Child of Darkness

  I shrugged, which encouraged him.

  "You shouldn't be finding the work too hard, not from the school history you have," he added, tapping on a folder opened on his desk. "So," he continued, leaning toward me, "why aren't you doing better, Celeste? I can't believe you're really trying. Are you really trying?"

  I was about to answer him when I saw Noble walking up from the ball field. I was sure it was Noble, even though he was walking with his head down. I remembered too well that plodding gait of his and the way his head and shoulders would bob along with each carefully chosen step.

  "Celeste? Are you listening to me?"

  "My brother isn't happy about my being here," I said, my voice laden with anger.

  "Pardon me?" He leaned back. "Your brother?" He thought a moment and then leaned forward again and quickly read some pages in my folder. "When have you spoken to your brother?"

  "I saw him last night," I said.

  Now Mr. Fizer was the one simply staring.

  "Oh," he finally said. "Well, then, we'll have to find out why your brother is unhappy about your being here," he said, forcing a smile. "How do I get to speak to your brother?"

  Noble turned abruptly to the right and disappeared from view.

  "You can't talk to him," I said.

  "Why not?"

  "He doesn't talk to strangers," I said. "He never liked it when any came to our home. He would pretend they weren't there."

  "Okay, if he won't talk to me, then maybe you can tell me why he is unhappy about your being here," Mr. Fizer said.

  "He thinks I should go home," I said. "He's afraid I will forget."

  "Forget? Forget what?" Mr. Fizer asked.

  "My family," I said.

  "Oh. Well, I don't think you will ever forget your family, but that doesn't mean you can't let other people help you and care for you and eventually love you the way your family loved you," he said.

  "No one can love me like that," I told him, my eyes so narrow and fixed on his face, he actually raised his eyebrows and look flustered. "Don't ever say such a thing," I chastised, as if he was the child and I was the adult.

  "Yes, well, I don't mean to upset you. I'm here for you if you need to talk. Any time, Celeste, any time at all," he said.

  I pressed my lips together and turned away from him, slamming the door shut on everything else he said.

  There were more conferences, but none with me. The talks were between the Prescotts and my teacher. Nothing they did or said changed anything, and the Prescotts grew more and more concerned. I overheard Papa Prescott tell Nana Prescott that it was even affecting his golf game. They began to argue more and more about me.

  When I began to sleepwalk, as Nana Prescott described it, Papa Prescott grew even more concerned. She found me downstairs in the living room talking to Noble, and once she found me in the kitchen having a glass of milk while I talked to him. Each time, I told her what I was doing, and each time she had me go back to sleep.

  I knew they were having endless conversations about me with their children, too. None had come yet to see me, but Nana Prescott spoke to someone, perhaps Madam Annjill, who advised her to do more family-type things with me.

  They tried taking me on what they called fun rides. They bought me some new clothes, and Nana bought me a new doll, even though there really were dozens of old ones in one of the closets. I couldn't play with them anyway, because they had the fingers of the Prescotts' grandchildren still on them. J felt like my hand was over another every time I touched one or picked one up.

  They took me to parks and amusement parks, and they tried to get other girls my age from my class to come to their home to be with me, but I hadn't really made any friends at school. Most of the other girls kept their distance. I often saw them whispering about me.

  My schoolwork didn't improve. I began to sleep a lot and eat poorly, too. Finally, Papa Prescott told Nana Prescott that they should "throw in the towel." I heard her cry about it, and I did feel sorry for her.

  "She is a nice lady," I told Noble that night.

  "The world is full of nice ladies. You need to be with family," he insisted. He wouldn't compromise.

  In the end the Prescotts did give up on me, but they discovered they couldn't bring me back to the orphanage run by Madam Annjill and her husband, Homer. That orphanage was closed. Madam Annjill had suffered a massive stroke and died. All of the children living there had been transferred to other orphanages. This disturbed Nana Prescott even more.

  "We're going to turn her over to a strange new place," she moaned. "How dreadful for the child."

  "It's not going to be any more dreadful for her than things are for her here," Papa Prescott insisted.

