Girl in the Dark (13 page)

I marched outside with the knife in my hand. Just then the woman across the street came strolling by. She greeted me. Naturally, I didn't greet her back, since hers was the messiest front yard on the block. Then she caught sight of the knife in my hand. Her face tightened.

“What are you going to do?” she asked in a high squeaky voice.

I'd never noticed before that she had such a funny voice. It was as if she had to force the words out by squeezing them up out of her throat. I walked to his car without answering her question.

The navy blue car stood there gleaming and the sun wasn't even shining. I glanced around. Rosita's front door was shut. I could
picture Rosita taking Anna's father's hand and dragging him up the staircase to the second floor, into her bedroom. He'd make her take off her white robe. And she would let him touch her privates.

I raised my arm and punctured the car's right front tire. There was a feeble
pffff.
That was all.

I slashed all four tires and kept hacking at them until the woman across the street was screaming so loudly Rosita
had
to hear it.

I wasn't done yet. I suddenly noticed the silver jaguar on the hood of his car. I thought of it pouncing on some innocent prey. A helpless animal, whose jugular he'd ruthlessly sink his teeth into. I'd seen them do it on the Discovery Channel.

I started trying to pry the jaguar off the car's hood. It wasn't easy; it was screwed on tight. But I was mad. As I was tugging on the jaguar, I heard sounds coming out of my mouth I'd never heard before. I couldn't help it. I roared, the way a jaguar roars maybe, and yanked the silver beast off the hood.

I used the jaguar to smash the car's windshield. That wasn't easy to do, either. The windshield resisted. It wasn't until the fourth wallop—the glass was already webbed with cracks—that the jaguar finally shattered it. The neighbor screamed, the breaking glass clattered, and I was roaring again. Finally Rosita's door opened.

“Holy shit!” Anna's father came scampering outside wearing only his blue-and-white-striped boxers. “Have you totally lost your mind?” His voice cracked. He ran up to his car. He wasn't smiling anymore. He darted around the car, taking stock of the damage, wailing, complaining, and swearing.

Rosita came running out after him in her white bathrobe. She stopped a little ways off and watched. I couldn't make out her expression. Was it anger, disgust, shame, pride, humiliation, or triumph?

“I think maybe you'd better not come here anymore,” I told Anna's father. Loud and clear.

I turned and went back into my house. I put the big knife back in the kitchen drawer and washed my hands. I felt calm. I had done good. I had done a very good thing.

“How did it go here today?” I couldn't help asking.

“Well, okay,” said Petra. “It's clear that he's getting along much better since he's had a bit more attention from you.”

I pasted a smile on my face. If she thought I'd let her provoke me again, she had another thing coming. “Well, then, see you tomorrow.”

I helped Aaron into his jacket and walked him to the car. It was cold out. We'd had a few weeks of warm weather, but there'd been a cold snap and everybody was waiting for summer to show itself again.

“I'm hungry, Mommy.”

“We're going to eat in the restaurant, sweetie.” I hadn't had time to do the shopping for a change. I often made a foray to the supermarket at lunchtime but hadn't had the time.

“Don't wanna.”

“Pizza. You like pizza, don't you? We'll have a yummy slice of pizza, and that nice man always gives you a lollipop at the end, remember?”

I buckled him into his car seat and tried to make him look me in the eye. He was gazing vaguely in my direction, but that was it.

I drove to the pizzeria around the corner from my mother's house. The food wasn't great, but they had a liberal children's policy, meaning that all kids under the age of fifteen were lavished with lollipops.

We went into the pizzeria. Our coats were taken from us and we were shown to a table in the back, by the window.

“I wanna go home,” Aaron whined.

I sighed, annoyed. “I'm sorry, but we're here now. Tomorrow I'll cook at home. But I didn't have time for shopping. And anyway, you love pizza, don't you?”

The waiter came to our table. I ordered a glass of white wine and a lemonade.

“I wanna go home,” he persisted.

“Tell you what. I'll ask if we can have it wrapped up for takeout. But first we have to have a little patience.” That seemed to do the trick; as long as I could keep him occupied for the next ten minutes, disaster averted.

