I'll Let You Go

CHAPTER 24. Pixies and Tigers

Summer — El Monte at eventide. The desiccated wings of insects make for a thin layer of heavenly blisters on the high battlements of MacLaren Children’s Center. The fragrance of sage, jasmine and honeysuckle fans over Mac’s dusky campus grounds past a waterless pool donated by Barbra Streisand; a mural of seagull and ocean spray, insipidly anodyne; the campus boutique wherein misbegotten children trade goodness points for CDs, T-shirts and donated effluvia — locked down tight.

Eventide at Mac — dinner is done.

The volunteer grannies have all gone home.

The floors are waxed. Meds dispensed. Order all around.

The children, secure in their units.

The orphan — all orphans here! — is ensconced in Pixie cottage. That is her domain. For those her age, there are Pixies (girls) and there are Tigers (boys). Last week a Tiger huffed a hairstyling foam aerosol and died; grievous news for United Friends of the Children, who’d recently donated a batch to the brand-new beauty salon. But that’s a rare thing at Mac. This is no Tunga Canyon. No Jilbos or Woolerys to be seen, at least not so far.

The orphan child—our orphan child — half lies on her bed, nail-bitten waif of sun-bleached hair and indomitable will, a “rainbow” child now nearly recovered from visible wounds. Syphilis has retreated from the assault of penicillin infantries; still-tender maceration of breast has drained, with only a dainty Wild Thornberrys Band-Aid as evidence. Her cough is tolerable and there is no rank discharge from between fattening legs, whose calves and thighs now bear the heartening black-and-blue memoranda of normal girlish activity. The face is filling out nicely, ruddy cheeks made ripe by the chopping off of six licey inches. She sleeps in a room with two others, only two, because most Pixies insist on keeping their mattresses in the hall. They can’t handle bedrooms — any bedrooms.

Amaryllis is fully, securely, deeply in the “pop.”

And sleeping without meds.

Tonight she reads in bed as in days of yore, small flashlight gripped in smaller hand. She’s uninterested in the mess of library books Dézhiree (her staffer) brought to the Cottage from the library: Alex, the Kid with AIDS, My Body Is Private, The House That Crack Built.

This is the baby with nothing to eat

Born of the girl who’s killing her brain

Smoking the crack that numbs the pain

Who lives in the House That Crack Built.

She begged a volunteer grannie to find back issues of Time and Newsweek. Amaryllis then made a tricked-out cradle for the scissored magazine articles, bigger than her old cigar boxes, gluing photos to its sides.

Tonight she’s in a transport, for, scanning the articles before her, Amaryllis knows she will soon see her babies. She always had a feeling she would find them here, from the moment the detective announced their destination — when she saw Mac’s inviolable stone walls, she was certain. And, besides, the baker’s wife had told her it would soon come to pass.^†

Among a plethora of fresh clippings, the Royal Kumari and even dare it be said Amaryllis’s protectress Sister Benedicta, née Edith Stein, began to fade from memory. Voraciously, she carved out the text at hand: the pope had held a candlelight vigil for thousands of twentieth-century martyrs at the Colosseum in Rome. “There are so many of them!” he exclaimed. “Men and women of every land, of all ages and callings.” In another scrap, she read how John Paul beatified 108 Poles who died at the hands of the Nazis, then turned around and did the same with 110 martyrs — a hundred and ten! — in a thunderstorming Warsaw mass for over a million pilgrims. How she loved this pope! On top of it, the Vatican said they were about to canonize three blacks; Vanessa Williams had already played one in a miniseries (her TV Guide picture graced one whole side of Amaryllis’s reliquary). After all his exertions, John Paul still found the time to make twenty-seven new Mexican saints — before his decree, poor Mexico had had merely one.

Even popes themselves were busy being promoted. (When Amaryllis mentioned that, Dézhiree laughed and said it was like when the Academy Awards got nominated for an Emmy. Then the staffer agreed it was probably a good thing, and that John Paul would make a wonderful saint, because she really did like him, especially after he got shot, which, surprisingly, was news — and not good news — to Amaryllis. Seeing her long face, Dézhiree rushed to add that he’d long since recovered, and forgiven the man who attacked him.) For example, it was acknowledged that John XXIII had heroic virtues, but the Congregation wouldn’t yet declare him worthy of veneration. Pius XII was on a fast track too, but there was a snag because the Jewish weren’t happy — Amaryllis didn’t think that boded well for her own cause. She didn’t understand; why should the Jewish be unhappy, knowing that the Church had so proudly elevated their own Edith Stein? The Jewish were always unhappy, said Dézhiree. Amaryllis wondered if her father was that way.

