Читать книгу Little Mercies - Heather Gudenkauf, Heather Gudenkauf - Страница 14

Chapter 7

When I arrive at the familiarly ramshackle neighborhood, I am struck at how depressingly run-down it has gotten through the years. Burnt yellow lawns are edged with rusty metal fences, windows are boarded up and the ones that are intact are covered with grungy sheets or threadbare blankets.

Before I even turn onto Madison Street, I hear the sirens behind me. I pull to the side of the road to let a police car pass. Please just be precautionary, I say to myself, hoping that help hasn’t arrived too late. I drive the final four blocks as people in the neighboring houses peek out screened windows and step out onto crumbling front steps to see what’s happening. I stop three houses away, throw the van into Park and leap out and hit Lock on my key fob. The temperature has risen in just the few minutes I’ve been driving; the oppressive air crawls heavily into my nostrils and sits like sludge in my chest. Two police cars are idling in front of the house and I rush up to the nearest officer, who has emerged from his squad car and is calmly surveying the house that looks eerily quiet, empty.

Without looking at me, the officer holds up his hand to silence me before I even speak.

“Please stay back,” he says.

“I’m Ellen Moore, the social worker. I called 911,” I say, as if this explains everything.

He raises his eyebrows, finally looking me in the face. Sweat glistens on his bald forehead, his uniform already darkened with perspiration. “Officer Stamm,” he introduces himself. “Then you probably know a lot more about what’s going on in there than I do. What’s the situation?”

I try to keep my voice composed, level, but it still shakes with fear. “Manda Haskins lives here with her two children, Kylie who is seven and Krissie is four. Kylie called me a few minutes ago and said that her mom’s boyfriend, whom Manda has a temporary restraining order against, came over last night. Kylie said that this morning he started beating up their mother, so she and her little sister locked themselves in the bathroom and called me. We got disconnected and then I called you. I’m afraid the boyfriend is done with the mom and now is going after the girls.”

I don’t have time to go into the entire all-too-familiar story of Manda Haskins’s life with Officer Stamm. That Manda is twenty-five years old but still seems to always choose the wrong man. She may have been pretty once, but now Manda looks closer to forty than twenty-five—a meth addiction will do that to you. Her face is set in a permanent scowl. Manda lost custody of Kylie and Krissie two years ago when the police stopped her van and found that she was housing a mobile meth lab inside. She swore that her boyfriend was the one who placed all the drug paraphernalia in the back. In return for testifying against the boyfriend and admitting herself into an inpatient drug treatment center, Manda avoided jail time. In foster care the two children did well and all thought that Manda had done the work. Gotten clean, gotten a job. I’d hoped for so much more for Manda and her girls, but apparently her self-improvement didn’t extend to her choice in men.

“Any weapons in the house that you know about?” Officer Stamm asks.

I shake my head. “No. I mean I don’t know. Have you been able find out what’s going on inside?”

“Not yet. We’re going to walk around the house, take a look in the windows, see if we can hear anything. Have you tried to call the kids back?” Stamm asks.

“No,” I say. “I was afraid if the phone started ringing it might lead the boyfriend to where Kylie and Krissie are hiding. Should I call now?”

“Yeah, go ahead. We’ll walk around the perimeter and see if we can hear a phone ringing. That might give us an idea of where the kids are. If the kids or the mom answer, try to find out the status of the situation and keep them on the line.” Stamm and the other officer begin to make their way around the house and I scroll through my received calls to find the number that Kylie called me from, hit Send and the phone goes directly to voice mail. Stamm looks at me over his shoulder and I shake my head in disappointment. He rotates his hand in a keep-trying gesture. I scan my phone looking for Manda’s contact information. In the back of my mind I remember that at one time she had a landline number as well as a cell phone. I locate the number, press Send and an instant later I can hear the faint trill of a phone ringing from within the house.

A woman, a neighbor I presume, sidles up next to me. “What’s going on?” she asks. I give her a cursory look. She is wearing flip-flops, flannel boxers, a tank top and holds a crusty-nosed toddler on her hip.

“I’m sorry, I can’t talk right now,” I say to her, and take two steps toward the house. The phone continues to ring and ring. “What’s going on?” the woman asks again, this time more insistently. The boy in her arms begins to giggle, a strange sound amid such a tense situation. I turn to face the woman and immediately recognize her as one my former clients, a woman whose son was removed from her home because of severe neglect. “Jade, Anthony,” I say. I give the little boy’s bare foot a squeeze and he smiles shyly back at me before burying his face in his mother’s shoulder. I lower my phone down to my side as it continues to ring, unanswered from within the house. “It’s Manda Haskins. The police are afraid that she’s got some trouble in there and are worried about her girls.”

Jade shakes her head, her dark eyes knowingly serious. “Haven’t met her new boyfriend, but I’ve seen him coming and going. Used to be Manda would be outside all the time in her front yard while the girls played. Her Kylie is real good with Anthony here. They would sit in their little pool.” She nods toward the small, round, plastic pool. A yellow duck floats aimlessly and a few Barbie dolls are submerged in the shallow, dirty water. “It’s too hot to be inside.”

“You don’t see them outside much anymore?” I ask.

“No.” Jade shifts Anthony to her other hip. “The boyfriend is over all the time and Manda won’t let the girls outside by themselves. Haven’t seen much of them the past three weeks or so...” Jade trails off and we both watch as Officer Stamm and his partner emerge from the other side of the house and make their way back toward to where we are standing.

“No answer,” I say, indicating the still-ringing phone. “Did you see anything?”

