The visitor was a child, a girl of perhaps eight. She wore a red jacket over a plaid skirt, white kneesocks, and scuffed sneakers. She carried a red bookbag and a metal lunchbox with Snoopy on the lid. The brightness of her outfit was an odd contrast to her pale complexion — her skin so light and faintly tinged with blue it made Alice think of skim milk. She was evidently from the neighborhood, but Alice couldn’t remember having seen her before.
“Yes?” Alice said, trying to keep her tone one of friendly inquiry. “Yes, what may I do for you, young lady?”
A wary, almost sly expression crossed the child’s face. “Hi,” she said. “The bus picked us up late at school and I got cold waiting for it.” She had a dry, whispery little voice that reminded Alice of dead leaves rustling. “I’m so cold.” She looked up and smiled a little, watching Alice’s eyes. “I’m really cold. Can I have some hot cocoa?” The smile grew broader, knowing. “Can I?”
Then she said it, pronouncing the word with deliberation. “Mommy?”
Alice jerked away from the child, trembling with rage and humiliation. How dare they? she thought. How do they dare to do these things?
She expected the child to run now that the tormenting was done, but amazingly the child stood her ground, staring at Alice without a trace of remorse. “Can I have some cocoa?” she repeated, her voice rising to a whine — and she walked past Alice, into the house.
Shocked, Alice stared at her. The kids, the teenagers mostly, who had made her life a misery with their vicious taunts, who had probably put this little one up to this, had never gone so far before. Alice looked out the door for some sign of the instigators, but the street was empty. The other occupants of the school bus had presumably made their way home. A chill wind gusted through the leaves.
Alice knelt so that she could look the child in the face and spoke as calmly as she could, reminding herself that this was a very young child who couldn’t possibly understand the enormous cruelty of the trick she was playing. “Now, look, dear. I know you think this is a funny joke to play, and I’m certain it wasn’t your idea, but what you’re doing makes me very unhappy and I’d like you to stop.” The child’s eyes dropped under Alice’s steady stare. “You really must go home now. I understand you might not want to walk home alone. I’d tell you to call your mom, but our phone isn’t working yet. If you like, we can go next door and make the call from there.”
Alice felt stronger now that she’d been able to keep her voice level. She gently touched the little girl’s hand. The child said, “No, no, no!” And then she screamed — a terrible banshee wail of rage and hate. She threw her bookbag and lunchbox and they skidded on the tile floor. “No!” she screamed. “No!”
“Stop that! Stop that noise!” Alice demanded, shouting now, too. “You listen to me! You just be quiet and listen to me. You look old enough to understand this.” The child clutched her ears, but Alice forced the small hands, cold as little stones, down and gripped them. “You will listen.” Alice’s need to explain was overwhelming. “Before we moved to this house, my husband David and I lived in another house not far away. We had a little girl. She was seven years old, her name was Annie—”
Alice had to stop here to breathe slowly and evenly for a few beats, until she was sure she had the tears under control. When she began again, she spoke as much to herself as to the child.
“We had a swimming pool built in the back yard. No, that’s not true. I had the swimming pool built in the back yard. I did it. It was my idea. My husband thought we should wait until Annie was older, but I persuaded him. I said I would be very careful, that I would watch her and never leave her alone near the pool. When I went back to teaching, we warned the babysitter. We explained that even though Annie could swim, it wasn’t safe to leave her alone near the water. I really tried to be careful.
“One day in the fall — this time of year — just before the pool was covered for the winter, I stayed late at school for a conference. When I got home, there was a crowd in front of our house — and an ambulance and police—”
Alice’s mind always skidded at this point. She could remember getting out of the car and running — running through the open garden gate — and seeing police and paramedics bending over the small form that lay dripping and still by the side of the pool — and the babysitter, Marcy, crying, saying something about leaving Annie just for a minute to go to the bathroom. Alice remembered saying “Please, please — let it be all right, let there be a chance—” and then seeing how very still and pale that limp form was. She remembered running again and falling to her knees on the concrete edge of the pool, smelling the chlorine, and clutching the small hands that felt so cold and heavy and stiff — like little stones — and knowing, and saying, “It’s my fault. It’s my fault.”
The child had grown very quiet listening to Alice. She stood so still that Alice was barely conscious of her. “Afterward, after the accident, I couldn’t work. I cried all the time. I cried at what they called ‘inappropriate’ places. I cried at the library. Once I cried at the supermarket. The kids in the neighborhood used to stare at me. They followed me down the street and made faces behind my back. They yelled “Crazy lady” when they passed the house. There would be phone calls in the middle of the night and someone trying to sound like a little girl would say ‘Mommy — Mommy — I’m so cold!’
“So we sold our house. I wanted to move far away, but we couldn’t — not now, anyway — because of David’s job. But at least this is a different house, with no reminders, and no swimming pool. And I’m trying very hard to get on with things. So you must understand that it’s very wrong of you to listen to the other children and play this trick on me, and that you really must go home now.”
Alice stood up as she said this, and grasped the child’s shoulder, bony and cold even through the red jacket, and tried to turn her toward the door. The little girl shook her head rapidly from side to side. Her colorless lips were pressed tightly together. Suddenly she wrenched free of Alice’s grasp and ran down the hallway, her sneakered feet soundless.
“Come back here!” Alice cried, stung to fury. “I want you out of my house!” She ran wildly after the child, no longer caring if she was being responsible or logical or controlled. “I want you out of here, you little devil!”
The child careened down the hall with Alice after her, stopped for an instant when she reached the door of the laundry room, then tore it open and raced inside. Alice grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her violently. “Little devil!”
The child’s face was contorted, as twisted as a gargoyle’s. “Get away from me!” she shrilled. “Get away from me!” She pulled free and swooped around like a trapped bird, waving her arms in frantic arcs. She knocked the laundry basket full of clothes off the top of the washer. Treading on the spilled wash, stomping on it, she flung a bottle of detergent against the wall, where it broke and bled its contents over the scattered shirts and towels. “Get away from me!” she screamed. “Get away, get away, get away!” Mucous streamed from her nose.
It occurred to Alice that the child was crazed, and really not capable of understanding. She reached out to touch her. Then, appalled, she froze. Clenched in the child’s fist were the wickedly sharp scissors from the mending basket. “Get away, get away, get away!”
Alice, her eyes riveted on the gleaming blades, backed slowly out of the laundry room, then with a desperate quickness she slammed the door shut and held it closed with all her strength against the child’s shrill cry of frustrated rage. She felt the pounding on the door, the sharp rap of the scissors, and, feeling real fear now, so intense it cancelled the anger, Alice held on.