beautiful world.

  “I’m trying to honor them,” she had said.

  Jerome had turned, carefully lifting the old white sugar jar from the cupboard with his one hand. “I think you are trying to keep your distance.”

  “I could get used to this,” Detective Winfield said.

  “You shouldn’t.” Naomi smiled.

  They were walking along the river, where rows of pink and white cherry trees lined the shores. The ground was littered with fragrant petals. On the side of the roads were stacks of garbage bags. The town had been in a budget crunch, with most services on short rations. Naomi had read of the impact on schools and transportation—and on Detective Winfield’s hours.

  “I’m working the Danita Danforth case,” she told him.

  His eyes got smoky. “That’s an active investigation.”

  “I know. I don’t plan on mucking it up for you.”

  “Trying to show me up?” he asked. His voice was light, but his eyes were cold. The entire mood of the conversation changed. Of course, she thought. He’s a proud man.

  “I’m telling you because I have a feeling I might find something bad, and at that point it will be a crime scene. I’ll call you if that happens.”

  “Even if she killed her daughter?”

  “I don’t protect parents who kill their children. You know that.”

  They walked in silence for a time. On the river a foghorn blared.

  “Personally I have big questions about that case,” Detective Winfield said. He looked like he wanted to share something and was weighing whether to do so. His expression said he was exercising caution. “But the district attorney wanted to indict. You know how that goes. And then the attorneys get involved and I can’t talk to Danita. It’s like the brakes come on and all of a sudden I can do nothing.”

  “I just ignore those rules,” Naomi said, smiling.

  They turned back, passing joggers, a set of young men walking a dog. In the distance a large grain ship moved regally down the river, so slowly the water barely seemed to part.

  They stopped back at her car.

  “I’m not trying to show you up, Lucius,” she said, suddenly uncertain. “You’re . . . my friend.”

  “Oh, I know that.” He opened her door for her. “I can tell something is troubling you, child finder,” he said.

  “How can you tell?”

  His eyes met hers. “I’ve known you some years now. You blow in and out of my office. That’s okay. I could tell you’ve been blind to yourself. Just searching for others, not looking inside. You’re wrestling with something now.”

  She hesitated. She wasn’t accustomed to talking about herself.

  “I don’t know if it is the past or the future,” she said.

  “Sometimes they’re the same.”

  “Do you think it is okay if . . . if a man and woman who were in a foster home together end up, you know?” She sounded so young, even to her own ears. “Is it a sin?”

  Lucius paused for a moment, his smile sparkling.

  “The sin was what came before,” he said, gently. “But I don’t think the sin is really what you are afraid of.”

  Naomi nodded, uncertain. She started to get into the car.

  “I think you are afraid of something else,” he told her as she settled into the seat.

  He looked down at her like he felt sorry for her, and she felt a chill—like there was a piece of the world she was missing.

  “What am I afraid of?” she asked, her mouth dry.

  “You are afraid,” he said, leaning down, so he was almost whispering in her ear, “of being found.”

  Naomi stopped driving, abruptly, in a cold swirl at the side of the road. Others could walk the path even when it didn’t seem firm. They didn’t know what it was like to skydive into darkness. To pull up entrails when you wanted hope.

  She wanted to call Jerome. Wanted to say, Come here now. Wanted to say, I can abide the sin even if God looks at me forever.
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  The phone was silent, beckoning.

  What would she say? That she was lost, lonely? That the detective was right, she was afraid of what Jerome might find?

  She didn’t want to think her fear was because of this—this one thing—but it was. A kiss, a touch, a hope: a remembrance. The way God had instructed us to remember, and bring forth.

  How could she find the future if she didn’t know her past?

  The rag doll from the school where Danita had cleaned was still on the dash, legs folded, facedown. Naomi picked it up, held it in her lap, smiled sternly at the cross-stitch eyes. “You can’t see, poor baby,” she said, and a ghost of a voice tugged at her. “You can’t talk.”

  Monkey see, monkey do. Something flitted on the edge of her mind, and then was gone, because the idea was there, in force.