When she got to the lengthy piece in the Times—the one she’d been hoarding — there was great commotion in head and heart; all the world was hard-charging calvary and redemption and the girl’s blood began to boil: the pope had declared two children to be Blessed, the first ever beatified by the Church who weren’t martyrs! Amaryllis didn’t care that the article said beatification was only bestowed on the dead — things were moving so quickly anything could happen. There was an actual photograph: two girls and boy, just like Amaryllis and her babies — Portuguese shepherds, from a place called Fátima, to whom the Virgin Mary had appeared in a field. She stared ravenously at the image of them clutching rosaries, sweet hands pushed together in prayer. Their eyes alone, dilated and enthralled, proved they had witnessed something awesome and eternal. It seems the three little cousins, using information the Virgin gave them, had predicted that someone would shoot John Paul long before he was even born. (She was glad Dézhiree had prepared her for the awful news.) Now, John Paul kept the bullet in a shrine. Two of the cousins died of influenza not long after the Virgin’s sighting, and Amaryllis wondered why they wouldn’t at least have lived a normal life span after being so touched — Dézhiree said hers was not to wonder why. But the surviving cousin was ninety-four, and that seemed to make up for it. She and John Paul smiled for the camera.

Amaryllis pasted the holy couple to the cover of her magic box. Then she said a prayer for Cindra, a Pixie attached to a respirator who slept sitting up, and a prayer for Dézhiree, and a prayer for Crystel and Shangg and Dennis the Phantom Menace, and a prayer for Jane Scull too, wherever she was, and one for Topsy — all of whom she decreed Blessed — and still another for her gone yet not forgotten mother, and of course one for her own little shepherds, the precious babies, with whom, God’s help and John Paul’s mercy allowing, she would soon be reunited …

She sits in front of the mural with the painted image of Martin Luther King, Jr., against a backdrop of constellated outer space. She watches a boy paint a perfectly proportioned clapboard house on the Star Trek cope — little house on the cosmic prairie.

Cindra in her wheelchair, facing campus. A child is only supposed to be at Mac short-term; a child must appear at children’s court within fifteen days so it can be learned why he or she has not yet found a suitable placement. But Cindra’s been here three years, practically a record. She’s got MS, and not even one of those famous families that adopt only invalids has yet to take her on.

Amaryllis turns to look in the same direction: wild boys strut this way and that, each one trailed by a burly, unflappable staffer. “One-on-ones”—those deemed unsafe to be alone. The shadowy escorts bark corrective commands, which their charges obey in jerky protesting movements, unruly automatons staying the course.

She sits in the Learning Enhancement Center.

The Learning Enhancement Center helps kids who have neuroperceptual difficulties. All Mac kids have neuroperceptual difficulties. The teacher says such disabilities are “the hidden handicap,” because most people go through life undiagnosed. The purpose of the class, she says, is to “retrain the brain”—the way it organizes information. The teacher says perceptually handicapped people are usually restless and can’t control the impulse to talk or interrupt or get up and wander. They’re emotionally unstable and cry over nothing or laugh uncontrollably or get too boisterous. They get easily frustrated and withdraw into themselves. The teacher says no one should feel bad about being there, because lots of famous people have neuroperceptual problems. Like Thomas Edison, Cher, Tom Cruise and Bruce Jenner. (Amaryllis hadn’t heard of any of them.)

They did some tests, like making her walk on a long rail set in the ground — she pretended she was a tightrope walker at the circus. They gave her a pen and big pad of paper, and while someone read from a book, Amaryllis wrote down what they said, only she was blindfolded. They had her do a lot of bouncing on a small trampoline.

Around seventy kids are gathered because the director of the Scream movies is coming to talk about a movie he’s planning to make about Mac.

After celebrities visited, there was always fresh “swag” at the boutique — videos and sweatshirts and key chains with movie-studio logos — and sometimes tours of Universal Studios were arranged. When celebrities came, the kids always thought there was a chance they’d be put in a major motion picture or brought on a field trip to the celebrity’s house or pitied so much by the celebrity that they would be chosen from among all others for some sort of temporary home visitation sleepover that would fatefully morph into permanent placement at a Hollywood mansion.

