He talked to her for a little while and then he told her what I had said. I sort of wished then that I hadn’t told him all the things I did, but I didn’t expect him to tell Martha. She said she didn’t know anything about any Uncle Allen and if that Jenny told you, don’t put any stock in it because she’s crazy. Then he asked her if she had ever seen the doll Uncle Allen gave me. Martha sort of snorted through her nose like she does all the time.
“You mean the doll she stole. Belonged to the little girl next door. Carol’s her name. She seen Jenny playin’ with it out in the yard and started kickin up a fuss. I told Jenny to give it back, but she wouldn’t. Said it was hers when I knew it wasn’t. Little Carol started to cry and Jenny like to beat that child to death with that doll. Terrible temper Jenny has sometimes. Told her daddy about it, but I don’t expect he said nothin’ to Jenny. Just gave me money to give the little girl.
“The doctor he don’t never say nothin’ to Jenny when she acts up the way she does. Queer Jenny is and her daddy ought to do somethin’ about it, but he don’t care what I have to put up with. He ain’t hardly ever here to see some of the things she does.
“Already give the doctor my notice. I ain’t gonna stay with Jenny no more. Mean she is. Plain mean. Stays down in the cellar all day playin with her mother’s things like they was hers. Ain’t no way to make her mind.”
The policeman didn’t know it, but Martha was on her favorite subject, which is me, and when she gets started yelling you can hardly make her stop.
She told the policeman about the time I killed her cat. She made it look worse than it was though because I just did it to prove to her that a cat doesn’t have nine lives like she tried to tell me it did. That’s the way Martha is. She never quite tells the truth like why you do something, just that you do it.
I wished I’d told him how she used to lock me in the cellar. She thought I couldn’t get out. So did I and I was afraid and cried until I found out about the coal chute. Then I started playing in the cellar all the time because I knew Martha was afraid to come down. She said there were rats down there. Once I found one. He was dead though. I sneaked in Martha’s room and put him in her bed. She really screamed and jumped up and down in her nightgown. Daddy finally had to give her some pills to make her be quiet.
The policeman started talking about Mama then. I guess he was tired of hearing Martha rave about me.
“Poor lady. Hardly ever even got in her wheel chair. Used to lie up in that room all the time not doin’ nothin’. Couldn’t even get her out in the sunshine after the doctor built that contraption on the stairs. Sure would have been a lot easier for me if she’d come downstairs. Traipsed up and down them steps a dozen times a day, I did, checkin' to see if she was all right. Jenny, she wouldn’t help nobody. Get down in that cellar and no amount of callin’ would make her come out again. Ain’t gonna stay here with that crazy little girl no more.”
No matter what Martha started talking about, she always ended up yelling about me. She was always saying she was going to leave, but she never did.
I heard her clomp down the hall into the kitchen. She lifted up the trap door and called. “Jenny, come up here and eat your dinner. I know you’re down there.” I didn’t even answer. I never did. Besides, I knew the policeman would talk to daddy and I wanted to hear what he said.
Daddy stayed in his room or in his study almost all the time since Mama fell down the stairs. I sort of wondered how he felt because once after Mama had her first accident, Judy came to stay to help take care of Mama. I was down in the cellar and I heard daddy say. “I can’t tell her now, Judith, not the way she is.” And Judy said, “What about me? What about our own lives?” — like it was real important.
“We’ll have to go on, Judith, just as we have been.” Daddy’s voice was sad like he felt sorry for Judy. Then I heard Judy begin to cry. Then I didn’t hear anything else.
Once I asked daddy if he liked Judy better than he did Mama or me, but he just looked at me for a long time and told me to go and play.
The policeman was talking to daddy now and then I heard myself talking, saying all the things I had said to the policeman. It took me a minute to figure out that it was coming from a recording machine and I wondered where the policeman had it and why he hadn’t told me about it. Then I heard Martha raving again and then it was the quiet.
Finally the policeman said, “We know your wife had no brother, and we know that no one has seen this Uncle Allen except the child. What we don’t know is whether or not it would have been possible for your wife to walk.”
“Medically, I would say, no. You can check that too, I suppose. A good many specialists saw Catherine. The opinions were always the same.” Daddy talked as if he were very tired and didn’t really feel like talking to the policeman at all. “Miracles happen, though. There are many cases that medical science can’t explain — impossible cases where—”
The policeman interrupted Daddy and said, “But you don’t believe she walked, do you?”
“No. But when Jenny told you her mother walked, it could have been so in her mind. Rather like wishful thinking. She could have wanted so much for her mother to walk that she simply said she did. She actually believed it.”
“How do you explain Uncle Allen?”
Daddy didn’t say anything for a while as if he might be thinking hard. “Children have vivid imaginations. Jenny is alone much of the time. She has no playmates. Sometimes children invent people. They pretend, but in the pretending their minds go a little bit further until the person they’ve invented becomes real to them. Sometimes the person takes the blame for the naughty things the child does. For example, the doll ‘Uncle Allen’ gave her which in reality she took from the child next door. Also, her mother’s jewelry that she mentioned this ‘Uncle’ having. It’s true the jewelry is gone, but it never occurred to me to question Jenny. Naturally, I knew of no such person as ‘Uncle Alien’ or I would have been concerned. She never mentioned him to me or to Martha. I didn’t want to disturb my wife by telling her that the jewelry was gone. They were pieces that she was exceptionally fond of.”
I heard chairs scrape and the policeman walk across the floor. I knew it was him because daddy doesn’t make very much noise when he walks. “You have an explanation for everything, Doctor, and the one about ‘Uncle Allen’ fits in exactly with what I believe. Your wife’s wheel chair was found in her room, yet your wife who couldn’t walk was found at the bottom of the cellar steps. How did she get down the stairs, through the hall, and across the kitchen? I’ll tell you. She came down in her wheel chair, finds out Jenny is wearing her things. She scolds her. There is an argument. Jenny gets scared or she loses her temper. She pushed her mother down the stairs, takes the wheel chair back up, and then proceeds to make up the story about her mother walking and her ‘Uncle Allen’ standing at the top of the stairs. ‘Uncle Allen’ is substituting for the naughty Jenny, just like he got the jewelry, just like he gave her the doll. It all fits, Doctor, and you know it.”
I decided I didn’t like that policeman after all. That wasn’t the way it was at all.
Daddy still didn’t say anything and the policeman said after a while, “Hell, I don’t like to believe what I’m thinking any more than you do, but the woman, Martha, telling about her killing the cat — that isn’t normal for a kid of nine. It isn’t normal for a kid that age to invent people either”