Where is the Baby?

by Charlotte Vale-Allen

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘Need to use the potty?’

  ‘What’s a potty?

  ‘The toilet. Do you need to go?’

  ‘Yes, please, Miss.’

  The nurse lifted her down off the high bed, then took her by the hand to a room by the door that had a toilet and a sink and behind a curtain was a standing-up place for washing in.

  ‘Can you manage by yourself?’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘Good. If you have any trouble, just pull this string. Okay?’

  ‘What’ll happen if I do that?’

  ‘One of us will come back and help you.’

  ‘Oh!’

  After helping Humaby back into the bed, the nurse went away. Right after that a blue lady came with food on a tray and left it on the table with wheels that fit all the way across the bed. Humaby was hungry but nobody said she could touch the tray, so she sat and waited for someone to come say she could eat. She waited a very long time, her stomach making noises.

  When the nurse came back, she said, ‘I thought you were hungry.’

  ‘I am, but nobody said I could eat.’

  ‘Oh, cupcake, you don’t need permission. It’s probably cold now.’ She lifted the lid off the plate with a sad look on her face.

  ‘That’s okay. I can eat cold.’ Humaby picked up the spoon and started eating the scrambled eggs and toast.

  The nurse leaned against the window sill, watching for a while, then she said, ‘We’re going to find you some clothes to wear, and maybe fix your hair, cut it some so it looks better. How would that be?’

  ‘Cut with a razor?’ Humaby asked worriedly.

  ‘Scissors,’ the nurse said. ‘Do you know what they are?’

  Humaby shook her head.

  ‘Scissors are a tool. We use them to cut all kinds of things, not just hair. Paper and cloth, lots of things.’

  ‘They don’t hurt?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Okay.’ Humaby put down the spoon, picked up the glass of apple juice with both hands, tasted the juice, then drank it all. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, touching the bowl on the tray with the tip of her finger.

  ‘Oatmeal cereal.’ Pushing away from the window, the nurse sprinkled some sugar in the bowl, opened the milk container and poured it into the bowl too. ‘It’s good. Try it.’

  Humaby took a bite, chewed experimentally, and decided she liked it.

  ‘Told you it was good,’ the nurse said, as Humaby began spooning the cereal into her mouth. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Eat as much as you like.’

  ‘’Kay,’ Humaby said, around a mouthful of soft sweet oatmeal.

  When the nurse came back, she taught Humaby how to brush her teeth, watching with interest as Humaby switched the brush to her left hand. Then the nurse washed Humaby’s face and hands, being careful of the hand with the bandaged cut, and dried her with a towel, saying, ‘It’s still early. Want to watch TV for a while?’

  Remembering what Mr Brian had told her, Humaby said, ‘Sesame Street, ’Lectric Company, Mister Rogers?’

  ‘Those shows don’t come on until later. How about some cartoons?

  Humaby shrugged. ‘What’s a ka-toon?’

  The nurse turned on the set, then used a little black thing to go through the channels until she stopped, and said, ‘This is a cartoon.’

  A skinny rabbit was chewing on an orange stick and talking to a little man with no hair. It didn’t make sense. But the nurse seemed happy, so Humaby sat with the bear and the bunny on her lap and watched intently, trying to figure out what was going on.

  Everything felt strange: the underwear, the dress, the shoes and socks, even her hair, which she kept touching. It was very short and when the nurse put her in front of the mirror, saying, ‘See! You look great!’ Humaby thought maybe she was a boy-girl after all, because her hair looked the same as the hair on all the men she’d ever seen.

  Her feet felt as if they’d been put in narrow little packages and tied up tight. And even though the nurses said the dress was pretty, and she said, ‘Thank you,’ so they wouldn’t be mad, it felt stiff and uncomfortable. She’d never had on so many things at one time and she couldn’t move right. All the bandaged parts of her were itching and she wanted to rub them but was afraid the nurse ladies would get mad. So she kept her fingers curled into her palms and tried not to think about it.

