by Torey Hayden
“Dr. Denning, from the mental health clinic, has assessed the two elder girls for stability and overall functioning. Both are of normal intelligence, from what he can tell, although Jadie refused to participate in the verbal parts of the test. Neither appears wildly stable, according to him; neither was wildly cooperative, however. So goodness knows how helpful these data are.
“Regarding your comments, Torey, about the possibility of occult involvement or a porn ring or something similar, we took a search warrant and went through the house. We didn’t come up with much. A handful of Playboys stuffed down the back of the sofa, two books on astrology, one on numerology, a small box full of bones, which the path lab has identified as coming from small animals, and six boxes of white candles.”
“What are their explanations for those last two items?” I asked.
“Mr. Ekdahl says the bones are some he’s collected out in the field. He says he likes to reassemble skeletons as sort of a hobby. Says he’d always wanted to be a taxidermist but couldn’t afford to pursue it, so he goes out walking on the weekends and collects the bones. He was able to substantiate all this insomuch as he had two completed skeletons, one of a squirrel and one of a cat.” Lindy wrinkled her nose. “They were rather nauseating, really, because he’s glued them up in these coy little poses. We did bring the two skeletons in, but I must confess, I could hardly imagine anyone performing black rites around a squirrel sitting on a little red bench with its legs crossed and a newspaper in its paws.
“As for the candles, they’re just ordinary penny candles, which they say they keep in case of winter power cuts. Six boxes do seem a bit much, but Mrs. Ekdahl claimed they were on sale when she bought them. So …” Lindy paused.
“That’s not really going to be enough, is it?” I asked.
“Not to prosecute, no.”
“But what about these characters from ‘Dallas’?” I asked. “She talks so realistically …”
“No, she doesn’t,” Lindy replied. “That’s the whole problem. You talk realistically. She doesn’t talk at all. I have never yet heard this kid utter a word. And while we’ve tried to follow up some of the things you’ve said she’s said, unless you can give us something more specific, what are we supposed to do? A plain example: when you talk about these characters, you’re talking about five or six or more suspects, all involved in serious sexual abuse. At best, we’ve got two suspects. Where are the other ones? Who are they?”
“I think we have to face the possibility that these people simply may not exist at all,” Arkie said, her voice soft. “I know it’s hard for Torey. She’s closest to the child; she has the girl’s confidence, and certainly the girl can be remarkably vivid when she does talk. But irrespective of whether abuse has occurred or not, Jade is a seriously disturbed child. There is a hearty chance we’re chasing moonbeams.”
I looked over at Arkie in dismay.
“Torey, you’ve got to accept this.”
“But why can’t you accept it could be real?”
“Because it can’t. Because she’s disturbed. Because I don’t want to see a replay of the Salem witch hunt right here on my own turf. That’s what that was, wasn’t it? Hysterical children accusing innocent adults. Human nature hasn’t changed, and I just don’t want to be a party to destroying these people’s lives. These are people, Torey. This is a family we’re talking about here, and they’re never going to be the same because of this. You and I and the police and everyone, we’ll walk out of it. The Ekdahls won’t. I’m scared shitless by this talk of witches and Satan and stuff, not because of what it is, but because of what it can do. It’s exciting, interesting, something to liven up a dull police report and a bunch of dull lives. I’m so frightened we’re going to forget these are people and we’re destroying them.”
I fell silent. Indeed, we all did, the silence weighing down on us in the small room. Lindy shuffled through her papers for a moment, but the silence remained.
Finally, Lindy looked over at me. “What do you think? Do you really believe she’s telling the truth?”
A depressing weariness overtook me. “I don’t know. I really don’t. But … it’s not so much what she says when she’s talking about the abuse, it’s the little things. Like how she talks of Tashee always being cold. Or how Tashee was short for her age. Or like the other week, just before Thanksgiving. One of my boys is Sioux and he got to talking about a headdress and some other Indian articles his father has, when Jadie mentioned that Tashee had a pair of genuine moccasins. Then she scooted back and showed this boy how the moccasins came up around the ankles. That incident struck me, because it wasn’t Tashee she was talking about and it wasn’t me she was talking to. It was the moccasins and it was to him. From her description, she was clearly referring to real Indian moccasins, because they do look so different from what gets fobbed off on the tourists. Such a casual, minor reference. It’d take considerable skill to lie like that, and I’d find it unusually complete, if it’s the result of some kind of psychopathology.”
