Ghost Girl (26 page)

Jadie seemed aware of the intensity of my emotions and openly avoided me for the remainder of the day, which only reinforced my feeling that I had been the fool in all this. I left her alone, however, because I knew Jadie too well to think I could make her talk when she didn’t want to.

Friday followed the same pattern. Jadie approached me only when I was well surrounded by the boys and, thus, unable to have a private conversation. Otherwise, she made herself scarce.

The following Monday, I had a case meeting after school over Brucie. His parents, his pediatrician, Mr. Tinbergen, and Arkie were there, as well as a new speech therapist, who would be working with him. When the meeting was over, I cornered Arkie.

“Listen, I have to have a chat with you over Jadie Ekdahl. I really do.”

“Eeee,” Arkie replied, pulling her lips back in a grimace. “Bad time. Super bad. Up to here at the moment. Could it wait ’til the end of the month?”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty desperate.”

“You’re determined to get that dinner out again, aren’t you?” And she laughed. “Tottie’s? Friday night? That okay?”

Frankly, I would have much preferred the peace and quiet of my classroom, but realizing that to see her at all would require an after-hours meeting, I agreed.

After everyone had left, I remained a while longer, making notes of the conference for Brucie’s file and then putting away the materials we’d used. Then I pushed the chairs back in around the table, turned off the lights, and left, too.

Down in the parking lot, I headed around the side of my car to put my books into the passenger seat. In the process, I very nearly tripped over Jadie. She was sitting on the ground in the narrow space between my car and the one parked next to it, her back against the other car’s rear door.

“Good grief, you frightened the life out of me,” I said. “What are you doing there anyway? You could have been badly hurt, if I hadn’t seen you in time.”

“I would have moved,” she muttered, but she didn’t move. Lightly dressed for a November evening, she remained with her legs drawn up close to her body.

We regarded one another.

“Can I talk to you?” she asked at last.

Looking back over my shoulder at the school building, I knew Mr. O’Banyon would already have locked the doors. “You want to get into the car with me?”

“I don’t want no one to see me.”

“Well, get in and we’ll drive somewhere.” So quickly she scuttled up and opened the door.

I didn’t know where to take her. In previous years, I’d always been able to fall back on the anonymity of a McDonald’s or such place when in retreat with an unhappy child. In Pecking, there were no fast food restaurants. I was reluctant to go into one of the local cafés, where we’d draw attention to ourselves and most likely be recognized. So, for ten minutes or so, I simply drove around, completing the circuit from Main Street up to First and back again several times. Silence wrapped around her like a garment, Jadie laid her head against the shoulder strap of the seat belt and gazed out the window.

After the umpteenth circle, I was desperate to stop. Pulling into a gas station on the southern edge of town, I hopped out and bought us two cans of pop from the soft drinks dispenser.

“Here,” I said, getting back into the car. And with that, I pulled the car around into the gigantic parking lot that fronted the supermarket. I turned off the ignition.

Jadie inspected the can of pop. “I don’t like orange,” she said.

“You like Dr Pepper better? Here. Trade me.”

“My mom doesn’t let us have pop before dinner.”

“Very well. I’ll drink them both, then.”

She didn’t hand the Dr Pepper back.

Silence.

“You want to talk?”

Jadie leaned forward and peered into the little hole left by the pull tab. Night was nearly upon us and the huge sodium lamps in the parking lot bathed us in a pale, orange glow.

“We’re going to have to go soon,” I said. “I don’t feel at all comfortable about your being here without your parents knowing.”

“They won’t miss me. I told them I was going over to Rachel’s.”

Silence again.

I finished the orange pop, being pulled back by the taste to childhood summers spent on the banks of the Yellowstone River, and the bottles of orange NeHi my grandfather used to buy me when he took me fishing.

Gently, I squeezed the aluminum can and a metallic crackling broke the silence. “I didn’t tell Mr. Tinbergen anything about what you’ve told me, if that’s what you thought.”

Barely raising her head, Jadie looked sidelong at me.

“Has that been bothering you these last couple of days?” I asked. “Did you think I’d told? Did you think the whole game was up? No, I didn’t. I promised I wouldn’t, and I kept my word. We found that mark on Amber by accident, so Mr. Tinbergen still doesn’t know what you’ve told me.”

Jadie turned her attention back to the Dr Pepper. Agitating the can gently, she sloshed a bit out onto the top. Then she lifted the can and sucked the pop off with a noisy slurp.

“When I saw the mark, I showed it to Mr. Tinbergen, because I thought it might be a good way to get things out into the open without your being implicated. See, I thought that nobody would get mad at you, if I was the one who discovered the symbol on Amber and … But …”

Jadie’s entire attention seemed absorbed in sloshing up the pop onto the can and then slurping it off. After listening to so much of this, it took saintly patience not to rip the can from her hands. The noise itself was annoying enough; her recalcitrant silence capped it off. Irritated, I turned the key in the ignition.

Jadie looked up abruptly.

“I’ll drop you off in the school parking lot.”

A disconsolate expression crossed Jadie’s face. “You don’t believe me, do you? You believe Amber.”

“Don’t believe you? You haven’t said anything for me to believe. The only thing I don’t believe is that you want to talk. If you did, you’d talk. But as for what we’re doing at the moment … well, missy, it’s after school hours. Time for you to be at home with your family. Time for me to be doing my own things.”

“I didn’t do that mark on Amber’s stomach. Sue Ellen done it. Amber’s going to die, just like Tashee did, and Sue Ellen had to make the mark. She done it with the knife, that one I told you about, the one that’s shaped like this.” With a finger, Jadie drew a crescent on her jeans. “And it’s got this twisty design on the handle and curves up with this special sharp point for cutting. It’s what they put in Tashee. In her throat, right here.”