The Scream man is introduced by staff. Most of the kids are shocked, because he was standing there the whole time and no one knew it. He looks like an old college professor, courtly and bespectacled and soft-spoken, with a nicely trimmed beard. Willow whispers to Amaryllis how the Scream man also did the movie about the monster who went into children’s dreams and killed them with long finger-razors. Amaryllis missed that one. A kid asks if he really made the “Freddies” (because it was hard to believe there was a scare in him), and the Scream man genteelly acknowledges he was “the culprit.” The staffer interjects that he’s made other films, too — like the one about underprivileged inner-city kids who learn to play the violin so well that they all wind up at Carnegie Hall — and is here today to talk about the power of change and the movie he’s planning on making about children like Mac children and how they can overcome adversity and realize their dreams. She tells them the woman who starred in the violin movie was nominated for an Academy Award and then introduces the dimpled lady who stands blinking and smiling beside the Scream man — a lady, says the staffer, who actually did win an Academy Award for Best Actress. The lady is old, too, and no one believes she ever won. Someone wants to know if she has the award with her, and she says normally she leaves it at home but would be sure to bring it next time. Then the boy who was painting the house on the mural shouts, “Are you the Flying Nun?” and everyone laughs and the woman with apple cheeks smiles and says yes she is, or yes she was. With great authority, someone whispers to Amaryllis that The Flying Nun is on TV Land. Amaryllis is embarrassed to even ask what TV Land is. Then a girl led by Dézhiree rushes up. The Scream man playfully scolds, “There she is! You’re late, you’re late! You’ll never work in this town again!” The girl looks flustered and out of breath and makes her way to join them. There’s a stir because lots of kids recognize her from television, and when Amaryllis has a good look, she gasps — it’s Boulder Langon! Royal Kumari covergirl, TV superstar and friend of the boy who first called himself Toulouse …

The Scream man talks about the film he’s going to make “about a place like Mac,” starring Boulder and the Flying Nun, but Amaryllis doesn’t hear a word: her heart pounds away as she gathers the nerve to approach her after the talk. She plays out the encounter in her head, wondering if Boulder will remember her. She was just reading about her in a magazine at the cottage — the “What’s in Your Makeup Bag?” column of Twist, where they asked Ms. Langon that very thing. Now she stares at Boulder’s Prada purse to calm herself, trying to recall the starlet’s exact response, forcing herself to do a real-time inventory, neuro-perceptually retraining her brain to organize data: a Power Bar and my StarTAC, she said, and lots of sunscreen … — lots of lipsticks … — yes! that’s right. There were lipsticks and lotions that Boulder called “Mac” (for MacLaren?) …

They wanted to know when the movie would be made and if they were going to use any kids from the center. They wanted to know when he was going to make another Scream. They asked Boulder about T’morrow, her show on The WB. They asked how much money she made and where she went to school and if she had a boyfriend — everyone laughed when a cracked voice called out, “Do you want one?” Boulder said she was waiting to find a soul mate (the same thing she said in the article Amaryllis read in All About You!), which elicited more hoots, whistles and offers, quickly suppressed by staff. The last thing she said, with almost rehearsed gravitas, was that her “prime aspiration” was to attend a place called Yale just like her friend Claire Danes, whom she recently had the privilege of meeting at an “affiliates” luncheon at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena.

The Scream man brought some CDs and signed glossies, and the boys scrambled for them while most of the girls went over to Boulder, who signed T-shirts, forearms and scraps of paper with her name. The Flying Nun stood off to the side with the fawning staff. Amaryllis thought her best chance was to wait by the door. She stood there patiently, imagining the encounter again, but just when it looked like Boulder was about to leave, a staffer came up to Dézhiree, who then told Amaryllis she had a visitor.

“Who?”

“A visitor,” she slyly remonstrated.

It had to be Lani, with news of the babies.

When she returned to the cottage, Amaryllis was met by a Mac psychologist.

As they walked, she cheerfully engaged the girl in pleasantries, or at least tried to, before arriving at a far-corner office of the main building’s second floor.

Instead of Lani, there stood a man in a brown shirt and thick brown tie. He reintroduced himself as Samson Dowling, the “public servant” who had picked her up at “the Hotel Higgins.” He remarked on how pretty she looked.

“Are they taking care of you?” he bantered, with a wink to the therapist, not really expecting an answer. Amaryllis shrugged diffidently. She wanted to know if he was a policeman, and he said kind of — a detective. He said detectives helped find people. He asked if she really remembered him; the foundling nodded tenuously.

“That’s OK,” he said. “You weren’t in the greatest shape. You’ve been through an awful lot.” He said it was nice to see her looking so much healthier and what a sick little puppy she had been. Then he crinkled his eyes and asked if they could talk about her “friend.”

“Lani?”

