by Anne Rice
Nancy stayed in place until I lifted her out of the sink. When I did so, my hand slid under her sweater, where it came in contact with almost gelid, squish-soft skin beneath … and when I bent down to take one of Nancy’s small hands, it felt much the same. Not quite rotted … but getting there. She had to be awfully sick….
As we walked down the hallway, toward the Toddler Pit, I now understood Mrs. Day Care’s frantic desire to wash—and wash—her hands under that stream of hot water….
I may have saved Nancy from one kind of disaster that afternoon, but I didn’t have the same kind of luck myself. During my absence, Ruth—ever helpful, ever nosy—had come upon Nancy’s handiwork resting on the table, plus my collection of coloring pens. And by the time I was finished in that women’s room, Mrs. Day Care and the other children had returned to the Pit—where Ruth felt compelled to show the teacher both Nancy’s drawings and my felt-tipped pens.
They were deep in discussion when I came back with Nancy; I don’t know what made my heart palpitate more—the sight of my pens in Mrs. Day Care’s sharply pink-nailed claws, or those butcher-paper drawings from hell in Ruth’s lightly freckled hands. Nancy sensed my panic, and did what any child long accustomed to keeping deep, dark secrets would do—she ran and grabbed the pictures out of Ruth’s fingers, and tossed them into the big trash can near the kitchenette. Then she went and pretended to busy herself with a picture book in the corner of the room.
I don’t remember exactly how I bullshitted my way out of that mess; I do recall something to do with keeping a bored child happy, a bored professor’s child. I might have even tossed in situational ethics, I don’t know. It would’ve been appropriate.
All I do know is that the ban on Nancy participating in outdoor playtime was lifted. During my last couple of weeks in the Toddler Pit, I alone folded the cots after naptime, and I was even released form my duties as back-rubber.
To her credit, Nancy never mentioned our mutual secret; I saw so little of her—just a sad, dark-wigged little figure sitting obediently behind a jumble of bristle-blocks—that it was almost as if we’d never met. And Stephen continued to whoop, coo, and burble happily, forever safe from the spilling of secrets, or the revelation of his second nurturing womb. I did make it a point to touch him, just once before leaving the Toddler Pit for good. His skin was soft, pliant, and firm—good, clean, healthy baby skin. If he was lucky, he’d keep it for life. And he smelled good, too. Like soft powder and baby lotion. I never changed his diapers, the long-haired secretive aide was in charge of that, but I never once doubted that the sight of something like the “stuff” would have shocked her into sudden loudmouthed ranting to Mrs. Day Care, her usual tight-lipped reserve shattered. So I had to assume that Stephen merely did his “duty” like any other person.
But the near-revelation of Nancy’s little secret did enable me to add one more jagged piece to the frameless, many-pieces-missing puzzle of her life. Instead of rubbing backs before naptime, I was assigned to do dishes after snacktime (which occurred about an hour or so before I showed up in the Pit each day), and put them away in the cupboards that lined the kitchenette. Taped to one of the doors was a ruler-lined sheet of paper, with all the names of the children who attended the day care—along with a list of dietary “No-No’s” (as they were so dubbed on the sheet). Always-crying Sarah was a diabetic, so no sugary foods for her. Jennifer needed to take a pill for lactose intolerance, from a bottle issued by the hospital pharmacy. Plus, there were a couple of notations for the DeGrooten youngsters:
“Stephen—jars of baby food in refrig., Nancy—withhold all solids, can give water (bottled only, see refrig.)”
I only needed to read that once … for Nancy had explained the rest, in her own fashion.
Aside from that printed revelation inside the cupboard door, my being barred from the nap area—and Nancy—had one other advantage. I was able to fish the child’s drawings out of the trash, long before the janitor came to take away a week’s worth of garbage, and stuff the folded sheets into my purse.
Not that I expected anyone to scrutinize the scribbled sheets, or even understand them … but secrets are secrets.
