The fleeting thought of that horrible woman was enough to send her running back to the shadows. “I’m watching you, child!” she heard Topsy bellow. “Courage! Courage, or you’ll never see the babies again!”
Sheets of water — like in a movie — as she neared the St. George, a weak wet bird flitting past stands of boxes shrouded in plastic tarp, end-of-the-road tenants sleeping within. A hand reached out and encircled her ankle: she clawed it and ran — toward the place where she’d find the Korean — but why? What was she doing back there? … wild with grief, revisiting the raided nest to smell her vanished babies! The St. George was dark and locked for the night; rain had washed the infants’ scent away. She stole toward the cupola of St. Vibiana’s deserted diocese, soon to be demolished. Still no entry, else she would have liked to have stayed. She drifted across the street instead, again to that fated place.
The alley entrance used for their escape was glued shut. Fresh plywood had been nailed over chinks in the Higgins armor, but the girl was small enough to slip through an already damaged plank. She made her way to the lobby and stood dead still — no sound of pigeons or trespassers. In the half-light of a pleuritic moon, it looked like someone had made nominal efforts at clearing out debris. As the exhausted child climbed the stairs of the cold copper tower, her heart sank; she knew Topsy would not be in residence.
When she reached the place of their reunion, Amaryllis was not wrong. It was dank and freezing; she was dank and freezing, and determined never again to move or stir. She slumped against the wall, uncaring of her fate or anyone else’s.
As fatigue and Mrs. Woolery’s soldier-stragglers drew her to dreamless fields — to Minotaur’s maze — Jane Scull danced across the screen of her eyes and Jane Scull only: dear Jane with her big white hearing aids, spinning into Forever like an ensorcelled top.
Morning — noon. The world outside shiny and new, hung to dry in the sun. She stirs, then sleeps two more effortless hours. Awakens, feverish. Chest aches. Thirsts and shivers, clothing damp. Slowly, she walks downstairs. There are pigeons and they gladden her.
“There, look!”
She seizes, choking.
Someone-Help-Me points with a cane.
“She the one there!” he shouts, advancing. “Come here last night — try to grab her foot but she too fast! Scratch me up good!”
Peering at the child from his side of the broken slat is a handsome, world-weary man in white shirt and tie, stylish sport jacket slung over his arm. In comic contrast to his guide’s histrionics, Samson Dowling squints like a bird-watcher at some point above Amaryllis’s head, which must have seemed a goad to the vagrant, who wished the little fugitive’s apprehension to be handled in a more Most Wanted fashion.
“Wull,” he says, turning to the detective. “Get her!”
Amaryllis sprints on cue, and Someone-Help-Me pimpily gives chase. The investigator, shod in tasseled Church’s English, takes casual, graceful flight. “You! Idiot! Stop!”
He commands the bum, but the little girl, arrested by the powerful voice, can run no longer — and collapses.
Someone-Help-Me does a victory jig and the detective tells him to disappear, his tone menacing enough so the snitch is gone in the briefest time imaginable.
Detective Dowling kneels, bunching his expensive coat under the girl’s fainted head.
When they got on the freeway, she became agitated — certain he was taking her back to Mrs. Woolery’s.
“Were you staying at the motel, Amaryllis?” A nauseating lump grew in her throat — for she hadn’t yet told him her name. “Were you staying at the St. George?”
“The babies!” she cried, broken. “Where are the babies?”
He reached out to pat her head; he was awkward with kids. “The boy and girl? They’re fine, fine. Don’t cry, now.”
“How do you know?” she snarled. A ray of hope pierced through: “Have you seen them?”
“Not personally.”
“Then how do you know?” She hated him again. He had hairy, muscular arms and reeked of cologne and she held him in the utmost contempt. “How do you know anything about them—”
He laughed, not unkindly. “Because I know the detective who made sure they were safe. A female officer,” he said, then corrected himself. “A woman. She really took to those kids. They’re your brother and sister, aren’t they?”
Now she was possessed of a new torment: the babies were bonding with one of their captors! They would love the policewoman and not even recognize her when she came to their rescue. “When can I see them?”
“Soon, I’d imagine. First we need to get you well and on your feet. You’ve had a rough go of it, haven’t you? It couldn’t have been wonderful sitting with Mom all that time the way you did. You’re a brave little gal.”
They rode awhile in silence. He cracked a window, because the smell of her was overwhelming — like the worst, infected whores he’d found in crackhouses, or half dead in littered fields. He asked about the man—“a big, tall fellow” whom a “witness” saw carry her off into the night. Went by the name of William, he said, or Topsy … He wanted to know where the man had taken her, and if he was a friend of her mother’s.
There is no man, she said. And where are we going?
“A place called MacLaren.”
“Is it in the Canyon?”
“It’s in El Monte. What canyon?”
“Is it a house?”
“MacLaren? In a way, though it’s a lot bigger. There’s a school and a gymnasium — even a swimming pool. Lotsa kids your age.”
Amaryllis scanned the interior: the dash-mounted beacon on a curved, creepy metal neck … battered computer wedged between them … shotgun rack — prison! He was was taking her to prison!
The detective’s insistence this MacLaren place wasn’t a jail did little to ameliorate her terror. The children who lived there, he explained offhandedly, were not prisoners—why, there weren’t even locks on the doors! He went on to say that in point of fact at MacLaren locks on doors were “against the law”—of course there were some locks, he clumsily amended, to prevent strangers from coming in, not to stop kids from going out, a system so designed to protect the “pop” (“short for ‘population’ ”) from unhappy parents, who in very rare cases may wish to do their children harm—
With each botched blandishment the detective dug a deeper hole for himself and his detainee, multiplying her paranoia tenfold until the looming sight of Mac’s outer wall — the highest, thickest wall Amaryllis had ever seen — delivered the final blow. The only thing stopping a leap from the moving car were the babies. They were there, at the place called MacLaren, like prisoners in a deathstar. She knew it. They had to be.
Then it all blurred. She was taken to the infirmary, where an RN peeled off layers of clothing and gasped, hand to startled mouth. Other nurses and staffworkers gathered to gawk. Doctors were called; wounds were cleansed. She was examined for pelvic inflammatory disease and tested for TB, strep, syphilis, HIV, chlamydia, clap. They poured penicillin in her veins, and Demerol for pain.
Amaryllis slept for three days. In a languid flirtation with consciousness, she heard the stealthy footfalls of children arriving for daily meds. They poked their heads around the curtain to look before being chased away.