House Arrest (9 page)

10 ~ Pippa

Pippa knew the exact moment she and Tian had started this baby.

It happened during the heat spell in August, just before they found Abby’s body. Right where she was curled up, on the mattress filling most of her slanty-walled attic room.

Tian believed that every adult should have a space in the house. A room of their own, even if the room had no door. That meant the generous bedrooms of the Pioneer Street house had to be partitioned into smaller ones. As the last person to join, Pippa was given the tiny back room on the third floor. Even when Meg and Enoch and their kids moved out, Tian wouldn’t let Pippa take one of their large second-floor bedrooms. They would be back, he promised, even though everyone else had given up on them. No one had ever deserted the family before. Not in six years in Springfield, or before that in Newark.

Early on the Monday morning before Thanksgiving, Pippa’s attic nest was comfy and warm. It was tucked under the sloped roof, sheltered from the wind that searched out the cracks in the drafty old house. But, every August there were a couple of sweltering weeks, when stagnant weather patterns in the Connecticut River valley trapped hot air in the city. Most nights, Tian flashed his incendiary smile at her, and she joined him in his first-floor bedroom where triple bay windows wide open to the garden caught every wisp of breeze.

That night last mid-August was roasting. Hoping to sleep downstairs, Pippa smiled at Tian. When he didn’t respond, she went upstairs alone. She set the fan blowing stale air across her body. She must have fallen asleep, because she woke to the shiver of Tian’s tongue on her belly and the vast undertow of his hands.

Afterwards, resting her cheek against Tian’s chest, Pippa eavesdropped on the slowing of their heart rates. She traced the broken shape of his pinky finger, never set and poorly healed, the small blemish that defined his perfection. She inhaled the smell of their mingled sweat. At that moment, soft as a moth’s kiss, the cells in her center rearranged themselves. Right then she knew that they had started another baby. She wouldn’t say anything to Tian until she missed her period. Maybe not even then, because she didn’t know what she felt; elation and sorrow battled inside of her. Tian would not be conflicted; he loved being a father.

She only had one true secret from Tian. One private thing that she could never share. It started when she turned sixteen. She had heard girls at school chatter about birthday parties with cake and balloons and sleepovers, but for her Sweet Sixteen it was just the four of them. Ma made biscuit-fried chicken and a lemon meringue pie. After dinner, in a rare moment of brotherly love, Stanley invited her to tag along with him and their neighbors, Martha and Charley, to the Saturday night dance at Maxy’s Place.

No one at Maxy’s that evening looked older than twenty-five, but they abided by the time-honored tradition in the county. White folks claimed the front bar, and black people sat at the tables along the rear of the room. Same with the dancing mostly, whites in the front half, blacks towards the back. Pippa sat with Charley and Martha in the shadowy front corner, lit only by the flickering Bud sign. Stanley carried their beers over, hoping nobody would make a stink that Pippa was underage. Not likely, because the Billy Boys were hot that night and the bar was as jam-packed as the dance floor.

“Would ya look at them.” Martha elbowed Pippa and pointed back towards the bathrooms. A mixed-race couple danced slow and close, even though the music rocked. The guy’s back was towards them, but there was something familiar about the slope of his shoulders. Pippa stared as the couple slowly turned.

“Isn’t that Delmar?” Martha squinted. “Who’s he with?”

Pippa hadn’t seen Delmar since he dropped out of school two years before, the same month her father fired his daddy for drinking whiskey during haying. It had been a decade since the two of them snuck away together to play in the barn on rainy days. Sometimes Delmar’s daddy brought him along to work, when his ma took off. That younger Delmar liked to stick hay twigs in the corner of his mouth for whiskers and meow until she rubbed his belly and made him laugh. This Delmar was full-grown, a head taller than his partner.

“Didn’t that blondie used to be your friend in school?” Martha asked.

“Sally Ann,” Pippa whispered.

“A bit wild, is she?”