“Tell me. What did you do today in nursery school? Did you draw me another beautiful picture?”

Aaron slipped off his chair.

“What are you doing?”

“Going home.” Aaron started plodding toward the door.

I got up and set him back on his chair. “Sit down. We'll go home soon. As soon as we have our food.”

He started wailing. Of course.

“Shhh,” I said, not very quietly. It was early, fortunately; the restaurant still pretty empty. But the few patrons who were there started shooting me annoyed looks.

The waiter came back with our drinks.

“There's your lemonade,” he said. “Drink up,
ragazzo
.”

“I don't want,” Aaron screamed. “Go
way
!”

“I'm sorry,” I said to the waiter. “He's not having a very good day.”

“Would he like a lollipop?”

“He doesn't deserve one. Just give me the check, then we can leave before this gets out of hand.”

“I wanna lollipop! I wanna go home!”

“Sit down,” I hissed. To no effect. Aaron, flailing his arms around, spilled the glass of lemonade in front of him.

“Not to worry,” said the waiter, hurrying off to get a towel.

“Look what you did!” I grabbed Aaron by the arm. “And now you're going to behave yourself.”

I caught an elderly couple sitting a couple of tables away, staring at me. “In
our
day we handled things differently,” the woman said, loud enough for me to hear.

“Bitch,” I muttered.

Aaron wouldn't stop howling, not even when the waiter pushed a lollipop into his hand, not even after the table was wiped clean and a fresh glass of lemonade was set in front of him.

“We really have to go,” I said to the waiter. “Do you have the check for me?”

“On the house,” he said. “It's not your fault.”

I felt myself on the verge of tears.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Don't worry. We've seen everything in here.”

I then had to carry a thrashing, kicking, and screaming child out of the restaurant. I tried to hold my head high, to preserve some small shred of dignity. But it was thoroughly humiliating. Another public disgrace, starring me as Incompetent Mother.

Wrestling Aaron into his car seat was another struggle. “What's your damn
problem
?” I had lost all self-control. I was yelling hysterically. “Why can't you just be normal?”

I was this close to slapping him in the face. Or just tossing him out of the car and gunning it. Instead, I slammed my fist into the backrest just inches from Aaron's head.

He immediately piped down, staring at me wide-eyed. I took a deep breath and clicked his seat belt into place.

“But I don't know
how,
Mommy,” he said when I had climbed into the driver's seat and started the car.

I turned around. Seeing the drawn little face with those grave, big eyes, I almost burst into tears. Because I realized he was right.

That night Aaron and I watched the aquarium, completed the shark puzzle, and read the fish encyclopedia. Once Aaron was in bed, I thought back on our vacation in Tenerife, a year ago. We had played all day in the surf. We'd hunted for shells and built sand castles. We'd let ourselves get dragged into the sea by the tide. And then at the end of the day when Aaron had started screeching because he didn't want to go back to our hotel room, I'd tickle him and say, “Hey, silly boy, I'm glad you had
such
a good time today that you're mad we have to go. But know what? Tomorrow we'll do it all over again.”

I had been truly happy then. I'd felt I was a good mother, even. I'd resolved we'd take another vacation soon.

I started to wonder what had been my mother's state of mind when she drove Ray to the home for boys? Even though motherhood wasn't particularly easy for me, I could never bear to send Aaron away. Because I loved him, of course I did, but if I were honest, the main reason was I could never live with the guilt. Wasn't maternal love just another name for Stockholm syndrome?

Maybe I was jealous of the layer of Teflon coating my mother's soul.

I went over the clippings about Ray again. There was very little background information on him, except that he was reclusive and withdrawn according to those who knew him. And he used to work in a bakery.

“Most of the time he'd walk right by you,” a neighbor had told the
Telegraph
in an interview. “Even if you said hello.”

Rosita was the only person he seemed to have had any contact with. I examined a photo of her. A Mediterranean-looking woman with a wide mouth and unruly curls. She wasn't beautiful in the classical sense, but she was definitely sexy. And then there was her daughter. Where the mother was dark, the little girl was fair. Where Rosita laughed provocatively into the lens, Anna seemed rather introverted.

