Those Bones Are Not My Child (29 page)

So in place of “coincidence,” she learned to say “synch occurrence” when, in the space of two hours, three and a half things echoed each other. 12:30—the Busy Bee, B. J. slapped down on the counter still another collection from the chicken porn file: glassy-eyed youths languorous against pillows, clothes open, lipstick-painted aureolas round their nipples and the head of their penises, one naked boy with one hand tugging the end of a silken scarf knotted around his neck, the other arm under his balls, a finger, perhaps, stuck up his ass. If someone could do that to children, then she could look, she had to know what Sonny
might be coming home from. 1:15—the sculptor back from a conference on the coast stopped her to show her a brochure that had been in everyone’s conference kit, a two-page booklet from the San Francisco Visitors’ Bureau containing safety precautions for out-of-towners attracted to the S&M communities in the city; a yellow marker emphasized passages concerning the lengths one could go in strangling a sex mate for the ultimate get-off without the ultimate bump-off. 2:20—batik class over, students scraping wax from the floor, Zala bunching newspapers from the table, an item about a sodomy trial, youngsters taking the stand to say the defendant had been otherwise kind, stunned parents had thought the defendant a praiseworthy scout leader, had had no idea of the bondage games and the sex. 2:30—Teo running in to say that he’d missed meeting Spence because a customer at Daily’s had choked on a fishbone, and did she know where he might be, and why was she laughing so hard, and did she want to smoke a joint, shouldn’t she try to calm down?

Convinced that there was a force steering her, placing people on her path, setting items in her line of vision, knocking down the barrier between night dreams and daytime consciousness, Zala had pressed the cruise control button in Dave’s car that she’d borrowed and dared the force to present itself and take over. The force took over. She removed her foot from the pedal, at times her hands from the wheel, and glided along will-less in the car enjoying the lascivious pleasure of surrender. And without quite deciding to, though she’d bargained with the TF detective, she had found herself heading for the state police office.

“You’re out on your feet and don’t even know it, girl.” Paulette seemed to come out of nowhere, her firm hand steering Zala through the crowded corridor of Grady. She pushed her toward a chair and went to a bank of vending machines.

She would have to get a grip on herself. No telling what Sonny would be like. She was scared. But then he had scared her before. He’d grabbed Kenti once in the yard and was swinging her around by an arm and a leg when Zala got to the window, afraid to yell
put her down
’cause he might have; mad about something, surly, unpredictable, he’d reached that stage she’d thought only other people’s sons went through. And a time after that when he and Kofi had pooled their allowances to order an anatomy chart from a karate supply house. She’d been at a delicate phase in a stained-glass project and they were identifying death
spots on each other’s bodies. She’d dropped her soldering iron when Sonny told Kofi that one deft slam with the heel of his hand between his nipples and it would be all over. She had shattered the glass.

“Here, it’s beef bouillon. Good and hot.” Paulette put the Styrofoam cup in Zala’s hand. “You’d better see a lawyer, Zala.” She tossed a package of peanut-butter crackers in her lap. “Routine! What did you think you were doing?”

“I thought it might help.”

The TF detective and the consultant had both said it might help, so she’d agreed. She would cooperate with them if they would do likewise; if they would review all the cases and take the map seriously. But when they ushered her into the room and walked her around the industrial shelving, she knew they’d made a mistake. The detective had made a mistake. She’d made a mistake. There was a definite misunderstanding somewhere. She’d come to be hypnotized, not electrified, she’d tried to explain.

They led her to a chair, a scarred-up old library chair with wide armrests and a curved ladder-rung back. Not the brother she’d expected to see, the operator at the machine was a wispy-haired white man with skin like sidewalk. They drew down the shades and strapped her in, a band across her chest, taped buttons at her pulse points. Then they left her alone with the wispy-haired man, who would not look up from the machine, from the needles, the dials, or the praying mantis that moved across the grid paper.

“Relax, please. Do not change position in any way and simply answer the questions. Your name is Marzala Rawls Spencer?”

“Yes.”

“You live with your children at 109 Thurmond Street, Southwest, Atlanta?”

“Yes.”

“Your oldest child is named Sonny Spencer?”

“… Yes.” She could feel throbbing just below her left ear. The operator glanced at her wrists on the armrests, the wires curling out from the back of her hands, then straightening at the attach points on the machine.

“His name is Sundiata Spencer. We call him Sonny.”

“You last saw Sonny on Saturday the nineteenth of July at approximately 10:30 a.m.?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“No.”

“Do you masturbate?”

“What?” He was deadpan at the controls, the metal mantis scooting across the grid. She held her breath. He would ask it again and she’d be ready.

“How old are you, Mrs. Spencer?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Do you have any idea where Sonny Spencer is?”

“No, I do not.”

“Has he run away before?”

“He’s never run away from home. From anything.” Her throat felt swollen and raw. The back of her left hand was inflamed.

“Do you resent it if your husband has an orgasm and you do not?”

“None of your business.… No.… I don’t remember.”

“Please don’t gnash your teeth. Relax. Do you know where your son was going when he left the home on July nineteenth?”

“I thought at the time that he’d gone to the Boys’ Club four blocks away. I thought later that he might have gone to the campground. I also thought that he might have gone to his father’s place on Campbellton Road.” Her mouth went dry. “But I don’t know for sure where he was headed.” Went. “He disappeared.” She looked down at the band across her chest, expecting her heart’s pounding to snap it in two. “No.”

“Do you suspect anyone of having kidnapped your son?”

“No. No one in particular … no one I can think of.” She wondered if the machine could pick up her nightmares, could reach below her daytime thoughts and pull names and faces up through her pores. Everyone she knew, at one time or other, had skulked about in her nightlife with hooded eyes and dread schemes, featured as the number-one suspect.