  "Maybe we're just too old for this sort of thing. She needs a younger pair of parents, and maybe a home with a child already there, too."

  "How sad. How sad," Nana Prescott moaned.

  They conferred with the children's protection agency, and a little more than a week later, they gave me the news.

  "I'm sorry," Nana Prescott said. "I think we're just too old to raise a little girl like you. You need more energetic, younger people. It's not fair for us to keep you," she added to make herself feel better.

  I said nothing.

  I didn't shed a tear, which I knew bothered her more. It made Papa Prescott feel better about it all, however. He felt justified in his decision to give me up. I saw it in his eyes. I was far too big of a problem for them.

  A new orphanage was found for me, but when the Prescotts returned me to the children's protection agency, they told them all about my conversations with Noble, and arrangements were made for me to visit with another child psychiatrist who donated his time to the needy.

  His name was Dr. Sackett, and I grew to like him very much. He was very understanding about Noble.

  "It's not unusual to cling so hard to someone who loved you so much," he told me. "But you have to let go, just the way any little person lets go of his or her imaginary friends. As you get stronger and more self-confident, you will," he assured me. "After all, Noble comes to you only when you're afraid or insecure, or even feeling guilty about something, right?" he gently prodded.

  In time I thought he was right, and as I grew older and stronger, I did see and hear Noble less and less at this new orphanage, until he was virtually gone.

  That was where I had been up until the very day, nearly six years, in fact, when I was called quite unexpectedly to meet a young man and woman apparently looking for a foster daughter my age. It was really the woman who was looking for me, who needed me even more than I needed her. The reasons for that would not be clear for a while, and when they were, I found myself in the most frightening situation in which I had ever been.

  I should have paid more attention to the shadows thickening around me, perhaps, but I had promised myself I would try hard, very hard, to put all that aside and be as close to a so-called normal young woman as I possibly could be. Dr. Sackett had convinced me that the voices and visions were all corning from inside me, from my own insecurity. If I was ever to be a truly successful and independent person, I would have to shut the doors on all that.

  The question was, would I be right or wrong to do so? The answer wasn't long in coming.

  3 A Curtain Dropping on My Past

  .

  "Hi, I'm Ami," a very pretty young woman said, rising quickly to greet me when I entered the office. She didn't look much older than me. We were about the same height. I was five feet five by now. Our figures were similar, too. I thought we even had the same shoe size, but what truly amazed me was how close to the color of my hair hers was.

  She held out her hand, which had long, polished fingernails, a hand that obviously never performed any hard work. I took it and shook, glancing simultaneously at the slim man in a charcoal gray pinstriped suit and black tie seated beside her. He swung his soft hazel eyes to her and twisted his thin lips up at the right corner.

  Ami held on to my hand and turned to
him.

  "Isn't she just perfect, Wade?" she asked him, keeping her eyes on me. Then she stepped beside me to face him. She bumped her hip against mine. "Look at us. She could be my sister."

  He raised his light brown eyebrows and widened his eyes. With his fingers held out stiffly, he pressed his right palm over his thin, closely trimmed dark brown hair as if he sensed a strand had fallen out of place, and then he grunted what sounded like agreement.

  "You are perfect. You are," Ami insisted. "I want to know all about you. Every little thing. Nothing is unimportant. We're going to be great friends."

  I turned to Mother Higgins, the headmistress of the orphanage. I saw she was amused by the young woman's outburst, but instead of smiling, she raised her eyes slightly toward the ceiling, just as she did when she was about to begin a prayer of thanks at our dining table. Then she looked at me with her most officious headmistress's face.

  "Celeste," she began, "this is Mr. and Mrs. Emerson."

  "Oh, please don't call us Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. I'm Ami, and this is Wade," Anti insisted. She was still holding my hand. I didn't know whether to pull it out of her grip or just turn my fingers into limp noodles to get the message across.

  "Why don't you take your seat, Ami," Wade suggested in a monotone.

  She turned back to him sharply.

  "So that we can get on with it," he explained with a little more feeling. "There's a lot to do."

  "Oh, yes. Yes, of course," Ami said, and released me. She sat and folded her hands over each other on her lap, primping and smiling like an impatient little girl whose daddy had just told her to behave or she wouldn't get any ice cream.

