It was some hours later when my phone finally rang.
“Hello, Sergeant Kosinski,” I said.
“How did you know it was me, Mother?”
“I know everything,” I told him. I decided not to tell him I had caller id now. When someone thinks you have special powers, it’s best to let them go on thinking that. “Did you find the children?”
“Yes, we found them.”
“Where were they?”
“In the board-ups. Right where you said they would be. How did you know, Mother?”
“I have my ways, Sergeant. Are they all right?”
“They’re fine.”
“Thank God for that.” And then I waited to hear what else he had to tell me.
“There was someone with them, Mother,” said the sergeant. “A man. A very strange man. He was pretty badly burned. He’s in the hospital now, asking for you.”
“Asking for me? I’ll be right over.”
“How are you going to get there?”
“Same way I’ve gotten around my whole life,” I said. “My own two feet.”
“You just wait right there, Mother,” said Sergeant Kosinski. “I’ll send a car for you.”
I guess old age does have its privileges after all. I rode to the hospital in style, in the front seat of a police car. Sergeant Kosinski was waiting for me in the lobby.
I had not seen him in some years. He was younger than me, but not by much. Once he had been a strapping young man, six feet tall with blond hair. But time works the same magic on all of us. Now the sergeant had snow on the roof, and his face was worn with care.
We looked at each other and smiled. Just two old warriors near the end of the battle, wondering if they had managed to do any good in the world.
“You’re looking well, Mother,” said Sergeant Kosinski.
“None of your sweet talk, now,” I said. “Take me to him.”
“Right this way,” he said. He led me to the elevator. Then he walked me down a long hallway. Another policeman was standing guard over a room. We went in.
A man lay in bed, covered in bandages and wearing a hospital gown. My eyes had started to get bad by then. I could not see his face clearly. I needed to get closer.
“Can he hear anything?” I asked the nurse.
“He’s in and out,” she said. “Don’t talk to him too long.”
“He was wearing some old clothes when we found him,” said Sergeant Kosinski. “He must be a bum or a homeless guy.”
“He’s not homeless,” I said.
“Do you know him, Mother?”
“I know of him. And I think he knows of me.”
“He was in the board-ups with the children, just like you said. We thought he kidnapped them. But the kids said he was only feeding them.”
“Did he have anything with him?” I asked.
“Like what?” Sergeant Kosinski asked.
“Like a couple of beat-up old suitcases,” I said. “One black, one white.”
A strange look came over Sergeant Kosinski’s face then. He went out for a moment. When he came back in, he had a suitcase in each hand. He set them down on the floor.
“This one,” he said, opening the white case, “was full of canned food. The kids were all eating when we came in.”
“I see,” I said. “And what about that one?”
“The black one? There’s nothing inside,” Sergeant Kosinski told me. He made a move to open it, but I stopped him.
“Don’t,” I said. “I don’t want to know.”
“But Mother, there’s nothing in it,” he said.
“That’s what you think,” I told him. “Some things cannot be seen with the eyes, but they’re there all the same.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Sergeant Kosinski.
“Do you go to church?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “Every Sunday.”
“Then you know just what I mean,” I said.
Sergeant Kosinski shook his head.
I came closer to the bed and looked at the face of the man who lay in it. I had not seen him in many years, but I knew from the old rat bite on his cheek who he was. For a moment, time played a trick on me. I imagined he was still that same sweet little boy, glowing with light.
“Jamal?” I said. “It’s Mother Angelique.”