I am out the door by five, lugging my suitcase and briefcase down the hall for a cab ride out to O’Hare.
The girl and her baby are asleep when I go, their own door pulled to and presumably locked, as well, my office chair possibly slid under the door’s handle for an extra safeguard in case we try to force our way in while she sleeps.
The sun is beginning to rise, painting the sky gold. As the cabbie, with his talk radio and the overwhelming smell of a pine-scented air freshener filling the cab, careens down I-90, I lay my briefcase on the seat beside me. I reach inside for a notebook and pen, to get some work done on the ride. It’s a solid thirty minutes out to O’Hare on a good day, and judging by the buildup of cars already on the interstate, I’m guessing it won’t be a good day.
I toss open the briefcase, and there I see it, a note, scribbled on a purple sticky note, the answer to last night’s unanswered question.
A note that sucks the oxygen right out of the cab.
Handwriting I’ve never seen.
The simple inscription: Yes.
WILLOW
Louise Flores wants to know more about Matthew and Isaac, my foster brothers if that’s what you call them. The term brother implies some kind of familial tendency, of which there was none. Not with Joseph. Not with Miriam or Isaac.
But Matthew. Matthew was different.
Sitting there in the meager room, across the table from Louise F-l-o-r-e-s, I picture Matthew, tall, like his father, but with hair the color of chocolate brownies, Momma’s chocolate brownies, and dark brown eyes. I imagined that this was what Miriam must have looked like once, long ago, before she became a mousy gray. Isaac, on the other hand, was Joseph through and through: a carrot top with orange hair on his arms, his legs, his chin.
“What about them?” I ask, and the lady says: “Did you get along with them? Did they participate in this alleged sexual abuse as Joseph did? Or were they victims, as well? What was their relationship with their catatonic mother?”
“Catatonic?” I ask.
“Yes. In a daze. Unresponsive.” She says that she assumes Miriam suffered from a condition called catatonic schizophrenia, based on my description. If, she says, what you say is true, as always implying that it is not.
A troll, I think. An imp. I envision Miriam parked in the corner of her room on the wicker armchair, staring into space, while in the room next to hers, her husband did as he pleased.
My bedroom shared a wall with Matthew and Isaac’s bedroom, and for the first year or so, that alone was the only association we had. We ate no meals together. Looked away or downward when we passed each other in the halls of the home. Matthew and Isaac were made to share a room when Joseph and Miriam brought me in, and I didn’t know if they liked it or not because no one talked much in that house. Matthew and Isaac spent much of their day in school, and when they were home, they were in their room, doing homework and reading from the Bible. Joseph didn’t allow any exchange with me, and he would readily remind Matthew and Isaac that: “Bad company ruins good morals,” when their eyes so much as wandered in my direction.
To this end, Isaac never changed. If anything, he became more like Joseph as time went on, a lemming ready to plunge off a cliff at his father’s request. But Matthew was different.
I remember the night, the first time we really spoke. I was ten. I’d been living in that house for almost a year, and in that time, Joseph had visited me two dozen or more times. I laid in bed, well after midnight, unable to sleep as was almost always the case. I was thinking of Momma and Daddy and rattling off as many “I love you likes” as I possibly could. And then there were footsteps, outside in the hall, moving along the wooden floorboards to my bedroom door. I held my breath, waiting for Joseph to come in, to slide his clammy body into bed beside mine. I began to shudder as I always did when Joseph’s footsteps clamored down the hall and that, in itself, set in motion a whole slew of things: my heart beating as though it might jump from my chest, the sweaty hands, sweaty everything, the inability to see straight, the ringing in my ears.
And then the door slid open and standing there, in the darkness, was a much different profile than that which I was used to seeing. And the voice was different, softer somehow, tender, equally as scared as I was. “Did you know that cockroaches can live for a week without their heads?” he asked. And then I knew, by the sound of his hushed voice: Matthew.
“They can?” I whispered, sitting upright in bed, propped on my elbows in the nearly black room, the only light from a nearby streetlight that flickered off and on, off and on. All. Night. Long.
