She was shouting, “Crap, crap, crap! Why do you have to do this now?”
Then I saw it.
A big wet spot on the sheet.
And while Julia cursed at him and Max continued to hit her, I went to the door and turned around. I knew it was over. But even so, I shouted, “You don’t understand anything! I was trying to save you! Don’t you get that, you crappy little monsters?” I unlocked the door, slipped through it, slammed it behind me and turned the key.
Outside, just three or four steps away from the blue house, I threw myself in the barley field. I rolled onto my back and stretched out my arms and legs. I must have looked like Max, who had been laying down on the mattress in this same position. Above me, the sky shined a nasty blue. All around me was the gold-gray barley, and my ears rang with the sounds of Julia pounding, throwing herself at the door of the blue house and screaming.
Screaming, “Help!”
Max was screaming, too, but in a different way from Julia. Inside, they raged. Outside, in the field, I lay there, unable to move, not even to do the simplest thing: get up and leave. I lay there like I was dead and everything was done.
They pounded and screamed for at least half an hour, then got quieter until finally there was silence. I stood up, went slowly over to the door and listened. At first I couldn’t hear anything, and then I heard something that I could hardly believe.
But it was true.
Julia.
She was finally crying.
39
I don’t know how I managed to get to my grandparents’ house, I really don’t know, but somehow my trembling legs carried me back. If a police dog had growled at me or a helicopter had circled over my head, I wouldn’t even have noticed.
When I reached their door, I began to feel sick, and at precisely the moment when my grandmother came out of the kitchen and said, “Where are all those cold cuts? And Grandpa’s chocolate is missing, too,” I threw up all over the freshly washed paving stones and on my grandmother’s slippers. It kept coming and coming, new waves of vomit from my mouth. My grandmother asked at least a hundred times, “Mascha, my dear, are you okay? Tell me what’s happened.”
She didn’t make it sound like her clean walkway was more important than me. She was genuinely worried and afraid. “John, come!” she called in alarm, and then she turned back to me and said, “Mascha, you’re quite pale. What is it?” She stood behind me and held my shoulders, which was something she had never done before.
Grandpa was now there holding a bucket, but by then I was only heaving up small amounts. When it didn’t seem like anything else would come up, he led me to the bathroom, where I rinsed out my mouth and brushed my teeth. Then my grandfather brought me into the living room and helped me lie down on the sofa.
“Should I turn down the television?” he asked.
“No,” I moaned, “leave it.” I was happy to be distracted and happy for the tea and the washed-out bucket and my grandmother’s care as I lay on the sofa. I still felt sick, and I thought about all the sweets I had stuffed myself with, every single one of them. What I didn’t think about was everything else, the things you couldn’t eat, that sat so heavily in my stomach.
I dozed. The sofa was soft and smelled a little musty. Sleep, I thought, sleep, just sleep, and then, a hundred years later or maybe just ten minutes, I flinched. Two children, one seven, the other nine years old, went missing yesterday, said a voice from the TV. It was hard, but I raised myself up on the sofa and watched the news report. The children, who are siblings, may still be in the Clinton vicinity, but the police have not ruled out the possibility of a violent crime.
Possibility.
Possibility.
I let myself fall back on the sofa and listened to the rest of the news and felt like I was deep underwater. I heard, four foot three and of stocky build, and then, a few sentences later, the search will go on until dusk tonight and resume at dawn tomorrow.
I heard my grandmother’s voice. She was standing right beside the sofa, but I couldn’t understand her. All I understood was my stomach, which began to churn, and then the vomit surged once again from my mouth and landed on the carpet, right beside the bucket.
40
I woke up in the guest room in the middle of the night. Someone must have carried me to bed, probably Grandpa, which was nice to think about. It was too bad I hadn’t been awake for it. I still felt awful and could have used more sleep, but it wouldn’t come. I lay in bed and waited, waited for something, maybe some Leonard Cohen miracle, maybe to wake up a second time and discover that the whole thing had been a terrible dream.
And then I sat up in bed with a jolt. It was three in the morning and pitch-black outside. I couldn’t stay where I was. I just couldn’t. My legs were wobbly, my stomach empty and it took me ten minutes before I had my feet on the carpet at the foot of the bed. It took me another ten minutes to dress. It was 3:30 by the time I climbed out the window and set off.
On the path to the barley field.
To the blue house.
It was quiet. Everyone was sleeping peacefully behind their blinds. The tidy edges of the lawns were busy growing ragged, making more work for their owners, just to keep them from getting bored. It was cooler than I’d thought it would be. A wind rustled through the dark front yards and across my face.
I decided to take the shortcut again. I wasn’t curious about what was happening at the Brandners’ anymore. I didn’t have any time to lose. I wanted to be near Julia and Max.
The field.
There it was.
Even in the darkness, you could see how perfectly the blue house fit in with the sea of barley. It sat there silently and let the wind pass over its roof. I stood on the edge of the field and listened. I had expected to hear crying or banging on the door. But there was nothing, just this silence, just this wind. I walked through the field and lay down right beside the blue house.
