Only the Truth (6 page)

I still didn't know the answer by morning, but I did know that I wanted it
back.

III

I went to visit Charlene that evening. I wondered if she would even want to
see me after she told me to get the hell out. Did she hate me or love me?

I arrived after dinnertime and the police officer let me into the room next
to her cell. Charlene was lying on her cot facing the wall.

I said real quiet, "Charlene?"

She didn't respond.

"Charlene? It's Billy Ray. Are you
gonna
talk
to me?"

She moved enough to let me know she was awake.

"I'm sorry I asked you so many questions last time, honey. I love you,
Charlene."

Charlene pushed the covers back and rolled over on her cot. She looked like
hell, but she was smiling. She ran across the cold floor barefooted and kissed
me through the bars.

"I got something to show you, Billy Ray." She handed me a piece of
notepaper.

I looked at the writing scratched on it and asked her what it said.

"Cheryl
Wiggington
.
Fort
Hanley."

I looked up from the paper to her excited face. "Is this you?"

Charlene laughed. Laughed! "It's me! I remember who I am!”

Her face saddened a little. "I remember Bald Eagle. I remember why I
was there and what I did." She didn't look up at me.

I suddenly felt Mr. Green should be here.

"Charlene, you need to tell all this to Mr. Green. It might help you in
the trial. Okay?"

Charlene nodded.

"I'll go get him right away. Don't you forget anything, honey, while
I'm
gone.
" I put a finger through the bar, lifted
her chin and kissed her lips. When I looked into her blue eyes, I saw me in
them.

********************

Mr. Green, Charlene and I sat in the talking room and he started a tape
recorder so none of us would forget what was said that night.

Mr. Green started.

"Charlene? Can you tell me your whole name?
Your real
name?"

She cleared her throat and spoke in such a little
voice,
Mr. Green had to ask her to speak more loudly for the tape recording.

She tried again and this time her voice was clear. "Cheryl
Wiggington
."

"Date of Birth?"

"January 1, 1990."

"So you are twenty-one years old, turning twenty-two in January?"

Charlene twisted a napkin between her fingers. I bit my tongue.

"Uh-huh."

"Where were you born, Charlene?"

"In Fort Hanley, Arkansas."

Mr. Green leaned back in his chair. "Tell me what you remember from
your childhood there, Charlene."

Charlene frowned.

"I don't remember very much at all. I remember a little house. It was
blue with white shutters. I remember a big ugly tree in the yard with a rope
swing on it that I loved a lot. I remember the kitchen. It was yellow. I
remember my mother. She had long blonde hair, and long fingernails, and her
teeth stuck out funny and they hurt sometimes when she kissed me. I had a
little brother and sister."

"And your father?"

"I didn't have a father." Charlene spoke that rather angrily and I
wondered what made her so mad.

"Dead?"

"I don't know."

Mr. Green was observing her very carefully.

"When do you remember being with your family, Charlene?"

Charlene twisted the napkin into a snake and played with it on the desk. She
seemed to drift off so Mr. Green asked her again.

"Maybe when I was six.
I remember the school
building down the block but I don't remember being in it."

Mr. Green asked what she next remembered.

Charlene looked over at me and then back at Mr. Green.

"I remember being cold and hungry and the old man giving me money in
Bald Eagle for some food."

Mr. Green got that look on his face like he didn't trust what she was
saying.

"Are you telling me you remember nothing from the time you were six
until the time you were…let me think…about nineteen years old?”

Charlene started ripping her snake into shreds on the table. I leaned
forward to calm her down but Mr. Green signaled me to leave her alone.

"Charlene? Do you remember nothing about sleeping with men for money?
Sleeping with that old man 'who gave you money for food?'
Ripping him off?"

Charlene shook her head back and forth, back and forth.

Mr. Green pressed on. "Don't you even remember the children you
had?"

Charlene's body started jerking in a strange manner and she began madly
mutilating the little pieces of snake she had deposited on the table until she
started making noises that I couldn't identify as human. At that point, Mr.
Green started getting scared and he called for the officers to come and get
Charlene. When they touched her, she started thrashing around so wildly, it took
three of them to pin her to the floor and then she bit the arm of one of them
and he yelped and another of them slammed her head to the floor with his
forearm and held it there while they called for an ambulance to come and take
her to the hospital.

I felt horrible for Charlene, to see her being treated like an animal, and I
lied down beside her on the floor while we waited for the medical people to
show up. I looked over at her face held tight to the floor under the uniformed
arm and it was then I saw she was laughing.

I got up and left the room.

********************

The ambulance came and took her away. Mr. Green and I sat back down in the
talking room.

"She was laughing, Mr. Green.
Laughing."

Mr. Green smiled just a bit it seemed.

"People laugh for lots of reasons, Billy Ray.
Sometimes
because they're happy but sometimes because they're sad and can't cry.
Sometimes they go completely hysterical when they can't express themselves in a
way that anyone can understand."

I guessed that made sense. Charlene laughed so little in our time
together,
it was strange to see her doing it at that
particular moment.

Mr. Green calmed me down.

"She obviously was very upset about the loss of those children for
whatever reason they aren't with her today. We will get to the bottom of this,
Billy Ray. We have her name now, a
birthdate
, and the
place she grew up. Maybe we will finally get some answers."

I nodded tiredly. I hoped he was right. Suddenly, it seemed Mr. Green
was believing
more in Charlene than me.

********************

It turned out Mr. Green was right as rain. The answers showed up just a week
later at the doorstep of the State Hospital in the forms of Mrs.
Wiggington
and her son and daughter. Mrs.
Wiggington
was as Charlene said. Very blonde (but her hair
was now short), long fingernails, and some really bad teeth that made me hope
she wouldn't kiss me for any reason. She was crying like a baby and her son and
daughter kept hugging her and telling her it was okay.

