When she put a hand on his shoulder to urge him forward, he winced and jerked away. Why, what’s wrong? she said. She knelt beside him. There were tears filling his eyes and he looked very frightened. What is it? she said. Come out in the hall a minute.
I don’t want to.
She stood and took hold of his arm.
I don’t want to.
But I’m asking you to.
She pulled him to his feet and led him toward the hallway door, but as they passed her desk he grabbed at it, dragging one of her books to the floor with a loud flat crash. The other students were all watching.
Class, she said. Keep working. All of you get back to work. She stood until their heads were bent again over their desks and then took him under the arms and pulled as he struggled against her and kicked and caught at the door. She got him into the hall and knelt in front of him, still holding him.
Richie, what’s wrong with you? she said. Stop it now.
He shook his head. He was looking off along the hallway.
I want you to come with me down here.
No.
Yes, please.
She rose and took him by the hand in the direction of the office along the empty tiled hallway past the other classrooms, their doors all shut to the noises and murmurings rising from behind them. Are you sick? she said.
No.
But something’s wrong. I’m worried about you.
I want to go back to the room, he said. He looked up at her. I’ll do my work now.
I’m not concerned about that, she said. Let’s just see the nurse. I think the nurse should look at you.
She took him into a small room next to the school office where a narrow cot was pushed close to the wall opposite a metal cabinet with locked doors. The nurse sat at a desk against the far wall.
I don’t know what’s wrong with him, the teacher said. He won’t tell me. I thought you better have a look.
The nurse stood and came around and asked him to sit on the cot but he would not. The teacher left and went back to her classroom. The nurse bent over him and felt his forehead. You don’t seem hot to the touch, she said. He looked at her out of his big wet eyes. Will you open your mouth for me, please? She put her arm around him and he squirmed away. Why, what is it? Are you afraid of me? I won’t hurt you.
Don’t, he said.
I need to look at you.
He leaned away but she pulled him close and examined his face and looked briefly in his ears and felt along his neck, and then she lifted his shirt to feel if he was hot and then she found the dark bruises on his back and below the belt of his pants.
She peered into his face. Richie, she said. Did somebody do this to you?
He looked frightened and he wouldn’t answer. She turned him around and drew down his pants and underwear. His thin buttocks were crosshatched with dark red welts. In some of the places the welts had bled and clotted.
Oh, my God, she said. You stay right here.
She left and went next door and came back at once with the principal. She lifted the boy’s shirt and showed the welts to the principal. They began to ask the boy questions but he was crying by now and shaking his head and he wouldn’t say a word. Finally they called his sister out of her fifth-grade classroom and asked her what had happened to her brother. Joy Rae said: He fell off the slide at the park. He had a accident.
Would you go out? the nurse said to the principal.
All right, he said. But you let me know. We have to report this. We’re going to find out what’s going on here.
The principal went out and then the nurse said: Will you let me look at you too, Joy Rae?
I don’t have anything wrong with me.
Then you’ll just let me look, won’t you?
You don’t need to look at me.
Just for a moment. Please.
Suddenly the girl began to cry, covering her face with her hands. Don’t, she said. I don’t want you to. Nothing’s wrong with me.
Honey, I won’t hurt you. I promise. I need to look, that’s all. I have to examine you. Won’t you let me, please?
The nurse turned to her little brother. I want you to step into the hall for a minute, so we can be alone. She led him out and told him to wait there near the door.
Then she came back into the room and took the girl gently by the shoulders. This won’t take long, honey, I promise, but I need to look at you. Slowly she turned her around. Joy Rae stood sobbing with her hands at her face, while behind her the nurse unbuttoned the back of her blue dress and drew down her underpants, and what she saw on Joy Rae’s thin back and thin buttocks was even worse than what she’d seen on her brother.
Oh, honey, the nurse said. I could just about kill somebody for this. Just look at you.
AN HOUR LATER WHEN ROSE TYLER FROM THE DEPARTMENT of Social Services came into the nurse’s room, the two children were still there, waiting for her. They had been given pop and cookies and two or three books to look at. And soon after Rose arrived a young sheriff’s deputy from the Holt County Courthouse came in and began to set up a tape recorder. The two children watched him in terror. He talked to them but his efforts were of little use, and they watched him without blinking and when he wasn’t looking they glanced at his thick leather belt and revolver and his nightstick. Rose Tyler was more successful in her attempts, the children knew her from before and she talked to them quietly and gently. She explained that they were not in any trouble but that she and the officer and the nurse and their teachers were all worried for their safety. Did they understand that they only needed to ask them some questions? Then she asked the deputy to go out of the room and she took photographs of their welts and bruises, and afterward when the deputy returned they began the interview, with Rose asking most of the questions. These were not meant to be leading questions, so as to avoid planting anything in the children’s minds but to allow them to tell their story in their own words, but it didn’t matter, the children were very reluctant to talk at all. They stood uncomfortably at the edge of the cot, standing side by side, and looked at the floor and played with their fingers, and it was Joy Rae who spoke for both of them, though she herself answered very few of the questions in the beginning. Instead she adopted a kind of bitter defiant silence. Gradually, though, she began to talk a little. And then it came out.
But why? Rose said. What would make him want to do this to you?
The girl shrugged. We didn’t pick up the house.
You mean he expected you to clean the house.
Yes.
Yourselves? The two of you?
Yes.
And did you? The entire trailer house?
We tried to.
And was that all, honey? Was there anything else he was upset about?
The girl looked up at Rose, then looked down again. He said I talked back.
That’s what he said?
Yes.
Do you think you talked back to him?
It don’t make no difference. He says I did.
Rose wrote in her notebook, then finished and looked at the two children and looked at the sheriff’s deputy and suddenly felt she might cry and not stop. She had seen so much trouble in Holt County, all of it accumulating and lodging in her heart. This today made her sick. She had never been able to numb herself to any of it. She had wanted to, but she had not succeeded. She looked at the two Wallace children and watched them for a moment and began again to question the girl. Honey, she said, where were your mother and father at this time, while this was happening?
They were there, the girl said.
They were in the room?