“But it could be,” Arkie replied. “Maybe she wanted those moccasins. Then it’d be only natural that she’d put them on Tashee.”
Lindy pursed her lips. “So, basically, we’re not a whole lot further along than we were at this time last week.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“So, what we gonna do in here, man? You gonna get us a Christmas tree or what?” Jeremiah demanded. We were only half an hour or so into the morning on Tuesday, all sitting together around the table, supposedly working, but nobody was. Brucie was in deep conversation with his crayon, flipping it before his face and saying “Bwah, bwah, bwah” to it. Reuben had done his first math problem, to which the answer was “12.” So taken by the sight of “1” followed by “2”, he felt compelled to continue on, writing “3”, “4”, “5”, and so on, covering his paper with minute numbers. I’d already stopped him twice and reoriented him, but he reverted the moment I turned my attention away and was now up to 736. Philip had drawn a gigantic Christmas stocking on his paper and was decorating it with stars. Jadie just sat.
“I think we have plenty of time to worry about Christmas trees in the weeks ahead, Jeremiah. Now is the time for numbers.”
“Fuck numbers. We gonna have a party?”
“We’ll discuss it another time. Now we work.”
He slammed his pencil down on the table, grabbed his chair, and slammed that down as well. Then he saw Philip’s paper. “Look at him, lady. Look at what that little boog’s doing. Hey, baby boogs, what’s Santy Claus gonna bring you, if you been a good boy? Put in your itty, bitty stocky?”
“Jeremiah, please sit down.” I reached a hand behind me to the bookcase. “And here, Phil, here’s another math sheet.” I removed the decorated one.
“I don’t hang up a stocking no more,” Jeremiah announced. “I’m too big. That’s what my mom says. Says I won’t get nothing in it.” He shrugged. “But don’t matter, ’cause what I want don’t fit in a stocking anyhow. Know what I want?” He flung himself down on his back on the tabletop, his face right under mine. “A BMX.”
Deciding to ignore him, which wasn’t easy, as he was nearly lying in my lap, I stretched across to reorient Brucie.
“What you gonna get, girlie?” he asked Jadie, as he rolled across everyone’s work on the table to come face to face with her.
“Go stick your head in a toilet, okay?” Jadie replied.
Rising, I took hold of Jeremiah’s shirt collar and belt and lifted him bodily off the table. I placed him upright in his chair.
“Hooeeee! Did you see that, guys? That is one strong broad there. Lifted me up just like that. Man, better mind what she says. Better do what this dame wants. Man, lady, you know how to treat a guy.”
“Jeremiah, work.”
About twenty seconds’ silence reigned before Jeremiah looked up. “I know what. Let’s make Christmas wishes.”
“You’ve already told us about your bike. Now, go back to math, please.”<
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“No, not that. Wishes. Like peace on earth and stuff. Like what you’d wish for—not for yourself, man—for everybody.”
The idea caught my fancy. “Okay, Jeremiah, what would your Christmas wish be?”
“That people with brown skin don’t get picked on no more. That it don’t matter that you got brown skin or black skin or anything, that nobody gets beat up, just ’cause they’re different.”
“Well, that’s a very good wish, Jeremiah. Wouldn’t it be lovely, if it came true?”
“What do you wish for, girlie?” he asked Jadie.
Jadie thought a moment, then shrugged, and I didn’t think she was going to answer. Finally, however, she did. “No more fighting, I guess. That everybody in the whole world could be happy.”
Philip jumped up and down excitedly. “Mhhheeee!”
“Okay, you. Your turn,” I said. “What do you wish for?”
“Hhhhhaann huhhh,” he said and gesticulated wildly, a grin on his face. He pointed to Jadie.
