by Torey Hayden
On the way home, I impulsively stopped by Lucy’s house. We’d become quite good friends at school. She was a likable, easy-to-talk-to person, and youth was our common ground in a workplace where most were members of the AARP; however, we’d never made the transition to friendship outside school.
Even within the confines of a homogenizing environment like school, the contrast in our lives was obvious. Lucy was a local girl, married at twenty-one to the boy literally next door, in a storybook wedding with carriages and white horses and most of the community present. She’d gone to the state university to get her teaching degree and she and Ben, her husband, had done a three-week tour of Europe for their honeymoon; otherwise, Lucy’s entire world was Pecking. I envied her her connectedness and her certainty about her place in the universe. When we talked about it, she said she envied me my freedom, but I’m not sure she really did.
“Hi!” she cried in delighted surprise when she saw me at the door.
“Sorry for bothering you on a Friday evening, but I was coming by and I still have that material on the teaching centers in my car. Thought I’d drop it off.” Which was true enough, although not the whole reason I’d stopped.
“Oh, how nice of you,” she remarked cheerfully. “Want to come in?”
I entered a small, neat-as-a-pin living room with green shag carpeting and an electric organ against the far wall.
“Ben’s out for the evening. He and his dad. They’re pricing a job in Falls River, and so he’s not going to be back ’til late.” Lucy smiled. “So it’s nice you stopped by.” She disappeared into the kitchen. “You want some soup? Have you eaten? I was just heating some up.” She returned, carrying a can. “It’s this kind. Vegetable-beef. Do you like that? Or I could open something else.”
“No, that’s fine.” I followed her into the kitchen. “What’s Ben do? He’s a builder, isn’t he?”
Lucy nodded. “Yes, he and his dad did this house.” She gestured widely. “Afterwards, after we eat, I’ll show you around. It’s got three bedrooms. That’s for when we get around to starting a family. At the moment we’ve got Jilly in the second bedroom, and she’s doing the family bit. Wait ’til you meet Jilly.”
Jilly turned out to be a toy poodle, proud mother of three-week-old pups. Lucy also showed me her needlepoint and then her wedding photographs. That put us on to the honeymoon pictures of Europe. I needed the distraction, and Lucy was providing an ample amount.
When we came to the last of the honeymoon photographs, Lucy lingered over the album. “I probably don’t need to be showing you these,” she said quietly. “You’ve been to Europe, too, haven’t you?”
“Yes. But not as many places as you and Ben have seen.”
“You’ve been all over, though. You’ve been to New York.”
I nodded.
“How come you came here?”
“It looked like an interesting job, and I was fed up with the city. My own hometown isn’t much bigger than Pecking. I’m perfectly happy in small places.”
“Do you like it here?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“We haven’t got the kinds of problems they have in the cities. That’s what I like about it. You hear about all this junk, like drugs and child abuse, and I’m just really glad I don’t have to deal with it. But I bet you came across it a lot up in the city, didn’t you?”
I looked over. “It’s probably here, too. Those sorts of things don’t really respect boundaries.”
“Well, yeah, probably out on the reservation.”
“Probably right here in Pecking. Odds are, at least with child abuse, right in your classroom.”
Lucy was silent.
“It’s hard to think that these kinds of things happen to people we know, but, unfortunately, that’s often the case.”
Lucy looked down at the album with its soft, pale gray leather-effect cover, trimmed in gold. “I’ve probably lived a pretty sheltered life.” A pause. “But I can’t say I’m not thankful for that. It’s easier to believe in the good in people if you don’t know all the bad.”
I studied Lucy’s face. What I wanted more than anything was to share the eerie experience of being locked in the cloakroom with Jadie. I was so confused, not knowing what to think about her behavior. Was she aphasic? Brain damaged? Was there an organic basis for what she did? Or could it all be psychological? Mutism had ceased to be a problem from the first day, as Jadie now responded to anyone who spoke to her, but only with me did she speak spontaneously. Why? What for? How come? I did enjoy my new life in Pecking, but it had brought with it unaccustomed isolation. My network of professional colleagues and friends remained in the city, and I had found making new contacts here slow going. But did I tell Lucy about life in my classroom? Was it the right thing to do? Was it fair, either to Lucy or to my children?
