I push my glasses to my eyes and peer at Cooke again. And it occurs to me for the first time that people can do this to each other. People really can. And I wonder: How thin is the line? Is it something we all have in us? Is it just a matter of friction and pressure? Is it shit luck and a poor lot? Is it time and chance? I scratch at my scalp and sniff. Maybe Mark Twain knows.
To my surprise, the next volume holds Cooke’s own answer.
The paper is dry, and it crackles as I navigate through it. It smells musty. I turn to the right page. There is a small tear in the bottom corner, and my spine sparks cold at the thought of someone else being privy to this. There’s a different picture of Cooke. This time he looks more pathetic. Almost resigned. I read hungrily. Finally, at last, a reporter asks him why. Why did he do this?
Cooke replied: I just wanted to hurt somebody.
I sigh and rest my cheek on my fist. I glance out the window for a time. That can’t be it. That can’t be all. I reach for the newspaper dated the day after Cooke’s hanging, but I find no report. I frown and lean forward, scouring the sheets in front of me. It’s only when I’m deep into its innards that I realize my mistake: October 27, 1965. I’m a full year out.
But underneath the date, I’m drawn to a headline that stops me cold. I pause to clean my glasses with my shirt. I hold my breath and pore over the box of text beneath it.
I read about a girl from America called Sylvia Likens. The police found her dead on a dirty mattress. She was sixteen. The same age as Laura Wishart. And I feel myself lured down a path I’m not sure I should be treading. The outline of her story seems so black and obscene. I’m ill and cold and empty, but hungry for more. So much so that I’m driven back to the newspaper stand to take every edition since October back to my table. Mrs. Harvey eyes me over the rims of her spectacles. I sit down heavily. And I read on with my brick sinking, patching together the story of Sylvia Likens.
Sylvia’s parents were carnival workers and often moved from city to city. A few months ago, in July, they were due to leave for another stint. They couldn’t afford to bring all their children with them, so her father called on a recent acquaintance of his, a woman called Gertrude Baniszewski, and offered her twenty dollars a week as board for Sylvia and her younger sister, Jenny. Baniszewski, described as a sickly and severe woman, accepted the offer despite having seven children of her own and an estranged husband.
It seems that as soon as the door was closed on Sylvia Likens, the nightmare began. Gertrude Baniszeswki was at once bitter and suspicious, then jealous and sinister. She took an immediate dislike to the girls, particularly Sylvia, and often falsely accused her of thieving so that she might punish her.
After the first week, the stipend promised by the girls’ father did not come. Enraged, Baniszewski thrashed Sylvia with a wooden rod. This became the first of many beatings. The violence became routine and grew in intensity. Sylvia must have been terrified. After a few weeks, she started wetting her bed. But it wasn’t just Baniszewski. As the abuse escalated, Gertrude somehow enlisted her own children and others from the surrounding neighborhood, inviting them to enact awful cruelties upon Sylvia. They did unthinkable things. They stubbed cigarettes out on her skin. They cut her and beat her. They pulled her hair and they spat on her. They made her strip her clothes and dance in front of them. They made her put a Coke bottle inside her private parts.
Sylvia’s torment got worse. Every day she was kicked and punched and hit and burned. She was just a grisly game for them. They tortured her methodically, all at Baniszewski’s bidding. They began lowering Sylvia into baths filled with scalding water, holding her down as a means of cleansing her of sin. Then they rubbed salt into her open wounds.
Eventually, Sylvia tried to escape. She was caught on the landing. She didn’t even make it to the front yard. Baniszewski dragged her inside. She shoved her down the basement stairs. From then on she was made to live in the cellar with the dogs. Baniszewski treated her like one of her animals. Worse. They starved her, feeding her nothing but crackers. They wouldn’t allow her to wear clothes. They wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom. They made her eat her own shit and piss and vomit.
Sylvia had told Jenny that she was going to die soon. She said she knew it. She must have been so afraid. It sounded as though she was giving up. She’d borne too much. She was letting go.
