Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  No response. Marceline just sits there, allowing the cat to slurp innards from her hand.

  She isn’t the type to pepper a conversation with questions, prompts, or even acknowledgment. Amelia used to wonder if she was even listening. Now she knows the woman doesn’t miss a thing.

  “I lost it the night my mother died,” Amelia goes on, watching her closely. “A few days later, I even went back to the hospital to see if anyone had turned it in, but it wasn’t there. My only clue, and it’s gone forever, and now I keep thinking about the letter C. Maybe it wasn’t some grand plan God had, like they said—that someone named Calvin Crenshaw was supposed to find me. Maybe it was my real name.”

  A subtle shift. Marceline is still sitting there, her hand outstretched for the cat, but the animal stops slurping, poised ears twitching like antennae.

  “Every time I bring up the past, you change the subject. But you were around here back then, in ’68. You already told me you knew Bettina wasn’t my real mother, but you never told me who told you?”

  “Sometimes we don’t know what we know because someone tells us, or because we know. You see?”

  Amelia doesn’t see at all. Marceline often speaks in this mystical way. Tonight, she doesn’t have the patience.

  “How can someone know something that she really can’t know? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It do to me.”

  “Well, it don’t to me. Doesn’t.” College girl.

  Yes, she’s smart. Too smart not to ask questions of the one person who might be willing to answer them.

  “Tell me what you know about how I was found.”

  “Ask your daddy. He was there.”

  “I think you were there, too. And he won’t talk about it, and Bettina is dead, so who else am I going to ask?” She refuses to let emotion break her voice, aware that tears wouldn’t budge Marceline, but repel her. She’s a tough old woman, and Amelia has earned her friendship and respect by being a tough young one.

  Marceline is silent, weighing something as Amelia and the cat watch her. At last, she gives a little nod. “It’s like he said. He found you in the church that night. I saw him go in alone. I saw him carry you out.”

  Amelia presses a fist to her mouth. “You saw me?”

  “I saw a big ol’ bundle of rags. But I heard a baby.”

  Rags. Calvin had told the truth.

  “Did you ask him why he suddenly had a baby in his arms?”

  “No. He didn’t see me there.” She gestures at the side of the church steps.

  “Is that where you were? Hiding?”

  “No hiding!” she says, indignant. “Just there.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “He went home. I went home. That’s it.”

  “You didn’t say anything to him? Or tell anyone?”

  Marceline shakes her head and gets to her feet. The cat slips off into the shadows beneath the steps.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “Time for me to go. I got things to do before dayclean.”

  Marceline descends the steps without looking back.

  Amelia knows better than to follow.

  She’s certain the woman knows more than she’s telling. But now that she’s broken down the wall, it’s only a matter of time before she learns more.

  She walks slowly home, seeing the first hint of light in the eastern sky.

  Dayclean.

  Chapter Six

  Friday, October 23, 1987

  Another day, another missing person. This time, it’s not a teenaged runaway or a confused mahjong lady, but a Park Avenue millionaire named Perry Archibald Wayland III.

  Sitting in the passenger’s seat as Stef inches the dark sedan along East Seventy-Third Street, Barnes is reasonably certain Wayland didn’t jump off the George Washington Bridge, though his Mercedes had been abandoned on the upper span overnight. He wouldn’t be leaning toward foul play, either, if there hadn’t been a homicide in the area around the same time Wayland’s car was found.

  A junkie known on the streets as Popper was gunned down in a crime-plagued stairwell leading from the bridge walkway on the Manhattan side. Society is better off, and Popper might be as well, having led a miserable existence in and out of juvie and jail. His murder was likely a drug deal gone bad, gang violence, or maybe even a victim turned vigilante like Bernie Goetz, the New Yorker who’d shot four muggers on the downtown 2 train a few years ago.

  Still, the timing and location are close enough to the Wayland disappearance that a connection, while maybe not likely, is possible.