“Yup,” he said. “Sometimes a month. They die from lack of water.”
“Oh.”
And we stood like that in absolute silence, for a minute or more, and then he closed the door and went into his room.
The next day I found a book slid under the mattress of the bed, sandwiched in between the patchwork quilt and a scalloped dust ruffle: A Children’s Guide to Insects and Spiders. I knew it was from him. When Joseph went to work, and Matthew and Isaac disappeared down the street, joining the other kids at the bus stop, those kids who heckled them and called them names, I sat on that bed of mine and devoured the book.
Momma had sent me to school back in Ogallala, and that school had taught me to read, and Momma used to make me read to her every night before bed, everything from her fashion magazines to the Julia Child cookbooks to the mail. I was a good reader. I wolfed down that book from Matthew on the very first day, and then slipped it back into his room, under his bed before he and Isaac, or Joseph, got home. I learned everything I could about earwigs and mantids, cicadas and damselflies. I learned that horseflies live for thirty to sixty days, that queen bees hibernate in the dirt in winter, that periodical cicadas only appear every thirteen or seventeen years.
A few days later, a new book arrived: Sea Anemones. I read how they looked like flowers, but really were not. Instead, they were predators of the sea. They didn’t age like others plants and animals. They had the ability to live forever, to be immortal, the book said. That book taught me how the sea anemone injected venom into its prey, and how that venom paralyzed the prey so the sea anemone could swoop fish, shrimp and plankton into their carnivorous mouths.
I didn’t like those sea anemones one bit: so pretty and celestial, and yet assassins. Would-be murderers in delicate, angelic bodies. It didn’t seem fair. It was a trick, a trap, an illusion.
A few days later: Rocks and Minerals. And then another book, and another. Nearly every week Matthew was slipping another book from the school’s library under my mattress: Charlotte’s Web and The Diary of a Young Girl and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I read in the moments that I wasn’t cleaning house or bathing Miriam, or making tuna salad sandwiches for dinner.
Every now and again, Matthew would pause by my bedroom door in the middle of the night, along the way to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a glass of water. I got to know which footsteps were Matthew’s and which belonged to Joseph. Matthew’s footsteps were light and airy as they moved down the hall, then hesitant as he closed in on my room, as if not knowing whether or not they should pause by my bedroom door. Joseph’s, on the other hand, had their minds made up. They were coming to my room, right through the white door without a second thought or a moment’s hesitation.
Matthew pulled the door open carefully, so it wouldn’t squeak, while Joseph flung it straight open, never mind if its bellowing woke someone in the house. Matthew stayed a couple seconds, at best, and would offer some tidbit of information that really, I didn’t give two shits about and chances are he didn’t, either. I came to understand it wasn’t about the information itself but the exchange: a pact, a bond.
I was not alone.
One night: “Did you know a crocodile can’t stick out its tongue?” And another: “Did you know nothing rhymes with orange?” and I admitted that no, I didn’t know that, and spent the rest of the sleepless night trying to come up
with something to rhyme with orange. Something so that I could tell him about it the next time he passed by. Porange. Yorange. Florange.
Nope. Nothing.
“Did you know Venus is the hottest planet? It’s surface can be 450 degrees Celsius. That’s over 800 degrees.” And I kind of just stared because really, I didn’t know much about Celsius or Fahrenheit, and in all honesty, I was starting to forget all about Venus. It had been so long since I’d sat in a classroom back in Ogallala and learned about the planets and weather and all that. The next day there was another book: a book on astronomy.
One night Matthew passed through and said to me, “Did you know my folks get almost twenty bucks a day to foster you?”
“What?” I asked. I’d never heard of such a thing. “From who?” I wondered if the money was coming from what little money Momma and Daddy used to have, or if my caseworker was paying my fare.
But in the near darkness, Matthew shook his head and said, “From the good ol’ state of Nebraska. That’s who.” He stood in the doorway, in the plaid pants he wore every night to bed, and a white undershirt with yellow stains down the front, two inches too short for his lanky body.
