Conrad felt a little jolt of adrenaline go through him as he watched her.
Maybe the demand would set her off, he thought. Maybe it would conjure up her Secret Friend in person.
He had a momentary vision of her leaping out of the chair at him. Her teeth bared, her claws extended, her hands reaching for his throat. He breathed steadily, forcing the air out with his abdomen.
And then Elizabeth did the one thing he had not expected at all.
She began to tell her story.
The Secret Friend
The first time he came, he was a little boy [she said]. He always changes, you see. He’s always different. The first time, he was a little boy with a striped shirt and red hair and freckles. Billy his name was. He played with me at the Sunshine School and then he came to see me at the apartment. I was living with my mother then.
I used to like to play with him at the Sunshine School. I was very lonely. My mother and I didn’t live in a very nice place and no one nice ever came to visit us. There were never any children at all. Sometimes I would go downstairs and visit Katie Robinson, but she was old. There were no children and I hardly ever got to go out except when my mother took me to the store or to see her friends.
The building was dark all the time. It smelled bad. And lots of times, I remember, I saw rats there. They were downstairs, right underneath the staircase. Upstairs, our room was dark too. The only windows looked out at a brick wall. And it was dirty all the time, with garbage in the trash can and on the floor around the sink. Old dishes, bits of food. It smelled. And there were big roaches and those water bugs. I hated those especially. They were so big. Once, when my mother hit one with her shoe, it cracked so loudly. It squished yellow gunk all over. I hated them.
I didn’t have a bed. My mother had a cot by the window. But I slept on the floor, in a sleeping bag on the other side of the room. That’s why I hated the bugs because they would crawl right in front of my eyes. I was afraid that the rats would come too, but they never did.
Anyway, Billy started out at the Sunshine School like I said. That was a place I went to when my mother had men.
I mean, really I imagined it—the school, I mean—but Billy came out of there. It’s very confusing sometimes. I don’t like to think about it really.
The thing is, the men would come and my mother would, you know, make love or have sex or whatever you call it. My mother would tell me to go to sleep during it. I would roll over and face the wall. They would say I was asleep but I wasn’t really. They made terrible sounds, like wild animals in a forest. When they were done, they would smoke drugs. Did they tell you my mother did that? She did. She smoked drugs and she … whatever you call it … put them in her arm with a needle too. Injected them. The men would give her the drugs a lot of the time. I guess that’s why she had sex with them.
Sometimes though … sometimes a man wouldn’t give her the drugs unless she let him touch me too. My mother would let him. She would sort of walk away and look out the window. I would cry. I would beg her not to. But she would look over her shoulder and say, “Shut up. Just shut up.” And the men would put their hands in me. You know where. I used to feel bad about it. I don’t really think about it anymore. That’s all you doctors are ever interested in though so I’m telling you. Even the women want to hear all about it. Personally, I think it’s just disgusting.
But anyway, what I’m trying to tell you about is that that’s how I started the Sunshine School. I didn’t go to regular school then. I went for a little while, but then my mother said the teachers wouldn’t mind their own damn business. After a while, we moved to the new place on Avenue A and I didn’t go to school anymore at all. I was sorry about that. I liked school. So when my mother was doing things with men, I would roll over in my sleeping bag and close my eyes and go to one that I could imagine.
Like I said, it was called the Sunshine School. There was a big green yard there and I would play with the other kids on it. My mother was the teacher and she would stand to the side and watch us and smile. Billy—the little boy with the red hair and the striped shirt—he was there. We would play tag together. He looked like a boy I had known at the other school, the old school. I liked him.
Billy liked me too. That’s why he got so angry that night. That night—this night Billy came to the apartment—one of my mother’s men really hurt me. He was a short little man with a greasy mustache. He had some kind of foreign accent or something too. He came that night and did, you know, his sex with my mother or whatever. But he wouldn’t give her the drugs she wanted. He said he wanted to do something to me too.
