Ghost Girl (34 page)

Philip jumped up and down excitedly. “Mhhheeee!”

“Okay, you. Your turn,” I said. “What do you wish for?”

“Hhhhhaann huhhh,” he said and gesticulated wildly, a grin on his face. He pointed to Jadie.

“I’m sorry, we can’t quite understand you. Can you use your signs?” I asked, because Philip now had quite a wide vocabulary of sign-language gestures.

He signed wildly and leaped from his chair again. “Hhhaann hhuuuuhhhhh!”

“Stand up?”

Still grinning broadly, he pointed at Jadie and signed elaborately.

“You want Jadie to stand up?”

Further signs and gestures.

“Your Christmas wish is that Jadie would stand up … straight?”

Happily, Philip nodded.

“Hey, that’s cruel, man,” Jeremiah cried. “Don’t you know better than to go around making people feel bad for the way they are? She can’t help being crippled no more than you can help being a dumb fucker.”

I reached a hand out to touch Jeremiah’s arm, but it was Jadie who interceded. “I’m not crippled, Jeremiah. I can do it,” she said quietly.

He looked over at her.

“I can stand up straight.” Then, with the same creaking slowness she’d first exhibited in the cloakroom with me, Jadie put her hands on the table and pushed her body upright in the chair. Once that far, she took a deep, shuddery breath and then shoved her chair back. With what appeared to be a tremendous effort, she rose to her feet, erect.

Philip appeared so pleased I feared he’d swoon.

“Hhhuhhh! Hhuhhh! Hhhuuuuhhhh!” he cried, although none of us knew what he was saying.

Jadie pressed both hands across her stomach.

“What’s the matter? Are you feeling sick?” I asked.

“No,” she replied, her voice perplexed. Arching her back slightly, she pressed the area around her navel. “I don’t hurt?”

All of us watched her.

“I don’t hurt there,” she said, amazed.

Jeremiah finally recovered his voice. “Hey, man,” he said with admiration. “You’re really standing up.”

Jadie looked over at him.

“You’re standing up, Jadie, just like you was normal.”

When the recess bell rang and the others scampered off to the cloakroom to get their jackets, I caught Jadie by the arm. “Do you suppose we could have a little chat? Mrs. McLaren is going to take the boys down, so we won’t be interrupted. I want a moment alone with you.”

She looked up at me.

“You know what today is, don’t you? Eight days since you and your sisters moved out to Red Circle.” She nodded slightly.

“Has anyone talked to you about what’s going to happen next?”

Jadie shrugged. “People been coming out, if that’s what you mean. This doctor keeps coming out and looking up our butts. And there’s that lady with those dolls.”

“Yes, but I mean about the future. Has anyone said what’s going to happen from here on?”

“We’re going to a new foster home? That’s what Mrs. Verney says. She says me and Amber are going to get to go home for our toys, and then we’ll go somewhere else, ’cause we can’t stay in Red Circle. They only take kids for short times there.”

“Has anyone mentioned the possibility of going back to your parents?”

Jadie looked up. She hadn’t been able to maintain her erect posture and was bent forward again. Catching hold of the back of the chair, she kept herself from folding over farther.

“What would you think of returning home?”

When I said that, her eyes filled immediately. “I wanna go back.” A tear escaped and she caught it with her fingers. “That’s my Christmas wish, my real one. I miss my room and my toys. And I just wish my mommy would hold me.”

Knowing that in all likelihood the girls were going to be returned to their parents, I had been intensely worried about Jadie’s reaction to this news and had anticipated an awful confrontation. Now, hearing her talk like this, immense relief washed over me. A whole morning’s tension dissolved so rapidly as to leave me weak-kneed. “So, you’d like to? Oh, I am happy to hear that.”

“Except that I can’t.”

“My news is pretty good. Because what I wanted to tell you was that I think you can. I was down at the police station last night and as long as they feel everything is okay at your house, they’ll probably send you and Amber and Sapphire home instead of to a new foster placement.”

Jadie raised her head abruptly to look at me, her eyes widening. All the color in her cheeks vanished, leaving her skin a whitish gray, like forgotten pastry dough. “But everything
isn’t
okay,” she said in a choked whisper.

“They’ve looked things over pretty well—”

“It
isn’t
okay.” Her breathing grew shallow. Clutching at her face, she looked rapidly from side to side, as if anticipating invasion. Then her hands came up to cover her eyes a moment.

At last she looked over at me. “It was just a
wish,
” she wailed. “Didn’t you know that? Didn’t you understand? I didn’t mean really doing it, when I said I wanted to go back. I
can’t
go back.”

I regarded her.

“Miss Ellie’ll be there. After what I done, if me and my sisters go back now, Miss Ellie’ll
kill
us.”

Stricken, I just stood. There was nothing I could say. I couldn’t reassure her she wouldn’t go back, that I could keep her out, that I would rescue her, because there was nothing I could do. Throughout this entire situation, I’d never made any promises to Jadie about what would happen if she came forward. While not often, I still had experienced other instances in which a child’s accusations of abuse had been unsubstantiated and the child had been returned home, so I knew enough not to make promises I couldn’t fulfill. Technically, I suppose, I was in the clear. On a human level, however, I felt absolutely wretched.

A discouraging silence enveloped us. All sorts of wildly unrealistic ideas were stampeding through my head, visions of snatching Jadie and running off with her, leaping in the car and just driving off, but I knew them to be fantasies even as I had them. Nothing workable came to me.

Wearily, I pulled out a chair at the table and sat down. Jadie continued to stand. Her eyes wandered, fleetingly met mine, then we both looked away. She sighed. The silence deepened.

At last Jadie pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table and sat down too. “I’m not going back,” she said, her voice soft but final. She said nothing else.

