Who Let That Killer in the House?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “MacLaren jumped in and pulled her out.” I was annoyed they hadn’t been able to figure out by looking at me that I hadn’t been in my pool. I looked like I had been dragged through a mud puddle.

  “Did she try to kill herself?” That was Hollis again, her face so white that even her freckles were pale. When we hesitated, she demanded, “Did she?”

  “Of course she didn’t,” Buddy answered.

  “Yes, she did,” Art said with a glower.

  Sara Meg seemed to notice him for the first time, and she visibly cringed. I couldn’t blame her, since the poor boy had been branded a murderer by Chief Muggins not many hours before. She moved a step closer to her brother, and Buddy said, “What are you doing here? Go on home. You have no place here.”

  Art bristled, but Joe Riddley put a hand on his shoulder. “You won’t get to see her, son. We’ll stick around and I’ll call you if there’s any change. Go on home now.”

  Art slunk out like the stray cats Mama used to evict from our backyard.

  Hollis turned to me, her blue eyes blazing. “Did she try to kill herself, Miss Mac?”

  I reluctantly nodded. “I’m not sure, but I think so. I saw her get out of the car and head toward the pond. By the time I got there, she’d already been under the water awhile.” I shivered. The hospital was definitely too cold. Joe Riddley came over to put his arm around me, and I leaned close to him. For a second there, I’d been back in Hubert’s pond.

  Joe Riddley peered down at Martha. “How long before Garnet will be ready for her folks to see her? Is there time for us all to go get a cup of coffee?”

  “Why don’t you go on up to the waiting room just outside the unit?” she suggested. “There’s a coffeepot there, and I doubt there are other families up there at this hour.”

  Hopemore doesn’t have much call for a psychiatric unit at the hospital. It’s really just four rooms at one end of a hall, with a little lobby outside a set of double doors. Martha personally escorted us up to the lobby, which had a big round table, and made a fresh pot of coffee. She also found a box of assorted cookies that still had a few good ones left. With the bright lights dimmed, it was a pleasant enough place to wait at that hour.

  Martha indicated the double doors. “Usually you’d ring to be admitted, but right now they’re getting her settled. I’ll tell them to come get you when you can go back.” The last was for Sara Meg, whose eyes were greedy on those doors.

  Martha inserted a key and the doors opened with a swoosh. I saw a second set of locked doors beyond them. The unit might be small, but it was certainly secure.

  We ranged ourselves around the table, with Hollis between Joe Riddley and me and Buddy and Sara Meg on the other side. Joe Riddley poured coffee and brought milk and sugar. As we munched on cookies, I wondered if like me, everybody else was wondering what to say.

  Hollis knew. She said in a low, furious voice, “This has got to stop.” Her fists were clenched on the table before her and her jaw jutted out as she glowered across the table at her mother and uncle.

  Buddy put one arm around Sara Meg’s chair. “Don’t worry your mother now.”

  “Don’t worry your mother.” Hollis’s parody made something terrible of those words. “Ever since Daddy died, that’s all we hear from you. ‘Don’t worry your mother.’ It’s time she got worried. It’s time she got real worried. It’s time she found out exactly what’s been going on.”

  “Hollis.” His voice was stern.

  I didn’t know what he was warning her against, and neither did Sara Meg. She looked from one to the other, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing,” Buddy told her.

  Hollis glared at him. “Ask this—this uncle, this vermin, if he’s sleeping with Garnet.”

  She might as well have poured ice water down our backs, she shocked us so. I stared at her. Joe Riddley froze with his coffee halfway to his mouth. Sara Meg wore the embarrassed expression most mothers get when a child tells a particularly shocking lie in public.

  Hollis ignored us and went right on. “I can’t believe I never suspected before, but you were so clever, Uncle Buddy. Always dropping me off at places before you took Garnet to the club to play tennis or home to practice the piano or study.” Her tone made the last word into something dark and nasty.

