My Abandonment, page 6
We sit on soft chairs in Miss Jean Bauer's office. She has flowers and a computer. Out the window I can see more tall buildings of the city. She scoots closer and touches my arm with her hand.
"Now Caroline," she says, "how was your breakfast?"
"I liked the orange juice," I say.
"Good. Now is it all right if I ask you a few questions?"
"Yes," I say. "That's what you said we were going to do."
"Your name is Caroline and you are a thirteen-year-old girl who has been living with your father. Correct?"
"Where is Father?" I say.
"He's close," she says. "He's fine. He's doing fine. He misses you, too."
"Can I see him?" I say. "Of course that's my name."
"We just want to make certain we have everything right," she says, "so we can start."
"If I scream," I say, "would he hear me?"
"Please don't scream."
"I wouldn't scream," I say. "There's never any good reason to raise one's voice."
"Really?" she says. "Why do you think that?"
"When will I see my Father?" I say.
"Your physical and mental examinations have been very good," she says. "Excellent, in fact. Would you say you've had a happy and normal childhood?"
"Am I going to stay here forever?" I say.
"No," she says. "Don't worry. I've told you that before. Let's try it this way: I'll say what your father told me and you can tell me if it's not right, okay? He says that you lived in Forest Park for four years because it was safer and better for you than being on the streets and he didn't have the money to rent an apartment or a house. He says you've never met your mother, that she passed away?"
"We have a house," I say. "My father is paid every month. She had the same name as me."
"Caroline."
"Yes."
"But you haven't gone to school," she says.
"My father teaches me at our house," I say. "You said I passed your test, so we should be able to go back home."
"Yes," she says, "you're ahead of where you need to be, but you must understand that you can't live there. And school is about social skills, too, not only intellectual ones."
"I am happy," I say. "I was happy. Where are the dogs?"
"Who?" she says.
"The dogs who found us. Are they here?"
"In this building?" she says. "No. They are search and rescue dogs."
"Are they the ones who watch the criminals?" I say.
"They live in kennels," she says, "at the police station."
"We didn't need to be rescued," I say.
I like Miss Jean Bauer and I like the gray streak in her hair but I don't say this. I can tell she likes me even if she doesn't understand me.
"Is that picture your husband?" I say.
"My boyfriend," she says.
"He's handsome."
"Yes, he is," she says.
"Do you have a daughter?" I say.
"No, I don't."
"Do you have a father that you can see and hear and talk to?" I say.
She touches my hand again and says, "It's amazing to me, Caroline, the life you've had so far. Not many people can tell a story like that and now there's so many new opportunities for you. Still," she says, "I wish I could have just followed you around for a day, just to see how you did it all."
"You wouldn't have been able to follow me," I say. "I'd lose you in five minutes. Even with dogs it might not matter."
"Did you grow all the food you ate?" she said. "Your father says you're vegetarians."
"No," I say. "Yes we are vegetarians but we went to Safeway, too. Everyone goes to a store, or eats things they find in the city that other people leave behind."
"Did you take things from other people?"
"Never," I say. "If someone in the forest park drops something, the rule is to wait and count to thirty. Then you can pick it up. Hide. Count again to fifty, to see if anyone comes back. If they do, try to put it in their path a little further along, so they can find it and so you won't be stealing from them."
"So you went to Safeway every two weeks?" she says.
"Everyone has to buy something sometime," I say. "Only maybe Nameless only eats what grows in the forest park."
"Who's that?" she says. "A friend of yours?"
"Not exactly," I say. "It doesn't matter. Is Father somewhere taking tests like this?"
"Kind of," she says. "They've been asking him a lot of questions. He's been very cooperative."
"We're different than you," I say.
"We're just deciding what is the best thing to do," she says again. "You can see that we have to understand where you've been and who you are, first."
I don't know what to say so I just look out the window again. I button the button on the cuff of the shirt they gave me.
"Please," I say. "I don't know what to say. Those are all the things I can think of. Can I not go in with those girls again?"
"Is there a problem?" she says.
"There's not even any books in there," I say. "I can't breathe. I can't even see one tree out the window."
"We don't want to make a mistake," she says. "How about this? How about we try something new?"
She takes out a bright blue box then, thin but as tall and wide as a piece of paper. From a drawer she pulls out a square machine with black and red buttons on it.
"I am wondering if it's all right if I make a tape recording of our conversation," she says. "Would that be all right? If you like, I can give you a copy of the tape to keep."
"All right," I say. "But I already said I'm out of things to say."
Miss Jean Bauer pushes down the red button and I can see the wheels turning inside the clear plastic window. She picks up the blue box again and takes off the top.
"This is a storytelling test," she says. "Actually, it's more like a game. Think of it like a game. I have some pictures here that I am going to show you, and for each picture I want you to make up a story. Tell what has happened before and what is happening now. Say what the people are feeling and thinking and how it will come out. You can make up any kind of story you please. Do you understand? Well, then, get ready for your first picture. You have five minutes to make up a story. See how well you can do."