Pippa didn’t answer. She glanced quickly at Stanley, who looked like his beer tasted sour, then back at the couple. Delmar’s square farmboy hands stretched across the tight denim of Sally Ann’s bleached mini-skirt. His dark fingers cupping the white cloth of her bottom made Pippa’s throat ache.

When Pippa got home later, rosy and sleepy from the dancing and the beer, Ma was waiting up for her. She followed Pippa into her room, sat down on her bed and patted the mattress next to her, smiling.

“Nice birthday?”

“Uh hmm.”

It had been a big mistake, telling about Delmar. Ma had never liked Sally Ann, anyways. But that night Pippa was still glowing, and couldn’t stop thinking about it. Ma hardly ever asked, so Pippa wasn’t used to keeping secrets. She told Ma how they danced so close. She kept to herself how strange she felt watching them together that way, squirrelly and awkward and yearning.

One night two weeks later, Pippa sat on the porch swing. She couldn’t sleep. She pushed off with her toes and her thoughts swayed back and forth with Delmar and Sally Ann’s slow dance. A pineapple-scented breeze from the sweetshrub bushes rippled her T-shirt. Crickets chirped in the tall grass at the dark edge of the wrap-around porch, their lament loud against a far-off murmur that Pippa couldn’t place.

She counted the number of chirps in fifteen seconds like Ma taught her, so she could add thirty-nine to get the temperature, but it was hard without a watch. Footsteps crunched on the gravel driveway, where a tall shape trailed something. Probably Stanley sneaking out with a blanket to meet some girl in the woods. Then she heard the familiar clicking noise her father made to clear his throat. From his smoking, Ma said.

Not knowing why, not really caring, she followed him. She walked barefoot in the grass next to the driveway, so he wouldn’t hear her steps. Around the house and along the rutted tractor path up the hill toward the north pasture. The night air was heavy, the moon a chalk thumbprint smudged on the black sky. A shimmery glow outlined the curve of the hilltop against the sky. Too early for dawn, and in the wrong direction.

At the crest of the hill, she stopped. Their pasture was transformed. Pickup trucks lined the county road. A tree trunk with outstretched arms burned in the middle of the field. Among bales of new hay stood hundreds of shapes like Halloween ghosts. In June.

At the bottom of the hill, her father shook out his sheet and pulled it over his head. Next a hood. Then he stepped forward and merged into the crowd. Pippa hesitated for three heartbeats, then followed, staying just beyond the circle of light from the flames.

Pippa wasn’t ignorant about the Klan. Everyone knew they were still around in 1999 Georgia, just more secretive. She had never seen any of the good old boys in action, not first-hand, but she recognized their daytime selves manning a booth at the Confederate Memorial Day parade or handing a check to the winner of the “Proud to Be from Dixie” essay contest at a high school assembly. She had not realized they held nighttime rallies in her county, in her father’s north pasture.

She did not know they still burned crosses.

The flames flickered across the pale faces of the people milling around, signing petitions on clipboards, looking through stacks of pamphlets, filling sagging paper plates of brownies and cherry pie. Some people wore sheets and some regular clothes. From behind the pie table the sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Davis, waved Pippa over. She looked peculiar without her lime-green uniform from the diner on Chestnut Street, her matching muffin cap.

“Glad to see you, honey,” Mrs. Davis said. “Don’t you want to cover up some?”

Pippa looked down at her cotton T-shirt and sleep shorts, crossed her arms against her chest. She shook her head at the folded fabric Mrs. Davis offered from the cardboard box under the table.

“You seen my father?”

“With the rest of the marshals, I bet.” Mrs. Davis pointed past the cross.

White hoods concealed the faces of the sheeted shapes on the makeshift stage, but Pippa heard the raspy sound of him. The shape with her father’s voice jabbed his cigarette in the air, like when he wanted her to clean out the barn or weed the garden. He nodded his head hard. The peak of the hood slapped up and down. His eyes were obscured behind black holes cut in the fabric.

The shape with her father’s voice lifted his cigarette into the slash in the hood, where a man’s mouth should be. The ash flared red. The smoke seeped back out, puffing through the jagged cut in the fabric. Two thin tendrils spiraled out the eyeholes. For several seconds, the haze hung suspended around his tapering hood, before dissolving into the night air.

