Origin

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  “I can’t believe you came all the way out in this weather to see me.” I’d like to ask her how she found me, but it strikes me as an unwelcoming question.

  “Oh, I’m a big walker.” Opal surveys the living room. “What a lovely home.” I show her the kitchen and dining room. She takes in the big farm-style table. “Could we sit a moment? I’m still a little winded and to be honest, I was hoping to chat a bit.” She eases her coat over the back of a chair, sits, smoothes her hair, centers a gold pendant-style chain. Then she removes a handful of folders and a notebook from the tote bag and arranges these on the table. “Is it just you living here?”

  “Um, I . . .” Distracted, I peep into the purple bag. Resting on top is a white envelope with the words Get Well Soon handwritten in blue. I pull that out and find the bag is filled with tiny muslin pouches that seem to contain herbs and bits of twigs. “How nice! Is this . . . tea?”

  She nods. “My own brew. There’s licorice in there—great for the blood. Very fortifying.” She taps her chest heartily, but she seems smaller and more fragile than she did in the hospital. Her voice sounds hoarse. “Well, Lena, the thing is, I worried after you left the hospital so quickly. And then those detectives came and we all found out about . . .” She drops her voice, looks at her fingers. “That awful thing that happened. The poison. Horrible, horrible.”

  I touch her hand. “Please—I’m much better. I think you and all the nurses did—really—just great. Well, most of them.”

  She looks stricken. “You still don’t know . . . who . . .” She lowers her eyes.

  I hold up my hands. “A nurse? Someone disguised as a nurse, more likely.”

  Opal nods, making a discreet, settling motion with her hands. “Well, I’ve been thinking about you ever since you left. I knew I’d have to do this.” She flattens her hands on the folders. “You were one of Mother Abbé’s.”

  I’m still on my feet, about to ask if I can bring her something to drink. But I stop when I hear that name. She pats the place at the table across the corner from her. I pull out a chair at the table and seat myself. The sky beyond the windows is coalescing, changing to a dense, bone-colored morning light, and Opal squints when she looks up at me. “I used to work at Lyons.”

  I sit back in my chair, my face and hands warm.

  She smiles. “Mother Abbé—she gave me a chance when I was starting out. I’d had sort of a—a rough time—I hadn’t had much of an upbringing. A few legal problems . . .”

  “You?” I can hardly imagine this; I take in her ivory chiffon blouse, polished shoes.

  She shakes her head. “Oh, I was a little bit wild when I was younger, but Mother Abbé saw how I loved the babies. She ran a special nursery—children all available for adoption. And every now and then there’d be a—special baby.”

  “Special?” I try to smile.

  Opal lowers her head; the crown of her head gleams white. Then she lifts her chin though her eyes remain lowered, and says, “Favorites, I suppose—though I never liked that word. Mother Abbé would pick one, not necessarily the nicest—there’d just be something . . . unique . . . like a sign?—and she’d say ‘I’m taking that one.’” Opal’s voice flattens. I watch her fingers drifting over the folders. “I always wanted to pick one too. But I wasn’t allowed.”

  “And then what?” I ask softly.

  She touches her necklace. “We called the nursery Animal World.” A smile starts to materialize on Opal’s face and finally her eyes lift, though she seems to be looking at something that’s not in this room. “The place was filled with great potted plants and the walls were painted green and covered in twirling vines and leaves—like a real forest! And there were birds painted in every color, and all sorts of cunning little animals and monkeys—oh, you just can’t imagine.”

  I close my eyes. “I can see it.” I say. “A rain forest.”

  “It was a lovely, magical place. I still miss it. Mother Abbé gave the ones in that room everything—she played with them, gave them special toys and treats.”

  “She sang to us.”

  She nods. “But you couldn’t have remembered—you were so little.”

  I close my eyes again, start humming low near the base of my spine, and let the tone begin, and in its vibrations, for the first time, I recognize the start of musical notes: ahhnnnh!

  And Opal is humming then as well, her voice clearly musical, a pure tone:

  Thy mama shakes the dreamland tree

  And from it fall sweet dreams for thee,

  Sleep, baby, sleep . . .

