The Tiger's Child (25 page)

Dozing, I’m not sure I responded.

“Tor?”

I roused myself. “Yes?”

“Do you really fuck him?”

“It seems I’ve heard this question before,” I murmured. “You seem unusually interested in my love life.”

“It’s just I can’t picture you doing it.”

I smiled into the darkness.

“Actually,” she said, “I’m not sure I want to. It seems so awful to me. I’m not kidding, I’m never going to do it of my own free will.”

“You might feel very differently when the right boy comes along.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

A quiet interlude followed, a deep, pensive silence, heightened by the darkness. Then at last her voice, “Tor?”

“Hm?”

“Do you think I’m ever going to get a boyfriend? I mean, if I won’t do sex with him, will any boy ever want me?”

“A real boyfriend will love you for much more than sex. And who knows? You
might
feel differently. It’s a natural part of loving a man—wanting to touch him, wanting him to touch you.”

She didn’t respond.

“You’ve had bad experiences, Sheil. Hideous experiences, that a kid just should never have to go through. You’ve been fucked up in the real sense of the word and that’s tragic. But this isn’t fucking, not this natural feeling. It
is
love; it’s part of love, and you can tell that, because when it happens, it makes you feel happy.”

The conversation drifted away then. I had the sense of a thinking silence again, and then, just silence. Settling back into my covers, I closed my eyes.

“I hope he’s like Hugh. Funny like him,” she said.

“Yes, I hope so too. Hugh’s good.” A pause. “Now, I hate to be a party pooper, but it’s very late. We’ll feel like sheep vomit tomorrow morning if we don’t go to sleep.”

A chuckle from down on the floor. Then silence.

Then her voice again, soft in the darkness. “You know what this reminded me of, this tonight?”

“What’s that?”

“Remember that time with your other boyfriend? What was his name? Chad? Remember when he took you and me out for pizza? This tonight was like then. Fun, like that time was.”

“You remember that?” I asked, because I distinctly recalled her saying she hadn’t remembered it when she was fourteen.

“Yeah. Sort of. Well, not every little detail, but what I remember was the feeling. Feeling really happy. Being with you and him and feeling so
good. I remember thinking, this is what it must feel like, if you got a real mom and dad.”

I smiled into the darkness. “Yes; I remember feeling good that night.”

“It was that way tonight, kind of, too. You know. Kind of a family feeling. Like … well, a belonging feeling.”

“Yes.”

“It’s nice to feel that way. It’s nice to think that the people you’re with aren’t looking for the first opportunity to open a door and shove you out.”

Dear Mom,

I was a lot of trouble in those days. That’s probably why you had to do what you did. I think I can understand it, because it was probably the only thing you could do. But I’m a lot better now. Here are my good points:

1) I can cook

2) I can do housework really well

3) I will get a job when I get out of here and earn money

4) I get mostly A’s at school and so am on the Honor Roll (well, I was on the Honor Roll at my old school. There isn’t one here, but I will be on one, if I go to another school).

5) I will do what you want now, because I’m old enough to know.

October came. Knowing I was her only visitor, I continued to see Sheila on a near weekly basis, and her improvement was remarkable over the early part of the fall. She was keen now to earn points in hopes of a Saturday afternoon spent out away from the ranch and Jane reported much improved cooperation during the week. Sheila still eschewed the company of the other youngsters, but this didn’t bother me too much.

With her father’s parole coming up at the end of the month, plans were afoot for Sheila’s release as well. Jane intended to keep her at the ranch until the middle of November to give Mr. Renstad a chance to get settled. After our last unpleasant parting, I had not talked to Mr. Renstad again and I didn’t know if he realized that I was involved with Sheila yet again. As a consequence, all my information came from Jane. She had already told me that Social Services had made his evidencing some sort of stable lifestyle a prerogative of getting Sheila back; however, in October, Jane said that employment in Broadview had been arranged for him through a prison rehabilitation program and all that was left was finding him a place to live.

Sheila took all this news and activity fairly calmly. She’d been through it all on at least three previous occasions, and so maintained an “I’ll believe it when I see it” sort of skepticism. And of course, there was another matter.

“Torey! Torey! Come here.” She motioned excitedly, when I arrived on the Saturday before Columbus Day. Quickly shutting the door to her
room behind me when I came in, she bounced over her bed. “Sit down. I want to show you something.”

I sat.

Leaning over her bed, Sheila pulled out the under-bed box where she stored all her treasured possessions. She lifted the cardboard lid and extracted a letter. This she pressed to her chest and grinned at me. “Guess what! Guess what this is.” But before I could guess, she thrust it into my hands. “It’s from my mother.”