Pippa turned away. She forced herself to walk until she reached the cusp of the darkness. Then she ran.

She was almost safe, climbing upstairs to her room, when Ma appeared at her bedroom door, her nightgown pearly in the moonlight.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Where you been?”

Pippa put her arms around her mother and pulled her close. She was afraid Ma would read the Morse code of her racing heart, but she needed the hug more.

“On the porch. I couldn’t sleep.”

Ma leaned back and looked at Pippa. She felt the question in her mother’s eyes, and did not look away. Ma must know what was going on in the north pasture.

Pippa untangled from her mother’s arms. “I’m sleepy now.”

She wedged her desk chair under the doorknob. Lying stiff on her back, she studied the landscape of cracks on the ceiling, the canvas for her childhood imaginings of princesses in heavenly mountain palaces. She had never paid much mind to the school lessons about Dixie Forever. Now those slogans ricocheted behind her eyes. She could not imagine ever sleeping again, but maybe she dozed off for a few seconds. She was startled awake by a noise from outside.

It was still dark. The crunching on the gravel was louder. Through her bedroom window she saw a cluster of ghostly shapes enter the barn, shoving a smaller figure in dark clothes. On her way out of the house, she grabbed the yellow flashlight from the hook by the kitchen door.

Pippa crept the long way around the barn to the small side entrance and stood outside listening. A solid, slapping sound. Whimpering. The occasional eruption of the oily laughter men make when they’re lubricated with whiskey. She understood that there was danger and that she was not brave, because she did not open the door and walk into the barn. Instead, she crouched in the shadows, resting her arms on the splintery cover of the feedbox. She listened as the smacks grew harsher and the moaning more sorrowful. Then the sounds stopped.

After a long time, she heard the big double doors open and close, then more gravel noises and laughter. Finally the barn was still, the voices silent. She unlatched the small side door and slipped inside. The air smelled used and rusty.

Delmar was sprawled on his side, his skinny arms and legs akimbo. As if they just let him be, however he fell. The rope, still hanging from the beam, was cut. Around Delmar’s neck, the noose was off kilter, knotted to the side like a Sunday necktie fastened sloppily, without a mirror. Two by fours leaned up against the goat stalls. The ends were stained with something dark. The dark became deep red in the flashlight beam. Delmar’s face and chest were broken.

The harsh grinding of her father’s pickup in reverse broke the silence. She returned to her spot behind the feedbox until the voices stopped again and the truck drove off. It was almost dawn when she tiptoed around to the front of the barn.

The double doors stood wide open. Fresh hay had been spread on the floor. The two by fours were missing. The rope was gone. So was Delmar.

Should she call Sheriff Davis? His wife had been in the pasture, but maybe that was part of her job at the diner, maybe she didn’t mean it. The sheriff might be out patrolling somewhere on the other side of the county, not even aware of what was going on in the north pasture.

She couldn’t ask Ma for help. What happened to Delmar could be Ma’s fault. And her own fault too, for telling Ma what she saw at Maxy’s. Maybe later that night, Ma had whispered to her husband, “I always knew that Sally Ann was a slut.” Or maybe Stanley said something to Pa. Maybe Stanley had been in the field of white shapes. She couldn’t stop thinking about Delmar and dancing. But Delmar was gone.

And so was she. Pippa got dressed and emptied the money from the Mason jar Ma kept hidden in the cupboard over the sink. Sorry Ma, she thought. She was on the next bus north, to Massachusetts, as far as Ma’s rainy day cash would take her.

•

Pippa pulled the quilts over her head, muffling the moaning of the wind outside. It was too early to get up. She tried to chant the sleep prayers, but her thoughts were a jumble of images, a stew of regret. The north pasture. Delmar’s hands on Sally Ann’s bottom. Abby and this new baby. Ma who she missed even though it was more the idea of Ma instead of the person. Tian’s broken finger. Smoke puffing out of dark eyeholes in a white hood.