I reread the account of the murders. Ray had slaughtered his next-door neighbor and her daughter with some sharp implement and had then, it seemed, sat down and smoked a cigarette. Cigarette ash had been found on the bodies, and the burn mark of a butt stubbed out on the little girl's arm. What did it all mean? The savage explosion of violence, followed by the cool enjoyment of a cigarette. I conjured up Ray's face and tried to imagine him doing such a thing. The Ray who kept such a meticulous logbook and who closed his eyes when you mentioned his fish. Ray couldn't have done it. It simply didn't fit the picture.

I started fantasizing about unmasking the real culprit, and freeing Ray from the mental institution. Maybe one day we'd all be living happily ever after.

“Drug testing at eleven,” said the social worker with the glasses at breakfast. I had found out his name was André.

I was spreading honey on the slice of pulpy factory bread, longing for a
pain de Boulogne
with a crispy crust and light, tender crumb with a sourdough touch. I would spread it with fresh dairy butter; that's all it would need.

He sighed, annoyed. “Will you please look at me, and at least give a sign you heard what I just said?”

I lifted my head up. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“I heard.”

“I'll come for you at five of eleven. Then I'll walk you over to the medical wing to give your urine sample.”

I dropped my knife. I'd have to pee in front of that woman again. The woman with the prying eyes who had nothing better to do than stare at my penis. Women always let you down. I suddenly lost my appetite.

“Nervous?” asked Hank. He glanced over his shoulder and then went on in a whisper, “Drink lots of water. At least three liters. That way your urine will be useless, and they won't be able to pin anything on you.”

“What?”

“You're not very bright, are you? Let me explain it to you. You have to drink lots of water, to dilute your piss. That way they can't trace the dope. Get it?”

“I don't use drugs.”

He laughed. “Everyone in here uses drugs. It's how we get through the day.”

“What are you two whispering about?” asked André. “I think it's best if you two didn't sit next to each other at mealtimes. Deepak, would you please switch places with Hank?”

I wasn't very fond of Hank. But at least I
knew
him. I had grown used to the smell of tobacco and the patches of sweat under his armpits. Deepak hadn't been in here that long.

“You can't trust those gooks,” Hank had said. “They'll fuck your wife and then shoot you dead for ten euros.”

Deepak plopped down next to me. “Why do
I
have to sit next to the retard?” he said in a loud voice. I heard sniggers.

He was an adulterer and a poorly paid hit man. And yet
he
had the gall to call
me
a retard. Why couldn't he just mind his own business? It made me mad. I didn't want to be in here, I didn't want people to talk to me or say stuff about me, and I
certainly
didn't want to be called a retard.

“I AM NOT A RETARD.”
I had never spoken that loudly in the common room. In my cell I'd sometimes talk out loud; I even yelled sometimes, the way I used to do when I was in jail. But here, in broad daylight, surrounded by all the loudmouths, the freaks, and the con men, I tried to keep my mouth shut as much as I could.

“
Go
for it, little Raynus!” said Eddie, whistling through his teeth. “Get it out of your system.”

Everyone laughed. Deepak loudest of all.

I was shaking. I picked up the knife lying beside my plate and brandished it in the air.

André jumped up. “Okay, calm down. Put the knife down and finish your sandwich.”

“The sandwich is
gross
.” I waved the knife around to emphasize what I was saying. “You people have no idea what
good
bread tastes like! No idea! So
you're
the ones who are retards.” I felt spit fizzling on my lips. Little drops of spittle fell on the gross bread, the plate, and the table.

“Put it down, Ray. Or your aggressive behavior means a stint in solitary,” warned the social worker.

“Come on, sit down,” said Rembrandt. They all turned to look at him. It was suddenly quiet in the room. “Rainman doesn't mean it, do you, hey, Rainman? We're all good.”

I wanted to announce that my name wasn't Rainman and that we weren't
all good
. But the word
solitary
stopped me.

“
You're
not the one calling the shots in here, Rembrandt,” said André. But I sat down anyway.

“I don't want any trouble,” said André as we walked down the corridors to the medical unit. A guard came with us. “You don't do any drugs, do you?”