What could I do? A jumble of nonsense was in my brain. Did I defend myself? Defend the police actions? Did I try to make it sound as if it wasn’t really so bad? Did I point out how nice it was going to be to sleep in her own bed and play with her own toys again, even if it did mean the occasional rape? Did I offer to run off to Mexico with her? Did I promise to become her crusader to fight her parents, the police, and City Hall, if necessary? Did I say I’d never give up? Did I offer comfort? Did I say I understood, although in no imaginable or unimaginable way was it possible that I did?

Jadie, across the table from me, picked at her arm. Her left hand resting palm upward on the tabletop, she tweaked the skin of her wrist, making it go white. I glanced up at the clock and prayed Lucy would keep the boys out of here if I ran over the allotted time for recess.

“You know what?” Jadie murmured, her voice low but calm, conversational. “Them there, know what you can do with them?” She touched the veins in her wrist. “You can take a knife, and if you cut there, all the blood in your body runs out. It runs out so fast you die.”

Shaken sharply from my thoughts, I looked over.

“Dead’s not so bad,” she said softly. “It’s dying that hurts. But being dead … that’s all quiet-like. I reckon it’s like when you go to sleep. Except there’s no dreams.”

As I realized what she was talking about, my mouth went dry. “Jadie, don’t think like that.”

She looked up then, meeting my eyes. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not going to solve anything.”

“Why not?”

I didn’t know why not. I didn’t know what to say anymore. For lack of a better response, I reached out across the table to her and saw my hand was shaking. Jadie let me touch her, but she didn’t respond. Instead, she just sat, fingering the veins of her wrist.

“I’m not going back,” she said at last, lifting her eyes to meet mine. “I don’t care what you say, what any of them say. I’m not going back. I’m never going back.”

“You know what would be a better idea than that?” I asked.

She looked up again.

“To tell them about Tashee. To tell them everything.”

“I already have. They don’t believe me.”

“You haven’t, Jadie. You haven’t said a word. You’ve made me do the talking and who they don’t believe is me.
You
tell them. You
know. So
, you tell them, because if they hear things from you, the way you’ve told me, they’ll have to believe you. Nobody can hear those things and not believe.”

Jadie went back to fingering the vein.

“Why won’t you at least try?”

No response.

“Are you frightened? Is that it? What of? Miss Ellie? Her spiders?”

Jadie shrugged.

“What if the police came here? To the school? If I called Lindy from the police station, she’d come out. You could go in the cloakroom and lock the doors, just like you and I’ve done. Would that make it easier? Could you talk then?”

Jadie looked up, and for the first time I could sense her wavering.

“What if I go call her now?” I asked. “Right this minute? She could come out this morning, before anything happens about your going back home. If you told her, Jadie …”

“I can’t.”

“If you don’t want to go back, they need to know why. That’s the only way they can stop it.”

“I can’t.” She lowered her head.

“You want to cut your wrist? Is that what you’re thinking about? But then what’s going to happen to Amber and Sapphire?”

Tears came to her eyes.

“Just think what it’d be like for them, if you weren’t there.”

“I can’t.”

“You
can
. If you can stand upright as you just did, because you wanted to enough, then you can talk.”

“But ghosts don’t have mouths,” she whimpered.

“Maybe ghosts don’t, but you’re a girl, Jadie. You’ve got a mouth. You
must
talk. Please.”

“I can’t,” she murmured, doubling over until her head was almost on the tabletop.

“You
can.
”

“You tell them for me.”

“I’ve told them all I can. It’s your turn now.”

She began to cry.

“Sit up, Jadie.”

Laboriously, she pushed herself back into an upright position. A minute passed, perhaps two, then finally she looked at me. She nodded. “Okay.”

L
indy came immediately, arriving at the school about 11:15. The children and I were sitting around the table when the door opened. Upon seeing her, Jadie rose without prompting. Silently, she led Lindy into the cloakroom. The door went shut and the snick of the lock echoed in the classroom.

“Who’s that lady?” Jeremiah asked. “What’s she doing with our girlie?”

“She’s just come to talk with her.”

“How come?”

“Jadie’s having some problems at home,” I replied, “and that lady’s come to help.”

“Whew,” Jeremiah said softly, “that dame sure is a looker. Ain’t our girlie lucky?”

“Maybe so.”

The lunch bell rang and the others clattered out to join Lucy’s horde, while I remained in the classroom. There was no sound from the cloakroom. This building was old and the walls thick, so very little passed between rooms. Consequently, I couldn’t even discern whether Jadie was talking to Lindy. Filled with anxious curiosity, I was tempted to go nearer the door, but I didn’t. My concern was that I might have brought Lindy out on one more wild goose chase, and they were closeted in there, face to face, once more weighted down by Jadie’s immutable silence. On the other hand, they’d been in there so long, I assumed Jadie must be talking. Had she finally found the courage?

What worried me most was what would become of Jadie if she didn’t talk. Recalling her at recess time, her child’s wrist turned upward, her fingers over the veins, I knew her talk of suicide was not idle. Whether her eight-year-old mind comprehended death in those terms, I did not know, but she certainly understood dying. Sitting alone at the table, waiting, I tried to think of what else I could do.

Mr. Tinbergen entered the room about noon. “They’re still in there?” he asked, nodding his head toward the cloakroom.

“Yes.”

Nearing the table, he sat down. We didn’t speak. We just sat.

When they emerged from the cloakroom, it was 12:35. Jadie, pale but fairly erect, came out first. She looked exhausted, as if what she needed most was sleep, but there was a weary calm about her.

“Would you like some lunch, Jadie?” Mr. Tinbergen asked. “I think they’ve saved you some.” Rising from his chair, he extended a hand to her.