With Child km-3

by Laurie R. King

  "Jani's mother was born in Shanghai in 1935, of a Russian Jewish mother raped by a soldier, either Japanese or Indian. Twenty years later, the child of that event was caught up in a riot in Hong Kong, and she, too, was raped. Jani was born nine months later. When Jani was three months old, her mother took her to the local Christian missionaries, then went home and committed suicide."

  "Good… heavens," said Kate weakly.

  "Jani became the brightest student the missionary school had seen in a long time. She received a scholarship, then came to this country to go to university. She was a sheltered young woman who was nonetheless aware of her past, and it was an almost textbook example of the cyclical nature of abuse when she met and married a young man who loved her extravagantly, wanted desperately to protect her delicate person, and turned on her whenever she stepped outside the guidelines he set. He began to beat her. And although it was not at the time legally recognized that a husband forcing himself on his wife is rape, that is what it was.

  "However, Jani was not living in a war-torn city, and she had a few friends and some very employable skills. She left him, and she saw a lawyer. A restraining order was granted, he violated it, and when they came to arrest him, he had a gun and he used it against one of the policemen, who fortunately was not killed. Jani was there when it happened, and Jules, who was about six months old, was sleeping in the next room. He was, somehow, granted bail, but when he came, inevitably, to look for her, she was already gone. She divorced him while he was in jail. He was killed a few months after the divorce was finalized, apparently in a prison brawl, but Jani had the satisfaction of knowing that she had broken free, that she, of her own will, had saved both herself and her daughter.

  "You will understand now why it took her so long to accept Al."

  "Does he know all this?"

  "Of course."

  "And Jules?"

  "Jani told her the bones of it last summer, just after school was out. Not the details, not the extent of his violence nor that he had threatened Jani with a gun, just that he'd threatened her, she had divorced him, and he was later killed."

  "Last summer, huh?"

  "The incident in Germany becomes more explicable, does it not?"

  "What incident in Germany?" Kate asked, then kicked herself. She didn't want to know.

  "Of course. Why should I think you knew about that? Curious. When they were in Köln, Jules disappeared from the hotel one morning, after what was apparently a mild argument with her mother. When she didn't come back by noon, Jani called the police. They found her just before midnight, coming out of a movie theater. Jules said that she'd spent the first part of the day in the park, and the evening in the theater, which was playing an American movie dubbed into German. Jules said she'd sat through it three times. She was trying to teach herself the language,she claimed, and chose the movie because she had seen it already in English."

  Kate had to laugh. "You know, that sounds like Jules."

  "It's possible. Nonetheless, Jani was insane with worry."

  "Who wouldn't be? I'm not saying it excuses Jules, but it does sound like something a kid would do. A kid like Jules, anyway."

  "And would a kid like Jules have screaming nightmares regularly every four or five days? You need to be prepared for those, Kate. And would that kid attack a teacher the first week of school, following a writing assignment to describe one's family history?"

  "Attack? Al told me there had been some trouble, but he didn't say she'd attacked anyone. Physically, you mean?"

  "Verbally. The woman was in tears, shamed before the class. Young and inexperienced, she could have used a greater degree of tact in the assignment - after all, many children come from broken homes, and at that age they are going to be sensitive about it. Still, the degree of hostility shown by Jules was extraordinary. And quite devastating."

  Kate sat and listened to the silence for several minutes, then stirred.

  "What else? Any attempts at suicide, or threats?"

  "Strangely enough, no. I agree, it might have been expected."

  "Drugs? No, I would have noticed that. Tattoos? Body piercing? Shoplifting, for Christ's sake?"

  "Nothing. She seems instead to have befriended a cop."

  Kate thought about this statement for a few seconds, then decided that although the woman had not actually meant to rank friendship with a cop alongside bodily mutilation, a degree of irritation, if not anger, might be allowed nonetheless.

  "Mrs Hidalgo, I haven't heard —"

  "Rosa, please."