11 ~ Emily

I don’t know what I expected to find Monday morning at the Hall of Justice, but it wasn’t an x-ray security scanner with a conveyer belt, a metal-detector gateway, and two armed guards.

“Empty the contents of your pockets into the blue bucket, ma’am, and place your bag on the belt.” One of the security guards spoke to me without taking his eyes from the screen of his shiny machine.

My pockets were empty except for old cough drops, tissue-flecked mittens, four pennies, and two ripped ticket stubs from the matinee of Shrek 2 at the Bing. I dumped the handful of jumble into the blue plastic bowl and watched it disappear into the tunnel, my old pocketbook beside it looking disheveled and discouraged. I pictured the matching gray leather purse and briefcase that Marge carried on Friday afternoon as she prepared for an early start on the weekend. I had asked her what to expect in today’s visit with the probation officer.

“You’ll find out when you get there,” Marge said. “Just tell them what they want to hear.”

I walked through the metal detector archway, wondering what kind of radiation scatter these things delivered. Shoving the clutter back into my jacket pocket, I shouldered my pocketbook and turned to the guard.

“Probation department?” I hoped he wouldn’t think I was asking for myself. All weekend I had felt like a criminal, worrying that I crossed some line when I took Pippa to the park. All weekend I thought about her story.

“Elevators around the corner to your left.” His eyes didn’t abandon the display screen. “Third floor. Left turn. First door on the right.”

I had the elevator to myself, a quiet moment to worry. I had never met a probation officer. I imagined a bulky man with broad shoulders and a narrow mind, the bulge of a holster over his heart. What questions would he ask? How should I answer them, after feeling the landscape tilt when I sat with Pippa in the dingle and heard her story?

The first door on the right opened into a narrow room crowded with tired-looking people. Alternating green and orange chairs lined three walls. The clerk behind the barred reception window wore a glittery nose ring. I gave her my name. The only empty seat had a large gash in the cushion, bleeding crushed layers of stuffing. I stood awkwardly in the center of the room for a minute, and then sat down on the slashed chair, next to a skinny woman who smelled like low tide. I closed my eyes and tried to take shallow breaths without offending her. Low tide. Maine. Momma did not tell me the whole truth on the ferry trip to the island. She saved the rest for early the next morning, before she left to return to Portland.

•

Momma and I sit together on the big rock down by the water. Coffee rock, that’s what Aunt Ruth calls it. At first Momma is silent. There is just the placid slap of the waves on the rock and the lazy buzzing of a dragonfly skimming the surface of the water.

“About the fire,” Momma says. “I haven’t told you the worst thing. We set the fire in the middle of the night, so no one would be hurt. But a man was working late, cleaning the offices. He was horribly burned. He almost died.”

There is something in my chest that balloons and fills up every bit of space, pushing aside my heart and lungs and stomach and liver, all the parts we color on an outline of the human body in class.

“We felt awful about it,” Momma says. “We didn’t know how to respond. We never did that kind of protest again. We left Michigan, our commune, our friends. It was a kind of penance, exiling ourselves. Of course we knew it wasn’t enough.” Momma’s voice trails into silence.

The dragonfly hovers above the water, in and out of mist. After a while, my arms and legs feel boneless and I drift with the dragonfly out to sea.

Momma coaxes me back to land with our special game. We touch foreheads, our eyes closed tight. We chant One-Two-Three-Owl, and on the word Owl, we both open our eyes wide and look into each other, deep and close. Momma promises to call me every evening from Portland.

“I have to be there,” she says, “for your father.”

What about me?

•

“Emily Klein.” The clerk called my name. She buzzed me through the barricade and led me on a snaking pathway through rows of desks to a private office the size of the waiting room.

“Have a seat,” the clerk said. “Malloy will be with you in a jiffy.”