Behind the bars, the window was still open, and after a while I could hear quiet snoring. Definitely Max. I hoped he was more comfortable than I was. Everything about me hurt. The barley straws jabbed me, the earth beneath was hard and I was chilly because I hadn’t thought to bring a jacket. But then it occurred to me that Julia and Max didn’t have much more. They were lying on a stinking wet mattress. I only hoped that Max had found my grandfather’s pants and put them on.
I lay on my side, with my cheek on my hand. My head was empty. I had no idea why I was there. The wind rustled through the barley, and soon I drifted off and found myself having terrible dreams. I half-woke, then kept falling back to sleep.
Then it was light out, and I woke up for real. I’d heard a noise, but I didn’t know what it was.
And then all at once I knew exactly what it was.
It was a dog barking.
I stood up quickly, went to the corner of the blue house and peered around it.
The huge, wide field.
The light breeze.
From far away, I saw them coming.
41
What would happen next at the blue house? I had no idea. I ran as if my life depended on it, ran and ran, stumbling twice, skinning my knees. When I reached the edge of my grandparents’ neighborhood, I could see them from far off, standing in front of their door. Grandma was holding something in her hands, something that I only recognized when I got closer.
Max’s clothes.
She had found them in the laundry basket.
I started crying. I said, “Oh, Grandma.” I wanted to hug her, but she turned away from me and went into the house. My grandfather stayed standing there beside me and laid a hand on my shoulder, but he couldn’t look me in the eye.
An hour later, the police came. There were four of them, and they arrived in two cars, which seemed to make an enormous impression on the neighbors. Neighbors crowded along the garden fence and in front of the door. I
stood at the kitchen window with pains in my stomach and listened to my grandfather open the door and greet the police. They didn’t have to explain themselves. Grandpa knew everything, even though I hadn’t said a word for the past hour. Not a word.
Grandma wasn’t much better than me when it came to talking. She had locked herself in her bedroom, crying, and wouldn’t come out. Though she did say one thing before she disappeared into the bedroom, just one thing, repeated five times, through her tears: “It’s all over.”
The burden of saying something fell to my grandfather. After all, someone had to talk to the police, and it certainly wasn’t going to be me.
Through the window, I watched Trudy standing out in front of the house shaking her head with an angry look on her face, and then my grandfather came into the kitchen with the police, three men and a blond woman. It was the woman who talked to me. I guess they thought a woman would have an easier time getting something out of me. They didn’t know I had given Julia and Max my promise, a promise that I would keep forever. It was the least I could do for them.
I sat at the kitchen table and tried to remember what Julia had told me about not being there. She found a spot on the wall and stared at it and imagined that she was somewhere else. I wondered if this was what my father was doing when he stared at the wall. It seemed to work for him; at least he was impossible to reach when he did that.
I looked for my own spot on the kitchen wall and found one: the calendar, which had a recipe for apple butter on it. But it didn’t help. I stared and stared but I was still there, my heart pounding as hard as ever, and nothing could protect me from what the policewoman said.
They had found the children in a stinking dump. I nearly said, Hey, wait a minute, what do you mean dump? They were in the blue house. But it was as if she could read my mind.
“The house was like a dump inside. There were scraps of food, crumpled papers, empty bottles, all these broken toys and the stink—God in heaven, what a stink! What on earth made you lock up those children? They are very upset with you.”
—
“A couple more days and— Mascha? Right? Mascha, do you know how hot it can get in a house like that? The children are being interviewed now. Their parents are with them. I think you can imagine what they are saying. Mascha, there must be an explanation. You didn’t just lock the children up like that, did you?”
—
“That’s what they’re saying. They say you put them in the house and locked the door. Is that true?”
—
“Okay, you’re not going to talk. Fine. How old are you, twelve, thirteen? Not older at any rate, which is lucky for you, or you could be held responsible. Do you know what that means? Do you know what you’ve done? Did you ever once think of those children?”
—
“Then let me be clear. This was a kidnapping. Maybe you just did it on a whim, but that’s the way the father sees it, and that’s the way a lot of people are going to see it. It would help if you would explain yourself.”
Suddenly I couldn’t stand it anymore. The whole time I had been staring at that hideous calendar and trying not to be there, but it wasn’t working. It didn’t work. I had been forced to listen to every word. And I just couldn’t take it anymore. I jumped out of my chair, and it fell backward with a terrible crash. For a moment I looked at the surprised face of the policewoman. She had a mole on her right cheek, and she had long eyelashes. Then I ran from the kitchen to the guest room and slammed the door behind me.
The police didn’t let that worry them. They stayed at least half an hour longer. Grandpa must have talked more than he had in the last two years put together. Then the lock clicked shut, and the house was deadly quiet. I lay on the bed on the verge of tears. I had all the time in the world and was sure no one would disturb me, but still the tears wouldn’t come. I couldn’t even get sick again. I was empty inside. I lay there on the bed for two or three hours, just staring at the ceiling.