“I’m sorry, we can’t quite understand you. Can you use your signs?” I asked, because Philip now had quite a wide vocabulary of sign-language gestures.
He signed wildly and leaped from his chair again. “Hhhaann hhuuuuhhhhh!”
“Stand up?”
Still grinning broadly, he pointed at Jadie and signed elaborately.
“You want Jadie to stand up?”
Further signs and gestures.
“Your Christmas wish is that Jadie would stand up … straight?”
Happily, Philip nodded.
“Hey, that’s cruel, man,” Jeremiah cried. “Don’t you know better than to go around making people feel bad for the way they are? She can’t help being crippled no more than you can help being a dumb fucker.”
I reached a hand out to touch Jeremiah’s arm, but it was Jadie who interceded. “I’m not crippled, Jeremiah. I can do it,” she said quietly.
He looked over at her.
“I can stand up straight.” Then, with the same creaking slowness she’d first exhibited in the cloakroom with me, Jadie put her hands on the table and pushed her body upright in the chair. Once that far, she took a deep, shuddery breath and then shoved her chair back. With what appeared to be a tremendous effort, she rose to her feet, erect.
Philip appeared so pleased I feared he’d swoon.
“Hhhuhhh! Hhuhhh! Hhhuuuuhhhh!” he cried, although none of us knew what he was saying.
Jadie pressed both hands across her stomach.
“What’s the matter? Are you feeling sick?” I asked.
“No,” she replied, her voice perplexed. Arching her back slightly, she pressed the area around her navel. “I don’t hurt?”
All of us watched her.
“I don’t hurt there,” she said, amazed.
Jeremiah finally recovered his voice. “Hey, man,” he said with admiration. “You’re really standing up.”
Jadie looked over at him.
“You’re standing up, Jadie, just like you was normal.”
When the recess bell rang and the others scampered off to the cloakroom to get their jackets, I caught Jadie by the arm. “Do you suppose we could have a little chat? Mrs. McLaren is going to take the boys down, so we won’t be interrupted. I want a moment alone with you.”
She looked up at me.
“You know what today is, don’t you? Eight days since you and your sisters moved out to Red Circle.” She nodded slightly.
“Has anyone talked to you about what’s going to happen next?”
Jadie shrugged. “People been coming out, if that’s what you mean. This doctor keeps coming out and looking up our butts. And there’s that lady with those dolls.”
“Yes, but I mean about the future. Has anyone said what’s going to happen from here on?”
“We’re going to a new foster home? That’s what Mrs. Verney says. She says me and Amber are going to get to go home for our toys, and then we’ll go somewhere else, ’cause we can’t stay in Red Circle. They only take kids for short times there.”
“Has anyone mentioned the possibility of going back to your parents?”
Jadie looked up. She hadn’t been able to maintain her erect posture and was bent forward again. Catching hold of the back of the chair, she kept herself from folding over farther.
“What would you think of returning home?”
When I said that, her eyes filled immediately. “I wanna go back.” A tear escaped and she caught it with her fingers. “That’s my Christmas wish, my real one. I miss my room and my toys. And I just wish my mommy would hold me.”
Knowing that in all likelihood the girls were going to be returned to their parents, I had been intensely worried about Jadie’s reaction to this news and had anticipated an awful confrontation. Now, hearing her talk like this, immense relief washed over me. A whole morning’s tension dissolved so rapidly as to leave me weak-kneed. “So, you’d like to? Oh, I am happy to hear that.”
“Except that I can’t.”
“My news is pretty good. Because what I wanted to tell you was that I think you can. I was down at the police station last night and as long as they feel everything is okay at your house, they’ll probably send you and Amber and Sapphire home instead of to a new foster placement.”
Jadie raised her head abruptly to look at me, her eyes widening. All the color in her cheeks vanished, leaving her skin a whitish gray, like forgotten pastry dough. “But everything isn’t okay,” she said in a choked whisper.