As it turned out, I never saw Nancy or Stephen again after I finally did the last of my time in the Toddler Pit. A week after I finished my student-teacher stint there, the pending court case against the hospital—as filed by the DeGrooten’s lawyers—went into session, and after an astonishingly brief six hours of actual court time, the hospital decided to settle out of court … for an undisclosed, but supposedly very high sum.
(Or so Ruth told me once she and I got over a decidedly frosty period … her friend the obstetrics nurse’s favorite doctor ended up leaving the hospital, while every other doctor named in the suit had significant jumps in their malpractice insurance premiums.)
And after they received the settlement, the DeGrootens also began to get hate mail and hang-up phone calls from a lot of the former patients of the doctor who was forced to leave, stethoscope trailing between his legs like a tail, until they up and left town. They quit teaching in midsemester, pulled the kids out of day care, the whole shebang. Not that I blamed them, weird as they were. I think—if what Nancy had been visually hinting to me with her black-head/black-body depictions of her brother and herself was true—that the DeGrootens would have had to leave town in a rather short while anyhow.
For when their house went up for sale, listed by address only in one of the local realtor’s advertisements, two items in the blurb caught my attention. The obvious one was “Complete greenhouse, with many flowering plants.” The one no one else would have noticed was, “Newly cemented and finished basement.”
That’s where Nancy’s story—or my understanding of it—should have ended, and there it would have ended, if I hadn’t gone back to my alma mater just recently, to do some research at the extensive library for my latest novel. A couple of years after the Toddler Pit incident, I gave up on teaching, for reasons having nothing to do with Nancy or her too-detailed pictures, and became a liberal arts/English major, and then a published writer … of horror, almost naturally. But I had never thought of sharing Nancy’s secrets, out of both fear and respect—fear of her parent’s wrath, and respect for a sick little girl—and, perhaps if I had stayed way from my old school, I never would have shared those secrets. But in the library, I ran into my old Introduction to Education professor, a cheerful man of Thai extraction who had now been bumped upstairs into administration.
Dr. Sarasin had never been much of a teacher when I had him, so I could only hope he was more efficient as an administrator, but I still made out as if I was happy to see him. We chatted between the stacks for a few minutes, until I asked if he’d been the only teacher from the college who’d been promoted to administration.
“Ah no, no, Dr. DeGrooten—you ‘member him, no?—he’s now chairman of board.”
Assuming he meant the board governing the administration of the entire college, and not caring enough for a clarification, I blurted out, “Didn’t he leave here ten years ago?”
“Yes, yes, he leave—but he return two, three years ago. You had him, no?”
Nodding, I told him about the ethics class, and was about to mention how I’d met his children in the Toddler Pit, when Dr. Sarasin cut in, “You hear, no, ’bout their little boy?”
“Stephen?”
“Yes, he in school now, special school.” Sarasin gently touched his graying head of black hair, making soft noises of what I assumed to be sympathy. Without thinking, I found myself saying, “Stephen was a cute little boy … but I felt so sorry for his sister; all the attention paid to him was a drain on her—”
“No, no, he was no problem to his sister. She born long after he put in special school.”
“Nancy? She was about the same age—”
“No-no-no,” he sputtered quickly, and waved both hands furiously—as if to wave away any misconception—before adding, “He lost sister before he born, sister Nanc
y was sick one, two year before he born. Cancer. After a time, her parents not talk ’bout her, and no one ask … my wife, me, we know DeGrootens long ’fore they come here, to this college. Daughter sick back then. After she sick, my wife, me, we didn’t socialize much with them. But now they are back here, and they have new little girl. Maybe three, four … same age as Stephen when you knew him. She pretty girl, goes to day care out on other side of town. It moved since you left here, not in FAC anymore—not since old teacher there, she die.”
Hugging my book to my chest, I nodded dumbly as my old professor spoke to me, jabbering on in his imperfect English about the restorations to the former day care after it was moved to an abandoned school on the other side of town, remembering how spaced-out he used to be when I had him for a teacher, how he was usually five years behind the times when it came to just about everything—and especially what was going on with his fellow teachers. Including the DeGrootens, and including Ruth and her professor husband … none of whom moved in the same social circles, either in or out of the college. And spaced-out enough not to know how many children his former friend and his biologist wife were sending to day care, even while some of his own students were taking care of both of the DeGrooten youngsters….
