Roadwalkers

by Shirley Ann Grau

  A two-headed calf.

  “Uugh,” a woman whispered. Her man said, “It’s nothing but a trick, that’s all it is.”

  A lizard the size of a hound, its skin a shiny sparkling gold in the light.

  “I bet it ain’t alive,” the woman said.

  The lizard blinked one eye. “You lose, tootoot,” her man laughed.

  A baby in a bottle.

  “A monkey,” the man said knowingly.

  A tank with six or eight two-headed slider turtles. Another tank with an alligator that was almost white. The largest rabbit Rita had ever seen, with floppy ears and fur that was pale pink. A snake, thick around as both her arms together, and curled into loose coils like a carelessly thrown rope.

  Behind her, the couple grew silent. All Rita heard was the woman’s short panting breath.

  A bobcat with high towering plumes on his ear tips. A two-legged dog, forequarters resting on a small wheeled platform. A hairless cat.

  The animals looked straight ahead, all staring intently at some far-off point.

  They see something, Rita thought. That is for sure. And what is it that is hidden from me.

  She came to the last cage, PIGMY TIGER, the sign said. She saw stripes of orange and gray. Bright orange, glowing like a fire coal. She felt a surge of disappointment. The pigmy tiger was a tomcat, an unusually large one, fur dyed orange. Nothing more. An old cat, stinking of urine and musk. She sneezed sharply, once, twice, knife slash in her nose. Stirred by the sound, the cat turned to her. Looked at her. Not past her to a distant point like the others. Not through her to an inner vision. But at her. Seeing her.

  On the wide head, the stripes—so crudely brightly dyed—radiated from the slanted eyes, sun rays, power rays. Once Rita had seen a picture of a saint with such an exploding halo.

  The flaming halo reversed, pointing inward, to the eyes.

  Eyes round and shiny as the glass balls people put on their lawns for decoration. Eyes protruding, lidless, wakeful, unmoving, fixed on her. The pupils widened, opened like doors. Rita looked into them. And it wasn’t black, it wasn’t dark, it wasn’t empty. It was the color of nothing and of something. It was older than time, older than rocks. The knowledge of nothing. Complete, enfolding, enveloping, swallowing. Old, beyond decay. Past hope, and without fear. Rita looked into the beginning of the world, before the universe started spinning.

  She bent forward, to see more.

  A hand jiggled her arm, impatiently. “I want to see,” a girl’s voice said, “if it’s something special.”

  The pupils contracted in a flash, and became again only slits in the skull of an old dying tomcat, not windows on an empty universe in a time before the world was made.

  That was the fair in Stevensport on the Little Mirassou River.

  To the small black child wrapped tightly in the cotton blanket, Rita said: “I have seen eyes just like yours before this day. An old tomcat was wearing them, and he was in a cage too.”

  Rita Landry brought food twice more that day, and each time the child was huddled on the pallet, blanket wrapped.

  The next day, Rita noticed that a spot on the window had been rubbed clean, a very small spot between the links of protective mesh.

  On the morning of the third day Sister Bernadette again came with her.

  “She is like this every morning?” Sister Bernadette pointed to the huddled figure, to the puddle of feces and urine on the linoleum.

  “Yes, ma’am. I clean it up.”

  “This time, pick it up with your cloth and put it in the bedpan,” Sister Bernadette said. “Do it very slowly and let her see.”

  They dressed her in clean clothes. She was limp in their hands, unresisting.

  “She needs fresh air.” Sister Bernadette fitted the harness, the one she had worn when she arrived, around her shoulders. “I am far too old to chase after her.” She picked up the child. “When you’ve cleaned here, Rita, join us. We will be in the play yard.”

  The smallest children, the ones too young for school, were gathered at the swings in the far corner of the fenced yard; their voices jabbered like squirrels. Sister Bernadette sat on a shady bench teaching Mary Woods to stand quietly upright. Over and over again she put the child on its feet; over and over again it squirmed and pulled frantically, throwing itself to the ground, struggling, thrashing, kicking up puffs of dust. Each time, methodically, Sister Bernadette put the child across her lap, spanked her. And began again.