Sylvia’s single act of defiance was to spend a night banging a shovel against the walls of the cellar. But nobody came. Nobody saved her.
She died in the bath. Of hunger and shock. She just slipped away. When they made the discovery, Baniszewski and her daughters carried Sylvia’s body and dumped it on a filthy mattress across the hall. They folded her arms across her chest. Then they called the police.
What they found was a tiny body scratched and torn and bruised and branded, still wet from the bath. She had open sores from her scalding. She was stippled with puckered cigarette burns. She had teeth missing. Two black eyes. Her nails were broken. She’d bitten right through her bottom lip.
Before the police left, Jenny Likens quietly tugged at the shirt of an officer. And she said: “If you get me out of here, I’ll tell you everything.” Later that day, Baniszewski was arrested.
I stop reading.
One of the hardest things for me to understand is why Jenny waited until then to speak out. She’d watched for all those months; she’d been there for every savage act. She had the chance. Hadn’t she been at school while Sylvia was housebound? She could have told somebody there.
But it’s not just Jenny. It’s the whole choir of mute voices that puts the lump in my throat. Why didn’t anybody help her? The neighborhood knew. Oh, they knew. The folks next door, the Vermillions, had been there and seen the extent of Sylvia’s injuries. They’d heard the screams and the commotion. The thumping of the shovel. But not a sound came from their side. They let it happen. Did they not care? Whole blocks of people. Whole towns. A whole city. Whole clusters of families. Not one of them uttered a word.
And how was it that Gertrude Baniszewski could seduce so many children into committing these acts? How could they turn up, day after day, to do the unspeakable? And how could they return home of an evening, no words of shame or remorse tumbling out of their mouths? What did Sylvia Likens do to deserve this? Or was it just shit luck and chance?
Everything bubbles up in me. I have to snatch it and squash before it boils over.
I’ve read too much. I’ve seen too much. I’m in a strange daze, angry and bewildered. I don’t know what to do with myself. I want to wash my shaking hands of all this. I want to clear my head. I wish I could unknow all I’ve learned. Exorcise the memory of Eric Cooke and Albert Fish and wring my heart dry of Sylvia Likens. And Laura Wishart? Right now, I’d tear it all out of me in a second. I’d choose to forget. I’d sleep safe in my settled snow dome, and I’d close my window to Jasper Jones.
I hastily stuff the books and newspapers into a shelf in a back corner and leave the library feeling exhausted. I squint in the sunlight and wonder where to go. After a whole morning’s reading, I’ve collected more questions than answers.
I decide to head back home by way of the bookstore. I look at my feet as I walk, my head circling and cycling dizzily through too many avenues of thought. I feel like swimming. I want to dive straight into the Corrigan River and ripple my body and have the heat fizz off my brown skin. I imagine scrubbing at myself with grit from the bottom. Then lying on the surface and floating downstream like a raft. Or a corpse.
As my mind wanders, I trip and stagger on a raised pavement slat. I don’t fall, but my recovery is just as spectacular. I stumble like a duckling on ice. When I right myself, I look up and see Eliza Wishart outside the bookstore. She looks both amused and concerned.
“Are you okay, Charlie?”
I forbear a shriek of pain and put my hands on my hips. I force a smile and hold up my hand, which must end up looking like some sort of strange, leery wince, like I’ve just swallowed
a glass of somebody’s urine and I’m recommending it.
“Yeah, nah,” I say, flexing my back. “Yeah, look, I’m fine. Didn’t hurt. At all, really. Just. Yeah. Bloody … town council and that. These slabs are … dangerous.”
Christ. I’m afraid to look down. I must have stubbed the bastard clean off my foot. I hold my breath. I want to either die or cry or take to this footpath with a jackhammer.
But she smiles and everything ebbs. She is beautiful. She looks a little like Audrey Hepburn today.
“Well, you know, I’ll let my father know. I’ll make sure it’s the first thing on the agenda at their next meeting.”
“Oh, no!” I say, realizing. “I didn’t mean, you know …”
“It’s okay, Charlie. I’m joking.”