Thus, the old Toddler Pit of my memories is no more, even as it still remains, albeit somewhat changed, in a different location, with no doubt the same smells in the air, the same folding cots arranged higgledy-piggledy across the floor, and with perhaps the same or very similar hands rubbing the tiny prone backs come naptime. Only … Stephen’s joyous coos and whoops are missing, but I am sure that they are still remembered in that new Toddler Pit, by the one who had to hear them for perhaps the longest time of all.
And even though the mask of flesh above that black silhouette body (as Nancy—or whatever she is called now—no doubt still pictures herself) may be the same, still childlike, still small and dark-wigged and bright-eyed, I wonder if the Nancy I knew is still a child—even if I don’t ever really want to know the answer to that question.
For … for if she is only a child without, how could I ever let my eyes meet hers, with both of us remembering how I was able to crawl out of the Toddler Pit she can never leave?
So, I’ve kept her scribbled drawings, and her secret … up to now. For I can only believe that as ethical as her parents have no doubt tried to be, they would never allow her to ever be able to read….
RED ANGELS
KAREN HABER
THE drums.
They were the first thing David Weber heard—felt, really, a steady pulsing beat—as he stepped from the gleaming seaplane onto Port-au-Prince’s sunny Bowen Field.
“Passports, please, passports.” The immigration agent chanted his mantra in lilting French-accented English.
Weber stepped up to the sagging metal table and stared beyond it at the murals decorating the walls, scenes of local frolic and revelry. Probably Philome Obin’s work or Castera Bazile’s, Weber thought, and his heart beat faster. Hadn’t he come to Haiti to buy the best native artwork he could find for his gallery? If it was right here in the customs shed then it was probably all over the island, his just for the asking. The drums beat behind him, through his pale skin, and right into his blood—boombadaboombadaboom.
“USA?” The agent had a dark, genial face. His smile was ragged, with crooked incisors.
“Yes.”
“Welcome. Not many Americans come here anymore. Purpose of your visit?”
“Business.”
“Really?” The man looked at him in surprise. “Perhaps you’re a trade inspector from Miami? Looking for smugglers?” He chuckled and Weber forced a smile.
“How’d you guess?” he said. “My cover story is that I’m a gallery owner from Los Angeles looking for art. For Ti Malice, the famous Haitian artist.”
The man gave him a sly, knowing glance. Weber’s hopes leaped high: perhaps he would get his first lead here, right now.
“Ti Malice?”
Weber nodded eagerly.
“Ti Malice. Heeheehee.” The immigration agent bent double with laughter. “Ti Malice. Ti Malice. Hoohoohoo. You really came here to find him?”
“Yeah. To find him and buy paintings from him.”
The passport-control agent laughed yet again, a quick mocking snort this time.
Weber began to get annoyed. He shuffled his feet and wondered just what was so funny. Should he ask? He hated being laughed at.
“Ti Malice won’t want to do business with you, my friend. Trust me.”
The drums were getting louder now.
“We’ll see.” Weber shrugged. “Maybe he will, and maybe he won’t. What’s that drumming? Some voodoo thing?” He tried to sound casual, but deep inside he trembled at the thought of actual voodoo rites taking place nearby. Grainy images from ancient movies floated to his mind. He pushed them aside.
The official was stiff now, even a bit contemptuous. “That’s not vodou. There’s a festival, a combite, someplace. Probably the hill farmers are building a barn up there.”
“But the drums—”
“It helps them to work. They sing.” The agent stamped his passport and handed it back without looking at him. “Next.”
Weber stumbled out into the bright sunshine, dragging his suitcase. He was just trying to make a living but it certainly brought him to some odd places, he thought. Now here he was in the nutty world of voodoo drums, witch doctors, and zombies. It was funny, really, where a guy with a master’s degree in fine arts from UCLA could find himself.