  I feel her hand close around mine and when I open my eyes she’s nodding, as if we’ve just reached an agreement. But then Opal looks away, her smile waning. “She was such a good woman, Lena. She wanted to help all children, no matter where they came from or how damaged they were. She was probably a bit naive.”

  She seems to be losing her focus and I say, “Please, tell me what you remember, Opal. Really, any details. Were Junie Wilson or Erin Cogan ever in your nursery?”

  She shakes her head but doesn’t let go of my hand. “I don’t know. You were the special one.” Her freckled knuckles are white against the olive cast of my hand. “People couldn’t take their eyes off you. So lovely. You had a full head of hair, such alert green eyes, and you didn’t miss anything—you noticed everyone who came into the room—you had this frightening kind of focus that you don’t see in a baby. Mother Abbé carried you everywhere. I remember your little face always peeping between her arms. Clutching that monkey doll. Always watching me.” She stops, her eyes shining, the irises cobalt-bright like stones beneath the surface of a lake.

  There’s a long pause. I rub my fingers along my cheekbones, mesmerized by these descriptions. “What else? Please, Opal, whatever you can remember—the hospital, the other babies, any of it.”

  She frowns again and fingers the thin gold chain that disappears into the V of her blouse, then she slides her hands under the table. The color in her eyes is shot through with light: emotions rising under her skin in layers. She slides the short stack of folders to me. “Last month, when you went down to Medical Records? I guessed you wouldn’t make much headway, so after you were discharged, I went to the records myself. Several times. I know Sabrina’s system—she cross-lists date of admission with blood type. It took some time, but I narrowed it down to twenty-three babies—all admitted to Lyons in 1970 under Mother Abbé. They’re all orphans, none of them named. The records . . .” She shrugs. “They don’t say much—it’s basic information—physical condition and medical history. I don’t know.” She taps the folders softly. “I thought you could look through them, see if there’s one that might sound like a fit. I know it’s been difficult for you,” she says. Her voice is so faint, like breath on a mirror.

  I hold my hands together in my lap, one hand squeezing the fingers of the other too tightly, yet I can’t seem to let go. I can’t bring myself to touch the folders.

  “Lena.” She sits back from the table. “I need to . . . atone . . . for certain things I’ve done. Even though I loved Mother Abbé—I thought she was remarkable—I did know that there was something wrong about her special ward. There was a . . . sort of an agency worker—Myrtle. Once the babies went off with Myrtle, it was like they vanished. Abbé and Myrtle kept things very quiet. Abbé used to say that Myrtle was a miracle worker. I told myself that she was getting babies into homes with loving parents.”

  “Which is why my—why Pia never legally adopted me, isn’t it? Because she bought me?” I squeeze my hands together—a manic sort of praying.

  “You knew?” Startled, her glance flicks up to mine. “Your mother couldn’t adopt you because she had to keep Myrtle a secret. She could’ve lost you.” Opal’s eyes are clouded. “The admitting doctor thought you were autistic, because you’d curl into a tight little nut when anyone touched you.
Like a pill bug. Guarding your extremities—you’d had frostbite in your fingers and toes—it’s lucky that you still have them all,” she says, with a nod. “Abbé said you’d never get a good home—she kept you nearly two years. She called you ‘little one,’ as if she was afraid to give you a name. But we didn’t have the facilities for older children. And anyway . . .” She lowers her eyes modestly. “People were beginning to talk—how a nun shouldn’t be so attached to a baby. So Myrtle offered to help.”

  “The baby broker.”

  Opal closes her eyes. She seems to be taking deep breaths; finally, she says, eyes still shut, “That’s why I came over, Lena. When I saw you at the hospital, I felt it was a sign—a chance to try and make something—a little piece of things—right.”

  “Is that why the victims’ mothers denied they were adopted?”

  “Most of them didn’t deny—they just really didn’t know. Their mothers never told them anything. If anyone lied to you, it was Myrtle—she’s a pro. If she were ever investigated, it could expose dozens, possibly hundreds, of illegal families.”