  I dared to look at Buddy and was relieved to see he looked merely baffled. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  She jutted out her chin. “The day of the big storm, I came home early. I saw your car leaving our drive as I came around the corner. Garnet was taking a shower—in the middle of the day. And washing her hair—when she’d washed it that morning—like she’d gotten filthy—” She stopped to swallow hard. “And her bed was messed up. I may be naive—I mean, it’s not like we ever got any real sex education at home”—she ignored her mother’s flinch—“but I’m not dumb. I know what messes up a bed like that. I know what she’d been doing. You don’t need to deny it, Buddy. I saw your car.”

  Buddy drained the rest of his coffee and set his cup on the table before he bothered to answer. “Maybe it’s you we ought to leave in the psychiatric ward. You’re making up a whole poultry farm out of one chicken. I was over there that day, yes. I went to see if you’d gotten home from the pool or if you needed a ride. Garnet said you had your bike. She’d gotten up from a nap and said the radio predicted we were in for a big storm, so she wanted to wash her hair in case the power went out—as it did, if you remember. I must have left just as you got home, and you put two and two together and got five. That’s all. You never were real good in math.” He picked up his empty cup, peered at it in surprise, and set it down again.

  Hollis looked from Buddy to the rest of us. Doubt crept into her eyes. “Then why did she plan to run away? Why did she try to kill herself?”

  “We don’t know that she tried to kill herself,” Joe Riddley reminded her. “We’ll have to wait for Garnet herself to tell us.”

  Buddy stood. “Don’t make things worse by letting your imagination run wild.” He went to get himself more coffee.

  Hollis slumped back in her chair, flushed and sulking. Her breath came in quick, angry pants. Sara Meg leaned across the table and spoke sharply to her. “I can’t believe you said those things. After all Buddy’s done for us—for you—”

  Maybe it was her saying his name that made me look over at him just then. I caught the quick breath he expelled as coffee filled his cup. I saw how he straightened his shoulders as he turned back to the table. He looked just like a kid who has been given a hard word in a spelling bee and spelled it right, to his own surprise and elation. I found sickening little doubts rising in me.

  Sara Meg had no doubts. As Buddy came back to the table, she reached out to lightly touch his arm in support. Hollis glared. Joe Riddley looked as discombobulated as I felt. It was one of those moments when I wondered how on earth we could get from there to anywhere else.

  Martha bustled through the doors like an angel of deliverance. “It will just be a few more minutes until she’s settled in. They’ll call you. Everything okay for now?”

  I knew she wanted to get back downstairs, but I motioned her over. “Do you have a few minutes to sit down?”

  “A few. My feet would enjoy a little vacation.” She took the chair between Joe Riddley and Sara Meg.

  “We’re having a discussion here I think you could shed some light on. Would you give us a quick description of a girl who has been sexually abused? Just a thumbnail of your usual lecture. What does she look like? How does she act?” I wanted to demonstrate to us all—particularly Hollis and myself—that Garnet wasn’t that girl. After all, Garnet had heard Martha’s lecture, I told myself. She could have talked about herself when she was telling Martha about her pupil. But Hollis needed reassurance, and she’d listen to Martha, who was an expert.

  Hollis leaned forward, dogged determination in the set of her shoulders. She had crossed some sort of Rubicon tonight and was not going b
ack without a fight.

  Everybody else was finding the tabletop mighty interesting.

  If Martha was startled by my request, her training kept her from showing it. She took a few seconds to gather her thoughts, then began. “Well, first, she has diametrically opposed feelings that flip back and forth. She’s terribly ashamed and feels powerless, yet another side of her is very sexualized, so she can look at other girls and feel superior, or think, ‘I know things about which you know nothing at all.’ She might look very prudish and demure, but she may go home and watch the adult Spice Channel or look up porn sites on the computer.”

  Hollis caught a quick breath, but nobody else seemed to hear her. Sara Meg was more interested in watching the door. Buddy sneaked a peek at his watch under the table.

  “She will be tinged with cynicism,” Martha went on. “She knows how bad the world can be. She will try to avoid the perpetrator whenever possible, but if he is around, she will do all she can to be nice to him. She fears his violence, you see. So while she looks calm to other people, she is real tense inside. She may clench her fists, pull out her hair, or bite her lips so hard she draws blood. And she will be withdrawn, real secretive.”