This takes an hour almost. She keeps telling me if I have more time or if I'm running out even if I can see the minutes going on my watch. The pictures are not easy. There's a woman coming through a door with her face down in her hand and men asleep on the grass resting with their heads on each other and hats over their eyes and one where a girl in a tree watches another girl in a dress running along a beach and holding up her dress out of the waves. I tell stories for them and mostly Miss Jean Bauer tells me they're good stories. The first one is a picture of a boy and a violin and this is the story I tell:
"There's a spider down in the violin and then he's sitting there wondering if it's going to come out of it and if it will bite his chin if he begins to play. But his mind keeps drifting away so he's not worried."
"Where is his mind drifting?" she says. "What's he thinking about?"
"He wants to go outside, I think."
"And what will happen?"
"He'll probably play that violin for a while and the spider will just listen," I say. "How do you read my answers? You think they mean in a certain way, but how do you know?"
"Don't worry about any of that," she says. "Just tell me the first story that comes in your mind. Have you ever seen an X ray?"
"Yes," I say. "I know what one is."
"Well," she says, "we're trying to find out what it looks like inside you, by the stories you tell."
"You could just ask," I say.
"Yes, but you might not be able to say it."
"So it's a crooked way you're going," I say. "So I'll somehow say what I can't say."
"Right," she says. "That's not a bad way to think about it." And then she shows me a picture of a person turned away with their head on a bench and a gun on the floor and then another with a woman on a couch reading a book to a girl holding a doll and looking away like she might not be listening.
It is so hard to be in the room with these girls. I sit at the round table with the pencil and scratch paper trying to write and then I get up and stand next to the window and I feel like breaking the glass in that room since it seems like it should be easier to breathe and I can't get air. Every time the door opens I think it could be Father and I look up and instead it's Miss Jean Bauer or Mr. Harris coming to get me or Valerie or Taffy.
My feet hurt so I take off my shoes and put the socks inside them. The floor is too hard and smooth beneath my feet. It's cold. The air smells like all the chemicals it takes to keep everything so clean.
"Gross," Valerie says. "You're getting your dirty feet all over everything."
"My feet are clean," I say.
"You act like you're better than everyone. Different."
"That's not true," I say to her even if what she says makes me think that I do feel that way but I don't act that way.
"What's your problem?" she says.
"I don't have a problem."
"That's your problem," she says. "That you think you're so great and don't have any problems. And your watch is always the wrong time. Stupid."
"My problem is that I got taken away from my father," I say. "Obviously. And then I got locked in here where you're trying to argue with me."
"I can ask whatever I want," she says, "if you have a problem. Is it me? Is that what you're saying?"
"This is such a dumb conversation," I say. "I used to think we were almost friends and now we only talk like this, not saying anything at all."
Taffy sits watching the television and then turning her head, looking at Valerie and then looking at me. Listening. Her face is happy like she expects something.
"You think I'm dumb?" Valerie says. "You don't even have any friends."
"I do," I say. "I have a friend named Zachary."
"Is he your boyfriend?"
"No," I say.
"Is Richard your boyfriend?" she says. "Do you think that?"
"Richard? No. He tried to give me a bracelet but I didn't accept it."
"Bitch," she says, standing close to push my shoulder. "Richard is my boyfriend," she says. "Don't you ever touch him. Don't even say his name again. What are you laughing at?"
"I was thinking about Zachary," I say. "He believes in Big-foot but really it's only Nameless."
"Whatever," Valerie says, and then reaches out to grab at me and tries to slap but is too slow and then she's chasing me around the table and is already breathing hard. She curses and picks up a chair and throws it over the table and I leap so it hits the wall and crashes down next to me. She comes around and I swing another chair loose from under the table and push it hard sliding so it hits her knees and knocks her down and right away I'm over her. When she tries to stand I push her back to the floor.
"Stop," I say. I put my hand on her neck.
"Bitch," she says, after a while, once she's crawled over the couch where Taffy's been watching. "Bitch," Valerie says, rubbing her neck. "I'm not talking to you again. I'm never going to be your friend now."
It is important to always remember that at any time you think of it there are people being kept in buildings when they want to go outside.
"I'm going to show you ten pictures again," Miss Jean Bauer says.
"Were there ten the first time?"
"Yes."
She pushes down the red button on the tape recorder.
"I didn't keep count," I say.
She takes out the blue box and a booklet and she is partly talking and partly reading to me.
"It will be easier for you this time," she says, "because the pictures I have here are much better, more interesting. You told me some fine stories the other day. Now I want to see whether you make up a few more. Make them even more exciting than you did last time if you can. Like a dream or fairy tale. Here's the first picture."
