Ghost Girl (18 page)

Lucy appeared.

“Do me an enormous favor, okay?” I asked and smiled as winningly as I could, then I disappeared back into the cloakroom.

Head down, long hair falling forward to obscure most of her face, Jadie just stood. Beyond her on the bench were the Sasha dolls, removed from their box and all carefully laid out, side by side.

“Looks like there’s a family there,” I said, approaching the dolls. “This one could be the mama and this one the daddy. And these look like they could be the children.”

Jadie didn’t move as much as a muscle.

I sat down on the bench beside the dolls. “What’s this one doing?” I asked, picking up the doll with the long dark hair, the one Jadie favored. “I wonder how she’s feeling.”

Jadie remained motionless.

Gently, I caressed the doll, pushing back its unbrushed hair. “Shall we play at dolls?” I asked Jadie. “This can be your doll. You pretend to be her and tell my doll what yours is thinking about. Okay?” I held the doll out to her.

Jadie turned away to avoid my giving it to her.

Pulling the doll back in, I stood it on my knee. “Oh, I’m feeling unhappy,” I whimpered in a high-pitched falsetto on the part of the doll. “I’ve got terrible feelings inside me, all scared and miserable.”

“Oh dear,” I replied solicitously in my own voice. “Why’s that?”

“I’m frightened. I’m so, so scared,” the doll whined.

“Oh? Why’s that? Can you tell me about it?”

“Terrible things are happening to me and I don’t know how to stop them,” the doll cried.

“How awful for you,” I murmured sympathetically and enveloped the doll in a tender hug. “Oh, poor you. I feel bad for you when I hear you’re unhappy. Come here and let me hold you. Let me help.”

Jadie took a step closer. Watching her furtively with my peripheral vision, I continued my conversation with the doll.

“I’m frightened! I’m frightened!” the doll cried in a piteous voice. “It’s hard for me to tell you. I’m afraid you won’t understand. I think you won’t believe me. I’m scared you’ll think it’s my fault.”

“Oh dear,” I said, turning to look at Jadie, “she’s so unhappy. What can we say to her? Come here. Can you think of something to tell her to make her feel better?”

Staring at the doll, Jadie hesitated, a perplexed expression on her face. Then, very cautiously, she took a step nearer. A pause, then she extended her hand in an uncertain manner. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered and lightly caressed the doll’s hair.

“I wonder why she’s so frightened,” I said.

“It’s her birthday.”

“Ohhh,” I said in a wise and knowing tone, although I hadn’t any idea why Jadie should consider a birthday frightening. “Poor dear,” I said to the doll. “You’re so, so scared, aren’t you? But I’ll hold you tight.” I cuddled the doll against my body. “Words are a good thing, because they help me understand. I’ll keep you close and you can tell me all about what’s wrong. Then I can help.”

Jadie began to weep.

“Come here, lovey,” I said, extending my arm toward her. “You can tell me, too.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I can’t. You won’t understand.”

“You can. And I will.”

“I
can’t
and you
won’t.
”

“Give me a chance, all right?” I smiled gently at her. “Right here, nice and safe. I’ll keep my arms around you.”

“I
can’t,
” she cried passionately. “You just don’t understand.” And with that, she broke out of my grip and turned on her heel. Running to the door, she unlocked it and bolted out before I could get to her. I was left with the sound of her footsteps echoing away into the silence of the empty corridor.

School began at 8:45, so most mornings I came about eight. I used the forty-five minutes to lay out last-minute materials, make sure I was organized, and then, on most mornings, to socialize. Getting a cup of coffee from the lounge, I would wend my way back via the front office, Alice’s room, and a few others, just to say hello and see how things were getting on, before ending up in Lucy’s room, where I often stayed until the bell rang.

So my rounds started the following morning, but before stopping in to see Lucy, I went back to my own room to put my now empty coffee mug on the desk. Opening the door, I was surprised to find Jadie sitting in her chair at the table.

“How did you get in here?”

Jadie didn’t respond. She was still dressed in all her outer clothes, right down to her mittens.

“Mr. Tinbergen’s going to be mad, if he sees you. He’s been pretty tolerant about letting you come in after school, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to push him too far. And he’s always been very strict about children staying outside until the bell goes.”

“My sister’s got a birthday,” Jadie replied. Her eyes were on me. Such beautiful eyes she had, such a sheer, clear blue, their intensity heightened by the thick black lashes. Her forehead wrinkled in concern.

“Your sister’s got a birthday?” I echoed, bewildered.

Jadie’s eyes grew wide and dark, the pupils dilating as she searched my face. I could sense her imploring me to understand, and I was briefly overcome with a feeling of utter helplessness, because I knew I didn’t in the least. “Which sister?” I murmured.

“Amber.”

“Oh.”

Jadie hunched forward. “She’s going to be six on her birthday.” Her voice was so soft as to be barely above a whisper. “On the twenty-seventh.”

“And that upsets you?”

Clearly, it did. Head down, shoulders bent, Jadie twiddled a tassel on one mitten. A thick snuffle betrayed her nearness to tears.

Pulling out the chair opposite, I sat down at the table. “Could you tell me a little more?”

No answer.

I reached my hands across the table to touch hers. “Lovey, I want to help you. I can tell that you’ve been very worried lately; I know you’re unhappy. I know you want to help, but you
have
to talk to me. Otherwise, I can’t tell what to do.”

“Amber might die.”

“Why do you think that?”

Jadie looked up, her expression one of anguished exasperation. “I just
told
you! She’s going to be six on her birthday.”

I paused in puzzlement.

“And I don’t
want
her to die.”

“Actually, sweetheart, people don’t usually die just because they’ve turned six.”

“Tashee did. And Amber might, just like Tashee. Maybe it’s going to be the same. I think it’s Amber’s turn now.”

