“WHAT’S YOUR PHONE NUMBER!” SCREAMED JESSICA’S mother. I thought I couldn’t move, my face had blood on it. I felt like I had to throw up.
“What’s the number, can’t you understand English?” She grabbed my arm. “I’m talking to you!” I closed my eyes and went away.
Jessica kneeled on her bed with her face in the pillows. She cried and cried. When her mother went to touch her she wouldn’t let her.
“How could this happen?” said her mother. “What kind of disgusting animal are you anyway? You should be locked up someplace. What kind of family could you come from, to raise something like you. I’m going to take care of you though, don’t worry, you’ll never do this again, not to my little girl, or anyone. Do you hear me?”
She grabbed my hair and pulled my face back.
“Do you hear me?”
I came back. I opened my eyes. “If you touch her,” I whispered, “I’ll kill you.”
I don’t know how she got the number but she called my parents. She said I said I would kill her.
My mom came and put me in the car. I tried to stay with Jessica, I held on to her bed, I had a tantrum, but I couldn’t hold on. When I got home there was a policeman and my father. I didn’t talk to anyone. My mother put medicine on my face. She was crying I remember.
I remember they made me go to bed and the doctor came and gave me medicine to make me sleepy. I couldn’t get up. I almost can’t remember, but I remember the phone, it kept ringing like bells, and I heard it was Jessica’s mother.
The next day my mother and father put me in the car and brought me here, to The Children’s Trust Residence Center. And left me. Jessica’s mother made them do it, but they said they thought it was best too.
And now I have been here for two months. Hanukah was three weeks ago. I got clothes in a box from my mom and dad, it was tied up with string. I took the string and tied it around one of my socks and hung it on the wall, like a puppet.
I don’t write here frequent anymore, because Dr Nevele says it is better to talk to him at appointments. I don’t even come to the Quiet Room frequent. I can control myself.
Rudyard left The Children’s Trust Residence Center, but he came back. But I don’t see him, he doesn’t come to my wing or the Playroom, he is upstairs. I think about him when I go swimming. I can do the Dog Paddle. I am going to teach it to Monkey Cuddles when I get home. He likes swimming except I will never see him again. He was at Jessica’s house. I think her mother killed him.
I saw Rudyard. It was upstairs where Mrs Cochrane took me to see another doctor who showed me pictures and had me name things. It was a test. When I came out Rudyard was in the hall with a child, he was holding it in his arms, it made faces.
He looked at me. I looked at him. We looked at each other for a long time. Then he said, “I have something for you.”
He put the child down and stood up. He looked at me again and reached into his back pocket.
“I’ve been carrying this around for a week,” he said. “I don’t even know why. Tell Dr Nevele you found it somewhere.”
I looked at it, it was an envelope. When I looked up at Rudyard he was crying. He was crying for me. So I did something. I put my hand under my chin and gave him the High Sign.
The child ran down the hall and Rudyard ran after him. Down the hall, he got smaller and smaller.
I opened the envelope. Then I closed it. I was shaking in my hands. Because I was afraid.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I layed in bed in my wing and looked at the ceiling, there was a window in it, where the lights shined in from the hall.
Outside the doors I heard the janitors go home, they said they were like to freeze their dicks off. And when they were gone there wasn’t anybody. It was late. It was quiet. Manny sucked his thumb and Howie breathed in bed next to me. I just watched the window in the ceiling, and watched and watched.
I got out of bed. I reached under my pillow and took the letter, Jessica’s letter. I went to the door. I looked out. It was empty. I went. I walked next to the wall. It had somebody on it, my shadow. We walked next to the wall, me and me.
I was going somewhere with myself.
I went through a door that said stairs. It was stairs. I went up them and up them. My feet made echoes but I didn’t stop. Then I went out another door and turned this way. I went all the way to the end and then I turned this way. I went through glass doors and then I was in another hall. There was a nurse behind a table. She read a book. She didn’t see me. Then I went through another door. Inside the room was a row of beds. I walked down the row to the last bed.
Carl was tied down, they had straps on him. He didn’t even try to move even, but he saw me with his eyes. They were open. He couldn’t sleep either. There was a folding chair by the window. I took it and opened it and sat down next to Carl’s bed. He smiled at me. I wasn’t afraid.
“It’s me,” I said. “From the Playroom, remember I pushed you.”
Carl didn’t say anything. His eyes went sideways in his head once but he looked at me.
“I am confused,” I said, “about Rudyard and Dr Nevele. Rudyard showed me swimming and he was my friend, but he lied about the wall, about reading the wall.”
Carl smiled. I saw his stomach go up and down up and down. Noise came from the other beds, it sounded like puppies. It was children.
“And Dr Nevele. He doesn’t understand children and it makes him sad. He said I didn’t have any letters.”
Carl stopped moving.
“And now there isn’t anybody. I wish I was home. I wish I wasn’t anywhere.”
I sat with Carl for the rest of the night. I just sat next to him and he watched me, smiling, and I stayed. It was very quiet in the room, like everyone had gone away to heaven.
When morning came I went. I walked back down the hall. Nurses came in and took their coats off and hung them. I went to the Quiet Room. I opened the door and turned on the light, but someone was in there, curled up on the floor against the wall.
She woke up when I came in and sat up and looked at me and rubbed her eyes and she looked like a little baby almost. She put on her glasses to see who it was, and it was me.
“Mrs Cochrane.”
She had wrinkles from the floor. She was like dizzy. She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. She started to get up but she couldn’t. She was too old. I looked at her, she was like a little child. I knew she came there to wait for me because I wasn’t in my bed, she had checked on me. I watched her. She didn’t say anything. Sat just, on the floor in front of the wall, where she had wrote He wanted to see time fly. I knew it was her.
I was very sleepy. I turned off the light in the Quiet Room and layed down on the floor next to her and she put her arm on me. I moved closer and she kept her arm on me. She kept it there while I slept.