  "I haven't heard anything that would even begin to justify your presence here." Kate was surprised to find that the spark of irritation was actually something that burned hotter, and she gave in to it: straight for the woman's professional pride. "Frankly, I don't think you had any right to tell me. I think that if Jules had wanted me to know, she'd have found a way of telling me herself. She's a tough young lady, and I don't know that you or her mother give her credit for that. Personally, I think she's coping very well with what must have been devastating news: some nightmares and a tantrum against a teacher who probably deserved it strike me as a damned healthy way to react. If anything, she seems in better shape now than she did a year ago." Kate was working herself into a fine old rage, and enjoying every second of it. "When I first met Jules, she talked like an eleven-year-old college sophomore. I'll bet she didn't have a single friend her own age. She was a prig with a big vocabulary, and if that isn't a defense mechanism to rival a brick wall, I don't know what is."

  "I didn't mean to —" Rosa Hidalgo tried to interject, but Kate plowed on.

  "Now she's a human being, as close to being a normal kid as you can get with a brain like hers. She's got friends - kids her own age, not just one inappropriate friendship with a cop." She put an ironic bite on the word cop, and again ignored the other woman's protests. "I know you people live in a hothouse down there, and I can see that Jani has a load of problems of her own, but I really think you'd be doing Jules a great service if you'd just back off and let her find her own way. Stop coddling her on the one hand and watching her like a hawk on the other, waiting for signs of mental and emotional problems. Give her a chance, for God's sake. Try trusting her."

  The final exhortation came out more as a whine than as a command: Kate's rage had deflated as quickly as it had grown, leaving her with a bad taste in her mouth and no choice but to sit while the woman across from her earnestly explained the need for therapy and guidance and supervision. By the time she got rid of Rosa Hidalgo, Kate was feeling like a sullen teenager herself, more firmly convinced than ever that Jules was on the rightest possible road.

  But, oh my, she thought as she climbed back into the muddy rubber boots, it was fun to get mad.

  Kate half-expected that after Rosa reported back on their interview, permission for Jules's plans would be withdrawn. However, the rest of that day and all the next went by with nothing said, so it appeared to be settled: Jules would come and stay with her from the wedding until New Year's.

  With one adjustment to the plan.

  On the phone, the afternoon before the wedding, Kate talked to Al, who was at his own place on the other side of town.

  "Al, I was thinking. If it's all right with you and Jani, I thought Jules and I might go north for a few days over Christmas. Maybe as far as Washington."

  "To see Lee?"

  "Possibly. If we feel like it. I had a letter from her last week, asking me to come to her aunt's island for Christmas if I could get it off."

  "Does she know you're on leave?"

  "She doesn't know anything. I didn't tell her about the shooting, or that I got hurt. I didn't want to worry her, and once I got out of the hospital, it didn't really seem like something I could put in a letter, somehow. She did say she was sorry not to make it to your wedding, that she's writing you and sending you a present."

  "Are you two about to break up?" he asked bluntly.

  "Jesus, Al, you do ask some good ones, don'
t you? I don't know. I just don't know anymore. I don't even know if I care. I haven't even talked to her in four months, just these stupid cards of hers. But there won't be any scenes, if that's what you're worried about. I wouldn't take Jules into that. I really haven't made up my mind one way or another. I just wrote and told Lee that I'd leave a message at the post office by the twenty-third if I decided to come - but if we do, it'd just be for the day, or maybe overnight, depending on the ferry schedule, but then we'd leave and go do something else. Does Jules ski?"

  "Better than I do. Which isn't saying much, I admit."

  "Maybe we could go to Rainier or Hood, then. If Jani approves."

  "I'll talk to her, but I doubt she'll have any problems with it. Do you want the car?"

  "I'm going to take the Saab off its blocks. And if driving turns out to be a problem, we'll come home. I'm not going to risk passing out or anything while I'm driving Jules. You know that, Al. I'd never put Jules into danger."

