Ghost Girl (35 page)

Lindy, appearing even paler than Jadie, pulled out Mr. Tinbergen’s vacated chair across the table from me and fell into it. She watched as the door closed quietly behind Mr. Tinbergen and Jadie.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she murmured, her eyes still on the closed door.

“Jadie talked?”

“I’m not joking,” Lindy replied. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

Perhaps she wasn’t joking. Her face had gone gray; she clutched the edge of the table with one hand, her fingertips going white from the pressure. I glanced around quickly for some way to be of help. “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

“I’ve been in this business six years now,” Lindy said, as I returned from the sink, “and I have never in all my born days heard anything like that.” Taking the water from me, she sipped it. “Did she tell you about that little girl? About what … those people … are supposed to have done to her? How they killed her?”

I nodded.

“I’ve come across plenty of blood and gore in my day. You get it in this job. You get
used
to it. But when a child, a little child starts to tell you these things … That knife. The blood. Tasting the blood.” Lindy shuddered. Then she looked over. “I feel unclean. Know what I mean? I want to go home and have a shower. Scrub myself. Throw away my clothes. Burn them. I feel dirty just from having been in there, talking about those things.”

A small pause came as Lindy and I sat. The lights were out in the room, casting it in daylight gray. From beyond the closed windows came the muted laughter on the playground.

“That, about the cat, was the worst,” Lindy said. “She was telling how they laid the cat on her chest and then they pulled it apart … literally took its legs and
pulled
it to pieces on top of her.” Lindy grimaced. “… And the blood … smearing their hands in the blood of the cat, rubbing it all over Jadie’s face and body …” She paused and pressed her fingers against her mouth. “And then she was saying how … how they licked it off … how they performed … subjected Jadie to cunnilingus with the blood of the cat still on her body.”

Lindy’s face suddenly went white. She looked over, her eyes wide. “Cat,” she murmured. “Cat skeleton. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“I think we ought to have Christmas music,” Jeremiah said.

“I think you ought to get your work done,” I replied. “You still have half a sheet of math and all your reading left from this morning.”

“Shit, man, you never let us have any fun.”

“Work
, Jeremiah.”

“Gotta sharpen this here pencil first.”

“Use mine,” and I quickly slapped one down in front of him.

Peace reigned for about two minutes before Jeremiah raised his head again.

“Listen,” I said before he had a chance to open his mouth, “we’ve had a difficult, disruptive morning. People have been coming in and out, things have been out of the ordinary today. Now, no one has managed to finish what’s in their folders and we’ve only got forty minutes until going-home time. If everyone knuckles down, we can probably get done in half an hour. That’d leave enough time for me to read you another chapter from our book. How about that?”

“Aw, come on, lady, whatcha streaky blusher. I’d always say we have just a little bit of Christmas music? It’s Christmastime, for Pete’s sake. Let’s get ourselves in the mood.”

“If I put a record on, will you actually work?”

“Yeah, sure, man,” he answered graciously. “What kind of boog you take me for?”

So I rose and selected a record of Christmas carols. Gentle, familiar music filled the room, soothing all of us. At last, everyone worked.

The record was still playing when the knock came. Jeremiah jerked up, startled, and was on his feet instantly. I looked over.

Mr. Tinbergen was visible through the window in the door. He beckoned me out into the hallway. When I opened the door, I found Delores there, as well.

“I’ve come to take Jadie,” she said. “Like Lindy promised her.”

I looked questioningly.

“The police have decided to pursue the case further. Apparently there’s been an order issued to dig up the Ekdahls’ garden or something like that. Anyway, I’ve just been over to the house and collected the girls’ belongings, because the police have sealed it. Looks like things are hotting up.” She nodded toward the classroom. “Anyway, we thought it would be better if we took Jade and Amber now, from school, rather than have them …” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“Are they still going to be able to attend school here?” I asked.

