The Tiger's Child (27 page)

Sheila cried for a very long time. Pulling her legs up and pressing her arms against them, she buried her face and sobbed into the tattered fabric of her jacket. I said nothing, did nothing other than speed
us onward through the dark. We were in the mountains by then, the trees coming right down to the road on either side. It had begun to snow, the large, downy flakes falling mesmerizingly before the headlights of the car. The late hour, the darkness, the trees, the snow all combined to create a weird, otherworldly aura. Things no longer felt quite real to me.

At last, the end. She snuffled, hiccuped and struggled to draw breath, but the crying had ceased. Silence followed, a long, deep silence, so crowded with thoughts as to make them nearly palpable.

“I remember that boy,” she said, her voice very, very soft and still faintly embroidered with the aftermath of her tears, “that boy I took into the woods.”

Watching out through the wipers at the snow, I kept very still. Sheila had never spoken of the abduction that had brought her into my class, which had nearly sentenced her to a childhood spent in a mental institution. Of all the things Sheila had told about over the years, that incident had never once even been alluded to.

“I used to watch him in his yard. He had a swing and his mom would take him out and push him in it. I used to watch. He had a plastic riding car shaped like an elephant. He used to get on it and his daddy would push him. I used to watch him. And then … He was out there one day by himself and I said, ‘You want to come along?’ Or something like that. I don’t remember exactly now.
But I undid the latch on the gate to his yard and let him out. And I took him in the woods.

“I don’t think I ever intended to hurt him. I had this piece of rope with me, but it was just something I had found down by the railroad tracks. I didn’t bring it specially or anything; I just had it. And I don’t remember
wanting
to hurt him, not in the beginning anyway. I remember walking, taking him into the woods … I made him pull down his pants. I wanted to see his penis. I remember that. I remember thinking, he’s just like Jimmie. He
was
just like Jimmie. And I hated him. Torey, I had some thoughts in my mind then that … I mean, I still remember them just like they were yesterday. I remember
exactly
how I felt looking at that little boy. I just hated him so bad and I thought … You’re going to hate me, when I say this to you, but … I thought, I want to kill him.”

There was a long pause. Sheila lowered her head and regarded her hands in her lap. “I
was
a wicked little girl. Just like my pa said.”

I didn’t speak.

Sheila looked over. “Do
you
hate me now?”

“No.”

“Why not? I would have. If it hadn’t been that boy’s lucky day, I would have killed him.”

I had my eyes on the road, but I could see her in my peripheral vision. She continued to regard me. Finally, she looked away. “I’m a murderer.”

“He didn’t die, Sheila.”

“He would have died. It was just luck he didn’t.” She drew in a long breath. “I can never
forget this. I’ve never told anybody. I haven’t dared tell anybody, but it just sits in my mind. Every good thing that ever happens gets eaten up by this thing, sitting there. I think: I am so wicked. No wonder things keep happening to me. I deserve them. I’m so bad even my own mother couldn’t stand me.”

“Your mother had nothing to do with it. She left you long before you took that little boy. In fact, if I had to venture any explanation, it’s that it was the other way around. She didn’t leave you because you did such things. You did such things because she left you.”

“So why did she leave me then?”

“Most likely, because she had problems of her own. Because she was a very young girl. She was only fourteen when you were born. Did you know that?
Fourteen.
”

No reply.

“So, she would have only been eighteen on that night she left. About a year and a half older than you are now. And she had two kids to worry about and a husband in jail.”

Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, Sheila chewed it.

“I don’t think your mother planned to abandon you, any more than you planned to hurt that little boy. I think she was simply overwhelmed. She was pushed to her limits and could cope with not one thing more, not even a small girl acting up in the backseat. And like most of us when we can fight no longer, she ran away.”

Sheila made a small, derisive sound. “Well, I sure got her blood, huh? Always running away from my problems.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “You’re not like her. You’re much stronger. Much better.”

“How can you say that?”

“You might run away when the going gets tough, but the difference is, you come back.”

Sheila considered, then slowly nodded. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

D
uring the adrenaline phase of this adventure, I’d had visions of driving all the way back home without stopping, but the folly of that idea began to make itself known by about one in the morning. As we came down out of the mountains and started across the wide expanse of Nevada flatlands, I kept an eye out for motels showing signs of life at the front desk so late at night and finally found one on the outskirts of a small town.

Too tired for anything more than a quick wash, I settled into bed soon after we got in the room; but Sheila, who hadn’t been in contact with hot water for weeks, judging from the appearance of her, raided my overnight bag for shampoo and conditioner and disappeared into the bathroom for longer than I could keep my eyes open.

The noise of her rummaging through her things when she came out of the bathroom woke me again, and I lay watching her get ready for bed. “I wish I had something clean to wear,” she muttered. “Everything’s so grotty.” Then she slipped into her bed and put the light out.

An ancient radiator beside my bed heaved and sighed in the darkness. I pulled the blankets up close to ward off the November night.

Sheila turned in her bed. “I don’t feel sleepy,” she murmured. “I keep thinking about all the things we’ve been talking about tonight.”