“Does your husband whip or spank or otherwise administer corporal punishment to your children?”

“… Last time Sonny got spanked, he was nine years old. I did the spanking. Once or twice after that, his father shook him by the arm or yelled at him a little.” She could fix on nothing. Sonny was vanishing from her mind’s eye. She clamped her jaws tight and fought down a hiccup.

“Relax, please, and answer the questions as simply as possible. Have you ever stolen anything, Mrs. Spencer?”

“Yes.”

His eyebrows went up.

“I was pregnant with Sonny,” she said, catching the operator looking at her fingers. She spread them flat on the rests. “I went into a drugstore on St. Nicholas Avenue in New York City and slipped a pack of Bit-O-Honey into my sweater.”

He was studying the paper rolling across the machine. He seemed to want more.

“And light bulbs. I once stole some light bulbs. About two years ago. I had an argument with my husband and walked out to get cigarettes. I smoked then sometimes. I paid for the cigarettes but forgot I had the package of bulbs in my hand. I walked out. Nobody stopped me.” She remembered standing on the corner crashing the bulbs to the ground one at a time, then grinding them into the pavement with the heel of her boot. “That’s all.”

“Did you have a fight with your husband this past summer?”

“No.”

“Your son?”

She scrambled his earlier question around to make sense of the new one, frantic that she was taking so long. “No. We don’t ‘fight’ with our children.”

“Did your son and your boyfriend get along?”

“Who?” She felt wet under her right armpit. The pulse button seemed to be slipped down. “Sonny and my childhood buddy got along all right. They’ve had some disagreements sometimes. Naturally.” Again he seemed to be waiting for more. Maybe he too was listening to the whir, wondering if it was the machine, the traffic outside, or her blood beating against the tape and the wires. How did he know things about her?

“Did your son and boyfriend get along?”

“Yes.”

“Has your son Sonny ever stolen anything?”

“No. Well, not that I know of.… Yes, he once borrowed a guitar thing from the band closet. A clamp you put on the neck of the guitar to hold the strings down. He took it back the next day. His band teacher told me he put it back.”

“Does Sonny use drugs?”

“Definitely not.”

“Does anyone in the household or in the family use drugs?”

“No.… My husband was taking medication last year under VA supervision.”

“And you once stole an item of candy and years later a carton of light bulbs?”

“Yes.”

“Has anyone in the household or in the family ever been arrested?”

“My stepbrother was in jail once. With Martin Luther King,” she added proudly.

“Did you kill your son, Mrs. Spencer?”

And there it was. Routine question in cases like this, the police said. Did you kill your child? She’d heard the parents at STOP comparing notes. Did you kill your very own child? She’d been dreading it since the moment they led her past the industrial shelves. Pull the shades. Give her the chair. Turn on the juice. Come clean, woman.

Isn’t it true you were in a rage when your son challenged your authority? Isn’t it a fact that you are particularly sensitive about your inability to make people take you seriously, having never been able to strike an imposing figure, having always been diminutive in stature? Isn’t it true that you deliberately left the camping-trip flyer in the napkin holder where it would provoke the boy? You wanted a showdown. You’d been humiliated two nights before by your son in front of your boyfriend.

You hid across the street behind the hedges in the Robinson yard waiting for Sonny to come out. Of course he did. You knew he would. You followed him in your car to the Boys’ Club. The van had gone. You then followed the boy to the bus stop. You got out of the car and confronted him. He sassed you, challenged you, made you feel ridiculous there in the street with your hands on your hips trying to make the boy mind you, the boy three inches taller, twenty pounds heavier, a mind of his own, an agenda of his own. He defied you, criticized you for two-timing his father. You lashed out and struck him. He stumbled, he fell, he hit his head on the curbstone. It was an accident, to be sure. We realize that, Mrs. Spencer. You hadn’t meant for things to go that far. It’s hard to raise children without a man in the house. We understand that. An accident. It happens. But you covered it up, and that is a crime.

“Zala, give me the cup.”

You realized he was not breathing. You dragged his body to the car and dumped him into the backseat. You know this city well, Mrs. Spencer, and you know how to handle tools. You’re an arts-and-crafts worker, you’re the daughter of a handyman. You’re handy, you’re crafty. You knew just where to take him, knew just how to dispose of him. Come clean. You killed your child.

“Take it easy, girl.”

It’s not necessary to keep denying it. We know. Would you like a tissue? Would you like a blindfold, one last cigarette? Perhaps a drink of water—you seem to have a severe case of hiccups. Guilt? Guilty as charged.

Paulette was scrubbing her dress with a wad of paper towels. Zala felt two men standing over her, their lab coats so heavily starched the buttonholes were glued shut. One of them leaned down to whisper something to Paulette. She waved him away.

“Dammit, Zala, let go of the cup.”

S
he wouldn’t look. He had something to ask, but he couldn’t get her to look at him no matter where he stood. He felt lonesome. Kenti was falling asleep between Zala’s knees, and no one was talking. And he couldn’t hear the TV. He could make it louder, but then she might fuss. And if she was angry, then he couldn’t ask what he wanted to ask.

“Ma?”

“Hmmh?”

Zala parked the comb in Kenti’s hair, then dipped her head toward the bunk lamp. He was standing right there, but she wasn’t looking, just at the lamp. He clicked it on, figuring that’s what she wanted.

“It did it again, Ma.” Kofi hooked his arm in the bunk ladder and swung right in front of her. “The phone.” His arm hurt. Least she could do was look. “Ma?”

“Hmmh?”

“The phone. Just now when I put out the garbage, it rang twice, but nobody was there.” He stopped swinging when he heard the ladder creak.