I took the letter from her.

“Remember that ad I put in? You know, in the paper? Well, it worked! She saw it and she’s written me this whole long letter.”

The letter
was
long. There must have been ten or twelve pages written on both sides of the paper in a small, scrawled handwriting. I unfolded it, pressing it flat on my knees, and began to read.

Within the first few paragraphs, my heart sank. There was a strange, desperate note to the writer’s prose. She said she had given up a daughter for adoption and then went on for several pages telling a very convoluted story of emotional problems and abusive marriages.

“Sheil, I hate to say this, but … I’m not sure this is your mother.”

“It
is.
She says the girl was four.
I
was four,” Sheila replied. “I mean, how many four-year-old girls could this have happened to?”

“Well, not very many in your exact circumstances, but she doesn’t mention the exact circumstances. And besides, she says ‘give up for
adoption.’ What your mother did was not quite what I’d call ‘give up for adoption.’”

“Yeah, I know, but she was upset,” Sheila countered. “Look how she keeps saying how upset she was. God, it’s, like, wrecked her whole life. And I knew that’s what it would be like. I knew my mom would be so sorry it happened, and she’d want me back, if she only knew where to find me.”

Lifting my head, I regarded Sheila. I had seen that look so often in her eyes. She could have been six again, for all the poignant vulnerability in her expression. So desperately, she wanted this to be true. I reached my hand out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled back.

“She
says
my name is Sheila. She knows that,” she insisted.

“Lovey …”

“But she
says.
”

“You told her that. Your name was in the advert, wasn’t it?”

“But she
says.
Why would somebody lie about something like a name? Why would she want to contact me, if I wasn’t her daughter?”

“Because sometimes there are people with very bad problems who can’t tell what’s real from what isn’t real,” I replied.

Anger suddenly flared in her eyes. “That’s me, huh? That’s what you think I am. Crazy. Go ahead, say it, Torey, ’cause that’s what you’re trying to say.”

“That’s
not
what I’m trying to say. I’m referring to her, this woman who’s written this, not you. I
think she wants you to be her daughter. I think she may even believe you are, but you aren’t.”

“
I am
! That’s my mom. I know it is. Read the whole letter. You’ve just read a few pages. She talks about Jimmie in there. She talks about him and about my having four more brothers too. Younger brothers, ’cause she got married again.”

My shoulders dropped. “But you gave Jimmie’s name in the advert, Sheila. She’s going to know your brother’s name is Jimmie before she even wrote the letter, because you
told
her yourself.”

Tears came to her eyes. “You’re just being spiteful. You don’t
want
me to find my mom.”

Again, I reached my arms out to her. “Sheila, come on.”

Struggling to keep her composure, she turned away from me.

“Sheil, I do want you to find your mom. Nothing would make me happier, simply because I know how happy it would make you; but I don’t want you to get hurt even worse than you have been. And I’m so afraid that’s what’s going to happen here.”

“Go away.”

“Sheil …”

“Go away. Go
on.
I don’t want to see you this weekend. Just go away.”

No little “Dear Mom” notes came to me during that week, and when I came the following weekend, Sheila said no more about the letter. She wasn’t her usual friendly self, so I could tell I had
wounded her badly in the disagreement and she was still keeping her distance. I felt it would be unwise to introduce the issue myself, and felt I would get further by simply being warm and supportive and waiting for her to make the next move. We chatted pleasantly enough. Most of the conversation centered around her preparations for leaving the ranch. Sheila was going to be changing from the small, self-contained school room at the ranch to a large Broadview high school, and she was curious about what kind of curriculum would be offered. We discussed the merits of various courses of study and I mentioned the advantages of selecting a curriculum that would enhance her college placement.

This was the first time the subject of Sheila’s life after graduation had been raised. She was now a senior and such decisions should have been looming large, but I had thus far never been included in many conversations regarding her academic future. This was partly because school was the one area where Sheila seemed to be managing well on her own, and partly because Sheila’s present was so chaotic that it was hard to divert any attention to considering her future. To my shock, Sheila stated that she had no intention whatsoever of going to college after she graduated.

“You’re joking.”

“No,” she replied. “I don’t want to go.”

“Of course you do,” I said.

“No. I’m fed up with school. I just want to be out on my own. Have a place to live where I can be
the boss. I’m not going back into school the minute I get out.”

This stunned me. With Sheila’s IQ, with her interest in ancient history, her facility for learning Latin and reading old texts, I couldn’t imagine that she wouldn’t be longing for higher education. I tried to explain to her how much different university life was to high school, how easy she would find the lifestyle. She had long since developed the ability to study on her own, as her environment had never been particularly nurturing educationally, and I pointed out how this would set her ahead in the university community, how she was already likely to succeed.