  "Please take a seat, Celeste," Mother Higgins told me, nodding at the chair across from the small sofa where both Mr. and Mrs. Emerson now sat, staring at me. Something wasn't right about them, I thought. Something wasn't quite right, but I wouldn't permit that feeling to frighten me. Instead, I let it make me more curious about them.

  Wade Emerson had his legs crossed, but his back was so straight, it looked like a steel rod had been shoved alongside his spine down to his waist. He pursed his lips, which further tightened the skin around his narrow, almost square jaw. The eyebrows he raised for emphasis were long and full, but his hands were not much longer or bigger than Ami's, and just as soft looking.

  I was still wearing the school uniform that the orphanage provided all the girls, a navy blue top and skirt with thick-heeled dark blue lace-up shoes and white knee-high socks. The navy blue top had a big, masculine-looking collar with large black buttons and tight cuffs. It was loose-fitting, and I'm sure appeared a size or so too large. However, I had long ago stopped being self-conscious about my clothes or my looks. As Mother Higgins often told us, "It's not how you appear on the outside that matters; it's how you are on the inside." I don't think any of the other girls ever really believed that, especially when they contrasted themselves with other girls who weren't orphans, but sometimes it helped us get through the day and kept the sadness from taking control of our eyes and lips.

  Just on first glance, I could tell that I didn't have to be any sort of clairvoyant to easily conclude Ami Emerson wasn't someone who would ever believe in Mother Higgins's adage about what was and was not important. Everything about her outer appearance was too perfect, too well planned.

  "The Emersons:" Mother Higgins began, "are very interested in providing a healthy home environment for a young woman just your age. Mrs. Emerson--"

  Ami turned to her quickly and gave her a pained look.

  "I mean, Ami," Mother Higgins corrected. Ami smiled. "--and her husband Wade are relatively newly-weds, having been married only four years."

  "Four years and five months," Wade gently added. He looked at his wife. "Not that I'm counting the days or anything."

  "I hope not. Only people in prison count the days," Ami said, and laughed. Mother Higgins nodded and smiled, too.

  "Well then, Celeste," she continued, "as Ami has explained to me, she and Wade have decided to begin their own family in about two years, but in the mean-time, they'd like to offer their home, their family life, to a young lady such as yourself."

  As if she could no longer hold it all in, Ami Emerson burst out with her own version of the explanation.

  "I know the hardest years of my life

  emotionally were the teen years. You're a woman, but everyone still wants to treat you as if you were a little girl. You're not sure of what's right and what's wrong. It's a dangerous time!" she declared, nodding in agreement with herself. "You are capable of making some very serious errors if you are not given the proper guidance and advice.

  "I'm sure this is a wonderful place," she said, smiling at Mother Higgins, "but you can't possibly get all the personal attention you need at this climactic time in your life. And there are experiences that are just not. . . well, in the experience of your guardians," she continued. "Not that I'm saying there is anything wrong with that," she added quickly. "It's just not in their lifestyle."

  Wade's eyes widened, and Ami caught it.

  "I don't mean to sound critical of you or anyone else here, Mother Higgins."

  "Of course you don't, dear," Mother Higgins said generously, a slight smile at the corner of her lips that only I could discern.

  "Anyway," Ami continued, turning back to me, "it just came to me the other day that a girl in your circumstances would be the perfect foster daughter for us at this time, right, Wade?"

  He nodded, now looking at her as if he was truly amazed by her himself.

  "I said to Wade, Wade, why don't we do something wonderful and generous with our money and our time? Why don't we take in a young woman and provide her with foster care?

  "I'm sure you understand why I don't want to start with a much younger girl. It's much harder, much more difficult, to care for a little person, and when my own baby is born, well, she or he would get all the attention. I would just hate to end it for the little girl we had taken in to live with us, or to have her think she isn't loved as much as my own child will be loved," she said, scrunching her face as though she were about to cry for this imaginary little girl.

  Wade grunted again.

