“Please forgive Ed,” the woman said as the screen door cracked shut and they walked through a mudroom full of boots and hanging clothes, into a large, brightly lit kitchen. “He’s watching out for me is all. And it’s slaughtering time for the chickens and that always gets him in a mood.”
“This is hard for you,” Shelley said. “We do appreciate it.”
The woman waved a pink-scrubbed hand. “I knew you’d come. I wondered what was taking so long.” She smiled but her eyes were dark. She shrugged. “I suppose I figured everyone would want to know where something like that comes from. Not that I got the answer.”
“Something like what, Mrs. Voorsanger?”
Cast-iron pots bubbled and hissed on the stove. Next to the stove crouched a deep metal sink, a cutting board, and the gray-pink carcasses of birds. The air smelled of bones boiled clean and white.
“Well, you know.” She searched Jess’s face with eyes that seemed desperate. “After all this time? You must know what she is?” She turned to Professor Shelley. There was sudden bitterness in her voice when she spoke again. “Oh yes, I remember. My Lord. Nine years and you still don’t believe a word.”
“I think Jess would like to hear what you have to say.”
“I see.” The woman stuck out her hand. “Well now, aren’t you a pretty little thing? Jess, is it? Forgive my manners. I’m Cristina. Would you folks like some tea? I was just about to make a pot.”
Mrs. Voorsanger showed them through the kitchen and hallway and into a low-ceilinged room. The room had the feeling of unfinished business. The walls were bare except for a large silver cross, mounted over the old fireplace mantel. A faded plastic recliner sat in front of a folding table and large console television, and couches crouched at right angles, the patterns long since blurring into a uniform grayness that was either age or dirt, it was difficult to tell. The arms and backrests, where people rested their heads or put their feet up, were slightly darker than the rest.
The best pieces in the room were matching glass-fronted cabinets, which held what seemed like hundreds of painted trinkets: trolls, elves, fairies and dolls, toadstools, collector plates. Glass eyes winked at them from everywhere, peering over the tops of others. Little figures crouched and smiled as if holding secrets.
“My collection,” Mrs. Voorsanger said with pride. “I get them through the mail. Why don’t you sit down? I’ll bring in a pot of tea in a minute.”
They sat waiting on a couch as dust turned and drifted through the still air. “What did Mrs. Voorsanger mean in the kitchen?” Jess asked. “’Nine years and you still don’t believe a word’?”
Shelley seemed to consider whether to answer the question. She glanced to the hall, and when she spoke it was in a soft way, under her breath. “This is delicate, you understand. One of the reasons I took Sarah away was for her own good. The whole family seemed to be suffering from a delusion. I’d heard of it before, a kind of mass hysteria, but I’d never seen it firsthand.”
“What sort of delusion?”
“They didn’t see her as a little baby anymore. They had come to believe that Sarah was the Antichrist. Thank God they called me first. They might have killed her if I hadn’t stepped in.”
Dear Lord, have mercy, Jess thought. There seemed to be nothing else to say. But it would explain a lot: the silence for all these years, the missing sections of file, the reluctance of both Wasserman and Shelley to divulge any family history. The reason Sarah’s existing family had been kept a secret was as much for her benefit as anything else.
“I’ll help her with that tea,” Shelley said. She went to the kitchen. A moment later Mrs. Voorsanger returned carrying a tray with a kettle and two little cups with sugar and milk. Shelley brought out three mugs, poured tea into each, and handed one to Jess that read World’s Greatest Dad.
The tea was scalding and bitter. Jess forced herself to sip it while she waited, still slightly stunned. This house and these people were familiar to her; there were many like them where she grew up. People used to hard work, simple but strong. Money was tight but there was a code to follow that would see them through. It was hard for her to believe they were the sort that would harm a child.
But it happens all the time. People lose their grip.
“Sorry it took so long. I had to see to Annie upstairs. She won’t speak a word for months….” The woman shrugged. She sat very straight on the other couch with her hands in her lap. “Our daughter tries, so very hard. But life just don’t come easy for her. And she hasn’t been the same since Sarah was born.”
“Have you had her examined?”
“Of course. But they could never tell us nothing that would help. So we keep her at home.”
Mrs. Voorsanger told them about Annie’s difficult childhood. Never seemed to relate to any of the other children. At first they thought she was just simple, and that would have been all right; they could have handled it just fine.
“But soon it seemed it was more than that. When she went through puberty it got worse, but we managed. She was the strangest child. She’d go days without speaking, and you’d think she wasn’t even there, and then out of the blue she’d come up with something no one in their right mind could know.
“Then when she was nineteen we found out she was carrying a child. We didn’t know who the father was, never did. Just one day she was pregnant and she never would say a word after. Ed got crazy in the head about it. He was going to track the father down and make him own up to what he’d done. But that was just talk. Truth was it could have been any number of drifters, people who took advantage of Annie’s feeblemindedness. The boys used to get her down in their basements by offering her sweets. You know she loved cake and lollipops. Then she would come home with her shirt undone and her underwear gone, crying… she didn’t know what they done. She just didn’t understand.
“Most of them boys are gone now. Moved away to Lord knows where. Good riddance.”
Jess felt a strange sensation of falling into a life that had been so hard, so cruel. Closets full of arts and crafts, moldering papers in crayon, half-finished ashtrays and lopsided mugs. She wondered if Mrs. Voorsanger hated herself for the nights when she thought of putting the pillow over her daughter’s face, just holding it there until she stopped moving.
Mrs. Voorsanger reached for the teapot. Her hands shook as she refilled her mug. “Did you know Annie just up and disappeared? On about her eighth month she walked right out of the house.
“We looked for her for weeks. The police came out and combed the woods, we put up posters in town. Then we get word that she’d been found, up in New Hampshire somewhere, and she’s had her baby and won’t we please come pick her up? There’d been some trouble, as I imagine she’s told you.” Mrs. Voorsanger nodded at Shelley. “The hospital where Sarah was born burned right to the ground. It was a miracle they got out alive.”
“It took us a while to identify them,” Shelley said. “Annie wouldn’t talk to us and she had nothing on her.”
“Course not,” Mrs. Voorsanger said. “Didn’t I tell you how she was? She couldn’t earn a license and she’d lose her pocketbook if we didn’t tie it onto her sleeve.”
“So you went up there and brought Annie and Sarah home….”
“They told us not to do it but we did. Ed was furious. But here was this little child, and she was sickly, not expected to live. We tended to her as best we could. Annie and Sarah seemed to have a bond. Annie wouldn’t speak to her, half the time she wouldn’t even look at her, but every once in a while she’d just get up and go to the crib as if she’d been called. She’d stand there and stare. And the strangest things would happen.