  Al talked to Jani, Jani talked to Kate, Kate talked to Al again, and after that, she called the car insurance company, and finally went downstairs to see if she could get the Saab down from its blocks and running.

  Half the department seemed to be in the church, from the brass to the foot patrols, contrasting oddly with the ethereal academics Jani had invited. It was an afternoon affair with an informal potluck-style meal afterward in the church hall, when the motley friends rubbed shoulders and piled their rented plates high with dishes ranging from tamale pie and Jell-O salad to spanakopita, vegetarian spring rolls, and hummus.

  But the real surprise of the day was not the sweet, honest innocence of the ceremony, nor seeing an SFPD lieutenant talking football with a Chinese professor of mathematics and a black lecturer in women's studies, nor even the quartet of two cops, a graduate student in history, and a technical writer singing dirty rugby songs. The real shock was the newlywed couple's daughter: Jules had a new image. With a vengeance.

  Her waist-length braids were gone overnight. In their place stood a cropped black bristle nearly as short as Kate's, with a longer mop on the top held in place with a thick application of gel. Her makeup, though admirably restrained, added five years to her age, and the short jacket, short skirt, and short heels she wore made it equally apparent that this was not a child, but a young woman. Jani could barely bring herself to look at her daughter, merely shooting agonized glances at her from time to time, but Al seemed for the most part amused, even proud, at the transformation. The younger males present were attentive; Jules was aware of them, as well.

  When the wine had begun to flow and the conversations flourish, Kate found herself standing next to Al over a platter of barbecued chicken wings. He was looking over to the other side of the room, where Jules in all her self-conscious punk splendor was talking animatedly with her new stepbrother, Sean, a serious, handsome young man a head taller than his father. Kate leaned over to speak in her partner's ear. "Quite a family you've got there, Al."

  "Isn't Jules something else? The fledgling takes on her adult plumage. God, I thought Jani was going to die when Jules came home looking like that on Friday. She'll settle down."

  "Jules? Or Jani?"

  "Both."

  The noise in the hall rose higher, and Kate escaped for an hour, to sit in the Saab under the shade of a tree and drift in and out of sleep. When she felt restored, she went back into the hall, to find that an impromptu dance had started up in one corner with a portable tape player. She found a chair in a corner, talked to various colleagues, then Jani, and then Al's daughter, until eventually the tables of food had been reduced to a shambles of scraps and crumbs, the new couple fled out the door, suddenly realizing that they were going to be late for their plane, and the life began to seep out of the party. Jules, flushed with exuberance and reluctant to let go of her triumphal entry into maturity, eventually remembered the shaky state of her guardian and pulled herself away from the nineteen-year-old premed student she was dancing with. Kate drove first to the Cameron apartment so Jules could fetch the bags she had packed earlier and to empty the refrigerator, and then to the house on Russian Hill. They stayed the night in San Francisco, and on Monday morning, they emptied Kate's refrigerator, as well.

  After that, the girls were on the road.

  ELEVEN

  Fragments of conversation from the road north:

  "Oh hell. I don't think I turned off the coffeemaker."

  "You did."

  "You're sure?"

  "Positive. And you locked the back door and turned off the oven and checked that the upstairs toilet wasn't running."

  "Thank God for your brain, girl. So, I thought we'd stop in Berkeley on the way. I need a raincoat and there's a good outdoor store there."

  "I wonder if they have boots."

  "I wasn't going to say anything, but those shoes you're wearing aren't going to do it. Athletic shoes are great for California, but the rest of the world is a little tougher."

  "It'll be wet up there, won't it? And we may be in the snow."

  "Count on it."

  "God, Kate, this is going to be so great. I love snow."

  "Let's look at boots, then. Or heavier shoes, anyway. And we'll stop in Sacramento tonight, to get your school project out of the way."

  "You sure you don't mind?"