  I rest my brow bone along the tips of my fingers. “Good Lord.”

  “Well, we can’t fix everything that’s past, can we?” Opal asks, her mouth small and taut. She taps on the folders in front of me. “This took days to narrow down. You may not be in here. And the information is so general, it might not be possible to pick yourself out. For what it’s worth.” She shakes her head and says, “I’m sorry—‘fix’ was the wrong word, wasn’t it? I’m not sure anything in the past can be fixed—the past doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Something in this comment seems wrong to me, elusive and odd. I gaze past her out the window, into the bare trees. A bird with a long, cantilevered tail perches outside the window. It turns its head, watches me with an orange eye, then ducks and plucks a berry from the snow on the sill.

  Opal turns to follow my gaze and says, “Goodness, where did that creature come from?” She absently touches the chain around her neck again, running the gold links between her fingers. It swings forward from the opening of her blouse—I’m expecting to see a cross. Instead it’s a large, white tooth.

  For a moment, I’m frozen, the breath cold in my throat.

  I wait until my breathing steadies, and then, as she’s gazing out the window, I say, as casually as I’m able, “You know . . . I—I just need to go get something.”

  “Oh?” She doesn’t turn to look at me. There’s a pause during which I hear the rumble of a car passing the house. She doesn’t turn. “Why do you need to do that?”

  I watch the bird also, the tick of its tail. It plucks up another berry. I sink back into my chair. The bird switches its tail up-down. There’s a subtle pause; the nurse drops the gold chain. Then she pushes back her long white hair. She slowly, formally turns in her chair to face me. “I’d prefer that you stay in here,” she says pleasantly. “With me.”

  Something shifts—like a vascular alteration in my cranium—the ambient sounds of the room are squashed. All I can hear is a flickering of tail feathers beyond the glass. I turn my focus to the woman’s face. Now she looks at me, her eyes a glacial blue, her skin soft—a preserved, celibate beauty. But in her expression, in her whole demeanor, I finally see it—the winter in her mind: a wilderness much deeper than Mr. Memdouah’s.

  Opal reaches for the folders and straightens them on the table. “You have that animal sense, don’t you? A sixth sense.” She smiles and closes her eyes. “All those years ago, I thought the problem was that woman Myrtle. It wasn’t until years later that I grasped the problem.” She breaks off.

  “Which was?” My voice is nearly inaudible.

  But Opal looks startled. She says, “We were saving the ones that God wanted to die! They were damaged babies. Most of them—like yourself, for example—were born without souls,” she adds gently, as if to console me. “Like animals.”

  I have a sensation like a membrane of ice covering my fingernails and toes, circling my wrists. I start to tremble. I try to regulate my breath.

  Opal stops and taps at her lips absently. “Did I mention I was once a nun?” She laces her fingers together loosely on the table. Their tips look grimy and discolored, as if she’s been raking them through dirt. “When Lyons Hospital—when it—closed, I thought I would die. The children’s ward was my life’s destiny. Of course, I never liked that Myrtle—she was so strange and sort of . . . unpleasant? I always thought her house might catch fire too,” she says casually, studying the ceiling. “My convent sent me back out to work. I taught high school chemistry—I liked it.” She spreads her hands open, flat on the table, and stares as if to read the tiny bluish webs between her fingers. “Then I fell in love. Thirty-eight years old. I thought God was giving me another chance. I left the convent, Andrew and I got married. When I got pregnant—” She stops short, her eyes damp. “It was a miracle.”

  She closes her eyes again, her lips trembling. For several seconds there’s no sound. I cough delicately and her eyes open. She looks at me. “Don’t worry, dear, I haven’t forgotten about you.” She folds her hands.

  “One morning I got up. I thought I heard Thomas—our son—fussing in his crib. But when I went to pick him up, he was cold. I gave him CPR and Andrew called the paramedics, but God—” She lifts her hand and curls her fingers into a fist. “Right out of my own hands.” There’s a small, terrible smile on her face. “Can you imagine that? Who could imagine such a thing? One second alive and laughing, and the next . . .” Her gaze travels around the room. “Have you ever held a dead baby, Lena? They’re very light. My mother said the same thing to me when my baby sister died.”