In the end, I said nothing. Instead, Lucy took me into the kitchen, where she showed me how to make brownies in the microwave in only ten minutes. Then we sat down in front of the television, scoffed brownies, and drank tall glasses of milk, all the while laughing like a couple of schoolgirls.
After school on Monday, Jadie joined me in the cloakroom. She was late, arriving at twenty to five. The first thing she did was to take the key and lock the two doors and then secure the masking tape over both keyholes. She didn’t really test the doors this time, however, just locked them and handed back the key. Nor did her posture improve. Still hunched over, she shuffled to one of the benches and sat down.
“You don’t look very happy.”
No response.
“You’ve been quiet all day. Do you feel okay?”
“Yeah.”
“How was your weekend?” She shrugged.
A moment’s silence passed between us. She was bent almost double, her dark hair tumbling down over her shoulders.
“You look like you want to cry,” I commented.
At that, her mouth dragged down in a grimace of tears and she bent forward on the bench, burying her face in the jacket on her knees.
Rising from my chair at the desk, I came over and sat down beside her. Gently, I put my arm around her shoulder. “What’s the matter, lovey?”
“I don’t got my cat no more,” she wailed.
“Oh dear, how awful. What happened?”
“She isn’t there no more. She’s gone.”
I hugged her to me.
“She was just little,” Jadie sobbed, pulling back to look up at me. “She wasn’t even grown up yet.”
“Poor puss. Poor Jadie.”
“She was skinny. I always saved some of my supper in my napkin and then I’d take it out for her to eat. ’Cause she was always hungry. She was a girl cat. I named her Jenny.”
“And now something’s happened to her? What was it? Did she get hit by a car?”
Rubbing the tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands, Jadie shook her head. “No, she was in the shed, but she’s not anymore.”
“Was this just a little kitty you’d found? A stray?”
Too choked up to say anything, Jadie didn’t respond.
“Well, she’s probably all right. Most likely she’s just moved on. Sometimes wild kitties do that. They aren’t very used to being with people, and even when you’re good and kind to them, they don’t know they’re supposed to stay in one place.”
“She didn’t run away,” Jadie replied. “She couldn’t. She was in a box.”
“In a box? Where?”
“In our shed, like I was just telling you. Out in back of my house. That’s where I was taking the food to her and I was putting it in the box. But now it’s gone.”
“How’d she get in a box? Who does the box belong to?”
“They’ve taken her away and they’re going to kill her,” Jadie cried, her voice trailing off into a whine.
“Who’s going to kill her?”
“Them.”
“Them who, Jadie? I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
The tears evaporated and Jadie’s eyes grew wide and dark. She sat very still, as if holding her breath. Then she inched closer to me on the bench.
“Who’s taken your cat?” I asked.
“Miss Ellie,” she whispered.
“Pardon?”
“Miss Ellie,” she said a little louder.
“Miss Ellie who?”
“Miss Ellie. Who’s with Bobby and J.R.”
“Miss Ellie?” I echoed in disbelief. “The lady who’s on TV?”
“Sometimes she’s on TV, but sometimes she comes to my house.”
“Miss Ellie?”
Jadie looked up, a pained expression on her face, and I realized she knew I didn’t believe what she was saying. Anxious not to destroy the trust growing between us, I backed off quickly.
“So, Miss Ellie has your little kitty.”
Jadie nodded, tears filling her eyes again.
“And she comes to your house? What does she do there?”
“She comes,” Jadie said, her voice small and apologetic. “She comes to be on TV sometimes, but mostly she just comes. To get me and Amber. To have us go with the others.”
“The others? Who else is there?”