  Such a long time, Rita thought, her arm must be getting tired.

  Finally the child stood, shoulders hunched, cowering but upright, on her own feet. She had not cried, not once, nor made a single sound.

  “Very good.” Sister Bernadette handed the leash to Rita. “Take her to play there, in the sun. She looks pale and peckish to me.”

  How, Rita wondered, could you tell with a skin so black.

  Sister Bernadette shook out her skirt, settled her wimple. “I leave her to you.”

  Rita, who never asked questions, said, “What do I do with her?” And clapped her hand to her mouth in surprise at her words.

  “During the day keep her out here. See that she learns to walk holding your hand. Feed her in her room, see that she takes a nap like the other children. In the evening take her for walks up and down the halls, let her look into everything, let her see everything.”

  “Yes, Sister.” Rita took a firm hold of the small arm.

  Sister Bernadette touched Rita’s cheek. Her hand was dry and hard and lumpy as a piece of kindling wood. “She will bring grace to you.”

  The midday bell rang. The children raced inside, passing close by them. Mary Woods closed her eyes and shivered.

  In the months that followed, Rita spent every day with the tiny black child who never spoke, never made a sound, never smiled or scowled, only stared with eyes that gleamed with strangeness: knowledge, or power from some secret of her own.

  One Sunday in April, right after Mass, three yellow school buses stopped at the side gate, and all the children, two by two, marched into them. They were going to a daylong picnic at Lincoln Park. Rita Landry and Mary Woods stood in the empty play yard and watched.

  Rita said, “I heard a lot about Lincoln Park.” Big oak trees and green smooth grass. Flower beds blooming all different colors. Fountains with water shooting high in the air. Benches where you could sit and look out over a lake, which was bright blue and so wide that you couldn’t see to the other side.

  “Except for you,” Rita said to the child, and the black eyes swung to focus on her, “I’d be on that bus, going.”

  The eyes blinked once, then twice.

  “Only God himself knows whether you understand a word I’m saying.”

  Now there was something else for her next confession: she had taken the Lord’s name in vain. She hadn’t meant to; it had just slipped out.

  “Well,” she said, “we got the whole yard to ourself, so let’s try the little swings.”

  Mary Woods studied the swing carefully, tracing the wood slats with her finger, as if she were memorizing them. Her legs were too short to reach the ground, so she rocked her body back and forth to start. She began humming, a soft low-pitched monotone.

  At noon she was still swinging. Rita pried loose the small black fingers. “Look now,” she said, “we are going to get our sandwiches and eat them out here on the steps. You know what I’m telling you?”

  No answer, but the small head tipped slightly to one side, for all the world like a bird.

  They ate their bologna sandwiches sitting side by side, watching the empty swings move gently in the light breeze.

  Mary Woods was hungry. She ate so fast that bits of the crusty bread flew out of her mouth, and the yellow mustard dripped down her chin. Rita took the newspaper that held their sandwiches, crumbled it into a ball, and wiped her face. “Let’s us go in now.”

  The child stiffened and very slowly lifted her free arm—Rita held the other tightly—pointing to the swings.r />
  “No.” Rita said. “All little children take a nap after lunch. And you are still a little child, even though we don’t exactly know how old you are. And I am pretty sure you are older than your size.”

  Free of Mary Woods, Rita hurried to midday meditation.

  Sister Bernadette was just entering the chapel, the hem of her brown skirt twitching through the door. Rita slipped in behind her and took a seat in the last pew, behind the two novices.

  She loved this time of silence, of physical rest and mental communion, though she was not sure what thoughts she should be thinking. She had a book—On Meditation—and she’d tried to read it, but the print was small and gave her a headache.

  She studied the faces of the nuns in their side stalls, unmoving, heads bowed slightly. In the dark-wood-dimmed, stained-glass-filtered light, Sister Immaculata was no longer the fat woman, laughing and easygoing, who ran the laundry and the boys’ dormitory. Her face was stretched taut, tense as a runner’s just before the start of a race. Sister Agnes, eyes open, half smiling, cheeks flushing under their light skin, seemed years younger. Sister Bernadette’s large busy hands rested one on each knee, palms up, like boats stranded by the tide; the sparse wreath of white hair around her chin shivered as she clenched and unclenched her jaw.