“Of course not,” I said.

We walked through the yard with the store where once a week we were allowed to shop under supervision. We could buy stuff like canned beans, cigarettes, and shaving needs. Things were much more expensive there than in a normal supermarket on the outside. There was lots of complaining about that. One of the inmates even proposed a hunger strike, but he didn't get much support.

The nurse who didn't wear a white coat was waiting for me in the medical wing. Dr. Römerman had explained to me why the
staff didn't wear white coats: it was deliberate; they didn't want to emphasize the difference between them and us. The guards were the only ones who wore uniforms. It was confusing. Sometimes I couldn't tell who was a patient and who was a doctor, social worker, or nurse. I learned you could spot them by the pagers they wore clipped to their belts and the name tags around their necks. The string would break if you tugged on it. I heard that was so we wouldn't be able to strangle them with it.

“You know what you have to do,” said the nurse. “Pants down to your knees, shirt up, and pee in the cup.”

I didn't move. Just looked at the cup and the mirror next to it.

“Inmate is a bit stressed today,” said André. “There was a little friction at breakfast.”

I shuffled slowly over to the urinal and halted in front of it.

“Pants down.”

I fumbled with the button of my jeans. My hands shook so bad that I had trouble undoing it. “I can't.”

“Here we go again,” said the nurse.

The button popped open and the zipper slid down.

“Pants down.”

It was cold in the tiled space. I thought of my fish swimming around in filtered, pH-neutral water that was always a constant temperature of seventy-eight degrees.

“Hey, I haven't got all day!”

I pulled down my pants and then my underpants, too. In the mirror I saw my penis dangling helplessly. I grasped it and shuffled closer to the receptacle.

“Shirt up,” the nurse snapped.

I let go of my penis and wedged my shirt up under my armpits.

“Pee into the cup.”

My penis didn't want to. I could tell it wouldn't. But I still kept trying. With all my might I tried to make the pee come out.

“Always the same story,” said the nurse. “Has he been drinking enough fluids today?”

“I think so,” said André. “Have you, Ray?”

A few drops dribbled out of my penis. And then a very thin stream.

“Okay, you can get dressed.”

Pulling up my jeans and my underpants, I felt like crying. “Saturn, Maria, Hannibal and King Kong,” I said out loud. “Margie and Peanut. Venus and Raisin. And François.”

“What's he going on about now?” asked the guard.

Walking back to the unit, I repeated the names of my fish. Over and over again.

“I think it's best if you spent the rest of the day in your suite,” said André.

But they didn't let me stay in my suite. Instead of having the rest of the day off to look at the photos and arranging them in order, I had to go to the therapy room.

Jeannie was waiting there for me. I hadn't seen her for a couple of days. I missed our talks about the mother dough she was growing according to my directions. She didn't have the equipment to keep her dough at a constant temperature, of course, but it sounded like she was on the right track.

I liked talking with Jeannie, as long as there weren't too many people around. She made me feel like someone who knows stuff. But on the other hand, she also made me nervous. Especially after Rembrandt told me I should tweak her ass, because she wanted
it
.
Maybe she was even expecting me to do it. I tried to work out if it was true, and if so, when was the right time to do it.

One time she'd called me over. She was standing at the unit's kitchenette counter making a sandwich and called to me over her shoulder. She was wearing a tight pair of jeans. Her bum was bigger than Rosita's, but maybe just as nice.

I walked up to her, unable to take my eyes off her behind
.
My heart started beating faster. I could hardly breathe because of the weight on my chest. This could be the moment. I stopped right behind her and was about to put out my hand, like Rembrandt had told me to. She turned around. “Could you please unscrew this lid for me? I can't do it.”

“Sit down, Ray.” Jeannie's voice sounded different than when she talked to me about her amateur bread making. Not friendly. Her voice was cold. I wondered why. Had I done something wrong?
Had the mother dough died?

The guard stayed by the door. I was usually left alone with the therapist. What was he doing in here? What was going on?

Jeannie put her elbows on the desk, folded her hands, and took a deep breath. “While you were taken for drug testing, we searched your suite. It's standard procedure. We always do after a resident has received a visitor for the first time.”