  "Not at all. The last time I went to the capitol building was when I was your age. I wonder if it's changed."

  "You don't think I should have gotten those heavier boots?"

  "These will be much more useful. And they really are waterproof."

  "I like your hat."

  "At least this one doesn't itch."

  "What a boring thing it must be, to be a state legislator."

  "One more career option to cross off your list, eh?"

  "I'd rather teach kindergarten, or be a garbage collector. Or a cop."

  "Thanks a lot."

  "No offense."

  "Is anything wrong, Jules?"

  "No. Not at all. Why?"

  "I thought you were going to fall out the window looking at those soldiers, and they weren't even very cute."

  "I wasn't looking at them. I mean, I was, but not at them in particular. I was just thinking the other day that I didn't really know any soldiers; I don't know anything about them. When you were growing up, you must have had a lot of friends who went to Vietnam."

  "I was a little young. I had a friend whose older brother was killed over there, but that was before I knew her. Why do you ask?"

  "I don't know, just curious. Wearing camouflage clothes in a city seems kind of… incongruous, I suppose. And having to keep their hair so short, and wear those heavy boots and… well, the dog tags."

  "Dog tags."

  "Yes, the identification tags they wear."

  "I know what dog tags are. Why are you so interested in dog tags?"

  "I'm not."

  "You sound like you are."

  "They're just kind of strange, that's all."

  "How so?"

  "Well, what do they do with them when a soldier dies? And could they be faked? How can you check up to see if the number is real? Do they keep records?"

  "Um, yes, they certainly do. The Veterans Administration could tell you about that, although they have to preserve confidentiality. I suppose a set of dog tags could be faked - they're only pieces of metal - although the number would have to be backed up by actual identification - for example, if the vet were trying to apply for benefits. They're not like a driver's license. And as for what they do with them, I've always assumed they send them to the next of kin. Why are you interested?"

  "I just am, all right? Can't a person be curious? God, you sound like a cop."

  "I am a cop, for heaven's sake."

  "Yeah, well, don't act like one all the time, okay?"

  "Sorry," Kate said to the back of Jules's head.

  "Why did you become a cop, Kate?" This time, they were not in the car, but in a pizza parlor near their motel north of Sacram
ento.

  "I thought I could do some good. And I guess… I don't know, I suppose the tight structure of it appealed to me. It does to a lot of the people who join the police. You know where you stand, and who stands with you. At first, anyway; it gets more complicated as time goes on."

  "Sounds like a family."

  "It is, a bit. Tight-knit and squabbling."

  "It's my word for the day."

  "What is, family?"

  "You sound surprised."

  "Most of your words for the day are more complicated than that."

  "I'm beginning to think that some of the most basic words are the most difficult. You know what family comes from? The Latin famulus, which means "servant." It meant all the relations and servants who lived together under one roof. In my dictionary, it's only the fifth definition that gets around to describing a family as two adults and their kids."

  "Really?"

  "Yes. Which would make you and Lee and Jon a family. When you're all together, I mean."

  "That's a terrifying thought, being related to Jon."

  "Ashley Montague says that the mother and child constitute the basic family unit."

  "Well, I'm safe, then. You want that last piece?"

  "Can I have the pepperoni off the top?"

  "Sure."

  "Dio's family sounds pretty awful, doesn't it?"

  "Has he told you anything about them?"

  "Just little things, here and there. It's what he doesn't say that makes me think it was pretty bad."

  "You're probably right."

  "You must see a lot of that kind of thing."

  "Too much."

  "Why do parents do that to their kids - ignore them and hurt them and push them out?"

  "A lot of them never learned how to be parents. Their own parents abused them, so they never learned the skills, and never had the self-confidence to make their own way."

  "Sounds like those experiments on animals, when they take baby monkeys away from their mothers. It's so sad."

  "It is. But it doesn't excuse them."

  "It explains them."

  "To some degree."

  "Yes."

  "What is your father like?" Jules asked.