  After a long, long time sitting in the chair by the bed, trying to watch the cartoons but not liking them, an old lady who had on regular clothes came and said, ‘Come with me, dear,’ and held out her hand. Not knowing what else to do, and afraid, Humaby took the lady’s hand and they started walking. The dress and the shoes made noise and the underpants felt funny on her bottom.

  They went down a big long hall that had lots of doors – some open, some closed. Voices came out of the ceiling, white ladies and men in white coats were hurrying here and there, and sad people were crying in the hallway. She’d never seen big people cry before and kept looking back at them.

  They walked far and her feet hurt from the shoes. At the end of the hall, the lady pushed open some big doors and they were in another hallway. There were no more voices coming from the ceiling here, and lots more doors, but a different kind. At last, the lady opened one of the doors and said, ‘Here we are,’ and took her inside.

  There was carpet on the floor, little tiny chairs and tables, and a big bright red wooden box of toys. ‘Just wait here now,’ the lady said. ‘The doctor will be in shortly,’ and she went away, closing the door.

  Really scared now, Humaby studied the little chairs for a time, then turned and looked at the great big mirror on the wall where she could see a picture of herself like the one in the room with the bed where she slept. She walked over and pointed. The mirror-girl pointed back. ‘That’s me,’ she said and the mirror-girl said it, too. Forgetting, she scratched at the bandage on her arm. So did the mirror-girl. She wasn’t supposed to do that. ‘Not s’posed to scratch,’ she told the mirror-girl. And they both stopped.

  The dress had a great big bottom. If she held each side of it in her hands she could lift it way up. Like wings. Birds had wings. Wolf told her that one time, not even getting pissed off the way he usually did when she asked questions. ‘Those’re birds. They can fly ’cuz they got wings. The wings flap up ’n’ down and that’s how they get up in the air and zoom around.’

  ‘Maybe I’m a bird-girl,’ she told the mirror. ‘I got wings. You do, too.’ She lifted the sides of the dress one more time, then let them drop and looked around again, wondering what this place was. She’d never seen a room like this before, or tiny chairs and tables. She went back to the middle of the room, curled her fingers into her palms so she wouldn’t scratch, and waited, looking down at the horrible shoes. Brown with a strap and a buckle. Too tight. She wriggled her toes but they were trapped and hardly moved at all. She sniffed several times. She could still smell the hair soap. She kept sniffing. The nice way she smelled kept her from getting really scared. She looked around the room, wondering if maybe today she was going to see the baby.

  Behind the two-way mirror were Brian and his captain, Jim Garvey; Dr Stefan Lazarus, the surprisingly young-looking child psychiatrist who’d been brought in by Margery Briggs, the rigid, unfriendly social worker from DCF, and two cameramen. One film was for the department, the other was for Dr Lazarus. This child’s case was so unique that both the police and Dr Lazarus wanted the interview documented. The police believed it would have evidentiary value. Lazarus thought the film would allow him to pick up later on things he might not notice in the course of the interview.

  He was anxious to take advantage of such a unique opportunity. Very few abducted children ever came under therapeutic scrutiny and he considered himself highly fortunate to have an opportunity to meet a stolen child.

  Watching the girl, he felt very confident and was making mental notes, already working up his evaluation: dissociation, if her interaction
with her mirror image was anything to go by, a level of fear that was off the charts, and yet a certain whimsy in her play with the skirt and her talk of wings. He thought this was going to be a relatively simple summation with some interesting particulars which, with luck, could find its way into one of the journals. He didn’t foresee any problems evaluating her, and it could very possibly lead to his first professional publication.

  Captain Garvey murmured, ‘Cute kid,’ and Brian said, ‘Yeah.’ He didn’t want to talk. Watching her cut at him like repeated jabs from a scalpel: quick, sharp slices of pain; starbursts of shock that made him dizzy. Given an unguarded minute he’d tuck her under his arm and ferry her away to his home. He and Jan would get her out of those clothes that so obviously made her uncomfortable, stick her in some shorts and a top, soft moccasins maybe, or a pair of sneakers. Let her run through the sprinkler with Lucia, feed her up while all the injuries healed, teach her how to laugh, help her get past her fear. He longed to rescue her.

  ‘Okay,’ Stefan Lazarus said, startling Brian out of his imaginings. ‘Time for me to get in there.’