  What do children do? They play. Even in the worst slums they will make garbage dumps into castles, sticks into grand weapons of war. Of the children she had found, the ones who did best over the long term were the ones who had found a way to play. They created fantasy worlds in which to hide. Some even talked their captors into getting them toys. Escaping into another world was a way for them to disassociate safely, without losing touch with all reality—unlike someone like Naomi, who had blanked it all out. Yes, the ones who did the best in the long run made a safe place inside their very own minds.

  Sometimes they even pretended they were someone else.

  Naomi didn’t believe in resilience. She believed in imagination.

  She knew now what she was trying to remember. It was at the Strikes store.

  In a now desolate farmhouse Jerome packed boxes.

  His red truck waited outside, and he recalled past visits to the town dump, crows crying over their feed. This time he would tie a tarp over the load, and when he pulled up outside, he would throw the unwanted belongings away and feel like death.

  The rooms already felt empty, echoing. Where Mrs. Cottle’s vanity had been, the old wallpaper decorated with dogs—he had never noticed that before—was as bright as brand-new. In the bottom of her closet he had found a tennis racket. That was odd. In an ancient suitcase, heavier than heck, he found a note zipped into the inner compartment. Dear Mary, her husband had written in the rough, uncertain hand of a farmer, I hope we get good news at the clinic.

  Buttons at the bottom of a sewing jar. Needles poked in a sun-faded cushion. Pictures of her foster kids, including ones she had never mentioned. Him. Naomi smiling from a class picture, her skin tanned.

  His own belongings were small. His case of combat medals. His clothes. They would all fit right next to him in the truck, on his journey to wherever he was going.

  Behind him, on the kitchen counter, next to the bowl of fruit, was a letter. He had been offered a job in a sheriff agency out of state. It was a good position—a decent salary, a chance to start over in a town that wasn’t dying around him. He had not told Naomi. He wanted her to choose him without pressure. But she had not, and he didn’t know if he should try one more time.

  You were here, he thought, walking the house, hearing his steps. He looked out the window and saw himself and Naomi, running through the fields as children. The entire house felt like a refusal now, its owner and heart gone.

  Naomi, he thought, don’t make me wait anymore.

  14

  Mr. B had been outside, chopping wood right by the door—he didn’t need to put snow girl in the cellar for that; he would see if she tried to leave. He had the ax. Even now, after almost three years had passed, snow girl knew Mr. B wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if she tried to escape.

  She had been lying on the bed, where she had been dutifully waiting. She was looking at the ceiling, with the bark on the logs stained dark from smoke. The clouds passing overhead made shapes that came through the dim light around the windows. She knew every inch of this cabin, from the dirty sink to the metal bar used for killing the animals, its end caught with blood and hair, leaning against the wall. The knives above the sink, the potbellied stove.

  She had a new thought: I have been here almost three years. I might grow old here, like Mr. B. It was an awful thought. As wonderful as the snow was, it was not a place she wanted to live forever. She tried to picture it. Mr. B would get older, too. That was hard to imagine. He already seemed pretty old. Maybe he would grow a long white beard and have a fat stick-out tummy.

  What would she be like? Her body would keep growing, until she was MOM-shaped. She didn’t think Mr. B would like that. He would see the strength in her and get afraid. Maybe he would make her disappear then.

  Snow girl felt terror in her throat, so she imagined shapes on the ceiling: a camel, an elephant, and the one that made her heart thump: a MOM shape running towards her, arms ready to scoop.

  Her eyes fell on the trapdoor, with the lock hanging open. She heard the thud and pause of the ax. It began again. She slid off the bed, crouching next to the trapdoor and lifting it up. Studying it, she noticed that the lock was attached to a large loop on a hinge. The hinge was old and rusty, and screwed into the top of the door. The screws were old, too, and some of them looked loose.

  The snow girl lifted the trapdoor a bit, to look at the underside of the latch.

  The metal hinge looked bent, as if someone had tried to push the trapdoor open, from beneath. Her throat tightened again, and she felt her heart pound. There had been another snow child here, before her. That snow child had tried to escape.