I was nine then. I remember because the day before had been my birthday. When I heard what the man said—about wanting to touch me—I pretended to be asleep. My mother even said to him, “Oh, leave her alone, she’s asleep.” But the man wouldn’t give her the drugs and finally she let him. He came over and put his hands on me and told me to wake up. I started to cry. I asked my mother to stop him but she just told me to shut up as usual. But the man was rough. He didn’t just touch me. He put his thing in me, you know, his penis, whatever you want to call it. It hurt a lot. I mean, it’s not like a big deal or anything. I don’t even think about it at all anymore. But at the time, it did hurt me and I cried. But my mother wouldn’t stop him. She turned away. She wouldn’t watch.
Anyway, I guess that’s why the Secret Friend came.
The man was gone by then. He gave my mother the drugs and left. My mother put the drugs in her arm and then she lay in the bed, sort of sleeping. I went to the bathroom to clean up. I ran a bath and sat in it for a long time.
When I was done, I got dressed in my nightgown. It didn’t hurt that much anymore, but I was still crying and sniffling a little. I came out of the bathroom quietly so my mother wouldn’t look at me. She got angry at me sometimes when I cried or complained or anything.
Anyway, I came through the door—and he spoke to me. I could hear his voice right in my ear.
“Your mommy did a bad thing,” he said. He was angry. I could tell by the way he sounded.
I shook my head. I whispered to him. “It wasn’t Mommy,” I told him. “She had to do what the man said. It’s because of the drugs, because she needs the drugs so much.”
But the Secret Friend said, “Your mommy is bad. You have to punish her.”
But I said, “No. No, Billy.” Because I knew it was Billy. I knew he was there, wearing the same blue-and-white-striped shirt as always. Holding a kickball under his arm. (Sometimes at the Sunshine School we played kickball with the other kids.) I said, “No, Billy. Mommy can be good sometimes too. Really. She can.”
But Billy wouldn’t listen. “Then I’m going to punish her,” he said. “And then she’ll be sorry.”
There was nothing I could do. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see, but that didn’t work. I could see anyway. I saw Billy go over to my mother’s bed. My mother was lying there on her back, smiling up at the ceiling. I said, “Please, Billy, don’t.” But Billy didn’t listen. He dropped the kickball and it went bouncing away from him, across the room. Then he grabbed the pillow out from under my mother’s head. I couldn’t do anything. “Please, Billy!” I said. He pressed the pillow down over my mother’s face. He pressed it down hard and he—he held it there. My mother tried to get up. She tried to push the pillow away. I saw her feet start kicking and her body twisted around. She grabbed at Billy’s arms and she hit him and scratched him. I thought Billy would let go, I thought he would have to let go. But he was so strong. Billy—he was so strong. He had some kind of … special powers or something. My mother couldn’t get up. She kept fighting but she couldn’t. And Billy just held the pillow over her face. He was so mad. He wanted to punish her. I said, “Billy!” But I couldn’t do anything.
Then, after a while, Mommy stopped fighting. She stopped trying to get up. Her hands fell back onto the bed. She just lay there.
Billy let go of her then. He put the pillow back under my mother. My mother just lay there w
ith her mouth open. Her eyes were open too. She looked like she was staring at the ceiling, amazed.
“Now she’ll be sorry,” Billy said.
After that, he went away.
I got into my sleeping bag and went to sleep.
Conrad’s expression never changed. He leaned on the back of his chair. He kept his eyes on Elizabeth’s face. He kept his own face relaxed. He looked impassive and yet sympathetic, intellectual yet understanding. Silently, he was thinking: Holy shit! Whoa! Jesus, holy … oh, my … whoa!
She had been speaking all this while in that blank singsong. A childish voice, almost sweet. Her eyes had been wide and empty and innocent. When she said “And then, after a while, Mommy stopped fighting,” she shrugged slightly, and even flashed a nervous little smile. She seemed to feel the whole thing was a rather puzzling incident that had happened to someone else.