  "That's why you are so perfect," Ami

  continued. "By the time I give birth, you'll be out there on your own or in college. Why, we understand you have property, too. Of course, you'll always have a place in our home and our hearts, but that's quite different from being a year-round resident for the rest of your life or until you got married or something.

  "What do you think?" she asked me, but before I could respond, she continued. "We have a very large house. It's a mansion, in fact."

  "It's not a mansion, Ami. Please don't exaggerate," Wade chided.

  "Well, how big is it, Wade? Go on, describe that," she ordered, folding her arms and nodding her head once as though she was throwing down a challenge.

  He turned, and after a deep sigh, said, "It's eight thousand square feet on twenty acres."

  "Eight thousand square feet. There you are. How big is the orphanage, Mother Higgins? Well, how big?"

  "Well, I don't know exactly, but I think it's about that, if not a bit smaller."

  "Yes, precisely." She turned back to me. "You live in a building the size of our house or a bit smaller, with a dozen or so other young women. I'm sure you're crowded. And how many acres do you have here, Mother Higgins?"

  "Please," Wade pleaded.

  "How many?" Ami insisted.

  "Five, I believe."

  "Five. Exactly my point. We have twenty."

  She turned back to me and nodded her head firmly.

  "So you see, I wasn't exaggerating. Our house will certainly seem like a mansion to you. Why, I bet your room in our house is as big as the living room here."

  "Ami, you're making us sound like snobs," Wade gently complained.

  "I am not. I've never been a snob. I hate snobs. My mother made me into a debutante, but I hated every minute of it, and you know I did." r />
  "All right, Ami. All right. Let's get on with it, is all I'm saying."

  She turned back to me.

  "Wade is always embarrassed by our good fortune. I don't think of it all the same way. If you have it, if you've been blessed with it, be proud of it, but most of all," she said, beaming at me, "be generous and charitable." She turned to Mother Higgins. "It was like a surge of goodness came into my head. It was like an electric shock. I thought, Why not go out and help someone in need? I'm sure you understand why I feel it was like a holy moment."

  "Yes, yes, I do," Mother Higgins said, holding on to her tight, amused smile. She raised her dark eyebrows. "The Good Lord acts in mysterious ways."

  If she could have, she would have winked at me.

  "Amen," Wade said dryly. He kept his gaze on the floor. Ami scowled at him and then turned back to me.

  "I'll enroll you immediately in the nearby private school, Celeste," she continued, barely taking a breath. Her hands fluttered about as she spoke, the large diamond ring on her left hand catching the sunlight that poured through the window and then sending beams of reflected light over the walls, Mother Higgins's face, and me. "The timing is perfect. You've just begun your senior year, so transferring won't be so damaging. I'm sure you'll catch up quickly, Celeste.

  "By the way," she said, lowering her voice, "I absolutely adore your name. Celeste. Your mother was so imaginative. My name is like a nickname," she said, grimacing. "Ami. Mon Ami, my father used to say. That means 'my friend' in French. Who expects to be called my friend by her father? My friend?"

  "Could we please get on with it, Ami?" Wade pleaded in a tired voice.

  "Yes. Back to what I was saying, Celeste. Wade and I have already discussed it and decided the private school would be the best place for you. The teachers will give you the personal attention you might need to make the transition from the school you are now attending. And don't worry," she quickly added, "they don't make you wear those stupid, ugly uniforms at this private school. The girls and their mothers wouldn't stand for it," she said, and laughed.

  Wade didn't crack a smile. He stared ahead like someone counting to himself. Mother Higgins looked a little upset now, but kept her face as stoic as she could manage. I stopped smiling. I didn't like to see her irritated. She had always been very nice to me. I didn't want to bring it up, but it wasn't the school that had us wear this uniform; it was the orphanage. It was Mother Higgins's way of keeping us from being upset about our wardrobe. There was no way we could compete, and wearing the uniform made that irrelevant. At least, that was Mother Higgins's hope. In truth, although the uniforms solved our immediate concern, they served to identify us all as orphans. I couldn't keep track of how many times and how often other students, especially the girls, asked us why we had to wear "those stupid outfits" all the time. Memories of how I felt and how the other girls felt when that happened rushed back over me.