“They’ve looked things over pretty well—”
“It isn’t okay.” Her breathing grew shallow. Clutching at her face, she looked rapidly from side to side, as if anticipating invasion. Then her hands came up to cover her eyes a moment.
At last she looked over at me. “It was just a wish,” she wailed. “Didn’t you know that? Didn’t you understand? I didn’t mean really doing it, when I said I wanted to go back. I can’t go back.”
I regarded her.
“Miss Ellie’ll be there. After what I done, if me and my sisters go back now, Miss Ellie’ll kill us.”
Stricken, I just stood. There was nothing I could say. I couldn’t reassure her she wouldn’t go back, that I could keep her out, that I would rescue her, because there was nothing I could do. Throughout this entire situation, I’d never made any promises to Jadie about what would happen if she came forward. While not often, I still had experienced other instances in which a child’s accusations of abuse had been unsubstantiated and the child had been returned home, so I knew enough not to make promises I couldn’t fulfill. Technically, I suppose, I was in the clear. On a human level, however, I felt absolutely wretched.
A discouraging silence enveloped us. All sorts of wildly unrealistic ideas were stampeding through my head, visions of snatching Jadie and running off with her, leaping in the car and just driving off, but I knew them to be fantasies even as I had them. Nothing workable came to me.
Wearily, I pulled out a chair at the table and sat down. Jadie continued to stand. Her eyes wandered, fleetingly met mine, then we both looked away. She sighed. The silence deepened.
At last Jadie pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table and sat down too. “I’m not going back,” she said, her voice soft but final. She said nothing else.
What could I do? A jumble of nonsense was in my brain. Did I defend myself? Defend the police actions? Did I try to make it sound as if it wasn’t really so bad? Did I point out how nice it was going to be to sleep in her own bed and play with her own toys again, even if it did mean the occasional rape? Did I offer to run off to Mexico with her? Did I promise to become her crusader to fight her parents, the police, and City Hall, if necessary? Did I say I’d never give up? Did I offer comfort? Did I say I understood, although in no imaginable or unimaginable way was it possible that I did?
Jadie, across the table from me, picked at her arm. Her left hand resting palm upward on the tabletop, she tweaked the skin of her wrist, making it go whi
te. I glanced up at the clock and prayed Lucy would keep the boys out of here if I ran over the allotted time for recess.
“You know what?” Jadie murmured, her voice low but calm, conversational. “Them there, know what you can do with them?” She touched the veins in her wrist. “You can take a knife, and if you cut there, all the blood in your body runs out. It runs out so fast you die.”
Shaken sharply from my thoughts, I looked over.
“Dead’s not so bad,” she said softly. “It’s dying that hurts. But being dead … that’s all quiet-like. I reckon it’s like when you go to sleep. Except there’s no dreams.”
As I realized what she was talking about, my mouth went dry. “Jadie, don’t think like that.”
She looked up then, meeting my eyes. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not going to solve anything.”
“Why not?”
I didn’t know why not. I didn’t know what to say anymore. For lack of a better response, I reached out across the table to her and saw my hand was shaking. Jadie let me touch her, but she didn’t respond. Instead, she just sat, fingering the veins of her wrist.
“I’m not going back,” she said at last, lifting her eyes to meet mine. “I don’t care what you say, what any of them say. I’m not going back. I’m never going back.”
“You know what would be a better idea than that?” I asked.
She looked up again.
“To tell them about Tashee. To tell them everything.”
“I already have. They don’t believe me.”
“You haven’t, Jadie. You haven’t said a word. You’ve made me do the talking and who they don’t believe is me. You tell them. You know. So, you tell them, because if they hear things from you, the way you’ve told me, they’ll have to believe you. Nobody can hear those things and not believe.”
Jadie went back to fingering the vein.
“Why won’t you at least try?”
No response.
“Are you frightened? Is that it? What of? Miss Ellie? Her spiders?”
Jadie shrugged.
“What if the police came here? To the school? If I called Lindy from the police station, she’d come out. You could go in the cloakroom and lock the doors, just like you and I’ve done. Would that make it easier? Could you talk then?”