Signe and Rhea spent most mornings in the children’s room. Shortly before lunch they selected places at a table in the dining room. Before they ate they bowed their heads in silent prayer, and then quietly and with perfect manners dispatched whatever was set before them; then they returned to the room. There Rhea sat on a low chair beside her mother with her book, turning pages, rarely looking up.
A Maeve named Michelle — the fifth of seven children — took a sisterly interest in Rhea. She offered to play with the girl. She offered to walk with her to the park. On one occasion she offered to tell Rhea some Navajo fables. “I’m minoring in folklore,” she confided to the children’s room at large. “I’m majoring in American women. I’m writing my senior paper on Donna.”
Donna was scraping dried oatmeal from the easel. She raised her eyes. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh, it’s almost finished,” Michelle said.
Michelle’s invitations to Rhea were always met with a polite refusal — from the child; the mother listened without comment.
“There’s a lovely pulpit upstairs,” Michelle said one morning. “Should we have a look at it together?”
“No, thank you.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see my dormitory? It’s just a few blocks away.”
“No, thank you.”
Donna had to take Michelle aside. “I think perhaps — if you’re just nearby, like an old tree, she’ll eventually come to you.”
“She’s so lonely,” Michelle wailed.
“Little Cassandra would love to build a block tower.”
“Cassandra’s no challenge.”
“Yes, well, but,” murmured Donna. “Okay?”
When Rhea did play she played by herself: arranged the doll-house or drew elaborate diagrams that looked like plans for lace tablecloths. Meanwhile Signe actually did crochet, her hands and hook converting a ball of wheat-colored thread into a long, loose fabric. The ball of thread lay in a canvas sack, and since the fabric she made dropped slowly into the sack, too, none of the staff knew whether Signe was making afghan strips or dresser scarves or just yards of trimmings. The woman was as silent and as absorbed as her daughter. Once in a while, though, when one of the toddlers became difficult, she would put down her crocheting, rise from the chair, and pick up the whining or bawling or flailing child. The child grew instantly quiet, either borrowing Signe’s composure or becoming paralyzed with terror. After a few minutes Signe set the youngster down and returned to her work, her scar glistening like the trail of a tear.
THE WINTER WORE ON. There were two fistfights. There was a fight with knives; the police had to be called. Concepta was caught drinking in the bathroom and was barred for a week. An elderly guest was found dead in her rented room. Another was found almost dead in an alley. Pam began to lead after-lunch discussions on subjects like self-esteem and expectations. Cassandra and her mother stopped coming to the Ladle. Over dessert one afternoon Donna wondered aloud what had become of them. Her table erupted with answers.
“They went south.”
“They went to New York.”
“The gran took them back.”
“She married that son of a bitch.”
Donna was impressed by this group confabulation. She lit a rare cigarette. Cassandra and her mother would return. Or else they would not.
“But all those explanations can’t be true,” Michelle said to Donna as she took away the dishes.
“Sure they can. Seriatim. Anyway, it’s not our business, toots.”
“Whose business is it?”
“The parole officer’s. You’ve got to take some things as you find them, Michelle.”
Michelle wheeled furiously away. She deposited her stack of dishes in the pass-through. Noisily scraping a chair, she sat down beside a guest who had once practiced law. Donna heard the girl enthusiastically propose that the former lawyer write down some of her experiences. The delighted guest understood this as an invitation to dictate her autobiography. “I am born,” she began.
Donna considered rescuing her acolyte, thought better of it, took refuge in the children’s room. Within a few minutes she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Ricky Mendozo was sniffling in her lap. Nathaniel and Elijah were lining up trucks, squabbling lightly. Bitsy lounged in the doorway, a teddy bear under her arm.
“The sauce on the fish was funny today,” Bitsy said. “Did you make it, Donna?”
“Josie made it.”
“The volunteer that looks like a parrot?”
“She has red hair and dresses colorfully,” Donna sidestepped.
“What’s in that sauce, huh?”
“Yogurt and mayonnaise.”
“Where’s my Nathaniel!” said Nathaniel’s mother, bursting past Bitsy.
“I prefer lemon butter,” said Bitsy.
“You, Nathaniel. Ain’t you ready?”
Nathaniel ran toward Donna. Ricky, still in Donna’s lap, gave him a feeble kick. Nathaniel yelled and punched Ricky. Nathaniel’s mother slapped Nathaniel. Elijah threw a truck at Bitsy.
The trouble swirled and then settled. Donna got help from Michelle, who thereby escaped from the lawyer’s reminiscences. By three o’clock most of the children and their mothers had been bundled out. Beth and some volunteers were putting the kitchen to rights. Michelle was singing to Africa. Pam was managing to calm Elijah’s gorgeous turquoise-eyed mother, who claimed that her social worker had recommended prostitution as a career. Donna was mopping the dining room.
“Good-bye,” said a low voice: Signe’s. She was carrying her sack and several books. Rhea too had books within each elbow. Their capes, widened by their burdens, looked like bat wings.
Many guests made use of the public library. Free toilets, a choice of periodicals, chairs to snooze in. But Signe and Rhea actually borrowed and returned books. They patronized the museum, too; a volunteer had spotted them at a lecture on Dutch Interiors. And Pam had once seen them at the statehouse, listening to a debate on the budget. Those events were probably part of Rhea’s schooling. They were fine arts and social studies field trips, just like the ones taken by schoolchildren, but uncomplicated by questions of who would sit next to whom on the bus. Rhea would end up better educated than her cohorts. “She’ll get into Harvard,” Pam had predicted. “That’s more than I did.” But Donna thought that the girl would be better off in a classroom, learning to tolerate and interact and share. Schools weren’t meant only for the likable. There must be a place for this scarily self-possessed miniature of her mother. Let Signe crochet in the corridor if the two couldn’t bear separation. Let them practice their queer habits somewhere else.
“Good-bye,” Donna said.
She watched them go. She leaned on her mop, letting her distaste for the pair flood her cheeks. The motherly slaps and threats and insults she countenanced every day at the Ladle didn’t bother her as much as Signe’s austere silence. She wondered if Signe controlled her girl by means of some drug undreamed of by the street-smart clientele of the Ladle — brimstone, maybe, bubbling on the stove in their basement apartment.
“Am I glad them two is gone,” Africa’s aunt said, finally coming out of the john. She tied Africa’s knitted hat so tightly that the child’s face bulged beneath it.
“Which two?”
“Which two? The devil and her child. They give me the creeps. And is you the cutest cookie God ever made?” she inquired of Africa, who burbled something in return.
“Isn’t the devil a man, Ollie?”
“He can put on a dress, honey. Do you happen to have an extra buck or two? Pampers is so expensive.”
Pampers were indeed expensive. They were regularly stolen from stores and resold on the street; the entrepreneurs involved made a tidy supplemental income. Donna gave Ollie both money and Pampers, and was rewarded by a mammoth embrace that made her grin — it was so easy, so emphatic, so momentarily sincere, so ultimately meaningless.