Around noon, I had to go to the bathroom and got up. From the hall, I heard voices in the kitchen and slipped into the tiny guest bathroom that was just beside the front door.
That was when I saw it.
The glass was smashed.
Someone had thrown a stone through the window.
I ran into the kitchen afraid and saw my grandmother kneeling down to sweep up shards of glass. On the floor lay a stone even larger than the one in the guest bathroom. My grandmother was sobbing.
“Your father is coming tomorrow,” she said. “He’ll take you down a peg.”
42
There were no more stones, but we did get a few phone calls, a lisping social worker, the police; and the following day, my father actually showed up. He sat on the garden chair. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking because I knew he hated that garden more than any place on earth. He hadn’t set foot in it since my mother died. But there he was, unshaven and haggard. It looked like he hadn’t eaten for weeks. He was thin and sat there kneading his hands.
It was unbearably hot again that day, with a blue sky. Grandma had halfheartedly baked an apple cake, but it was dry and had no cinnamon. She hadn’t looked at me since the day before and still wouldn’t, but my father seemed to realize that there was no point treating me like I was invisible or yelling at me. I was miserable enough. He made an effort though. “Couldn’t you possibly have done this a little differently?” he asked. “You can’t just lock people up. I didn’t raise you that way.”
Grandpa, who was reading the latest edition of the Clinton Weekly, peered around the edge of the newspaper and said in a shaky voice, “Mascha, she had a notion in her head.” It was the first thing he’d said about the situation since yesterday morning. I looked at him with amazement, but he was already hiding behind his newspaper again.
I could see the headlines on the front and back pages. On the back page it said things like Cool Waters Tempt Young and Old and Alfred Esser Appointed Chief of Fire Department. But on the front page it was something else entirely. In great black letters it read A Child! And underneath the article there was a photo of the barley field with the house and a few policemen and paramedics and men in white coveralls. The field looked like the wind was blowing through it, but really it was just my grandfather trembling.
Dad said a few more things, but nothing much, and Grandma was still stirring and stirring her coffee when someone yelled something from the other side of the fence. By that time, she’d probably already stirred the coffee cold. A woman stood at the fence, a woman I had never seen before. She shouted “Criminals!” three times. Then she disappeared, and my grandmother began to cry.
“Does anyone ever think about me?” she wanted to know, and did we know that no one would talk to her anymore, and she could just forget going to exercise class, and she might as well drown herself.
“By the time you find a place to drown yourself around here, Charlotte, the whole to-do will be over,” Grandpa grumbled back, and I actually came close to laughing.
Grandma pretended she hadn’t heard him and then turned to my dad and asked him to take me back home with him, if possible right then, because she couldn’t control her granddaughter’s behavior.
Grandpa shook his newspaper, and Dad looked pale and said something about my being “old enough” and that “this was bad” but that his film locations were too far away and he only had two weeks left to shoot and that he definitely couldn’t take me with him.
“This child!” shouted Grandma, and she was about to go on when Grandpa folded up his newspaper, slapped it down on the table and said loudly, “Mascha will stay here and that’s the end of it.”
43
So I stayed in Clinton.
And that was the end of it.
For the next few days, I sat in the guest room and did hardly anything but eat my meals and go into the garden. No one talked to me except Grandpa, who tried t
o be nice and say a few words now and then. The policewoman with the mole came back once. But there was really no point. She couldn’t lock me up, and I didn’t say a word, not even when she mentioned my mother’s death, which had nothing to do with anything. And then there were three letters, all from the same sender: Mr. Brandner’s lawyer.
My grandmother barely said a word, except now and then to my grandfather. I was silent, too. I held my tongue from morning to night, longed for my music and somehow passed the days. In the neighborhood, all hell had broken loose, at least according to the newspapers. Grandma was afraid to go out of the house, so she couldn’t get them at the newsstand anymore, but my grandfather brought them home when he went shopping.
One afternoon, the newspaper lay open on the kitchen table and I read on page three, in great black letters:
HORROR STORY REMAINS A MYSTERY
FOR FIVE DAYS, a thirteen-year-old accused kidnapper has refused to address the accusations against her. The abducted children, a girl, aged nine, and her seven-year-old brother, are safe with their family and slowly recovering from the ordeal of their captivity. Was this ultimately just a nasty prank committed out of boredom? Police officer Edgar Price remarked, “The children today are increasingly brazen.”
Around the area, people remain baffled by the events. According to resident Ramona Silver, “It’s scandalous that the girl is not being punished. She might abduct my children next!” Neighbor Rose Johnson is equally apalled: “Everyone here knows the girl lost her mother at an early age, but what right does that give her to kidnap innocent children?” Last Thursday, the girl locked two children in an isolated shack and kept them imprisoned there under appalling conditions until Saturday. The children were found thanks to a major search effort conducted by the police.
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