  Behind them, squealing brakes pierce the street noise, followed by a loud, sustained car honk and a resounding crash. Stef curses into the rearview mirror and Barnes glances to see a commotion back on Lex.

  “Cab rear-ended a Civic,” Stef tells him.

  “I’ll call it in.” Barnes reaches for the radio amid shouting and angry beeps from blocked traffic surrounding the accident.

  “Nah. Not our problem, kid. I didn’t even see it happen, did you?”

  “I—”

  “You didn’t. We’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. Big fat rich fish who live in the sky above Park Avenue.”

  Unlike Barnes’s Washington Heights neighborhood, this one has a number of private homes, framed by gleaming blue sky and arguably far more autumn foliage than you find elsewhere in Manhattan, save the parks. Most are narrow, four-story structures of brick or limestone. Some have subterranean patios beyond wrought iron gates; others, shallow balconies a level or two above the sidewalk. No one ever seems to use the outdoor space.

  The leafy block is thick with town cars transporting residents and visitors; delivery trucks bearing meals, flowers, and gifts. Doormen are stationed beneath tony green awnings that jut toward the curb wherever condo buildings break the row of brownstones. Boys in miniature blazers and shiny leather wing tips spill onto the sidewalk in front of the Buckley School. They’re met by women who appear not to have eaten in weeks, or nannies pushing strollers that probably cost more than a cop makes in a month.

  There are no fathers.

  “Did you ever pick up your kids from school?” he asks Stef, who has three sons, and stayed married for their sake until the youngest joined the marines a couple of years ago.

  “What, are you kidding me? I used to stay late at work so I wouldn’t have to go to all those damned Little League games and parents’ nights. ‘Don’t you want to meet the teacher?’ Judy would ask me, and I’d want to say, ‘Depends on what she looks like.’”

  He laughs as if Bill Cosby had just delivered a hilarious one-liner, then resumes his recap of last night’s Cardinals-Twins showdown. Barnes lights a Marlboro and resumes wondering how the one thing he’s always tried so hard to prevent could have happened.

  Because you didn’t try hard enough, fool.

  Abstinence is the only surefire way not to get someone pregnant.

  According to Delia Montague’s lawyer, she’s been trying to track him down for months. Thinking back, Barnes remembers that maybe she had tried to get in touch.

  “You’re never home,” her recorded voice accused.

  Yes, he was. He was right there by the answering machine, listening to her ramble on about how important it was that he return the call.

  Calls. There had been quite a few messages from her.

  “Where are you? Away for the holiday? Call me when you get back!”

  The last time he heard from her was back around the Fourth of July—or was it Memorial Day?

  Must have been, because he’d moved into his new apartment on July first, and she didn’t have that number. He’d regretted giving her the old one, never expecting her to use it, just as he never planned to dial hers, jotted on the lengthy bar receipt from their first date.

  By all definitions, it was a one-night stand. Barnes assumed she was as comfortable with that as he was, especially since he didn’t hear from her following that night in . . .

 
Barnes could have sworn it was April, maybe May. It had to be warm outside, right? She was wearing a low-cut, sleeveless top and a short skirt that rode up her bare legs.

  The baby is due around Thanksgiving. Her attorney claimed they’d met in March.

  Barnes supposes that might be possible. Women like Delia don’t wear thick down parkas and mukluks, even in the dead of winter.

  Okay, so March—that’s one month—then April, May, June . . .

  Yeah. It could be his.

  Her lawyer claims she’s lost her cocktail waitress job and her apartment since becoming pregnant. That means a child is about to be born into this harsh world with an unemployed, homeless mother, and no father . . .

  Except the likes of me?

  Poor kid. You don’t stand a chance.

  On Friday afternoons, Amelia gets out of class at three, walks to the Sixty-Eighth Street subway, takes a fifteen-minute subway ride to Harlem, and is home in time to catch the end of General Hospital.

  Today, she descends from the street to find a logjam inching toward the turnstiles. The platform is packed beyond, and the loudspeaker blares with gibberish.

