Saying Grace (11 page)

would be interesting to spring it on them. Not to mention that it got her out of having to work up a lesson plan.

Jennifer Lowen and Malone Dahl began to whisper to each other.

“Is this going to count towards our grade?” Jennifer asked as Catherine passed out the quiz sheets.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Trainer serenely.

“That’s not fair!” said a number of voices together.

“No? Why not?” Catherine had heard this before, a few thousand times. She handed quizzes to Jennifer and to Malone, and then to Lyndie. She noticed that Lyndie took hers with her left hand. The right wrist, lying across the paper to hold it still while Lyndie fished in her backpack for a pencil, looked swollen taut and twice normal size.

“Have you hurt yourself, Lyndie?” Mrs. Trainer asked gently.

Lyndie looked up at her a little like one who has been startled from sleep. She looked as if she was so clouded with pain that she had forgotten others could see her.

“A little,” she said.

“That looks awfully sore. Did you put ice on it?”

“No.” The rest of the class had now turned to look at Lyndie. Mrs.

Trainer briskly moved away, passing out the rest of the tests. “Read the questions over carefully first, and in a minute we’ll begin,” she said, and went back to Lyndie.

“Do you think you can write?” Catherine asked her.

“I think so.” Catherine looked doubtful. But she looked at her watch and said, “Class—ready? Please begin.”

Then she went back to her desk and sat over her attendance book, watching the room sharply, as she always did during tests. Bobbie Regan was sticking his pencil into the back of the girl in front of him.

Catherine told him to stop it. Malone Dahl was moving swiftly through the test. Jennifer Lowen, who daydreamed in class and only heard half of what Catherine said, was looking worried and not marking the paper. Lyndie, she saw, could not hold a pencil in her right hand.

Finally, she said, “Nicolette, will you be my proctor, please? Come to the front of the room.” Nicolette waddled up, bringing her pencil and test paper with her. Nicolette was bottom-heavy and beginning to get little breasts, but did not wear a bra. Her hair was Saying Grace / 75

in black ponytails. Mrs. Trainer installed her at the teacher’s desk.

“Please work until twenty past, and then bring your papers up to Nicolette. If I’m not back by then, begin to read chapter four in your geography reader. Lyndie, come with me.”

Once outside in the sunshine, Catherine asked permission to look at the arm. She probed it gently, and Lyndie nearly jumped out of her skin.

“I think this is broken, honey,” she said. “What happened? Did you fall?”

Lyndie nodded. She kept her head tucked down, as if the bright sun hurt her eyes.

“We better go see Mr. Dianda.” As they walked, Catherine asked,

“Did this happen while you were playing? Did you fall outside?”

Lyndie seemed to be thinking this over. “I fell off my bike,” she said.

“In the driveway.”

“In the driveway! That must have hurt! Did you skin your knees too?” Lyndie looked at the ground. Her legs were bare and bony, but not skinned.

“Was this yesterday afternoon? Where were your parents?”

Lyndie was silent. Catherine looked at her intently and decided to leave her mouth closed for a bit.

After a while Lyndie said, “I fell in the driveway but that’s not really when I hurt it.”

“I see.”

“Last night, well you haven’t seen my house, but there are these stairs? And I had a tray in my hands, I was bringing my TV dinner down to the kitchen. So I couldn’t see my feet when I got to the stairs, and I tripped and fell all the way down.”

“No wonder you’re all banged up! And it must have made quite a mess!”

Lyndie looked questioning.

“The tray. You must have had glasses and food and forks and things all over the place.”

“Oh, yeah. Oh it was a mess. The gravy got on the rug.”

“But didn’t your parents put ice on the wrist? Or think about taking you to the hospital?”

“They weren’t home.”

76 / Beth Gutcheon

“Then the babysitter?”

Lyndie looked at the ground some more.

“They must have noticed this morning, how swollen it is….”

“My dad was kind of upset this morning. I thought if it didn’t get better I’d show Mrs. Shaw.”

Catherine was finding this troubling. Lyndie looked up at her sharply, a pleading look, and then away again. She put her good hand in Mrs. Trainer’s and held it as they walked.

“Didn’t anyone hear you fall?” she asked. Lyndie said nothing.