“Bobby and Sue Ellen and J.R. Pam’s there sometimes and Clayton and some of the others, but I don’t know everybody’s names.”
Absolutely baffled, I tried my best to make sense of all this without seeming to disbelieve her. Jadie’s earnestness gave me no reason to suspect she was knowingly making this up. “These are the Ewings you’re talking about? From ‘Dallas’?”
Jadie nodded slightly. “It’s the Ewings, but I’m not sure where they come from.”
I sat back and a small silence ensued.
“Is Jenny Miss Ellie’s cat?” I asked finally.
“No. They just caught her, I think. I don’t know whose cat she is. Don’t belong to nobody, I think. Just a little cat.”
“But who caught her? How did she end up in a box in your shed?”
Jadie shrugged. “She was just there.”
“Maybe she got into the box accidentally. Kitties do get into very strange places sometimes. That’s just the way cats are, especially young ones. Maybe nobody really caught her after all. Is that possible?”
Jadie’s shoulders sagged, and she shook her head.
“Well, Miss Ellie wouldn’t hurt her, would she? Maybe she’s just going to give her a new home.”
Shaking her head, Jadie began to cry. “No, it isn’t like that.”
I looked at her.
“She’ll kill Jenny. Miss Ellie’ll eat her.”
Chapter Nine
The hardest adjustment I had to make in returning to teaching after three years at the Sandry Clinic was the sudden and total loss of professional peers. Teaching was a natural activity for me, and I found I fit back into the routine of a school very quickly indeed. And I unashamedly loved it. I got on well with Mr. Tinbergen and the other teachers, enjoyed the camaraderie of the lounge, joined in the gossip, and took up my position in the pecking order. However, I soon realized that, while I’d always find a sympathetic ear when I wanted one, I wasn’t necessarily going to find good advice. In the Pecking school district, I was state-of-the-art where special education was concerned.
This came as a disheartening insight, because if I’d learned anything over the years, it was how much I didn’t know. Access to a wide range of professional colleagues—psychiatrists, psychologists, medical doctors, social workers, speech therapists, other special education teachers—had always been an important part of my method of operation. If I couldn’t come up with a solution of my own to try, I’d find someone who could, or, at the very least, someone to shoot ideas around with. Suddenly, however, I was isolated. Twenty-three miles separated me from even the nearest special education teachers, who were in Falls River. And while Falls River undoubtedly had a full complement of mental health services and related resource personnel, I knew none of them personally and was too shy in my reduced status as teacher to phone them and ask for complimentary advice out of the blue.
My single professional contact was Arkie Peterson. I’d only seen her a handful of times since January, usually at meetings, and as a consequence, we’d had very little opportunity to talk. A brief look at district statistics told me why I didn’t see her more often. Arkie was responsible not only for the Pecking school district but for more than twelve hundred other students spread over a wide, sparsely populated rural area. Although based in an office in the administration building in Falls River, she spent most of her time on the road and was scheduled to be at her desk only on Thursday afternoons. Hence, the biggest trick of all with Arkie was catching her.
Increasingly, I felt the need to discuss Jadie’s case in depth with another professional. In the classroom, Jadie was making slow but steady social progress. While still disinclined to speak spontaneously, she did now join in with the boys and participate in group activities, and just occasionally Jeremiah could provoke her into arguing. However, it wasn’t the classroom that concerned me most. Rather, it was our little after-school sessions, and I honestly did not know what to make of those.
As time went by, I was beginning to doubt the likelihood of any significant brain damage. When Jadie did speak, she was generally forthright and articulate. There was none of the hesitance or slight spaciness that I had come to associate with aphasics; instead, she maintained the aura of intense control that so characterized elective mutism. Thus, I was satisfied that Jadie’s problems were psychological, without physical underpinnings. The question that remained unanswered was to what extent she was disturbed. In class she gave every indication of being well grounded in reality and functioning on a fairly high level, certainly much higher than any of the boys. On the other hand, after school, when she was alone with me, Jadie’s conversations were often weird and unreal.