  Rita settled herself, closed her eyes. Because the windows were never opened, the chapel held its past in layers of scents. Sunday High Masses had left smoky incense like guttering sweet candles. From the black linoleum underfoot, a dry vinegar smell. From the wooden pews, soft waxy furniture polish. From the dust motes spinning across a shaft of dim light, a tingle of sharp mold. From the folds of woolen skirts, a pepper smell of bodies.

  Except for an occasional rustle of starched wimple, a small smothered cough, a creak from the organ pipes, a scratching from the mice behind the walls, thick quiet filled the room like water. The women hung suspended, fish in a tank.

  A small tinkling bell signalled the end. They filed out slowly, sleepwalkers dreaming their own private dreams from that silent private time. They paused in the hall outside the chapel, struggling back to the day and its work.

  Rita returned to Mary Woods.

  In the isolated room, in the very same spot against the right-hand wall, there was a pile of feces in a puddle of urine. Mary Woods waited on her pallet.

  Rita stamped her foot with anger. “Mother of God, did you never live in a house.”

  The bright eyes stared intently. Then, quick as a shadow, Mary Woods raced across the floor. In a single movement she picked up the feces in both hands and carried them to the bedpan.

  Rita Landry looked at the brown trail of drops, looked at the filthy stained hands, hanging limply down. And she began to laugh, a noisy sound that bounced from bare floor to bare wall like a rubber ball.

  Mary Woods crouched on her haunches and watched.

  Rita grew quiet, sighed, looked down the length of her skirt to her black shoe tips, looked up to the ceiling where a single bulb shivered in invisible air currents, looked to one side where the dirty mesh-covered window had one small rubbed peephole. “It was bad enough to begin with,” she said, “but now it stinks of caca enough to offend any saint’s nose.” She turned to Mary Woods. “I am going to clean this for the last time. If you mess again, I am going to make you eat it.”

  She went for bucket and cloth, leaving the door open behind her.

  I don’t care if she does run away, I will not chase her, she thought angrily.

  But Mary Woods did not move.

  “Look now. I am going to show you how to clean.” Rita picked up one rag and tossed the other toward Mary Woods. “Take that and do like me.”

  Clumsily, Mary Woods copied her movements. She was left-handed.

  “Now,” Rita said finally, “we wash the cloths and we wash you, and then we go to the swings.”

  They were still outside when the yellow school buses brought the children back from the picnic. Dirty and hot and tired, some crying, some fighting, they ran across the yard.

  “You don’t pay any attention to them,” she said to Mary Woods. “I said you can swing and you are going to swing until you are dizzy.”

  But Mary Woods didn’t get dizzy. Long after the other children were called in, she was still pumping back and forth. Eventually, in the early dark, her movements slowed, and then stopped. She had fallen asleep. Rita carried her to bed.

  In the months that followed, Rita resumed her usual duties. Everywhere she went, Mary Woods followed, imitating awkwardly, silently.

  Sister Bernadette smiled her thin smile. “You are doing well with her, my child.”

  “She pays attention,” Rita said, “and she learns.”

  Sister Bernadette nodded. “Tomorrow at ten, make her clean and presentable and bring her to Sister Agnes’s office. There will be a visitor for her. The little wild creature seems to have friends.”

  At precisely ten o’clock, just as the stairway bell was sounding the hour, Rita Landry and Mary Woods crossed the center hall, their feet thudding neatly together. At the office door Rita picked up the child, settling her comfortably, and knocked.

  Sister Agnes sat behind the desk. A priest sat in the visitor’s chair. Above his black suit the white round of his face hovered like a moon. On the desk between them was a tray with coffee and a plate of cookies.

  Mary Woods shivered and stared, unblinking. Hooked, fish on a line, resisting but attached. She was so still that she seemed not to be breathing.