  I was beginning to feel queasy, and I noticed that Martha was talking slower. Her eyes sought mine as she said, “Almost as soon as the abuse begins, people will remark on how quickly she has grown up.”

  It fit. She and I both knew it. If I felt terrible for not noticing, how much worse must Martha feel? I truly pitied her as she reached out to cover Sara Meg’s hand with her own. “Do you suspect that Garnet—?”

  “Of course not.” Sara Meg pulled her hand away as if Martha’s touch was as distasteful as what she was discussing. “It’s a friend of Hollis’s—and Bethany’s,” she added.

  “It is not! It’s Garnet!” Hollis pounded her fists on the table and stamped her feet on the floor. “It’s Garnet, dammit, and you just won’t see it! Why won’t you see it?” Her voice rose in a desperate scream.

  Sara Meg looked at Hollis with shocked, rebuking eyes. Buddy had his arm around his sister, protecting her. And I finally knew why the ancients used to kill a messenger who brought bad news. We were all so distressed with that furious child for the way she was shredding our comfortable world. Then we heard a distant voice beyond the two sets of doors. “That’s my sister! I have to get out there. Please!”

  Martha hurried toward the doors. She came back in a minute, supporting Garnet. I swear, that child was beautiful even in a shrunken white johnny gown with her hair tumbled on her shoulders. She stood looking at Hollis with large, unfocused eyes. “What’s the matter? I heard you shouting.” Then she looked from one of us to the other as if she couldn’t see clearly—probably the result of something to make her sleep. She walked woozily toward the table, leaning heavily on Martha’s arm, and stood there, obviously puzzled.

  A nurse hovered at the door. “I’ll be here,” Martha assured her.

  As the nurse left, Hollis turned to Garnet, calm and pale. “Tell them what Uncle Buddy’s done to you. Tell them, Garnie. Don’t let him do it anymore.”

  Garnet’s eyes flicked around the table. When she saw Buddy, she gave him a hesitant smile.

  “Go back to bed, honey,” Sara Meg urged. “You need your rest.”

  “I’m okay. But you don’t have to be here, you know. You have to work tomorrow.” Garnet’s emphasis on work made it a criticism.

  Martha pulled out the chair she’d been sitting in beside Joe Riddley and gently steered Garnet into it. “Hollis has been saying some pretty serious things, honey. Is there something you need to tell us?”

  “Of course there isn’t.” Sara Meg’s voice was sharp.

  Martha turned to Garnet and her eyes never left the girl’s pale face as she said softly, “The most painful thing in an abused child’s world is the knowledge that somehow her mother is to blame. Mothers are supposed to protect us, but her own mother hasn’t done it. She won’t be able to deal with that, so her relationship with her mother will be passive aggressive. She’ll say things designed to hurt. She’ll pick at her whole family like a sore.”

  Buddy barked a short laugh. “Come on, Martha. You’re describing every teenager I know. Secretive, passive aggressive, picking at their parents—isn’t that normal adolescent behavior?” He looked around the table, inviting us to laugh with him. Sara Meg tried to smile, but it was a pitiful attempt.

  “Stop it!” Hollis shoved back her chair and jumped to her feet again. “Stop sitting there pretending this is just a discussion.” She looked from Buddy to Garnet, her face bright red. “He did it and we three know it. He’s been doing it for years, hasn’t he? You’ve been weird almost since Daddy died. Is that when it started? Is it?”

  Garnet made a high little sound, but she did not nod.

  “My God, Hollis!” Buddy slammed his palms onto the table. “You’ve got sex on the brain! First you go talking to DeWayne about how somebody you know is having sex and what you should do. Now this! What are you trying to do to me?”

  “DeWayne?” I asked before I thought.

  Buddy heaved a disgusted sigh. “He came to me embarrassed to death, saying Hollis suspected somebody she knew was sleeping with somebody. He said he was telling me because if it were his niece or sister saying things like that, he’d want to know. Is this what you were trying to tell him, Hollis? Thank God you didn’t.”

  “Yes, thank God I didn’t,” Hollis blazed back, “because then you might have killed him, like I was scared at first you did.”