She tilted her head at him now. Looked at him as if she expected him to remark upon the weather.
“I see,” he said quietly. Uh boy. Oh, Jesus, he thought. “And when did you see the Secret Friend next?”
“Oh, right away,” Elizabeth said easily. “Or, I mean, a few days later. He was in the truck going out to the cemetery.”
“Tell me about that,” he said. He tried to breathe steadily, forcing the air out with his abdomen. He had to stop after a while though. It was making him nauseous.
[Elizabeth went on] Well, in the morning, the morning after … after Billy came, I went downstairs to see Katie Robinson. Katie was an old black woman who lived on the floor below us. She was always nice to me whenever I visited her. Once or twice, she even gave me a candy cane or a small toy. I knocked on her door and when she answered, I said, “My mother won’t get up. I think she’s dead.” I remember Katie Robinson said, “Oh, my, my.” Then she called the police.
While she was doing that, I ran away. I knew the police wouldn’t believe me about Billy. I thought they would put me in jail. I went up to the newsstand and stood outside around the video games. I didn’t have a quarter but there was a boy playing Space Invaders. So I stood there and watched him until he left to go to school. When I went back, there were still police cars outside so I hid in the alley. There was an alley right next door where the landlord put old trash. There was a gate in front of it, but I could slip through between the bars. I hid behind some old trash cans, but no one came to look for me anyway. Sometimes, while I was hiding there, I cried. I felt bad about my mother.
It was spring, it was warm, so I didn’t mind staying out there. I didn’t go back into the building until it was almost night. The police had left by then. I went back to see Katie Robinson. She was very worried. She said the police had been looking all over for me. I said I didn’t want to go with the police, they would put me in jail. But Katie Robinson laughed and said that was silly. She said they didn’t put little girls in jail. She said they would find someone else to take care of me. I felt a little better after that.
I was very hungry by then. I had stolen two oranges from a grocery for breakfast, but I hadn’t eaten since and now it was dinnertime. Katie Robinson let me have some of her cereal. She said I could stay with her for the night and in the morning she would call the police again. I got my sleeping bag from upstairs and brought it down to her place.
That night, as I was going to sleep, I asked Katie Robinson, “Where did they take my mother? Where is she now?”
“Well,” Katie Robinson said. “Right now, she’s probably over at Bellevue Hospital, over at the morgue there.”
“Will they keep her there forever?” I asked.
“Oh no,” said Katie. “After a while, they’ll probably take her out to the island. Hart Island, it’s called, and it’s a beautiful place, and they got a whole cemetery out there just for people like us who don’t have a lot of money to be spending on funerals and like that. It’s a place they call Potter’s Field and they’ll give your mother a real nice funeral there and lay her to rest real pretty, I’m sure.”
“Can I go?” I asked her. I wanted to see my mother’s nice funeral. I wanted to tell her I was sorry about what Billy did and to say good-bye. But Katie Robinson said regular people weren’t allowed out on Hart Island. That made me feel bad again. That night, when I was supposed to be asleep, I lay awake and cried. I was afraid my mother would think that I had done it to her and that she would tell everyone in heaven. I wanted to explain to her about Billy, about how I couldn’t stop him.
The next morning, before Katie Robinson woke up, I crawled quietly out of my sleeping bag and snuck away. I knew what Bellevue looked like because my mother had had to go there once. She had been bleeding too much. Her, you know, woman bleeding. Her period or whatever you want to call it. But anyway, I remembered what Bellevue looked like. So all I had to do was ask Mr. Garcia at the grocery which direction it was in and then I could find it. It was right up on First Avenue, that big wide avenue that goes by the highway and the river.
It was a long walk, but it was still very early when I got to the hospital. It was not a nice-looking building. It was big and dirty; brown and dark and all ghosty. I was a little kid, you know, and it looked to me like some kind of big monster hunching up out of the grass. The morgue was sort of off to one side and around back. It was a more modern building, just a box of glass and green cinder block.