Visitor. That was the woman called Iris Kastelein who said she was my sister. The woman who had brought me the photos of my fish. In the end I'd been glad that she'd come after all. But I wasn't so sure anymore. People had gone into my room and touched my things because of her.

“Who went in my room?”

“I did,” said Jeannie. “And one of the guards.”

Jeannie being in my room wasn't that bad; I could bear it. She smelled nice and had small hands. But the guard, with his big stinky hands, I couldn't stand it.

“To my dismay, we found this.” She held up a bag of white powder. Cocaine. I'd seen it often enough on television, and in prison I'd seen it, too. Only, I'd never seen such a big bag. Eddie once showed me his stash. The bag was so small he could roll it up and hide it up his nostril. I thought it must hurt quite a bit, though.

“The good thing is,” he'd said, “the more you use, the bigger your nostrils get. Your septum gradually rots away, so there's more room in there to hide your stash.” He'd started roaring with laughter and I stopped up my ears because his laugh made me crazy.

“Whose is it?” I asked. “That would never fit inside someone's nose.”

“Not all at once, certainly not,” said Jeannie.

“How did it get into my cell?” I asked.

“That's what I'm asking
you
.” She leaned back, her arms crossed.

“I don't know. It isn't mine.” It was getting wild inside my head. I tried to think. The right words. I tried to find them, but they wouldn't come. So I just said over and over, “I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't
know
.”

“We cannot assume those drugs just wandered into your suite by themselves,” said Jeannie. “I'm really disappointed in you, Ray. I expected more of you.” She stared at me, unsmiling. Meanwhile both my brain and my hands were flailing in all directions.

I didn't know what to do. My mother—she would know what to do. But she said I couldn't contact her anymore.

“We're going to have to revoke some of your privileges until we can trust you again. You will be confined to your suite at communal hours for the next month, and you'll no longer be able to work in the garden.”

What she said slowly started to set in. The hedges. I wouldn't be allowed to trim the hedges.
God!
Always the same story. They accused me of something terrible and then they took away the only things I'd ever loved. Rosita and Anna. My fish. The bakery. I couldn't even keep the hedges.

“Not the hedges,” I said. “Communal hours, fine—I couldn't care less about those. But not the hedges! I haven't done anything wrong. The drugs don't belong to me. I swear.”

“The drugs were found in your suite, so there's no point denying it. You know it will only count against you,” said Jeannie. “Your first review is nineteen months from now. The patients that have shown signs of recuperation may be given a chance to return to society. But those who persist in lying and who refuse to learn will not.”

Learn? What I'd learned was that it didn't make any difference
what
you said or did. They'd always find some way to get you.
Always
. I didn't want to cave in.

“I
don't
keep drugs in my room. Someone else did it. While they were making me pee in the cup in front of the woman not wearing a white coat, and I didn't want to do that, either. It was someone else who did it. It wasn't me.”

“I'm sorry,” said Jeannie. “I wish this hadn't happened.”

I had given her the recipe for La Souche and she was taking my hedges away from me. I was getting mad. Very mad. “
Not
the yard work!” I said, my voice breaking. “Can't you see they've already taken everything from me?”

“Calm down, Ray.” But that made me even angrier. I wanted to grab Jeannie and shake her the way my mother used to do to me when I was little, a little boy who wouldn't listen.

“Not the yard work!” Now I was yelling. Not even so much at Jeannie and the guard—more at the whole entire world. Or maybe
at the statue with the loincloth in the yard, or at my mother, or at Iris Kastelein who said she was my sister. Somebody come help me! Anybody! “Not the garden!”

“That's enough,” said Jeannie. “We're done here. Return to your suite.”

If I went back to my cell, it would all be over. The guard put his hand on my shoulder. “Get up.”

I had to say something. I had to explain. But they wouldn't listen. No one ever listened. The pathetic little potted plant on the desk caught my eye. In prison workshop one of my jobs had been sticking labels on plants that gave the name and care instructions. This plant was a dracaena, and it needed a lot of light. I'd read that sticker at least six hundred times.