“No,” the female officer says, running a forearm across her sweaty forehead. “The house is shut down tight. Shades are drawn and the only sound is the phone ringing.”

We are silent for a moment, quietly regarding the house. I don’t see any sign of activity. “Jesus,” Stamm whispers. “It’s hotter than hell standing out here. Call for another car,” he tells the other officer, “I’m going to go knock on the front door.”

I’m vaguely aware of movements behind me. Curious onlookers and neighbors trying to see what is going on.

Jade lays a hand on my arm. “Look,” she says, and all our eyes fix upon the front of the house. “Something’s happening inside.”

There is movement behind the curtains at the front of the house and my attention returns to the Haskinses’ home. Abruptly the ringing stops and I quickly raise my cell phone to my ear. “Hello,” I say fervently. “Kylie, is that you? Are you okay?”

“Uh-huh,” the little girl whispers.

“Where are you?”

“Inside,” she whispers.

“Where at inside? Are you in the kitchen, the living room...?”

“The TV room,” she answers. Her voice is small and so scared sounding.

“Where’s Krissie?” I ask. I tilt the phone away from my ear so that Officer Stamm can hear what Kylie is saying.

“She’s still in the bathroom.”

“Good. That’s good,” I reassure her. “Where’s your mommy?”

Kylie’s voice quivers. “I don’t know. The bedroom door is locked. There was yelling and loud noises and then it stopped. I was afraid to knock. Should I go knock?”

“No, no, Kylie, stay right here with me,” I say in a rush, desperate to keep her on the line.

“Tell her we’re coming to the door,” Officer Stamm instructs.

I cover my hand over the phone. “Can’t I go to the door to get them? The kids know me. They won’t be afraid of me.”

Stamm shakes his head. “No. Too dangerous. Stay down here and you’ll be the first person they see when they come out. Tell them that two police officers are coming to the door.”

“Kylie, honey,” I say. “Two nice police officers are going to come to the door. You open it up for them and then they’ll be able to check on your mom, okay?” I nod at Stamm and the two officers move toward the front door.

“Okay,” Kylie answers. “Should I go back to the bathroom and get Krissie?”

“No, no. Lay the phone down but don’t hang it up. The police officers are almost to the door. Okay, Kylie, go open the door. I’m right outside waiting for you.” The front door opens a crack and a short beep indicates that I have another call coming in. I ignore it.

Shouts come from behind me, and when I turn I find that a handful of people are not watching to see what is happening in the house. They are turned in the opposite direction, their backs to the drama unfolding right in front of them. I face the house again. Stamm and the other officer cautiously enter the home, hands near their weapons. More hollering from behind me, this time urgent, frantic sounding. The commotion behind us has also caught Jade’s attention and I can tell she is torn between attending to what is happening in the home and the flurry behind us.

I hang up my phone, confident that the officers are in the house and will bring the girls out safely.

Immediately my phone begins to buzz. I look at the display. Three missed calls, all from Adam. I shove the phone into the pocket of my skirt.

The screen door opens and, to my relief, Kylie and Krissie are being led out of the home. As they exit, I see the fear and uncertainty on Kylie’s face and it breaks my heart. I rush forward to meet them, taking comfort in that I will be a familiar face to them and I will whisk them to safety. But I also know that they will hate me. I will be the one who may have to place them in a new foster home, the one who may take them away from their mother whom they love unconditionally, without question, without asking for anything in return. I hope that the entire situation was just an awful misunderstanding. I pray their mother is still alive.

Before I can gather the girls into my arms there is a sharp crack and the sound of broken glass. The crowd behind me has grown and I see that they have gathered around the source of the broken glass. My van. Someone is breaking into my car in broad daylight, a police officer less than a block away. The nerve. But very quickly I realize that these thieves aren’t wayward teenage boys with too much time on their hands, but a group of women and a lone man. Mothers and grandmothers by the looks of them, and an old man wielding a crowbar. He steadies himself by placing a hand on the hood of the van, his chest rising and falling heavily. The crowbar slips from his hand, clanking to the ground. A heavyset woman reaches through the broken window and violently flings open the sliding door. She disappears for just a moment and then emerges. It’s then that I see what they already know. A flash of pink, a dangling shoelace.

“Oh, my God,” a voice I don’t recognize as my own erupts from my throat. “Please, no,” I whimper. I run toward the van.

It’s a terrible thing when you discover your child’s life is in danger. God or evolution or whatever you believe in must equip our bodies, our minds, our souls with some sort of talisman. At first I can’t believe that it’s Avery. She should be at the babysitter’s house gnawing on a graham cracker, playing with the other one-year-olds, piling big plastic blocks on top of one another. How did she get in the van? I know I didn’t put her there. Did I? No, it was Adam, I think, remembering how I met him coming back into the house just as I was leaving. How could I not even know she was strapped into the seat directly behind me?

The world becomes silent, I see mouths moving but no sound emerges. A numbness has crept into my limbs; a curious heaviness weighs down my extremities. I pray that what I’m witnessing right before me is all a terrible mistake. The bluish tinge that rings Avery’s lips is just the slant of light through trees. The way her hands lie limply at her side just means that she is very tired. It is just about time for her morning nap.

Too soon, much too quickly, I realize what I am so desperately trying to deny.

I reach for Avery and the minute she is in my arms I know that nothing will ever be the same, will ever be right again. The heat is rising from her skin searing into my own. There is no flutter beneath her eyelids to let me know she is just sleeping, no discernible rise and fall of her chest. There is nothing. Just as quickly as I have bundled Avery into my arms she is pulled away from me and I am left empty-handed with only the sound of my own cries and the question roiling over and over in my head. What have you done? What have you done?