“Oh.”
“Where is Jeffrey? Playing cricket?”
“No, he got grounded. He’s stuck at home.”
Her eyes widen conspiratorially.
“Oh, really? What did he do? Is he in a lot of trouble?”
“Just general stupidity. Nothing, really, you know, bad.”
I am nervous. Where is the sharp ballroom wit that I always imagined would punctuate this moment? My wit has abandoned me. Just when I need wit, I am witless.
“So, what have you been doing in town?” Eliza asks.
“Oh, nothing,” I say, and look down. “I was just at the library.”
She nods.
“Yeah, just, you know, reading.”
“At a library?”
I am momentarily confused, and she smiles. Oh. She’s outwitting me. Deftly. I need to lift my game. I can feel myself blush. I scuff my heel.
“Yeah. Well, it’s less suspicious than pretending to browse outside a bookstore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She shifts her weight onto one leg and tilts her head.
“Well, you know, it appears as though you’re casually looking, but I know you’re just reading for free. The jig is up.”
She smiles and rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, you got me. Red-handed. You’d make a fine detective, Charlie.”
That snaps me back. My head whirls and my toe throbs. I smile weakly, trying to stem my nausea. A dragonfly jets past my waist and I recoil like I’ve been shot.
She raises her eyebrows.
“I have to get home, Charlie. I had to slip out as it is.”
“Oh. Okay.” I nod excessively, like a pigeon.
Eliza waves the short novel in her hands and smooths her dress. “I just have to get this,” she says quickly, and then she pauses as she opens the door. “You want to walk me home?”
My mouth is open. I shrug and keep nodding.
The small bell on the door chimes as it claps shut behind her. There is certainly not enough time for me to compose myself. I inwardly admonish my decision to wear dirty clothes. I hope I don’t smell.
I’m just sniffing my armpit as Eliza walks back out, her book in a brown bag. I snap my arm down so hard, I wind myself.
We set off. I am shitting myself. Should I hold her hand? Should I do that? I should. I should do that. But my palms are sweating. Profusely. Surely that would be bad. Off-putting. It would be like giving her a clammy invertebrate to hold. So I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t do that.
But I walk close as we near the oval. I hope those belligerent dick-heads are training at the nets so they can see me with her. But they’re not. The oval is empty, save for an old man practicing his golf swing under the shade of a fig tree.
I pretend to watch him with interest. I’m panicking. I should be regaling her with chatter. I should be squaring my shoulders like Jasper Jones. I scour my stupid empty head for witticisms and repartee.
“What book did you buy?” I ask, nodding toward the brown bag.
“Oh.” Eliza holds it up with two hands. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
I nod once and open and close my mouth like a large fish. I silently scold myself for not having read it. And I resolve to. Tonight.
“I’ve seen the film four times,” she says. “But I haven’t read the book yet. My mum says I’m not allowed, which is so stupid because I already know what happens, but I’m going to anyway. I can’t wait to read it. I wish I lived in Manhattan.”
“So do I. Or maybe Brooklyn,” I say.
“Well, I’ll live in Manhattan, and you can live in Brooklyn, and we’ll meet at the Plaza Hotel for high tea. And I’ll wear a fox-fur coat and penny loafers, and you’ll have a tartan scarf and a brown pinstripe suit. And a pipe.”
“Sounds swell.”
Past the oval, we make our way down the pea-gravel road to her house. This is the old part of town, where two-story houses with large trees out the front are common. It is the only part of Corrigan which hints toward any division of class. It’s eerily quiet today, though. No cars swish past; there are no kids or pets about.
“Do you like Audrey Hepburn?” I ask.
“Yes. Absolutely.” Eliza seems to ignite. “I think she’s brilliant. And pretty. She’s so … dignified. Do you like her?”
“Are you joking?” I’m pleased she’s excited. “I mean, she’s beautiful. Really beautiful. Stunning. She’s perfect. She’s my favorite, you know, actress. For certain.”