“Not Lani,” he said, smiling. “The big fellow. Do you remember me asking about him before? Well, he’s a friend of yours, at least I think he is, and I wanted to ask a few questions about him. Do you think that would be OK?” She nodded. “Can you tell me his name? He’s a pretty unforgettable fellow from how I’ve heard him described! Big beard, very strong. Wears ‘interesting-looking’ suits; probably a better dresser than I am.” He winked at the psychologist again. “Can you remember his name, Amaryllis?”

“Topsy …”

“Yes! That’s right. Was Topsy a nice man?” She nodded. “You got along OK?” Another nod. “I’m going to ask you to remember a few more things, OK? Is that OK, Amaryllis? When you left your mom at the rooming house — remember how they chased after you? That must have been pretty scary, huh. When you left your mom, where did you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you wander around awhile? You were probably frightened, and a little hungry. Did you go see Topsy?”

“He found me.”

“He found you? Where?”

“The building.”

“Which building? The place where we met? The empty building down the street from the St. George?” She nodded. “OK, good. Thank you for helping me answer some of these questions — that’s a big help. Because I’m an older guy, and this way I don’t have to run around so much. Now, after Topsy found you, what did you do? Did you talk? Did you have a little supper?—”

“We went to sleep.”

Detective and psychologist exchanged glances. “You went to sleep. OK. You were tired. You were both probably tired. Now, I want you to be truthful with me, Amaryllis, because I’ll always be truthful with you. OK? Fair enough. Someone saw you — you and your friend Topsy — someone saw the two of you leave that building very late at night. Do you remember that?” She nodded, staring at the floor. “The person who saw you and your friend said Topsy was carrying you. Was he carrying you against your will?”

Amaryllis thought he was asking how she was being carried; the therapist saw her confusion and intervened. “What the detective means,” she said, “is did you not want to go with him. Did your friend make you—”

She shook her head vigorously, still staring groundward. A finger was now in her mouth, and she chewed it.

“Why was he carrying you, Amaryllis?” asked the detective.

“Because I was sleeping.”

“Because you were sleeping. I see. OK. And where did Topsy take you?” She said nothing. “Did he take you to the bakery? Where Gilles works?” She nodded. “Did he say why he was taking you there?”

“He said it would be ‘no good with him.’ That Gilles was his friend. He said Gilles would do ‘right well’ by me.”

“Did he mean that Gilles would take care of you?”

“He said not to say he brought me there.” She looked up, her face filled with worry. “Is Topsy in trouble?”

“He may be,” said the detective. “Would you like to help him? You would, wouldn’t you. Well, he’s missing and we’d like to talk to him — Gilles and Lani want to help him, too. Everyone wants to help him. How long did the two of you know each other?”

“Not very long.”

“A month or two?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Did your mom know him? Did he ever come see you or your mom at the motel?” She shook her head. “You said you found your mother in bed—”

Her lip began to quiver. The psychologist put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Amaryllis. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Absolutely,” said the detective. “I know how hard this has been. But no one’s going to hurt you now, so you should just tell the truth — your friend Topsy’s life may depend on it. OK? Can we go a little longer? Do you need a tissue? Let’s get you a tissue.” The woman handed her some Kleenex and she blew her nose.

“Amaryllis … did he do things for you? He did things for you, no? He was a good friend? He brought you food? Food from the bakery?” She nodded. “Did he ever bring your mother food?”

“No.”

“But he—”

“He gave me food for my brother and sister.”

“That was very nice of him. Very nice. Did he ever meet them?”

“No. He gave it to me and I gave it to them.”

“Did he ever bring food to the motel? To the St. George?”

She shook her head. “He gave it to me.”

“Where?”

“Under the bridge.”

“Where he was living? Did you ever stay with him there? I mean, stay overnight? Did he ever take you anywhere?”

The psychologist chirped in: “Did he take you to the movies?”

“Lotsa great movie palaces downtown,” said the detective unctuously. “Historic.”

“And he never touched you, Amaryllis”—asked the psychologist—“in a way that made you feel funny? You know, that uncomfortable feeling we get in our stomachs when something isn’t quite right? Sometimes when people are sick or lonely they do things like that and it makes your tummy upset — even if they don’t know or mean what they’re doing. Even if they’re your friend. And it’s not your fault, Amaryllis,” she said, grinning like a moron. “It wouldn’t be your fault.”

“Is Topsy sick?” she asked.