  He made it sound as if getting in there was a chore, and Brian wanted to beg the guy to go easy. But he was a doctor, a headshrinker who specialized in kids; he had to know his stuff. He didn’t throw off a smartass vibe, he just seemed like a decent, kind of overly uptight academic type. Brian watched him leave the room, then he turned again to the mirror, anxiety bringing back the knots in his stomach.

  Instead of his usual gray flannels and navy blazer, shirt and tie, Stefan had intentionally dressed down for the occasion in jeans, an open-necked button-down long-sleeved shirt, and loafers. He wanted to appear as non-threatening as possible. As his hand reached toward the doorknob, he was excited by the challenge and suddenly deeply apprehensive. The apprehension was unexpected. The calm demeanor he’d perfected in the course of his schooling tended to ease the often anxious children with whom he’d worked during his training; he was confident of that. But this child was presenting with problems and behaviors far beyond his experience. He doubted, in fact, if more than a handful of people anywhere had ever worked with a child whose circumstances were even remotely like this one’s. He wanted to believe that he could help her; he also couldn’t stop thinking about the paper he might be able to present on her case and the acclaim it would bring him.

  He’d met Margery Briggs during his Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Training Program. It had been an incredible stroke of luck that he’d run into her on an errand at City Hall and she’d at once asked him to consult on this case. Flattered and intrigued, he’d accepted immediately without thinking it through. He didn’t want to screw it up.

  Wiping his hands dry on his jeans, he again reached for the doorknob. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and walked in with a smile, saying, ‘Hi. I’m Stefan.’ Reaching for one of the small chairs, he sat down, saying, ‘These are little chairs for little people. You can sit down, too, if you like.’

  Her curled hands held tight at her sides, she watched him without the amusement the majority of children displayed when he folded his long, lanky frame into one of these chairs. She was, he could see, very suspicious. Ironically, she probably trusted her captors more than she trusted strangers; at least she had a frame of reference for how those two might behave. Strangers represented completely unknown, potentially dangerous, territory.

  ‘If you don’t care to sit down, that’s fine,’ he said, smiling again.

  Nothing. She just kept on staring at him.

  ‘Well, okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s get started.’

  ‘’Kay.’ As if he’d given a key signal, she yanked off the underpants, lay down on her back, flipped the dress up over her face and spread her legs.

  ‘Oh, no!’ he said, dismayed. ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’

  ‘’Kay.’ She turned and positioned herself on her hands and knees, reaching back to raise the dress over her exposed bottom.

  ‘No! Please,’ he said. Something inside his chest tore away, like tape ripped off a raw wound. ‘Don’t do that.’ This was terrible!!! Why had he imagined this would be simple or that he was sufficiently schooled for the job?

  ‘No?’ She sat up on her knees, looking at him over her shoulder, then turned and knee-walked toward him.

  He thought she’d stop but she kept on coming until she was at his knees, trying to push them apart and reaching for his zipper. That raw place inside his chest was exposed and stinging as he took hold of her hand – so soft and scarcely formed; the dimpled hand of a child scarcely beyond being a toddler.

  Sitting back on her knees, she studied his face as he struggled to speak.

  Like the storied sin eater who for a small gratuity ate a piece of bread laid on the chest of a dead person, thereby taking the sins of that dead person upon himself, he had in just moments swallowed this little girl’s metaphoric sins. He was muted and hamstrung by the process, left fairly grief-stricken. How could he possibly help this child? She’d been so thoroughly brainwashed that she interpreted most behaviors as having a sexual subtext. Aware of the arrogance he’d carried with him into the room and ashamed of it, aware too of the humbling realization that he knew far less of the world than he’d imagined. He understood with sudden, staggering clarity that he was too young and too inexperienced to be of use to this child. Just moments and much of what he’d believed he knew about himself had been invalidated.