  “I’m sorry.” My voice is nearly transparent.

  “Well, of course it happened,” she snaps. “What did you expect?” She stares at me, her expression rigid; white windows at the tops of her irises seems to block out her pupils. “What did you think? After all those years of violating God’s laws? What did you expect to happen?” She stops and seems to be straining for breath. “I think I—I think I will have some of that tea, now,” she says, as if this is a social visit that’s gone stale.

  I hesitate, but it seems she won’t continue without the tea. I go into the kitchen and put the kettle on the highest flame. I hurry back to the dining room while the water heats, afraid that she’ll have left, but Opal’s still there, staring ahead, entranced by the bird in the window. Keller’s bedroom is behind the kitchen and I let the kettle give a good long whistle before I pour the water over two of the bags she brought. I return with two cups.

  She thanks me and touches the cup, turning it meditatively. “After God took Thomas, I went into a dark place. I left Andy and went back to the convent: I had to beg for God’s forgiveness. I started praying again. I scrubbed the floors and walls, working in my bare feet. I made myself low. Sometimes I soaked the pillows with my crying. My mind was very . . . dark. It was strange to me—why God would let so many bad, damaged babies live and then kill Thomas. The injustice was beyond anything—and all the abortion babies, all the SIDS babies, all taken! Why? You see how confusing it is!” she cries, throwing her hands down on the table. Then she calms again:

  “Well, the more I scrubbed and prayed, the more things became clear: I understood I had to set things straight. If I atoned and corrected my sins, then God would let me be with Thomas again—when I go to heaven.” Her agitation has dissipated, though her voice trembles and she’s back to fussily touching and lining up the folders again. “So simple! That big hospital hired me right away. Even though Mother Margaret didn’t think I was ready to go into the world,” she adds darkly. “I was ready. I’d correct things. All the most damaged—the babies without souls.”

  “But . . .” I feel tentative, slow, as if I’m feeling my way through an unlit room. “Those . . . damaged . . . babies—they were grown up. You weren’t poisoning them, you killed thei
r babies.”

  “No, Lena,” she says patiently. “It’s the seed that mattered. I had to stop the bloodlines. But I also had to find you, of course,” she says with her shy, bloodless smile. “God stole Thomas, and suddenly there you were again in my mind—I dreamed of a ball of flesh, all covered in fur. I knew it was you. I wanted to dream about Thomas, but you were always there instead, somehow, bothering my sleep.”

  I can’t look at her face. The air smells dry and sour, as if it’s about to start lightning. And it seems that a certain vital stirring has begun around us. I sense—not footsteps exactly—but movement.

  “A year after Thomas, one day I was sweeping and watching the convent’s TV, and there was your name and face on the news! Amazing—Mother Abbé’s favorite. My heart pounded. God was speaking to me. I thought you could see me through the TV screen.” She smiles. “It was a story about that case—the murder of that poor little boy?”

  “Troy Haverstraw.”

  She sighs. “Poor creature. One of the damaged. He had the special ability—like you. It’s against nature. Only creatures and demons have that power—to smell our sins,” she says, her eyes lowered and cagey. She fans out her discolored fingers and I realize that her nails are outlined in dried blood, cruelly gnawed below the quick. “It doesn’t matter. I know what you’re waiting to hear. You want to know about the poison.” She lifts the cup to her lips and sips through the puff of vapor. A vertical line appears between her brows. “Well water,” she mutters into the tea. She straightens up.

  “My aunt and uncle used to work at the Lucius plant. Uncle Jack said we’re lucky to live in America where things are so regulated, it takes years and years for the dyes to hurt you. Not like in other countries! He talked about how the poison colors were the most beautiful—how pure lead white is, or cadmium yellow.” Her voice trails off again, her eyes dim as if she’s losing steam.