  The ax stopped. She jumped back onto the bed and waited.

  The cabin seemed so much smaller after that, her cave no longer a refuge but a holding station. Only the outside was still open, still free—when they walked the high ridges, her eyes sought out every horizon.

  In deep, dark caves the world is made, one step at a time. You touch a root and think of yourself as a branch. You taste mud, and from this your own organs grow. You can finally be still, restful, knowing the world is a story and soon yours will end.

  But what will her end be?

  Down in the cave, the snow girl had pitched her head in the dark, felt the light of the slats above on her face. Felt the cool, sweet air. Was thankful for it, as a matter of fact.

  Hearing the creak on the floor above her, seeing the trapdoor open, knowing outside was a world of cool snow, blown by the hands of God, knowing there would always be a man watching.

  Once upon a time there was a girl named Madison who lived in a world of clocks.

  There was the fat black watch of time on her daddy’s wrist, which he said not only ticked off the hours but told the time, too.

  Her mother watched the tick of the white stove. The stove beeped when it was time to take the cake out (hooray!) but was frustratingly quiet during the long afternoons when Mom had her friend Leslie over, when what Madison really wanted to do was take a bubble bath and play with the kitchen strainer in the tub.

  Madison never had a chance to see if the spider in the story of Anansi was the same spider that lived in the backyard. She never had a chance to find the fairies that lived in the grass, or to discover if there were such a thing as a magic rock that gave you three wishes.

  She was too young to know the difference between fairy tales and real life.

  “Don’t ever lose your magic,” Madison’s father told her while they were on a walk.

  “What would happen if I did?” Madison had asked.

  The father shook his head, distracted by the clouds.

  In the world of Madison, time was measured in clocks and the surrounding of two people she faintly recognized in herself. That was time.

  In this world, snow girl knew, time was different. In this world time promised death.

  “Hello, Earl.”

  It was shortly after dawn, and Naomi was standing on the back porch of the closed store, next to the bundles of pelts.

  “Holy bejesus in a bonnet, you scared me!”

  Earl did look like she had given him a start, his heart rolling under his dirty flann
el shirt, his cheeks pale. He had just come out of the door, his hands already working the button of his pants, no doubt ready for a morning whiz. He wore the same stained trousers as always. Naomi wondered if he slept in them. Why not? She slept in her pants sometimes, too.

  “What are you doing back here?” he barked.

  “I’m standing on your back porch,” Naomi said simply.

  “I know that, miss!” he almost yelled. “You scared me,” he added plaintively. “My ticker,” he said, putting a bit of a show on it, holding his hand over his heart.

  It was another overcast, icy-cold day. Naomi wondered when, if ever, it warmed up here. She imagined summer came in a torrent: two quick months of melt before everything froze again. She had noticed there were no signs of a single vegetable garden from the motel on up. Even in Alaska you could grow cabbages.

  “I’m practicing being a hunter,” Naomi said. She put her gloved hand on the furs. “How many marten furs are in here?”

  “Aw, miss.”

  “Heard you had a charge some years ago. Unlawful commerce in furs.”

  “Miss, why—”

  “Do you hunt, Earl? Trap?”

  “I never was much into it, to tell the truth. Who wants to freeze their ass off—excuse me—when you can get meat out of a can? I mean really. Especially tuna. I’m fond of that myself.”

  She was beginning to like this old man, despite herself.

  “Let’s go in your store, Earl.”

  “I thought you’d never ask. Why you’d want to freeze your ass out here I don’t know. But hold up while I take a leak.”

  Inside the store Naomi went behind the counter. Earl squawked a bit and then grew silent after she gave him a look. She stroked the vintage black cash register, with its raised, oblique keys, and then banged open the cash drawer.

  Inside was a small collection of mostly dirty, worn bills and a few coins. Nothing more.

  She went to pull the cash register tape and saw there was none. She dug through the counter drawers, found endless torn envelopes with indecipherable notes. In one drawer was a pot pipe.