  “You’re crazy, girl.” He flung himself back in his chair. “Stop this nonsense right now. You are worrying your mother.”

  Garnet froze.

  Hollis breathed heavily through her nose, and as she began to speak, tears streamed down her cheeks. “She ought to get worried. Garnet cries all the time in her room, and she won’t talk to people, and she avoids boys, and she’s mean to Mama and me. I thought she’d gotten all weird because Daddy died, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t it at all!” She whirled around, covered her face and sobbed. Through her fingers, her voice was muffled. “I hate you! I want my sister back!” She stood there, shaking and crying as if her heart had broken.

  Joe Riddley—an old softie who can’t stand to see a woman cry—scraped back his chair and went to her. “There, there,” he said, patting her back. She turned and sobbed stormily against his shirt while he stroked her hair as he had stroked Bethany’s that dreadful Saturday when DeWayne died.

  Garnet moved her eyes from Hollis to her mother without saying a word, but I saw a small drop of blood begin to form where she had bitten through her lip. Sara Meg was as white as the Styrofoam cup before her, her eyes enormous and confused.

  Buddy frowned at Hollis as if she were a toddler having a public tantrum, then he looked over at Garnet and shrugged, with a wry smile that said Let her get it out of her system.

  “Wipe that smile off your face,” Martha snapped. In that instant, I knew Hollis had one ally. I soon discovered she had another.

  Joe Riddley spoke over Hollis’s head. “What about the fellow? What kind of person is he? How does he keep that going on without the child telling somebody?”

  Buddy again checked his watch, like he needed to get home if he was going to work in the morning. I automatically checked mine, too. It was well after midnight.

  Martha laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “Oh, the perpetrator is a clever fellow. He will always try to convince the child it’s her own fault. At first he’ll use mild threats:

  ‘You seduced me. I was just trying to make you feel better, I would never have done this if you hadn’t wanted it.’ ”

  I looked at Garnet, but for all the expression on her face, she could have been anywhere except right there.

  Martha kept talking. “Over the years, if she tries to break the relationship, he moves to harder threats, like ‘Nobody will believe you—they will believe me’ or ‘Your mother would never understand. If you
tell, it will break her heart.’ ”

  Hollis sniffed against Joe Riddley’s shirt. “Don’t worry your mother,” she said bitterly.

  Still Garnet didn’t move.

  “If she tries to break it off at that point,” Martha continued in a soft, calm voice, “the perpetrator will threaten violence against her, or he will threaten that maybe another, younger relative could take her place. To protect the other child, she will continue the relationship.”

  Hollis wrenched away from Joe Riddley to grab Garnet’s nearest shoulder. “Is that what he told you? Is it? That if you didn’t, I would?” She whirled on Buddy. “I never would. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Do you hear me? It’s wrong!” She had never seemed so gallant to me as when she stood there with her hair wild and tears streaming.

  Finally Garnet spoke. “It’s not really wrong, Hollie,” she said in a sweet, reasoning voice. “It’s even in the Bible. Genesis eleven?” She gave Buddy a quick look for confirmation, but he was checking his fingernails. “Abraham’s niece Milcah married her uncle Nahor. It’s in the Bible.” Her large dark eyes circled the table, urging us to understand.

  Understand? I couldn’t even breathe. Garnet had jumped back in the filthy pond and taken us all underwater with her.

  Martha got up and put a hand on Hollis’s shoulder. “Go wash your face. The rest room is just down the hall to the right.”

  “Do you believe me, Mrs. Yarbrough?” Hollis gave her a long, searching look. She seemed satisfied with what she saw, for she turned and stumbled out the door, sobbing.

  Martha sat down again beside Garnet. “Honey, it is wrong. You know that as well as I do, but it’s hard to admit it, isn’t it?”

  Garnet didn’t move. I had the impression that when we hadn’t believed what she’d said, she had departed for another planet and left only her beautiful shell behind.

  “But why would anybody put up with that—not tell somebody?” I asked, confused.

  Martha put a hand on Garnet’s shoulder. “Because she is afraid of his threats. She will have seen his violence, which he will probably have hidden from anybody else. But you don’t have to be afraid anymore, Garnet.”