  “What are they saying?” she asks a man wearing blue scrubs, probably coming from a shift at Weill Cornell Hospital four blocks east. He sticks a cigarette in his mouth, standing so close she can smell stale coffee on his breath. He lights up and treats her to a lungful of secondhand smoke before saying, “Sick passenger.”

  Bettina, who worked for the MTA, had told her that “sick passenger” is often code for suicide.

  “Why don’t they just tell the truth, Mama?”

  “Because people might get ideas about doing the same thing,” she said darkly. “The truth can be dangerous.”

  Back then, Amelia couldn’t believe Bettina would condone a lie any more than she could imagine someone jumping in front of a subway train just because someone else had.

  Yeah, well . . . live and learn.

  Amelia shoulders her way back through the crowd, up the stairs to the street. This won’t be the first time she’s walked the fifty-odd blocks home up Lexington Avenue.

  She scans pedestrians’ features, searching every black face for some resemblance to her own—ideally, someone who shares her own unusual light green eye color.

  That tall woman, the one with the high cheekbones . . . ?

  Or her companion, a few inches shorter but lighter skinned, like Amelia . . . ?

  Maybe the guitar-carrying hippie with a hint of gray in her dreadlocks . . . ?

  Are you my mother?

  No, no, and no. They all walk on past Amelia without a glimmer of interest. Her mother would be scrutinizing every young black woman on the street, because that’s what you do when something is missing. You can’t shake the nagging feeling that something is off, and you keep an eye out for the thing you’ve lost. You don’t just keep plowing ahead as though your world is intact. You don’t just forget your child. Not if you’re a normal, decent human being, and her mother has to be, because—

  Squealing brakes, a blast of car horn, a dull metallic crunch.

  She turns to see the front fender of a yellow cab crumpled against a Honda Civic’s hatchback. Just one more daily drama that will play out in an overpopulated city, crazily tilted with seven million lives teetering on the edge.

  Amelia walks on, preoccupied with her own.

  Are You My Mother?

  That was the title of her favorite childhood book, and she knew it by heart. Maybe some part of her soul identified with the lost baby bird searching for its missing mama. That story had a simple, happy ending. So will hers.

  As she waits to cross onto the final block of Lexington Avenue, she spots a familiar figure on the bus stop bench across the intersection. Even from a distance, on a Harlem thoroughfare crowded with traffic and pedestrians, Marceline LeBlanc’s watermelon-colored head wrap sets her apart.

  What is she doing out at this hour? Heading downtown, apparently, but why? Mundane pursuits—shopping, visiting a friend—aren’t likely for an exotic creature like her. Not in broad daylight, anyway.

  She turns abruptly and stares directly at Amelia, as though she’s been expecting her to show up in exactly this spot at exactly this moment.

  She couldn’t have, because Amelia is at least half an hour past her usual arrival time on the block. Anyway, Miss LeBlanc wouldn’t know her afternoon habits. Early mornings, late evenings . . . those are the hours when she’s out and about, doing whatever it is that a high priestess does.

  Maybe she has a doctor’s appointment. She always seems perfectly healthy, but she’s getting up there in years. She must be in her seventies, at least.

  Spotting a handled basket over Marceline’s arm and a large red leather satchel at her feet, Amelia feels her apprehension give way to panic.

  She isn’t going downtown. She’s going away. Now, when they have so much to discuss.

  “Miss LeBlanc!”

  The shout is lost in traffic noise and a blast of music from the opposite corner.

  The Carter brothers, ten and twelve, have set a boom box on top of a piece of cardboard by the bus stop, preparing to break dance. The older one holds a tip jar containing a dollar bill. The younger is a dead ringer for Michael Jackson, with silky ringlets and doe eyes, wearing a white suit and fedora.

  The Don’t Walk light is still on. Farther up the avenue, the bus is approaching. It might reach the stop before Amelia does.

  She eyes the cars crawling across the intersection, then steps off the curb to begin weaving her way around fenders. Horns honk as she darts to the opposite sidewalk, and a driver rolls down the window to give her the finger and shout a racial slur.