“Tashee died?”

Jadie’s brow furrowed in an expression of suspicion. “You knew that. I already told you.”

“Sometimes, lovey, I get a little bit confused. This isn’t because I’m not listening or because I don’t believe what you’re saying. I don’t mean to. It’s just that …”

Jadie’s chair had begun to slide backward, and I realized she was about to run away again.
Oh please
, I was praying,
let me know what to say next.

“When Tashee died,” I said softly, “how did it happen?”

Jadie regarded me warily. Then she glanced around the classroom, her eyes scanning the mopboards and crevices for cobwebs. At last she leaned toward me and said in a whisper, “Miss Ellie took the knife, the one shaped like this,” she paused to trace a design on the tabletop with her finger, “and she put it right there on Tashee’s throat.”

Jadie paused again, swallowed, leaned even closer, until our heads were almost meeting. “When she done it, the blood came out. Sort of like in a hose. It didn’t run down, like when you cut yourself, but it sort of came up, like when you turn the hose on, and Miss Ellie caught it in the cup.”

Placing a hand under my chin, I laid my fingertips against my lips to keep from betraying my feelings. A moment, two moments passed before I could trust my voice. “Miss Ellie killed her? Miss Ellie? The lady from TV?”

Cocking her head, Jadie met my eyes. “Yeah,” she said hesitantly. “You know about it?” There was a note of relief in her voice. “You know? You saw it on your TV, too?”

O
n Wednesday afternoons, I allowed the children an hour of “free time” after recess to pursue whatever activities they might choose. For Brucie, this usually meant lying on the floor on his beloved blanket and mouthing objects. For Philip and Reuben, it was a chance to play at the sand table or with water in the sink, two activities both boys enjoyed tremendously and got spiritedly messy with. Jeremiah and Jadie, however, tended to have wider-ranging tastes. Sometimes they played, sometimes they drew or colored or read, sometimes they continued on with an interesting project brought over from another lesson. And Jeremiah, who had an unaccountable tidy streak, occasionally spent the time cleaning out my cupboards for me.

This particular afternoon, Jadie couldn’t settle at any activity. Up and down from her chair, she wandered around the classroom, absently touching the books on the shelf, the fish tank, the stacked work folders. In front of the bulletin board, she paused and studied the schoolwork pinned there. She gazed at the posters on the wall. At last she came to the shelves where I kept the art materials. She passed them by initially, then pulled herself back. There were several squeeze bottles of premixed tempera paints standing in a row. These she considered, then fingered. “Do you mind if I paint?” she asked at last, lifting up one of the bottles.

“No. The big sheets of painting paper are up there on top of the cabinet.” And I returned to what I was doing at the table.

Jadie busied herself setting up the easel, tacking on a sheet of paper, slipping on a paint shirt, and then filling one of the foam egg cartons we used as palettes with an assortment of colors. Picking up a paintbrush, she paused in front of the paper. When I next glanced up several minutes later, she was still standing in front of the blank paper.

A few moments later, Jadie, still clutching the paintbrush, came over to me. “Can I take my stuff in the cloakroom?” she asked softly.

“All of it? The easel and everything?”

She nodded.

“I suppose so. But could you manage without locking the door?”

“Can I lock the other one? Not this one into here, but the one into the hallway?”

I nodded.

Arduously, Jadie dragged the easel into the cloakroom, then came back to carry the paints, brushes, palette, and newspapers for the floor.

Needing to get a correcting pen from my desk, I went into the cloakroom just as Jadie was preparing to put her first strokes on the paper, and what I noticed immediately was that she was standing nearly erect. Startled by my noise, however, she jerked and hunched over.

“It’s only me,” I said and picked up my pen.

“Close the door when you go out, okay?” she asked. “And make everybody knock before they come in. Okay? If I don’t lock it, make everybody knock.”

We left Jadie on her own for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, during which time it was obvious that she was enjoying what she was doing. Several times she’d come out for additional materials, more paint, bigger brushes.

At last I went into the cloakroom to warn her about the impending bell. The small area was in artistic chaos. Bottles of paint were strewn about on the benches. Mucky, disintegrating paper cups were on the floor and an assortment of brushes, all covered in paint, lay everywhere.

“May I have a look?” I asked.

She nodded, so I came around in back of her.

It was a painting of a huge, black-striped cat, so enormous that it nearly filled the paper. Its head, outsized for the rest of its body, was turned outward, its eyes wide and white-rimmed with round, yellow pupils. Its ears were tall ovals, and a dense brush of whiskers stuck out from either side of the two dots representing its nose. The mouth, however, was its most prominent feature. Gigantic, it took up fully half of the cat’s face in a red, rather malevolent grin, which bared six broad, rectangular teeth. Indeed, given the size of the cat’s head in the picture, the red grin covered almost a quarter of the entire paper. There was no mistaking the amount of sheer aggression in the cat, so tightly confined on its page.

“That’s Jenny,” Jadie said. “Do you remember Jenny? She was my cat for a little time.”

“It’s beautiful. I really like this painting.”

“She looks like a tiger, don’t she?” Jadie said.

“Yes.”

Then Jadie picked up a cup containing orange paint. Without warning, she began to paint heavy bars downward across the whole picture.

Stunned by the sudden action, I couldn’t help expressing my dismay. “What did you do that for?”

“It wasn’t safe, leaving it like that. Tigers are dangerous. She might have gotten out and killed somebody.”

In an odd way, the bars looked more fierce than the cat had. What, I wondered, did they represent? Had the cat been symbolic of the frightening world around her and the suddenly applied bars an effort at safety? Or was the cat representative of her own internal aggressive feelings and the bars her struggle to keep them in?

“Did you mean to put those bars on when you started?” I asked.