I sat on the edge of the bench facing the desk. Boxes, binders, dark books with thick spines crammed the floor-to-ceiling shelves climbing the wall to the right. On the opposite wall hung a painting of a razor sharp mountain peak piercing a sky dark with storm clouds. The small bronze label screwed into the frame revealed the title: Final Justice. Such an unforgiving image. A match for Pippa’s winged goddess.

Malloy breezed into the room with a handshake and an apology. She wasn’t bulky or broad shouldered. Her silky pants suit emphasized her willowy height.

“Call me Nan. Sorry to keep you waiting. Monday mornings are hell around here.” She ignored the desk and sat on the other end of the bench, turning to face me. “Thanks for coming in. I know you’re busy. We’ll make this brief.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m not sure why I’m here.”

“Because Judge Thomas set Glenning’s conditions of bail. She gets to stay at home and work part-time, which is healthier for her and her baby.” The probation officer spoke softly, almost as if she cared about Pippa. “She has to wear the monitor and report to me. Your job is to visit her every week and make sure she follows the medical plan.”

That I could manage. “I saw her twice last week. At home on Wednesday for the intake. And her initial OB appointment on Friday.”

Nan kicked off her high-heeled shoes and pulled a pair of fuzzy yellow bedroom slippers from under the desk. She slipped her right stockinged foot into one, and balanced her left foot on the opposite knee, rubbing her crooked big toe through the sheer nylon. She looked down at her foot, then at me.

“Ugly, isn’t it?” she said. “Any problems with Glenning at the doctor’s office?”

I shook my head. Why does a woman with a bunion wear pointy shoes? “Pippa has unusual ideas about health and diet, beliefs that don’t mesh with mainstream medicine. But that doesn’t mean she’s irresponsible.” I thought briefly about the potential damage from hallucinogenic cactus on a second-trimester fetus. But I couldn’t imagine that Pippa planned to drink the libation this year.

Nan Malloy must have read my mind. “Do you have any reason to think her baby is at risk?”

I hesitated a moment, then shook my head.

“Cult members can be extremely manipulative.” Nan stopped massaging her bunion and looked at me. “They can be very persuasive. Sometimes they can convince reasonable people, compassionate people, to go along with things they wouldn’t normally consider. This Isis group fits the classic profile.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Strong, charismatic male leader, probably sexually involved with all the women. More women than men in the group. Some unsavory history, gang violence and prostitution. And then, there’s the racial thing here, too.”

I opened my mouth to ask about that, but the phone rang. Nan reached across her desk for the receiver.

“Malloy here.” She mostly listened, making notes on a yellow note pad shaped like a daisy. I pictured her standing in the oak-paneled room arguing with a judge. I couldn’t imagine taking a job that required being in court. Momma had never allowed me to attend any of my father’s legal proceedings. Not the arraignment, not the trial, and certainly not the sentencing.

I wondered about Nan’s profile of the Family of Isis. Gangs and prostitution? Certainly not Pippa. And what did she mean by the racial thing? The newspaper article had mentioned something about racially mixed children, so I had assumed that Tian was black.

“Sorry about that,” Nan said, hanging up the phone. “You and I need to keep in touch about how Glenning is doing. Strict procedure would be for you to come here every week. But now that we’ve met and established trust, how about we just talk on the phone?”

Was that good, that Nan trusted me? It didn’t feel good. I probably didn’t deserve it. “You mentioned a racial thing?” I said. “What did you mean?”

Nan shrugged. “The men in the group are black. The women, except the one in jail, are white. The kids are mixed race. That makes ordinary citizens, both black and white, very nervous.”

I would think about that later. “Can you explain to me about the ankle monitor?”

“Does Glenning have a problem with it?” Nan’s eyes narrowed just a little.

“No, I just don’t understand how it works.” The truth was that I kept imagining Pippa dressed in white, dancing in the snowy woods, the box on her ankle shackling her bare foot to the earth.

Nan grabbed a carton from the bookcase, took out a small black device and handed it to me. “Here. You want to try it?” She grinned when I shook my head no. “The transmitter is connected to the phone and to an electric outlet. It continuously confirms that the offender is within 100 feet of the box, and triggers a warning signal to the monitor company if he goes beyond the pre-set radius.”