Catherine patted her good hand, which felt little and hot and gritty.

Lyndie started to cry.

“Mrs. Trainer? There’s a ghost in our house.” The little girl looked up and her face was full of fear.

“A ghost, Lyndie? That sounds terrible. Do your parents know?”

Lyndie shook her head forcefully. “No one can hear it but me! I told my brother, one night when it was crying, and he couldn’t hear it….”

“You heard it crying. Is it a child ghost?”

“No it’s an awful woman, and it weeps and weeps and I hear it after the lights are off, limping up and down the halls. And it comes to my room and stands there outside the door and I’m afraid it will come in.”

“How terrible!”

“It wants something!” said Lyndie. “No one would believe me. If Jonathan can’t hear it, they won’t hear it, and they won’t believe me!”

“Would that be so bad? You could tell your parents, and even if they didn’t believe you, they could comfort you, or help you to feel safer.”

Lyndie looked at her as if she must be mad.

“The ghost pushed me down the stairs,” she said. “It came up behind me and went like this…” she demonstrated a straight arm, such as Catherine had used on Mr. Glarrow when he took her bird feeder, “and I fell down and broke a glass. The glass broke. It
hates
me, I think it wants to kill me!”

Catherine had stopped, and the child stopped too, and looked at her very directly, as in agitation she finished this story. Catherine met her gaze, as if making her a promise.

Saying Grace / 77

They went into Home.

Catherine and Mr. Dianda together examined Lyndie’s arm. “She fell down the stairs,” said Catherine to Mike.

“Is that what happened?” Mike asked Lyndie gently. Lyndie nodded, holding back tears. “We better get you to a doctor,” said Mike. “Thank you, Mrs. Trainer.” And he and Lyndie went out to drive to the hospital.

In the afternoon, while her class was at PE, Catherine sought out Bonnie Fleming, the school psychologist. Bonnie was a waiflike young woman, a trapezist and a dancer with broken knees, who had learned massage when her own injuries had become chronic.

From physical therapy she had progressed to psychotherapy. Rue had hired her on a hunch to be on campus several days a week,

“making herself available.” Bonnie had a manner about her, quiet but magnetic, that Rue thought might be useful. The day she presented herself for her interview, Rue was showing her the campus when one of the runaway African gray parrots, which never let people get near it, had come down low in the live oaks, followed them from tree to tree, and finally flown out and settled on Bonnie’s shoulder.

“Hello, bird,” Bonnie had murmured to it, completely unsurprised.

“Hello bird. You got away, didn’t you? You got away and now your pin feathers have grown out and you can fly, can’t you bird? Good for you.” Rue had been amazed.

Catherine Trainer found Bonnie sitting under a tree, crocheting what looked like a snowflake in fine linen thread. Bonnie was wearing a black leotard, a long Indian wrap skirt, and ballet slippers.

Catherine tried to guess her age but couldn’t. Her long neck and torso bent and moved as she sat cross-legged, as if she needed to be constantly subtly stretching, warming her muscles in case her dance should begin.

Bonnie looked up at Catherine’s troubled face and gave her a welcoming smile. Catherine settled down on the grass beside her.

It was very nice to find her out here under a tree, this psychologist girl. Catherine had never talked to a psychologist and would not have liked to be seen going into one’s office.

“Look at that bad blue jay,” said Catherine. “Look how close he comes to you.”

78 / Beth Gutcheon

Bonnie nodded and made a noise in her throat at the bird.

“Do you know a lot about birds?”

“Hardly anything,” said Bonnie. “I like them though.” She made the sound again and the jay cocked his head at her. Catherine watched the bird, and then told Bonnie all about Lyndie, and Bonnie listened carefully.

“Tell me again where she was bruised,” she said.

“Here. And here. That
I
saw. Do you know the Sales?”

“Not Mrs. Sale. I met Mr. Sale when he came to the science building to donate a computer.”

Catherine stared at the grass. “Don’t you think something terrible is going on? When a child is hurt and tells different stories about what happened? To make up a thing like that ghost?”

“Children make up stories for so many different reasons.”

“But she went to bed with a broken bone in her arm! And didn’t tell her parents?”

“I agree it sounds like something’s wrong. But I wouldn’t want to say what, based on so little information. Would Lyndie like to talk to me?”