There was a parking lot in front of the door. I was walking across it. I was going to go inside and ask where my mother was. But as I went, I heard someone, a man, say something about Hart Island. “Another load for the Island,” he said. The voice was coming from around in back.
I walked over to the edge of the building. I peeked around the corner. There was a white truck parked back there, a small white truck with a square back—a square van section, you know, with Bellevue Hospital or something written on the side. It was backed up to the building, to a metal door. The metal door was open and so was the back door of the van. I could hear the men’s voices still. They were coming from inside the building. Then, a second later, the men came out.
There were two of them. One was dressed all in blue, I remember; in a blue work shirt and jeans. The other one had a plaid shirt on. They came out of the metal door. They were carrying a box between them. I knew right away that it was a coffin.
They lifted the box into the back of the truck. Then the man dressed in blue said, “That’s the last of them, Mike. Come on in for a sec and sign ’em out and you’re on your way.” The two men went back into the building through the metal door.
I knew what was happening—I mean, I could guess it. They were taking the poor people out to Hart Island for their funerals. I thought, my mother must be in the truck. Peeking out from behind the building, I suddenly got very excited. My heart started beating very hard. I felt like I was going to do something.
I didn’t move, at first. I was too scared. I knew the two men would be coming out any second. I didn’t want to move at all. But then, very softly, I heard someone call me. “Elizabeth.” Like that: very soft. “Elizabeth.” It was coming from inside the truck.
I didn’t have time to think. I just ran forward as fast as I could. The van was high for me, but I was so excited, I grabbed hold of the edge of it and jumped right in. There were a dozen or so boxes in there. Coffins. I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone else. I didn’t hear the voice anymore.
Then the men came back. I saw one of them—the one in the plaid shirt—come to the morgue entrance. He turned back over his shoulder and waved. “See you later, Lou,” he called. I just stood there frozen, staring at him.
But then I heard that voice again. “Elizabeth.” That’s all it said. So quietly. But somehow I knew what it wanted me to do. I crouched down, hiding behind two boxes that were piled one on top of the other. I heard the man’s footsteps coming across the parking lot, back toward the truck. Then I heard the back door rumble. The light in the truck started to go out, it started to get dark. I wanted to stand up, I wanted to call out to him, “Wait. I
’m still in here.” But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I don’t know why.
And the door closed. And it was dark in there. With just the boxes around me. It was very dark.
I remember I called out once. I tried to call out. I just said, “Help. Help. I’m still in here.” But the engine started up just then. It was very loud and I don’t think anyone could hear me over it. I wanted to pound on the back wall but there were boxes piled against it. I didn’t want to go close to them. The truck started moving. I sat down in the middle of the floor. I cried. I tore at my hair and I cried, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy …”
That was the scariest part: I couldn’t see anything then. I knew the boxes were there all around me, but I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see what was happening to them. I guess I mean … if they were still closed. I was afraid someone might come out of them. They were just wood, hammered together, with two planks on top. It would have been easy for the planks to come off, for someone inside to come out. Even my mother. My mother might come out of one of them. She might be angry at me. She might think I was bad. And it would be too dark to see her until she was right next to me, her dead face, grinning. I cried and cried. I whispered, “Please, please, please.”
Then, though, I began to see a little. Shadows. Shapes. I could see the boxes, about a dozen, maybe fifteen, stacked two up against the walls, to the side of me, behind me. Some of them were very small. I mean, just a little bigger than cigarette cartons. I kept turning from one side to the other, watching them, making sure that none of them moved or opened. I was still crying pretty hard. My face was all wet and there was snot running down onto my lips.
And then someone whispered right into my ear: “Elizabeth.”
I screamed and spun around. I couldn’t see her in the dark, but I knew she was there, she was sitting right beside me. Mommy. My mommy. Don’t be mad, Mommy, it wasn’t me, it was Billy. That’s what I said. But Mommy didn’t say anything anymore. She just sat there, invisible in the dark. And I could feel her staring at me.