Offender? I flinched at that word. I ran my fingers across the polished surface of the monitor, just like the one on Pippa’s mantel.

Nan fit the rubber strap into the grooves on the ankle device. “There are tiny wires inside this strap. If the offender meddles with this baby, we’ll know about it.”

I looked away from Nan, but my eyes found the painting and couldn’t stay there either. “What happens if you get a signal that someone has tampered with it, or left their house without permission?”

“Depends. The manufacturer monitors any disruption in the system. Could be a power outage, or telephone service failure, or someone messing with the device. They call the Chief Probation Officer, that’s my boss, and he has to decide what to do.” Nan shrugged her shoulders. “It’s a judgment call. If he’s worried about the offender committing another crime, he’ll send a squad car. Sometimes, he’ll check out the offender’s house himself, with the drive-by wand.” She pointed to a foot-long tube on the top shelf. “That tells him if the ankle monitor is in the house. Of course, those calls mostly come at two a.m. I wouldn’t have his job for anything.”

I stood up, anxious to escape this world of drive-by surveillance and the harsh justice of jagged mountains. “Is there anything else?”

“No. Thanks for your help.” Nan handed me a business card and walked me back to the security door, still in her fuzzy slippers. “Call me next Monday. Or any time, if you’re worried about Glenning. My cell phone number is on the back.”

“Okay.” I slipped the card in my pocket and shook Nan’s hand.

“I’m glad we met.” Nan said.

“By the way,” I said, pointing at her feet. “If you wear wide-toed shoes, your bunions won’t hurt so much.”

•

“You are twenty minutes late, young lady.” Mr. Stanisewski tapped his watch with his finger when I arrived at his apartment. “Luckily my schedule is light today and I can fit you in.” Then he laughed to let me know he was joking, and I laughed with him.

I was distracted, and I hated that in myself. I’d had to sit in my car in the Hall of Justice parking lot for twenty minutes after the meeting, trying to empty my brain of Pippa and Nan and dragonflies hovering over coffee rock. I pondered the gray November sky until the images of mountains skewering storm clouds and courtrooms and foggy harbors cleared. Until there was just the upscale façade of the court with its bright chrome and sky-colored panels that startled the old brick buildings on State Street.

“My, you are quiet today,” Mr. S said. “Lucky I talk enough for the two of us.” He was fond of telling me that, and that day it was certainly true. As I changed the dressing on his big toe, he reported on the progress of his granddaughter’s experiment with plants and music.

“So far, the plants getting no music at all are a little taller,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense to me. What does that prove?”

“I have no clue. But I do know that the seaweed dressing is working. Your toe is much better today. I’ll call your doctor.” I started packing up the supplies. “I think we can switch to a simple dressing, one you can do yourself.”

“Then you won’t need to visit me any more?”

“Not as often. But I’ll still come to check on the ulcer and make sure your sugars are stable.”

While I reviewed his blood sugar log and updated his records in the computer, we listened to a record of polka tunes. Mr. S. tapped his good foot in time to the music. Then I hugged the dear old man goodbye, promising to let him know what his doctor decided.

Josué’s vacated time slot in my schedule had not yet been filled with a new patient, which gave me a perfect opportunity to stop by and check on him at the Children’s Hospital. His surgery had been scheduled for first case that morning, so he should be back in his room and ready for a visit. Knowing Josué, he’d be hungry.

I first met Josué at Pioneer Valley Children’s Hospital after his accident and the surgery to reconstruct his leg. I like visiting my patients in the hospital before discharge, so they recognize me when I show up at their homes for the intake.

Walking into the three-story glass atrium now, I remembered rushing through the lobby in the middle of the night for Zoe’s emergency shunt surgery two years ago. Zoe denied any memory of that night. She loved the place, especially the life-sized sculptures of giraffes and elephants stretching their necks and trunks to munch leaves from the trees growing in the light-filled room. At the reception desk I signed in and clipped the green plastic “Visitor” badge to my coat.