All my words were of no avail. Unlike the week before, Sheila didn’t become angry. I don’t think she had that much invested in the discussion. This wasn’t an important area to her and she wasn’t bothered about defending it; however, she remained adamant. When school was finished, she was going to find a job, her own apartment and get on with life. College could wait.

In our office the following Wednesday, Jules and I were enjoying a leisurely chat over coffee when the telephone rang. The phone sat on a chair between our two desks, and consequently we both moved to answer it, but Jules was closer. He picked it up, then grimaced. “Wouldn’t you know? If I answer it, it’s always for you.” He handed it over.

Jane Timmons was on the other end. “We’ve got a problem here,” she said. “Sheila’s disappeared.”

“Where? When?”

“She had a supervised visit into the city this morning to get clothes and Annie had taken her into MacGregor’s department store. I mean, honestly, Torey, we didn’t think she was much of a security risk at this point. She’s less than three weeks from being released anyway. She went to use the ladies’ and Annie was standing right outside, and she just never came out.”

“What happened? Is there a window or something?” I asked.

“Yup. But it’s on the second floor. God knows how she did it or where she went from there. It’s a flat roof, but …”

In this brief conversation, Sheila was once more transformed from the pleasant, lively girl I knew into a stranger, familiar with worlds I could hardly imagine.

“The obvious question,” Jane continued, “is: she hasn’t turned up over there, I assume?”

“No.”

“Well …”

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“Not really. We’ve contacted the police. Contacted the prison in Marysville where her father is, although I should like to think she’s not going to get that far afield.” A pause. “Do you have any ideas where she might turn up? Know any friends or anything?”

The first thing to come to mind, of course, was her mother.

“There was a letter …” I started and then briefly explained Sheila’s efforts in that direction.

“Yes, we know about all that,” Jane said.

“Oh?” This surprised me, because Sheila had given no indication of having shared this with the staff.

“Routine precautions. We go through all the kids’ stuff regularly. We’d known she was writing to newspapers down in California, and I’d not given her any hassle about it. I mean, it seemed harmless enough, and God knows, if the kid could turn up another relative who’d take her, that’d be a blessing. Her father’s not exactly made of gold, is he?”

“But did you know about this letter?” I asked. “From this woman in northern California?”

“Yeah, I saw it. Holly brought it in last week for me to take a look at,” Jane replied. “Sad, wasn’t it?”

The offhandedness, both with which Sheila’s things were searched and with which her actions were dismissed, annoyed me deeply, making me unwilling to discuss in any detail my feelings on the importance of this material in relation to Sheila’s disappearance. I had never especially liked Jane throughout the period I had dealt with her, but now I felt contempt.

That single telephone call was the last I heard on the matter. Jane didn’t call me again. I phoned out to the ranch myself on both Thursday and Friday, but Jane was unavailable and the deputy director told me that they had, as yet, had no success in locating Sheila.

In the first few days after Sheila ran away, I expected to hear from her, or, like the time with Alejo, I thought she might turn up on my doorstep. I was uneasy, because I feared for her physical safety, but I still felt confident that everything would soon resolve itself. After all, how long could she simply disappear?

Quite a long time, I was to discover. Days turned into a week. One week, two weeks went by. Mr. Renstad was released from prison and moved back to Broadview and Sheila was still missing.

I couldn’t believe this. I simply could not believe that the girl could just disappear without a trace, and for the first time I came up against the nightmarish reality of how police and other Social Service agencies dealt with the issue of runaway children. And not for the first time, I was forced to confront how different Sheila’s world was from mine.

It was impossible not to worry about her. I could imagine all sorts of things, not the least of them that she had actually found this demented woman in California. Or her mother. In a best-case scenario, I pictured her reunited with her mother and Jimmie, living the kind of life she’d always wanted, and I tried to convince myself that’s what had happened and that was why she hadn’t contacted me. Unfortunately, several variants of worst-case scenarios kept intruding on my thoughts.

November came and I was having to come to terms with the fact that Sheila had yet again dropped abruptly out of my life. As with all such
experiences, time finally started to heal my sense of frustration and even the gnawing worry. One evening, I came across the sheaf of “Dear Mom” letters that I had kept in the front of the filing drawer. Instead of leaving them there, I took them out and put them in a box in the attic with all the other mementos of past children. The next morning, I moved the copy of
One Child
I usually kept on my desk to a place where my eye wouldn’t fall on it casually.