Delores shook her head. “I know you and Jade have a good relationship, and we’ve tried to take that into account in placing her, but it didn’t seem like a good idea for her to stay here. Lindy has told me a little bit about all this … you know … and we’ve decided to get them right out of the immediate area. God forbid the media should get wind of this, but you just can’t be too careful. And with the house right across the street from the school …”

I nodded.

Opening the door, I looked at my five, all still at the table, the strains of “Silent Night” filtering around them. Reuben, his eyes on us, was mouthing the words of the carol.

“Jadie?”

She rose and approached us.

“Mrs. Verney is here. She’s come to take you and Amber to your new foster home.”

Jadie looked at her, then me. Her posture, although not completely erect, was still upright. “Is it going to be in Red Circle?” she asked.

“No,” I said, voicing Delores’s shake of the head. “I think you’ll be a little farther away, and I think this means you won’t be coming back to our class, because it’ll be too far.”

“Never?” Jadie asked, her voice surprised. “Where am I going? Will I be in a real class? Will I be in third grade?”

“Well, we’ll see,” Delores replied with a smile. “Maybe you will.”

“What?” shrieked Jeremiah, leaping up from his chair. “Where’s our girlie going? Why you letting them take her away?”

“I’m going someplace you can’t come,” Jadie retorted, a note of pride in her voice I hadn’t anticipated.

“How? Where? What d’ya mean?” Jeremiah protested. “What does she mean, lady? Is she going to be in a real class? How come? What she done to get outa here?”

Jadie had gone to her cubby to collect her few belongings.

“What’cha mean, a
real
class?” he cried, running after her. “We’re real. This here class is real. Are you
going?
”

“Yeah,” said Jadie.

He paused, stunned.

“I’m going to my new home, Jeremiah,” she said and disappeared into the cloakroom to get her things.

Jadie was a long time in the cloakroom, and when she finally emerged, her arms were loaded with coat, boots, her pencil box, crayons, notebooks, and artwork. Coming over to us in the doorway, she paused and looked up at me. I gazed into her blue eyes, their clearness so sharp that they appeared faceted like crystals.

“Good-bye, lovey,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon.”

“Here. This is for you.” She inclined her head toward the armful of things, and I saw sticking out between her fingers a small piece of folded notebook paper. I took it from her.

“Is she
really
going?” Jeremiah asked. He peered through the door at Delores. “You really taking her somewhere?”

“I don’t mind,” Jadie said, then slipped by Mr. Tinbergen and out into the hallway. The three of them turned and headed away.

Jeremiah remained with me in the doorway, his shock at Jadie’s sudden departure almost palpable. “Hey, lady!” he finally cried out, just as Delores, Jadie, and Mr. Tinbergen were reaching the stairs. “Hey, lady, stop! I wanna tell you something.”

Delores paused and looked back.

“Did you notice, lady? Did you see our girlie can stand up?”

Back in the classroom a pall of silence descended. The record had ended. No one moved, no one spoke. Back and forth we looked, from one to another. It had all happened so quickly, so completely, that none of us knew what to do next.

Then Reuben, in a soft, breathy, schoolboy soprano, began to sing “Silent Night.” Jeremiah, and then Philip, ran to the window. I crossed the room to join them.

Below us, the front door of the school opened and Delores emerged with Jadie and Amber. They started down the long walk toward Delores’s car, parked at the curb.

“I want her to turn around and look at us,” Jeremiah whispered, his breath fogging the glass. “Ain’t she even going to turn around? Come on, girlie. Give us a wave.”

Then, just as she reached the end of the walk, Jadie paused. Still holding Delores’s hand, she turned and looked over her shoulder toward the classroom window.

“Hey! She sees us! Jadie! Jadie! Bye! Bye-bye, Jadie!” Jeremiah shouted against the windowpane. Both he and Philip waved wildly. A smile touched Jadie’s lips and she waved back.