She smiles. I hope I’m not being too obvious. I can’t control my hands. They’re flapping about like I don’t own them. I must look like I’m unraveling my own innards. I go on.
“And talented. Of course. Obviously. I mean, she’s not just, you know, pretty. She’s smart too. I really like her. A lot.”
Eliza seems amused. “Have you seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” She looks up and squints as she asks.
“Well, no. Not yet I haven’t.”
“Really? You should. What films, then?”
Shit. I am in it now. What films, then, Charlie? Idiot.
“Oh, um. Well. Probably my favorite would be … it would have to be … the last one. With …,” I stammer.
“Rex Harrison?”
“Yes!” I almost burst with relief. “I’m no good with names.”
“My Fair Lady,” she says, and I could kiss her.
“That’s the one!” I say. “She was amazing. Really.”
“Is that because her name was Eliza?”
“Oh. Oh, of course,” I say, and blush.
Eliza smiles and looks down. I’m eager to move away from this conversation. We go quiet for a time.
We round into Sullivan Street, which seems significantly busier. The lawns are lush and thick and well kept, and two rows of trimmed peppermint trees track down its length. Eliza slows her pace.
“So you’ve probably heard, then?” she says softly.
My stomach wrenches and my body tenses. I’m not sure what to say. My breath stalls and that familiar dizziness returns. I want to run away.
“No. What?”
“My sister. She’s gone missing. Since yesterday. We don’t know where she is.”
I stay quiet. We stop and duck under a tree a few houses from hers. We peer out through the thin strands of peppermint branches. Eliza looks very small in the dappled shade.
“My parents are going crazy. Well, my mother is. She hasn’t stopped shaking and crying. My dad is just trying to be normal, which means, you know, stinking of beer and yelling a lot.”
I can’t speak. My mouth is too dry.
“The police have been at my house all morning. That’s why I had to sneak out. I hate them being here.”
“Do they …” I clear my throat. “Do they have any idea where she might be?” I ask. There’s a tingly rash on my neck, as though I’ve already been caught.
“No,” she says. Her tone is strange. Like she’s describing someone else’s family. There’s no sign of panic. Neither of us can look each other in the eye. Eliza looks down; I look over her shoulder. “No, they don’t have any idea, really. They’re going to start searching soon. Sometime this afternoon. I think they’re organizing some people from town as well, and th
ere are special police coming from the city.”
“Oh, okay. My god. Eliza, this is terrible. You must be … Are you all right? Do you know where she might be?”
I should place my hand on her shoulder. Or rub her back. Or say something comforting. But it would feel trite and stupid. And dishonest. Because I know exactly where her sister is. Because Eliza Wishart is hurting and I’m just trying to cover my arse. I feel like such a phoney.
Before she can reply, a loud shriek cuts the street. It is Eliza’s mother, coursing this way, not quite running. Her face is red and her eyes are pink and puffy. She looks haggard and furious. I step back.
“What are you doing?” she screams at Eliza, and ducks into our umbrella of foliage. Her mouth is turned down sharply at the corners. Eliza remains passive and calm as her mother shakes her roughly by the shoulders, which has her head rocking wildly back and forth. Eliza looks so brittle, as though she might snap, but she stands firm.
“What are you doing? You stupid little girl! Where have you been? Why on earth would you leave the house without telling anybody? We have been looking everywhere! You stupid, stupid little girl! What are you trying to do to me?”
Eliza’s mother is trembling with feeling, and clearly attempting to smother her sobs. She keeps her grip on her daughter’s shoulders.
Eliza looks engulfed, like she’s been caught by a bird of prey. Her voice is soft.
“I just came down the street for a while to see Charlie. I wasn’t far away. I’ve been right here. I told Dad before I left.”
“Don’t tell me lies!”
“I’m not,” Eliza says plainly, with a shrug.
Her mother slaps her hard, just once, across the face. I feel ashamed and awkward. Eliza seems unmoved.
“Where did you get this, then, young lady?” Eliza’s mother snatches the book from her hands and holds it close to her face.
Eliza’s composure impresses me.
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