  That internal rending had been the peeling away of the hubris that had led him to say yes to the dislikeable Margery Briggs. He’d agreed to consult on this case knowing almost nothing of the facts. Top grades and high honors didn’t magically endow anyone with wisdom or special insights and just now he was lamentably short on both. He was all at once choked with sadness for the losses suffered by this misleadingly dainty little girl. Only the housing was a child’s. What was inside her was much used and mistrustful, perhaps irreparably broken. He felt, immediately and thoroughly, heartsick for her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, just then feeling scarcely older than the girl as, embarrassingly, tears welled up in his eyes and he released her hand to rummage in his pocket for a tissue.

  ‘What’sa matter, Mister Stefan?’ she asked, appearing fascinated by his distress. Getting to her feet, she put a hand on his arm. ‘You cryin’, Mister Stefan? It’s okay. I won’t get mad. You can cry. I sawed some other grown-ups cryin’ when the lady was bringin’ me here. Are you sad?’ Her small hand patted him consolingly as he wiped his face with the tissue. Her features had softened and lost their suspicious tightness. An old, sympathetic soul gazed out at him through the dark windows of her eyes. And as he gazed back at her, he realized that if he was allowed to work with her it could be the greatest learning experience of his life. Her effort to comfort him derived from an innate sensitivity that had not been blunted by her young life’s experiences. She was not beyond hope. He prayed he wasn’t, either.

  At last, having dried his face, he took hold of her hand again and said, ‘Thank you. You’re very kind. I was feeling a little sad.’

  ‘You’re not sad anymore?’

  ‘No. I feel better now, thanks to you. Shall we see what’s in the toy box?’

  ‘Okay. Toys are like friends,’ she said. ‘They don’t do anythin’ or mean anythin’. But they make you feel good when you hold them.’

  Hearing her paraphrase what he’d told her the night before, Brian emitted a sound that was half laugh and half sob.

  ‘That’s right,’ Stefan said in surprise. ‘Did someone tell you that?’

  ‘Yeah. Mister Brian telled me.’

  ‘Mister Brian is quite right. There are other toys, too,’ Stefan said, getting down on his knees and lifting the lid on the toy box. ‘Some you can use to build things. Others are like games. Would you like to try one of the games, or play with some toys?’

  ‘Mister Stefan?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please, could I take off the shoes? I don�
�t like them.’

  ‘If you could put the underpants back on, I see no reason why you shouldn’t take off the shoes.’

  She gazed at him for a few seconds, then sat down on the floor, reaching for the pants. She managed to get them back on, dragging them over the shoes, then rocking her way back into the underpants.

  ‘Could you help me now, Mister Stefan? I don’t know how to do shoes. I never had them before. I had rain boots in the winter but they didn’t have these do-up things.’

  He smiled, and said, ‘You bet,’ and bent to undo the buckles.

  ‘C’n I take off the sock things, too?’

  ‘If you like. Do you need help with those as well?’

  ‘I can do those. I had some before when there was snow.’ She pulled off the socks, then wriggled her toes. ‘I never had shoes like that. They don’t feel good.’

  ‘Then you don’t have to wear them,’ Stefan declared. ‘Now,’ he said, sitting cross-legged in front of her on the carpet, ‘let’s try this game.’

  ‘’Kay. You gonna tell me how it works?’

  ‘I am going to tell you.’

  ‘What just happened in there?’ Captain Garvey said quietly, gazing through the glass and shaking his head. ‘That was one hell of a thing. I don’t know if that young fella’s crazy as a loon or some kind of genius.’

  ‘I think he’s way out of his depth and she just threw him a life buoy,’ Brian said, deciding Stefan Lazarus was like a kid playing dress-up, not someone he’d trust entirely to look out for Humaby.

  FIVE

  ‘It’s time to call in the press,’ Garvey told Brian on the way back to headquarters. ‘I’ve got as many men as I can spare going through missing persons reports but since we don’t know how far back to go it’s pretty much impossible. The media people are all over us, wanting to see the little girl who saved the baby. The baby’s parents want to meet her, thank her, and give her some kind of gift. Thing is, we get her face out on the wire services and TV, maybe someone’ll recognize her. I’ve got a call in for Connie Mason to come back ASAP and do some head shots, get them printed right up and aim to have them on hand for the press conference this afternoon. That way we’re in time for the networks and the late editions of the national and local papers.’