“Lily, too?” I asked, wondering if Paul and Lily Zeeger were making twenty bucks a day to care for Lily.
But Matthew said no. “Not when you’re adopted. The Zeegers had to pay for Lily. Like ten thousand dollars or something.”
“Huh?” I asked, disbelieving. Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money. The Zeegers bought my Lily like you’d buy a shirt at the store. I didn’t know how I felt about that, if I was supposed to feel good that they’d fork over that much money to own my Lily, or if I was supposed to feel bad because she was just like any other commodity you might find at the supermarket. Clothing. Peanut butter. Bug spray.
I wondered if one day, if I ever had more than ten thousand dollars, if I could buy my Lily back. Or maybe, one day, the Zeegers would want to return her, like a shirt that didn’t quite fit right. Maybe one day Lily would be for sale again, and I’d figure out a way to buy her myself.
But what really rubbed me the wrong way was that Joseph and Miriam were getting paid for keeping me. They didn’t buy me like the Zeegers bought Lily.
“How do you know?” I asked.
He shrugged, like duh. “I just do.” And then he closed the door and walked away.
“Why didn’t you ever try to run away?” asks Ms. Flores. By now the man in the corner, the guard, has leaned in and I know he’s wondering the very same thing. Why didn’t I try to run? I glance at him, his brown eyes prodding me on from behind a navy uniform that looks like something his dad should be wearing, not him. He is a boy, not a man.
“Well,” they say, those eyes, “why didn’t you?”
“I was scared,” I say. “Scared to stay and scared to go. God would be mad at me if I disobeyed Joseph. That’s what he told me. That’s what he made me believe.”
I knew that there was no way I could go. Not at first anyway. Not that there was anywhere to go, but if I left, Joseph would do something to harm Lily—that he told me nearly a million times—and if by some chance he didn’t, then God would send his thunderstorms and vultures after me, and I wouldn’t stand a chance. He’d turn me into a salt pillar. Drown me with a flood. “I was a kid,” I remind her. Before going to live with Joseph and Miriam, I believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny. Until I lost a canine tooth, that is, and stuck it under the pillow on my bed and waited all night for one of the shiny gold coins the Tooth Fairy used to leave me back in Ogallala.
But she didn’t come.
I made believe she couldn’t find me, there in that house in Omaha, that she was flying all over Ogallala looking for me.
And then I started to wonder about things back home, in the prefab house on Canyon Drive. I wondered if another family had moved into that home, into my home, and if some other little girl was sleeping in my bed. The one with the hot-pink quilt—with orange polka dots all over—and lacy indigo curtains Momma had made with fabric she found on clearance, though they didn’t match a thing. I wondered if that little girl was hugging my favorite stuffed purple kitten, all wrapped up in my hot-pink quilt, reading aloud from my favorite picture books with her momma, awakening in the morning to find my shiny gold coin tucked neatly under my fluffy pillow.
I told Matthew about it, one night when he passed by my room. I told him how the Tooth Fairy couldn’t find me. How I was still holding on to that shiny canine tooth. How I didn’t know what to do, how to get it to the Tooth Fairy so she could use it to build her gleaming white castle in Fairyland.
“Fairyland?” he whispered. And I told him how the Tooth Fairy used all those millions of teeth she collected to build a shimmering castle and village for her and all of her fairy friends. And they called it Fairyland.
He just stared at me, dumbly, like he didn’t know what to say.
And then he kinda stuttered, “There ain’t no Tooth Fairy, Claire,” he said. It was quiet for a real long time. And then, “Throw it away.”
And just like the day Momma and Daddy died, a little part of me died, too.
I was too scared to ask about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. But when Christmas came and went again, with no presents, I knew the reason. And it wasn’t that I’d been a naughty girl that year.
Days later Matthew left a new book under my mattress: a book of fairy tales. Goldilocks and the Three Little Pigs, Rumpelstiltskin.