“Then why did Amber say you did it?”

“’Cause she had to. ’Cause that’s what they tell her to say.”

“Then why did
you
say it?”

Lowering her head, she pulled her lips back into a tight grimace. “’Cause I had to,” she whispered.

The silence, diseased, oozed back in around us. I sighed. Turning the ignition off again, I gazed wearily out across the empty parking lot. There were only seven other cars in the lot, all clustered down in front of the supermarket, which, without exaggeration, was probably a quarter of a mile away.

“Do you believe me?” Jadie asked, looking over.

“To be truthful, Jadie, I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

“You don’t, do you?” she muttered gloomily. “You think I’m making it up. You think I’m crazy.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I don’t know what I believe, and at the moment, I don’t.”

Crossly, Jadie thumped the side of the Dr Pepper can, making the liquid leap up and spill across her hand.

“Amber says you killed the cat.”

“I
didn’t!
” Jadie shrieked out, as if electrified.

I regarded her.

“I
didn’t!
She’s lying. Can’t you see she’s lying!” Jadie broke into tears. “I’m the one who tried to
save
Jenny. It was because of Jenny that I told you.”

“But Amber’s only little. Why would she lie about something like that? How would she even know to?”

This seemed too much for Jadie and she sobbed heavily, bending forward in the seat.

Turning my head, I looked out across the parking lot. We were on the farthest eastern edge, where the asphalt simply petered out and the buffalo grass took over.

“She said it, ’cause she thinks I did,” Jadie said at last, her voice ragged. “’Cause Miss Ellie said I did.”

I turned back to look at her.

“I was on my back on the floor and they laid Jenny on top of me. Bobby and Clayton were holding her. I didn’t have no clothes on, and Jenny was on my tummy. But I was screaming and Miss Ellie told me not to, but I wouldn’t stop. They were tickling my pranny with her tail, and I thought they were going to stick it inside and I didn’t want them to do that. I thought Jenny was going to scratch me. So Miss Ellie made J.R. and Ray come up and hold on to Jenny’s other two legs. Each of them had her legs and they started to pull.” Jadie began to sob again and didn’t catch her breath for a moment or two. “They just kept pulling ’til she came apart. ’Til the blood started running down on my tummy and her insides came out. And Miss Ellie said it was my fault.”

I drew my lower lip in between my teeth and bit it, concentrating on the pain, willing the pain to overwhelm the rising sense of panic. The confinement of the car intensified my feelings. I was acutely aware of being unable to jump up and run away, which I dearly longed to do.

Beside me, Jadie fought for control of her tears. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her fingers tightly against her temples.

“Jadie, you
must
tell,” I said, when I could finally trust my voice again. “This can’t go on. It needs to come out into the open.”

“I
can’t
tell.”

“You can. If the things you’re telling me are true, then we must stop them. I can’t do it alone. I can’t do it without your help, but it has got to stop. These are wrong, bad,
terrible
things and they should never be happening to anyone.”

“I
can’t
tell,” she said again, plaintively, the tears thickening her voice.

“Then, if you can’t, let me tell.”

Jadie didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she lowered her head and stared at the can of pop still in her lap. I sat quietly, listening to the tinny dashboard clock going pink, pink, pink around the dial.

“I can’t tell,” Jadie whispered at last.

I turned to look at her. “You won’t die. Whoever told you that is wrong. Nothing will happen to you that is any worse than what already has. Nothing will be as bad as what Miss Ellie is doing to you.”

“But the police’ll come. They’ll put us in jail.”

“Little children don’t go to jail, lovey.”

“But they can make my mom and dad go to jail. They can make me and my sisters go to live in a children’s home and never see our folks again.”

Extending my hand, I gently pushed the hair back from her cheek. “Is that what’s worrying you?”

“Would that happen?”

“Are your mom and dad part of this? Do they know what Miss Ellie’s doing?”

“I think my mom and dad are always asleep.”

“Well, it’s a policeman’s job to make sure people follow the laws of the land. One such law says that hurting children is wrong, so if someone really was hurting a child, the police would make him or her stop. This doesn’t necessarily mean they would go to jail. That’s not for the policemen to decide. There are judges and other people, who get together in a court and try to decide what’s best for everyone.”

“What happens to the children?”

“Well, they need a safe place to stay. Usually, it’s a foster home. Like Philip lives in. Usually there’s a foster mom and a foster dad to take care of the children and help them get over what’s happened to them.”

“I don’t want that. I want to stay with my family.”

“Well, if your mom and dad aren’t part of this, then you probably could.”

“But would we get tooken to a children’s home first?”

“There might be a bit of time away, but probably not in a children’s home. Probably just in a foster home. Like Philip has, and you know how much he likes his.” I paused to regard her. “Really, Jadie, it’d be better than what’s going on now, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t want to get tooken away. I don’t want Amber and me and Sapphire to get put in different places. I don’t want not to be able to see my mom and dad. I don’t want anyone to go to jail. I don’t want nothing, except for it to
stop
. That’s all I’m asking.” She raised her head and looked over at me. “This isn’t fair. Why do I have to decide this?”

I gazed into her eyes, the purity of their blueness obscured by the orange-shaded gloom of the parking lot, and I felt deep anguish, because I knew I had no answers. Child abuse is such a patent evil that exposing and rectifying it should possess only black-and-white clarity—abuse identified, child rescued, perpetrator gets what’s coming to him. Sadly, I knew it was never so. The reality always included the ruins of small, shattered lives, destroyed relationships, and broken hearts. Good and evil are not absolute, but relative.