“What will you do if she tells you a ghost pushed her down the stairs?”

Bonnie laughed. “I kind of liked the ghost. I’d like to hear more about it.”

Catherine said, “When a child is injured and can’t tell how it happened the same way twice in a row, it means someone beat her up.”

“It
can
mean that.”

“The police came and talked to us! It’s a classic case!”

“Catherine, children get hurt a lot of different ways. And they tell big stories for a lot of reasons. She’s got your attention by doing it, hasn’t she?”

“We signed that piece of paper. From the State of California. If it even
might
be child abuse, you have to report it. If you
suspect
.”

Bonnie looked troubled. “Have you talked to Rue?”

“No, she isn’t here. I heard her mother is sick.”

“That’s too bad. But the child has had medical attention, for the moment. I think we should talk to Rue. There could be all kinds of ramifications we don’t know about.”

“You’re probably right,” said Catherine.

Saying Grace / 79

But Catherine didn’t really think Bonnie was right, and thus didn’t hear what she said.

Catherine thought about the ghost, the angry weeping woman, and felt a strange stroke of pity for her. She thought about that poor hurt little girl, trying to be brave, and the look in her eyes as she told Catherine her story. She thought about it all evening, and talked it over with Norman, as she did everything. And by morning she had come to believe that Bonnie had quite agreed with her, certainly Norman did; that when a person is being misunderstood or hurt it is terribly important that she learn that somebody cares, and believes her. So before she left for class Friday morning, Catherine telephoned Child Protective Services.

R
ue’s mother had grown querulous and miserable in the hospital, and her father had determined to take her home. He couldn’t tell Rue on the phone what exactly had been so desperate, but he said she hadn’t taken to it, and they better get her out. “Do you want me to come?” Rue had asked.

There was a brief pause before her father said, “No, no, we’ll be fine.” So Rue said, “I’ll be in Bangor tomorrow night, and I’ll rent a car, so don’t worry, and don’t wait up; I won’t be in before midnight.” When he didn’t tell her not to come, she realized he’d been wanting her for days.

Even at the top of the airplane stairs, as you stand above the tarmac in Bangor, the crisp smell of fir washes over you, cleansing ether from a northern world. The airport was virtually deserted at ten o’clock at night. The car rental desk had closed but the agent left Rue’s contract and car keys with the airline baggage handlers. She was soon driving alone on nearly deserted roads, with black pine woods on either side of her, opening here and again to farmers’

fields. She drove carefully, watching for deer, and grateful it still lacked two weeks of hunting season, a time that had grown increasingly frightening throughout the state. During November even the dogs wore blaze orange and her father reported that Howard Schwarz braided blaze orange into his cow’s mane, and painted C-O-W on her sides with dayglow paint. A woman in Brewer had been killed hanging out wash in her own backyard, and another in Surry found some drunk had shot her donkey.

She had an hour and a half to home, to sort out her feelings about seeing her mother stricken. Jeannette was a proud and cool woman with a great need for others to see her dignity. Rue hoped they would not embarrass each other. She hoped she could be some help to her father without making him feel that he needed help. The car was underpowered and the upholstery reeked of cigar smoke.

Saying Grace / 81

As she drove she kept the windows open to the pine-perfumed night air, although the temperature was certainly in the forties. She wondered what Henry was doing. Then she wondered what Georgia was doing, and liked knowing they were in the same time zone. She tried the radio but it was AM only, and at this time of night she got a jumble of overlapping stations, either hard rock or call-in shows, the strongest signal being KDKA in Pittsburgh. She turned it off and drove in cold scented silence.

There was a light on in the kitchen when she pulled into the yard of the house where she grew up. The house was a nineteenth-century farmhouse, with boxy little rooms to hold heat and wood-burning stoves in the kitchen, parlor, and best upstairs bedroom. She was struck at how much it was like the house in which she now lived, except that the California rooms were breezier with much bigger windows, since the farmers there were not facing three months a year of subzero weather. When she was a little girl in this house, they used to live in the kitchen and keep the stove cranked up to a zillion in winter. You got used to piercing cold outdoors, so that a windless day and five above zero seemed positively balmy, but when you were inside, you wanted to be warm through your bones.