Suddenly, a small, wiry man was at his side.
“Taxi?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Hotel Jolly?”
“No. Hotel L’Ouverture.”
“You’re not Swiss?” The driver seemed surprised.
“No.”
“German, then.”
“Guess again.”
“But the blond hair, the blue eyes—all Swiss and Germans stay at the Jolly.”
“I’m American.”
“Oh. Good. Big tippers, Americans.” The driver chuckled deep in his throat. “Not many of you here now.”
“So I’ve heard.”
The car was an old gray Ford daubed with pinkish primer paint, sagging on its rusting suspension. It bounced as the driver stowed his bags in the yawning trunk, and again when Weber climbed into the back. The seat was black vinyl patched by red and gray tape whose edges had curled in the heat. He pitched and slid across it as the driver took off.
Weber grabbed the door handle and braced himself as the cab made the first of several sharp turns away from the empty fields of the airport and into the winding maze of Port-au-Prince’s potholed streets. After the third near-collision, Weber leaned over the front seat and tapped the cabbie on the shoulder. “Can’t you drive any slower?”
The man barely glanced at him. “You don’t want me to go fast? Americans always do. Americans and Japanese, forever in a rush, in a big hurry.”
Weber felt a warning tingle of suspicion: his biggest rival for collectors was an aggressive gallery-owner in Tokyo, Hideo Tashamaki. “Japanese? Here? What do they come here for?”
“The puffer fish. And whores.” The cabbie giggled.
Whores. That was the last thing Weber wanted here. He settled against his seat-back in silence and wondered why anyone would risk his life eating poisonous fish or screwing diseased prostitutes.
With a squeal of tires and brakes, the cab stopped in front of a six-story wooden building. The upper three floors sported balconies with graceful wrought-iron supports. From the lowest balcony hung a sign in faded gilt that read: “Hotel L’Ouverture.”
A statue of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture stood nearby the porte-cochère. It was green with age, surrounded by a circle of dead brown grass. White and gray pigeons roosted on L’Ouverture’s tricornered hat, on his outstretched hand, and along the eaves of the hotel that bore his name.
Weber stood on the staine
d front steps holding his suit bag as the taxi roared off. No bellboys swept him up in a welcoming bustle. Well, what did you expect? Weber thought. He elbowed his way past the stiff paint-flecked double door into the dim, cool lobby. His footsteps echoed. A clerk sat behind the wide mahogany desk, head propped on his hand, reading a creased and tattered comic book. He didn’t look up until Weber had put his bag down across the top of the desk. His expression was mildly hostile but mostly sleepy.
“I have a reservation,” Weber said.
The clerk didn’t budge. “The room isn’t ready.”
“When will it be ready?”
“I don’t know. The maid didn’t come in today.”
Weber looked around the lobby. Empty, dark, and quiet. “Oh, come on. Do you mean the entire hotel is full? It doesn’t seem that way to me.”
The clerk shrugged and gazed wistfully at his comic book.
Weber sighed, pulled out his wallet, and carefully removed a five-dollar bill which he ostentatiously slapped into his passport. “Here, you might want to see this.”
The clerk perked right up. He took the passport, nodded, and opened the guestbook. “Lucky for you we’ve had a cancellation. Room 37. This way.”
Room 37 had obviously not been occupied in some time. The air was hot and musty, and a thin layer of dust coated the dresser and the old-fashioned black phone on the nightstand.
The clerk lingered in the doorway. Obviously, this was even more entertaining than his comic book. Weber slung his bag onto the sagging bed, and the bedsprings groaned rustily. He brushed off the phone, picked up the receiver, and, after checking a card in his pocket, dialed the number of Jean Saint-Mery, a local art dealer who had been highly recommended.
The gallery number was busy. Weber double-checked the card and dialed again. Still busy.
“Damn,” he said. “Is there a phone book here?”
“No,” said the clerk. “Sorry.”