"There's snow all around a house," I say, "and the two windows are like round eyes since there's lights on where it's warm I think and it's cold outside and frozen and windy. And there you can see a black kind of ghost swirling over the roof by the chimney with two eyes and up there there might be another ghost but that might be another ghost or it could just be another cloud about to snow some more. It's cold. The snow there in the front is drifted and frozen up like a jagged kind of wing."
"Do you believe in ghosts?" she says.
"Yes," I say.
"Have you ever seen a ghost?"
"I don't know," I say.
"So," she says and touches my hand. "If a stick leaps up and strikes you or if you see a stone rolling uphill, is that a ghost that does that?"
"You've been reading my journal," I say. "That's not right. That's not a polite thing to do at all. Where is my backpack and my things?"
"You'll get them back," Miss Jean Bauer says. "And I'm being careful, I just am trying to figure things out. Your writing is beautiful. You should keep writing, Caroline."
"Most of that is homework, anyway," I say.
"We know," she says. "It's very impressive."
"And Randy?" I say.
"Who?"
"My horse," I say. "You shouldn't be reading my journal."
We sit still and not talking and our faces looking at each other without saying anything. I am not going to talk first. Miss Jean Bauer's mouth is smiling the smallest smile and at last it shifts and then moves.
"So far," she says, "you've really only described the picture. Remember, I want you to tell a story. What is happening? Are there people in this picture whom we cannot see, Caroline?"
I look at the picture on the card and I know that fighting with Miss Jean Bauer will not help me.
"There are two people inside that house who are sitting next to a fire and they're warm and maybe playing chess together. They can hear the whistle of the wind and maybe that ghost hugging down on the roof but they're safe in there. They get up and look out the window at the storm since it's scary and beautiful and everything that they need they have even if the storm keeps up. They are listening and trying to hear what the ghost is talking about and he is saying I wish I had fur all over my body and I was a person too who died and his words are all frozen and slick. Or it could be that the house is out in the storm and there are cold people lost in the snow and scared. Their feet are almost frozen off and their faces hurt from being cold and they are almost crawling because of the deep snow and one looks up at the lights and sees the house. But they see the ghosts too. Or what it is is that the first people look out, see in that window maybe that's someone looking out by the blurry curtain and see the frozen people crawling in the snow and they call out to them and maybe get a sled. By the fire their clothes melt until they can take them off and they get dry clothes. And soup. Even they can get up then and look out the window at the storm and the frozen wing in the yard."
Outside of Miss Jean Bauer's office I turn right, back toward the room with Valerie and Taffy but Miss Jean Bauer says, "No, Caroline, come this way."
We go down a long hallway, up a flight of stairs and around two corners, in a door and across a dark empty basketball court and into another hallway. I try to keep track of the turns to know the way back even if I don't want to go back.
"Wait here," she says. "One moment." She takes out a key and opens a door and goes in while I'm still in the hallway. I drink out of a water fountain and the water is so cold it hurts my teeth.
Miss Jean Bauer comes out holding something in her hand and that something is Randy. I don't say anything until he's in my hand and my fingers touch his shape that they know, the edges of his organs and his sharp ears and his numbers slightly raised up and sticky. I want to look at him but I don't want her watching me. I unbutton two buttons on my shirt and slide him inside and button it up so I can feel his plastic body against my skin there.
"Thank you," I say.
"We really want it to work out," she says. "We want to try something we haven't done before and we don't know if it will work so you'll have to help us. We can trust you to help us, right?"
"What are you talking about?" I say.
"I brought you a book to read, too," she says. "It's one I like. The first time I read it I was your age."
The book is small and blue with a dragon on it. I don't read the title since I'm watching where we're walking again, not back the way we came.
"Did anyone go back for my encyclopedias?" I say.
"I don't know," she says. "I don't think so, to be honest. I don't think you'll need them anymore."
"What?" I say.
"What would you think about going to a regular school?" she says. "In the fall, when it starts up again."
"Father can teach me," I say.
"But you can have friends your own age. Wouldn't you like that?"
"Sometimes I think so," I say, "and other times I think I wouldn't."
We pass an ax inside a glass window and a lighted machine for soft drinks. Miss Jean Bauer takes out another key and opens another door so I can go inside. She doesn't follow me.
This room is my own room. My paper and pencil and the sweater they gave me, the things from the other room have been brought into this small room. It only holds one bed and I go straight across to the window. Through it I can see over the rail-yard and all the trains and metal to the forest park. The sun is almost sliding behind it so all the thick trees are dark gray but still I know it and it's not so far away. In the morning I know the sun will be shining on it and then it will be green.
Also this window even opens, only five inches and there are metal locks but still I can breathe even if I can't get out so high above. I turn my head sideways and force it tight as far through as it will go.
"Hello," I say, softly, just in case. I close my eyes and think of the shadows in the trees and wonder again about the dogs and if they knew what they were doing and if they're sorry now.