  Ignoring it, she scurries toward Marceline. The bus has stopped a little farther up the avenue to pick up passengers.

  “Miss LeBlanc!”

  She must be able to hear Amelia now, yet she doesn’t respond.

  She saw me coming. She knows I’m here. Why would she ignore me? Why would she leave without saying goodbye?

  The bus is moving again, edging closer. Marceline picks up her satchel and stands to face it, waiting with her back turned to Amelia.

  “Miss LeBlanc!” She rushes along the crowded sidewalk, weaving among pedestrians. “Wait! Miss—”

  “What the hell!” A young man turns with a menacing glare as she shoulders into his brick wall of an arm. She apologizes and pushes past him, only to slam an elderly man shuffling along with a Key Food grocery bag. It slips from his grasp, skittering Campbell’s soup cans and oranges across the sidewalk.

  “Sorry!” Amelia stoops to gather his groceries.

  “Slow down, girl,” he scolds as she fumbles the bag, trying to open it wide enough for a dented box of Shredded Wheat. “You kids are in such a hurry all the time.”

  She thrusts the shopping bag at him and rushes away, reaching Marceline just as the bus pulls up.

  “Miss LeBlanc!” Amelia touches her shoulder. “Please! Where are you going?”

  She turns with resignation as the doors hiss open.

  “Home.”

  “But home is that way!” Amelia gestures uptown.

  The woman shakes her head and silently points in the opposite direction.

  “You’re going down south?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Why?”

  “It time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Time for me to go.”

  Passengers are still disembarking. She strains to hold her satchel in one gnarled hand and the basket in the other, a colorful cloth draped over the top. Both appear to be filled with bricks. Or all her worldly possessions.

  “Are you coming back?”

  No reply.

  “But what about me? You were going to tell me!”

  The woman glances at the Park Baptist Church across the street. “Tell you what?”

  “What you know about . . . me.” Amelia swallows an aching lump.

  “What I know abo
ut you is that you have your daddy, your schooling, your whole life to live.”

  “Hey, lady, you coming?” the bus driver calls, and Marceline turns away.

  “Comin’!” She sets down the basket.

  “Let me help you.” Amelia reaches toward it, but Marceline grabs it after hefting the satchel onto the bottom step, followed by one foot and then the other, clad in lace-up booties made of supple red leather that almost matches her bag.

  “I don’t need help.”

  I do. I need you.

  For a wild moment, she imagines hurtling herself onto the bus along with the basket. But then she catches Marceline’s eye, and what she sees there stops her, hand poised near the handle. Her gaze isn’t cold, exactly. Just detached. As if she’s already said her goodbyes and moved on.

  Slowly, she takes a step back and watches the old woman climb the steps. The doors close after her, and she’s gone.

  Gone forever, Amelia knows as she watches the taillights touch and glow, touch and glow down the avenue.

  Traffic on this northbound stretch of Interstate 95 has been bumper-to-bumper since Manhattan, with none of the expected trickling off in the Connecticut suburbs. Maybe the city is evacuating to New England and Canada to escape Black Monday’s fallout. It’s going to take hours just to reach the ferry. But it will be worth it. White is waiting.

  Growing up across the river in Rockland County, Red had dreamed of life in Manhattan—a high-powered job, rich, famous friends, a sprawling skyscraper condo . . .

  Until White came back, the reality was unemployment, loneliness, and a dreary, barely affordable Hell’s Kitchen walk-up. The place came furnished, though it’s strictly utilitarian. Couch, chairs, tables, lamps, a bed. The living room and bedroom are boxes; the windowless kitchen little more than an alleyway between them. The bathroom is closet-sized; there are no closets. That’s okay. When you spend the first part of your life in a trailer and the next moving from one group home to another, you don’t accumulate possessions.

  The landlord, a wiry little man with a cartoon-villain hook nose, had advertised this place as having “river views.”