Arkie was the only person I felt I could turn to in regard to Jadie. My affinity for Arkie, based mostly on that first meeting in January, had been instant. Despite her Dolly Parton appearance, she struck me as an intelligent, articulate woman with sufficient experience to give the kind of feedback I was feeling so in need of.
“Hey!” Arkie cried cheerfully down the phone, when I finally managed to track her down. “How are you surviving?”
I explained that things weren’t going too badly in general but that I felt I needed a chance to discuss Jadie’s case more completely, especially now that we were coming up to the end of the school year and needed to make decisions for the next year’s placement.
There was a pause and through the phone I could hear the shuffling of paper. “Listen, Tor, I’ll tell you what,” Arkie said. “My schedule’s pure hell at the moment, and if I waited for a decent amount of time to get out to Pecking, it’d be next fall already. So what are you doing next Friday night? You want to come up here? What about dinner? Shall we have dinner somewhere and talk about everything then?”
That sounded divine.
Arkie and I met for dinner in a small, extremely popular restaurant in Falls River called Tottie’s. By the time we arrived, the place was congested and noisy, and we were escorted to a table the size of an average serving tray and located at the junction between the kitchen and the public toilets.
“Hi there! I’m Keith,” a young man cried enthusiastically when he saw us. “I’m your waiter for the evening, and our chef tonight is David.”
“Great. I’m Arkie and I’m your customer, and, listen, Keith, haven’t you got anything better than this?” Arkie gestured widely to indicate the table’s location.
“Now, let’s see, Arkie, what have you booked? Party of two? Yup? That’s what I’ve got.”
“Well, that’s what I’ve got, too, but I wasn’t planning on spending my evening conferring with David and I pretty much can from here, so what do you say we give him some peace? Suppose you find us somewhere else.”
Thunderstruck by Arkie’s calm audacity, I shrank meekly behind. Keith, too, seemed
a bit stunned. He checked his list again, then glanced around, as if seeking help. “Well, I suppose there is a table over there by the fireplace. They haven’t arrived yet … I suppose you could probably have that one and then …”
“Good,” said Arkie. “I suppose we could.”
“Now,” said Keith as we sat down, “can I bring you girls some wine? We have three choices of house wine, sold by the glass, the half carafe, or the carafe. Or perhaps you’d like Debbie to bring you the wine list.”
Arkie, covering her eyes with one hand in mock exasperation, lifted a finger and looked over at me. “Makes you sorry for our generation, doesn’t it?” she whispered.
Arkie and I spent a pleasant twenty minutes or so in choosing our meals, ordering, and then, just small talk. As with our first meeting, I was greatly impressed with Arkie, her calm assertiveness, her relaxed friendliness. Talking with her was like being back with my colleagues at the clinic: a nice mix of wit, personal topics, and shoptalk.
The conversation eventually came around to Jadie. I told Arkie how Jadie had been coming in to see me after school, how she locked the door and seemed to need the safety of the cloakroom before she could be wholly open. I mentioned the doll play with its faintly sexual overtones, and finally, I spoke of Tashee, Miss Ellie, and the others.
“Whee,” Arkie muttered when I’d finished. “You’ve got yourself a live one there, don’t you?”
“Let’s just say that I don’t think we have to make any immediate plans for moving her back to the regular classroom.”
“Well, no, there’s a point. But where do you think all this is coming from?” Arkie asked. “When I was working with her, I got no wind of this. What do you make of it? Is it just fantasy?”
“I don’t know. This is the problem for me. At this point, I honestly don’t know what to think about her behavior. In the classroom, I get an extremely withdrawn, hunched-over, shuffling mouse. She’s cooperative, concentrates well, performs academically, and yet hardly makes a spontaneous movement. In the cloakroom, I get this brash, noisy, provocative creature who swings from the pipes and flings the toys around. Never in all my career have I come across such extremes.”