  “And here is Mary Woods,” Sister Agnes said. “That is the name we have given her.”

  “A good name,” the priest agreed.

  Rita listened, eyes downcast, as she had been taught.

  “Does she always stare like that?” the priest asked.

  “She is not used to people,” Sister Agnes said. “She lived like a wild animal in a kind of roving pack, I’ve been told.”

  “That is quite true, Sister. Now, however, there is a man who feels a responsibility for the child. He wishes to provide her with an education, a moral upbringing, and, as far as is possible, a home.”

  “He is very generous.”

  “He can easily afford to be,” the priest said calmly.

  Sister Agnes bowed her head to her coffee cup.

  “He himself is not Catholic, but over the years he has been a good friend of the Church.”

  Somewhere within the building, a child shrieked once and was silent.

  The priest smiled tolerantly at the interruption. “He requests only that the child be taught to remember him by name in her daily prayers.”

  “He would seem to believe that the prayers of children are especially efficacious.”

  The slight edge in her voice made the priest pause to glance at her curiously. Her face was as bland as his.

  “Who are we to say, Sister? He also wishes her to include a second name. That of the man who actually found her, retrieved her from the perils of the wilderness, as it were.”

  “It should not be a problem,” Sister Agnes said, “even for a child like this.”

  “She knows her prayers then?”

  “Rita, you may answer that.”

  Surprised, Rita stammered, “Well, in a way she does.”

  “Ah yes.” The priest smiled at her comfortingly. “You will teach her, of course.”

  “She is smart,” Rita said, forgetting her manners, and speaking out. “She can learn.”

  “Indeed she can. It will be Mr. Wilson and Mr. Tucker then.”

  “But, Father,” Rita went on breathlessly, aware of Sister Agnes’s disapproval, “couldn’t she say their whole names?”

  “My dear child, you are quite right. So…Mr. William Howell Wilson and—I can’t remember the other’s full name—but I do think that Mr. Tucker of Clark County will be sufficient identification for the Lord to recognize him.” He smiled serenely into Sister Agnes’s tight-lipped annoyance. “I, or someone from my office, will visit her in a few months. We must report her
progress to her benefactor.”

  “You are always welcome, Father,” Sister Agnes said stiffly and nodded to Rita to take the child away.

  The instant her feet touched the floor, Mary Woods ran—across the hall, out the door, down the steps, straight for the play yard and the swings. She stayed there for hours, body pumping, fighting against gravity. Her face was tipped back and she was scowling at the morning sky.

  The months passed, flipping by like cards in a dealer’s deck. Life at the Home went on. There was a grease fire in the kitchen, and firemen broke through the roof to reach the smoldering vent. Afterward all the children were allowed into the sodden room to see the damage; they marched through in orderly silent lines, awed and well behaved.…Two of the older girls, just finishing high school, left the home to begin nursing training.…Red measles appeared in the younger children. John Kimble, a small frail asthmatic boy, died choking in his sleep.…

  Father Gautreaux, the old priest from Little Mirassou River, wrote to say that Rita Landry’s father dropped dead while walking to the post office to pick up his pension check. Her mother and baby sister were fine; she could continue to devote herself to God and her vocation, which was a blessed one. As for her father, he would be remembered in the prayers at Mass.

  All the faithful departed, Rita thought, the souls of all the faithful departed.…So many, even in that small parish.…She saw them, crowding around the little parish church, six eight ten deep on the ground, even thicker in the air, souls packed tight together, stretching off upwards clear to heaven. Souls taking sustenance from prayers.

  And Rita remembered: So much of the little priest’s food had gone into her father’s round fat belly. Now so much more could go to the priest. He might even grow fat himself.…

  Mary Woods joined the other children at meals in the refectory. She went to church with them, too. Her small black face was solemn and inquisitive, for all the world like a monkey’s. (I wonder if she is praying, Rita thought, and what she is praying to.) At night, just before bed, when the youngest children gathered at the piano to sing hymns, Mary Woods sang along, confidently and loudly. When she did not remember the words, she made up sounds to fit.