“Well, we’re not sure,” said the detective. “That’s why we want to talk to him. Now, he said not to tell anyone about leaving you at the bakery. Was there anything else he ever told you not to tell? About any of the things you did together? Even the good things? Did he share secrets with you, like a good friend would? Did he ever tell you he did something bad to anyone? That he hurt someone, even by mistake?”

“It’s OK to tell, sweetheart. Otherwise, we won’t be able to help your friend.”

Amaryllis burst into tears, and the psychologist looked into Samson’s eyes, signaling the meeting should end.

“Thank you, sweetheart. You’ve been very helpful. I didn’t mean to make you cry! Amaryllis — that’s a beautiful name, do you know that? Did your mother give you that name? That’s a beautiful flower. A Christmas flower.”

He reached into a briefcase and pulled out a stiff plastic envelope. He held it out to her; encased within was a deep-blue handkerchief speckled with gold scallop’d teardrops. “Have you ever seen this before?” he asked.

She cautiously nodded.

“Where?”

“It’s Topsy’s.”

“Something he wore?”

“Around his neck.”

“Did he give it to your mother?”

“I don’t know.”

Her jaw clenched and she stared at her shoes. He was losing her again.

“Know what they call it? An ‘ascot.’ I’d like to return it to him.” He stood up, then bent to kiss her cheek. “Keep getting stronger, now — you’re doin’ great. Isn’t she?”

“She sure is.”

“Not mad at me, are you? Can I have a smile?”

Amaryllis eked one out.

“Mr. Dowling has something else to tell you,” said the psychologist.

“I sure do. Saffron and Cody are coming to see you.”

She looked at him, dumbfounded.

“We were able to locate them, and they’re on their way.”

“From what I understand,” said the psychologist, “they should be here either tonight or tomorrow morning.”

Come they did, later that evening. The woman at the foster home where they’d been placed soon after their departure from the St. George could no longer take care of them. That’s all that was said.

As curious as we are to observe the intimacies of the reunited, time and good taste have their limits. We shall leave them alone, for their moments together are precious and deserve exile from prying eyes. Briefly, it may be said that upon first seeing Amaryllis, the young babies, three and five years of age, were stunned and insensate, clasping each other in an odd pantomime of displaced, abject fear; then, spoken to in a persistent, cooing, complex language of animal sounds and shared remembrances, they slowly came around until the trio were overwrought to an ecstasy of desperation, Amaryllis coating them with kisses the way a mother licks her cubs clean. Even the stoic, efficient Dézhiree came undone. So let them be: allow the small, improvised party at the cottage — donated cupcakes, candles and bears all around — to proceed behind closed doors.

Such miracles happen, even at Mac.

Another reunion is at hand, though not as poignant.

He had what he needed — the girl’s statement about the ascot’s ownership was incriminating enough for him to now seek charges of rape and murder against John Doe aka Topsy aka William. He would visit the district attorney in the morning.

When Samson returns to Rampart Detectives, he is pulled up short by the sight of a woman sitting at the end of a bolted row of hard plastic scoop-chairs. His body knows her before his mind can properly assess; one child’s neuroperceptual difficulty is another man’s cognitive dissonance. He takes everything in — flamboyant vintage dress and absurdly glamorous hat upon fiery, fierce-bunned hair; the business end of a stiletto tap-tap-tapping on the cigarette-burned linoleum floor.

She stands, and the air rushes out of him.

^†After the vagrant’s disturbing visit undid and upended all her missionary work, Lani Mott used the resources of the advocacy office at children’s court to track down one Edith Stein aka Amaryllis Kornfeld, even traveling to El Monte to visit — but to what end? What do you want with this child? asked her CASA supervisor. Because Lani hadn’t said straight out that she wished to be the girl’s advocate. That of course is what she did want, more than anything, yet couldn’t voice because of a lurid, niggardly fear that shamed her no end. She had become a Court-Appointed Special Advocate in such selfless spirit of noblesse oblige; had cheerfully undergone the sometimes-depressing training and even put on a little “graduates’ day dessert” at the house, thoughtfully catered by Gilles. Yet more than a year later, all she had to show for her altruism was one measly case: driving a sullen teenager back and forth from a fancy residential facility to Western Dental to get a retainer. She’d made grandiose excuses to her growingly contemptuous courthouse boss — a death in the family, trouble at work — turning down case after case simply because she didn’t want to travel to certain neighborhoods, where she felt she would be at physical risk. She wouldn’t even go to Leimert Park! Lani Mott had said no so many times that she’d been informed that her days as an advocate were coming to an end. A fired volunteer — now, that was pretty low. But the fact remained: Lani Mott was afraid.