The radiator belched, wheezed and settled down again.

“And you know? In a way, I feel really angry with my parents. I
was
just a little kid. I feel so cheated. They should have protected me from all of this.”

“Yes, I think you’re right.”

“It’s occurring to me now that maybe … well … maybe I couldn’t help how I was. I was an awful little kid; I know I was, but … maybe I didn’t deserve what my parents did to me.”

Good
, I was thinking.

Sheila would have quite happily slept around the clock, I think, and no doubt she needed to, because I think it was probably the first real bed she’d had in some time. However, the weather was deteriorating and I wanted to be on my way, so I prized her out at nine-thirty.

Exhaustion was taking its toll with Sheila. Her mood seemed lighter than the night before, but she
was by no means chatty. A remark or two would pass between us and then ten or fifteen minutes’ silence before the next comment. I amused myself trying to keep the radio tuned.

“I went to see that lady that answered my ad. And, like you probably already guessed, she wasn’t my mother. Thank God.” A second small smile. “She was just nuts. Like you said.”

I grinned over at her. She shrugged.

“What else did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing, really. For a long time I thought, well … I mean, I just kept hoping I still might find her. I was in California and she was in California. Someplace. I just kept hoping …” Sheila turned her head and looked out the window. “It was pretty awful. I didn’t have anyplace to go. I didn’t have very much money. I had to sleep rough, mostly. In doorways and stuff. And try to keep away from the weirdos. And I was so fucking cold. And hungry …”

“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I dunno. At first I wasn’t going to tell you. I hate you when you’re right. You don’t exactly rub it in, but you sort of … emanate it. Besides, I didn’t want to go back. I still don’t, really.”

A pause.

“What do you think I should do now?” Sheila asked. “Go back to my dad?”

“Yes, probably. And if you want to know what I think you should really do, it’s knuckle down to your schoolwork, so you can get yourself a
scholarship. There’s still time, and with your kind of talents, there’ll be a lot of universities who’d be eager to accept you. I know what you said about not going to university right after high school, Sheil, but believe me, I think it would be the ideal setting for you. You’d love it. You’d have all the freedom you need, and still it’s a protected environment. You can study just what you want and really go. Really let your mind race. I think that’d be so good for you.”

She sighed. “Yeah, probably.”

After that, Sheila slept. We were within the last hundred and fifty miles and I filled the time trying to figure out the logistics of returning her anywhere. Her father wouldn’t be expecting her and I certainly didn’t want to let Jane or any of the Social Services get ahold of her at that point. The best idea seemed to take her back to my apartment and then contact her father. The following day was Thanksgiving, so I toyed with the idea of inviting Mr. Renstad over and making a big meal for everyone. Somehow, that seemed appropriate.

Sheila roused as I reached the traffic-light stop-and-go driving of the city. She sat up, stretched and rubbed her face. “God, I’m back,” she said, looking out the window. From her tone, I couldn’t discern whether she was glad or not. I explained to her my general game plan.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“No. Take me home to my dad.” She glanced over at me. “For about the last hour, I’ve been just laying here with my eyes closed, but I haven’t been fully asleep. I’ve been thinking. Thinking over and over and over what we’ve been talking about, and I’ve decided I want to go home.”

Surprised, I nodded. “All right.”

“Do you remember that summer when I was working with you and Jeff in the summer school?”

“Yes.”

“Well, remember that one time I asked you if you thought things were ever going to get better for me, if my life was ever going to be normal? And remember what you said?”

I hesitated, trying to recall.

“
I
remember it, because I took very close note of it. You said I had to come to terms with things. I had to accept that my mom had left me. Accept that maybe it was just something that had to happen and it wasn’t my fault. And then you said I had to forgive and let go.”

I nodded.

“Well, I think I’ve come to the first point. I was just sitting here, thinking it through, and you know, I don’t feel like it was my fault anymore. It still hurts me like hell. I still wish it didn’t happen, but it did, and I can see now that maybe my mom just had her own problems, that it was just my bad luck to have been part of them.”

She pondered a moment. “And maybe that’s true for my dad too. Whatever. Anyway, I’m thinking, like, I can’t go over it, I can’t go under it, I
can’t go around it. I’ve been trying all of them. So, I better go through it.”

A small silence.

“I think I’m seeing things differently now,” she said. “I think I can accept it.”

“Good.”

Coming up to the junction turnoff for my road, I held the car at the intersection a long moment, but when Sheila didn’t say anything further, I stepped on the accelerator and went on through to join the freeway to Broadview.

“You know,” Sheila said, “what I’ve been thinking most about is what you said about letting go. Accepting, forgiving and then letting go. I think I can accept. I think I can even forgive, but I’ve been wondering and wondering about letting go. Trying to figure out what ‘letting go’ entails, and all I can think of is that it means living your life forward. Starting to think of the future more than the past.”

“Yes, I think that probably puts it very well.”

A small, pensive silence. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever lived my life forward before,” she said. “Even when I wasn’t remembering things, I was always wanting to go back.”