Leaving the boys to clamor against the glass, I turned back to the classroom. In my hand, I still had the small piece of paper Jadie had given me. Carefully pulling it open, I found two words.
Thank you
.

T
he drama of Jadie’s case continued for several months after she left my class, during which time the police, who took Jadie’s accusations very seriously indeed, conducted an intensive investigation, which included, among other things, excavating the Ekdahls’ yard and dismantling their garden shed in search of Tashee’s remains.

Throughout this time the question that divided us all continued to be discussed and occasionally argued: were the episodes Jadie had told me about real-life experiences? Or were they the creations of a seriously disturbed child?

There was a strong basis for believing Jadie’s stories weren’t real. First and foremost, she had a long history of bizarre psychological behavior, which, while it had never previously included hallucinations, did indicate quite serious pathology.

Additionally, many of the aspects of her stories are common to the phobias, obsessions, and hallucinations of disturbed children. A fear of being watched or spied on by insects, a fear of spiders in general, a fear of blood and visions of it dripping down or onto the body are all psychological experiences which I, myself, have encountered many times in my work with psychotic-type children, and in virtually all these cases I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt they were mental phenomena and had no basis in reality. Similarly, such acts as carving the symbol on Amber’s stomach or even killing Jenny could conceivably have been done by Jadie herself. In fact, if she were as seriously disturbed as the nature of her stories would indicate, such mutilations and abuse would be within the realm of anticipated behavior.

Rejecting the face value of Jadie’s stories did not rule out the possibility that Jadie was genuinely abused. Indeed, based on the circumstantial evidence in the case, the professional conclusion was that Jadie had probably been subjected to serious abuse, most likely sexual, at some point in her life and that this had contributed significantly to her mental state at age eight. Her mutism resulted perhaps from a fear that if she talked, she would tell about the abuse. Her deformed posture was an effort perhaps to physically keep the story in and/or protect the vulnerable genital area. Following this line of thinking, Tashee became comprehensible, not as a real little girl, but as a fragment of Jadie’s own self, perhaps the genesis of a multiple personality disorder or as a depersonalization of what Jadie found good and whole in herself, separated out to be kept safe from the degraded self. Jadie’s constant need to protect and care for Tashee and her frequent reports of “talking” to Tashee, as if Tashee were near at hand, were understandable acts in this context. Similarly, the characters of “Dallas” took on some meaning. If the abuse was committed by her father, that would be difficult enough to bear, but if her mother joined in, or perhaps simply knew and did nothing to stop it, Jadie may have found it necessary to create an evil persona in the form of Miss Ellie, which would leave the kind, loving person Jadie knew as her mom unsullied. If ethereal strangers, materializing out of the television, did all these things, then Jadie could still feel safe with her parents.

Throughout the many weeks of police investigation and the endless meetings with social workers and mental health personnel, this psychological explanation of Jadie’s experiences became the increasingly accepted point of view. On numerous occasions, I found myself in accordance, feeling that yes, this was the only comprehensible conclusion that could be drawn. It provided answers for the most difficult questions; it made acceptable sense; and it brought Jadie’s case into line with what we already know about the human mind. And yet … The big questions
were
answered by this explanation, but the small things continued to niggle at me. For instance, why was Jadie so frightened of having her picture taken? Where had she gained knowledge of video recorders and video cameras in an era when they still weren’t commonplace in people’s homes? Why did she speak of Miss Ellie and the others “putting their faces on” and wearing “ghost clothes”? And what about Jadie’s symbol, the cross within the circle, which she had made so many times for me in so many ways? In the end, speculation on this concurred with the psychiatric opinions voiced at the Sandry Clinic the previous summer, that the circle was representative of the vagina, and the cross (“X marks the spot”) was a sort of “I was violated here” message. But why, then, would Jadie have made it on Amber’s stomach? And on a more subtle level, why had Jadie been so curious about my work with other elective mutes? Why had her questions about my work always centered around whether they talked to me in the end and when they did, had I believed what they said? And had I helped them?