Actually, I first laid eyes on the family when they got to the waiting room
outside Charlene's room. We were on a locked floor and a police guard stood in
front of Charlene's room twenty-four hours a day. Until they showed up, only
me
and Mr. Green came to see Charlene.

Mr. Green stood up when the
Wiggingtons
came into
the waiting room. He had been expecting them.

"Mrs.
Wiggington
? Please sit down."

She plopped down right in the middle of the sofa, each of her children
sitting down beside her. She sniffled some more.

"Did you bring the papers, Mrs.
Wiggington
?"
asked Mr. Green.

She fished in her large purse and pulled out an official looking document
and a newspaper clipping. She handed them over to Mr. Green who studied them
for a long time and said nothing. Finally, he looked up.

"Well, this is most interesting and may answer a lot of our questions
about Charlene."

I was itching to know what the papers said and Mr. Green handed them over to
me. He told me what each one was. One had her name on it and the date that she
was born. Mr. Green pointed to four words with fancy lettering across the top
and read each one for me - Fort Hanley Community Hospital. I put that paper
down carefully on the table and looked at the newspaper clipping. It had a
picture of a pretty little blond girl and underneath it Mr. Green told me was
written "Missing: Cheryl Bettina
Wiggington
."
I looked up at Mrs.
Wiggington
. I wondered what was
in the rest of the story.

Mr. Green looked over at the blonde woman. She blew her nose.

"Can I ask you to tell us what happened to Charlene, uh, Cheryl? Is it
all right if I record what you tell me?" He pulled his little tape
recorder out and set it on the table between them.

Mrs.
Wiggington
looked a bit flustered at the tape
recorder.

"Please, remember, Mrs.
Wiggington
, Cheryl is
going to trial. Anything said about her is part of evidence for the defense or
prosecution."

Mrs.
Wiggington
started crying again but she
managed a nod.

Mr. Green hit the record button.

"Can you state your full name for the record?"

"Mrs. Lucinda May
Wiggington
."

"And your date of birth?"

"July 31st...," she giggled a little here and I remember what Mr.
Green said about hysteria, "uh, 1974."

I felt kind of strange being only a few years younger than Charlene's
mother. I never thought about Charlene and mine's ages until then.

"Tell us what happened to Cheryl."

Mrs.
Wiggington
stopped laughing and started
crying again.

"Well, we adopted Cheryl when she was just a baby and then when Cheryl
was five," she shook her head at this, "my husband left me. Where he
went, I never knew. Then a year later, Cheryl was just starting into first
grade and on the second day of school she left the building…someone saw her
walking toward the flagpole out in front of the school…and then she just never
arrived home. First, we thought she had got lost and then when it got dark, we
started panicking. My first thought was my husband had come back and stole her
away and I told the police that."

"Did they check him out?" asked Mr. Green.

"Yeah, they said they did. They said they found him but they wouldn't
tell me where. They said he couldn't have taken her and that she has never been
seen with him since. I always thought it strange, though, that he never called
me to ask about Cheryl.
Never."

"Did any other suspects ever turn up?"

"Well, yes, they had one really good suspect. They said there was a
pedophile who was a suspect in a missing child case three years ago in another
town
who
had been seen in Fort Hanley around the time
Cheryl went missing. They said they checked him out as thoroughly as they could
but they never found evidence linking him to her disappearance."

Mrs.
Wiggington
paused and stared blankly around
the room.

"And?" encouraged Mr. Green.

Mrs.
Wiggington
gave a little soft snort.

"And nothing.
Just nothing.
Cheryl never was found. I always thought my husband had taken her and hidden
her away so I could never see her again." She burst into tears.

Her daughter leaned over and hugged her.

"But we found her, Ma! We found her!"

Mrs.
Wiggington
grinned and sniffed and said,
"Yeah, yeah, we finally found her!"

Mr. Green reached over and turned the tape recorder off.

"Go on. Go meet your daughter."

The family went on in to see Charlene and I wished I could have been there
with them, but it wouldn't have been right.

Mr. Green stood up and put the tape recorder into his pocket and gave it a
pat.

"We may have our miracle, Billy Ray. It's called post-traumatic stress
disorder.
PTSD.
We got ourselves a whole new
ballgame."

Mr. Green actually gave me a hug as he left the room. I hadn't seen him so
happy since he started working on Charlene's case.

PTSD.
Sounded a lot like those sexual diseases
Charlene got before. I hoped this one would do her some good.

********************

I saw Charlene a few more times before the trial started in January. Just
before the big day, I finally met the family at a little birthday celebration
for Charlene in her hospital room. She got a real sweet "daughter"
card from her Mama and two "sister" cards from
Pammy
and Donny, her siblings. I gave her a "sweetheart" card. She had a
whole tray full of relationships sitting in front of her.

Charlene laughed and smiled that day like she had just learned what it was
like to be happy. I sat in my chair and enjoyed her new found family and my new
family. Yes, my new family! I got me a mother-in-law and a little brother and
little sister and our new baby would have a Grandma and an aunt and an uncle!
And they didn't seem to care much that I was black. They never even batted an
eye about that. They gave me hugs and didn't call me ugly or stupid or any
other bad names.

Charlene was twenty-two years old that day. The first day of the year was
starting off just fine. We
was
all together in this,
one big happy family and Charlene had a lawyer who believed in her. Well, at
least he believed a little something about her. He at least believed now she
could be crazy and that was good enough for me.