I nodded.

“If my mom was fourteen when I was born,” she said, “if my dad was the same butthead he’s always been with me, then there probably never was a golden age. It’s weird to realize now that most likely there never really was a ‘back.’”

Sheila returned to her father. I didn’t make them the all-American Thanksgiving dinner the next day, which would have made for such a storybook ending. In fact, after dropping Sheila off there, I didn’t see her again for three weeks.

That journey back from California through the snowy darkness proved to be one of more than physical dimensions, however. Sheila ventured out of other darknesses as well. When we next met in the days just before Christmas, I found quite a different girl. Relaxed and cheerful, she treated me to lunch downtown and spent the entire time relating anecdotes from school.

She wasn’t particularly impressed with her new school or her course work, but she was doing well—remarkably well for a girl who had had the disrupted education she’d experienced over the previous year. I was particularly pleased to hear that she had joined the Latin club. More extraordinarily, she very nearly admitted to liking it.

We never spoke of our journey that night, nor of her mother, nor of anything of her past. Instead, we ate croissants, went Christmas shopping together and watched the skaters on the rink in the park. I bought her a copy of Aeschylus’s
Oresteia
trilogy, which deals with the family of Agamemnon, as a Christmas gift, knowing that ancient story of matricide and forgiveness would speak profoundly to her. She bought me an Arden edition of
Antony and Cleopatra
and then teasingly included the Cliffs Notes for me.

My own life was taking an unexpected turn over that period. I’d opened the Sunday newspaper a couple of weekends earlier and had seen an advertisement for a midyear vacancy in a special education class for emotionally disturbed children. It was in a small community in an adjacent state. The strange fact was that I hadn’t been looking for a new job at the time. I’d thought I was perfectly happy at the Sandry. However, the moment I saw the advert, I’d felt a terrible longing to be back in the classroom again.

I told Sheila that I had applied, although at that point I didn’t know whether or not I would get the position. She took my news with the same equanimity that I had taken hers about school and the Latin club. She was bemused by my choice to abandon a well-paying job at a private clinic to return to the classroom. Money was becoming an important issue to Sheila and she had a hard time understanding the rationale behind my actions, but she seemed pleased to think I would be a teacher again.

I did get the job and early January found me almost two hundred miles away from the city in a small town called Pecking. I heard from Sheila occasionally. She never was much of a letter writer, so it wasn’t often, and then, as usual, they were seldom letters in the traditional sense. Consequently, I didn’t always know what was going on. From what I did hear, she continued to be well settled at her school and with her father. He was making another effort at keeping himself out
of trouble. I heard a lot about AA. Sheila joined Alateen, and this was where she met Claire. Claire, who was eighteen and also a senior at Sheila’s school, had not come from the same deprived background as Sheila. Indeed, hers was a privileged upbringing of tennis lessons and summer camps. Yet, disguised behind all this was a world of parental drunkenness and abuse. Claire and Sheila found in one another the understanding other peers couldn’t give them and their friendship grew.

In March we had a two-day break from school and I came up to the city. Stopping by Sheila’s house, I had the opportunity to meet Claire myself. She was a solemn girl with very long black hair and glasses that gave her an owlish look. She had about her that terrible seriousness of adolescence that lends itself naturally to discussions of Sartre or ecology, and Sheila kept agreeing with her when she made dark, profound statements to me. For the first time I saw Sheila as she was, an intelligent, articulate teenager creating her own identity.

I didn’t see her again until May, when we met for lunch at a pizzeria in the city. I almost didn’t recognize her when I saw her. Her bangs, so long in the process of growing out, had finally reached the length of the rest of her hair and were incorporated in a smooth, blunt cut that swept back from her face and down over her shoulders. She had highlighted it slightly, which brought up the natural blond and drew attention to its glossiness. The punky clothes were gone, but not her natural sense
of style. Layered one over the other were two T-shirts, a cotton dress and a denim jacket, teamed with chunky clay jewelry. Her appearance had the modern sophistication of the catwalk.

“Gosh, you’re looking good,” I said.

“Yeah, thanks.” She pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. “I think it’s the freedom showing. Six more days of school.”

I regarded her. She had been cagey about her plans after graduation. I’d asked her a couple of times in letters, but she had never responded at all, even to tell me which scholarships she was applying for. This left me intrigued and anticipating a surprise. Secretly, I suspected she’d been accepted to a particularly excellent university and was going to use this lunch to tell me.

We chatted amiably, ordered our pizzas, and chatted some more. Sheila told me that Claire had been accepted at Stanford, her first choice.

“And you?” I asked, unable to contain my curiosity any longer. “What are your plans?”

She had been leaning forward, arms folded on the table, as she’d talked with me, and now she lowered her head. There was a smile on her face, but she stayed like that for a long moment. “How am I going to tell you this, Torey?”

I waited.

Finally, she looked up. “I’m not going to college. I got a job three weeks ago working in McDonald’s and when I’m done with school, I start full-time.”

“McDonald’s?” I said in surprise. “Jesus, Sheila,
McDonald’s
?”