But the one that interested me the most was the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, the tale of a funny-looking man who played his magic pipe to lure the children away from town. They were never seen again. I envisioned Joseph, dressed like a medieval jester from the pages of the fairy-tale book, in a motley coat and tights, playing his pipe up and down the streets of Ogallala to lure the children from their homes. Children like me.
I wasn’t sure what scared me the most about living with Joseph and Miriam. Joseph with his hawk eyes and aquiline nose or the vengeful God Joseph told me about or the things he said he would do to my Lily if ever I misbehaved, how he would trap her and skin her alive. He told me how he’d do it, too, how he’d hang her by her feet, then cut her jugular and carotid veins with a blade so that she’d bleed to death. Then, with slow, deliberate movements, he sliced his cold fingers against my throat, so I knew exactly what he meant. He used words like sinews and corpuscles, words that I didn’t know, but they scared me nonetheless.
Funny how thinking about that God of Joseph’s, and of all the things Joseph would do to Lily if I was bad, somehow made me feel safer inside that home, staring out at the boys on their bikes and the girls with their chalk, kids like me who had no idea what was going on inside Joseph and Miriam’s home. To them we were just the odd ducks on the block, what Momma used to call old Mrs. Waters from down the street, the widow, who walked around talking to her dead husband as if she were chatting on the phone. I imagined those kids out that window, the kids with the bikes and the chalk, and their own mommas and daddies telling them never to play with Isaac and Matthew ’cause they were weird. Not to talk to Joseph because he was an odd duck, and then later, when all was said and done, it would be those mommas and daddies who told police that they felt something funny was going on inside our home, all along, they felt that something wasn’t quite right. Something they couldn’t put their finger on.
But they didn’t do a thing about it.
HEIDI
I slip from bed once Chris leaves, quiet so as not to wake Zoe from sleep. Beside me, she sleeps like a newborn, on her back, arms up in the air: the starfish position, the rising sun casting a golden hue across her face. I watch her sleep, the sass and defiance at bay for a time, her features relaxed, her lips flirting with a smile. I wonder what it is that she dreams about, as she lets out a sigh, and rolls over onto her side, taking the warm spot on the ivory sheets where my body has just been. I reach for the comforter from the end of the bed, and pull it up over her shoulders, clos
ing the blinds so the impending sunlight stays out of her eyes.
I walk into the hall, pulling the door to, and find my feet traipsing across the hall to the closed office door, my hand coming to rest on the satin nickel knob. I press my ear to the door and listen for signs of movement, of which there are none. My heart beats loudly, quickly in my chest. My palms begin to perspire.
I’m overwhelmed with a sudden need, a very basic human need, like food, shelter, clothing.
A need to hold that baby in my arms.
There’s no logic as I set my sweaty palm on that satin nickel knob, only an instinct, a reflex, some innate behavior.
I know that I shouldn’t and yet I do; I turn the knob silently, astonished to find it unlocked.
An omen.
They lay side by side on the pull-out couch, Willow and the baby, a green chenille throw covering their bodies. Willow has her back turned to the baby, a pillow set over her head as if trying to tune out the sound of midnight cries or coos, or maybe Chris’s early morning shower before he departed for New York. Willow breathes deeply, evidence of a deep sleep. I tiptoe across the room, cursing a cat who follows me in, scampering under the sofa bed for a place to hide. The drapes are drawn, keeping the outside world out, tiny bands of light sneaking in through the opening in the middle, lustrous early morning light tinged with pink and gold.
In her deep sleep, Willow fails to notice the way my feet tread lightly across the carpeted room, and in my mind I’m envisioning no Willow, no sleeper sofa.
Just a beautiful baby in a bassinet waiting for someone to arrive.
The baby’s eyes are wide-awake when I finally adjust to the darkness of the room and can see her clearly. She is staring with wonderment at the white ceiling, and when she sees me, she smiles. Her legs start kicking in excitement, her arms flailing wildly about. I slip my hands under the weight of her body and lift her from the bed. Willow lets out a sleepy sigh, but doesn’t open her eyes.