Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 04 - Jupiter Returns (7 page)

All I saw in the foster home was a house full of happy children and a nice older couple.
Jane was standing in the middle of the living room with her head down so that her hair covered her face. The couple, the Fraziers, had cleaned her up and had dressed her in a new pair of jeans, a bright green long sleeve tee shirt, and a bright pink pair of sneakers.

“The other children have been trying to draw her out, but she just stands there like that.
I’ve had to feed her because she sits at the table and won’t pick up her fork,” Mrs. Frazier explained.

“Does she dress herself?” I asked.

“No, I have to dress her and she doesn’t put up a fight about anything. She just lets whatever is going to happen to her, happen. The police had her examined at the emergency room when they found her but they found no bruises or any signs where she had been abused in any way.”

I stooped down in front of the little girl and tried to make eye contact but she turned her head away.

“Would you like to ride in my car?” I asked. She kept standing there without responding.

“I have a lot of fun things to do in my office.
Do you like to draw and paint? I have a twin sister who is an artist. I also have some very nice dolls to play with. Would you like that?”

She was completely withdrawn and wasn’t going to respond no matter what I did.
“Has she had any nightmares?” I asked Mrs. Frazier.

“I don’t know.
If she does she doesn’t wake up screaming or anything like that. I think you’re going to have to just take her. That’s what we had to do when we brought her here from the police station.”

When I picked her up she was light as a feather
. She didn’t mold against me, like most children do when you hold them, but kept her body rigid. I buckled her into the front seat of my car and got behind the wheel but she didn’t look to see where we were going.

I had an office at the FBI headquarters but I decided to take her to my old office in a house in Montrose.
I had sold my practice to Dr. Alvarez but he was kind enough to let me use the play room when I needed to. I didn’t have a play room at the FBI.

I called him on my cell phone and he said I was welcome to use the play room but I needed to be finished by one o’clock.
He had a play session at that time.

I carried Jane into th
e play room and put her down. I could tell she wanted to look around. She raised her head just enough to see what was there but only moved her eyes.

“You like it here?” I asked her but didn’t expect a reply.
To my surprise I noticed the slightest nod to her head and smiled to myself.

I usually get down in the floor with the children I do play therapy
. Wearing sweatpants and a tee shirt, I had come prepared. I took a playhouse down off the shelf along with all the little people. Usually you can tell something about what the family of origin by the way the client will arrange the people in the house. This technique works with both children and adults.

Next, I put out drawing paper, colored pencils, and paints on the low table where there were child-sized chairs.

I usually would have had all of these things out before the child came in but in this case I was glad I didn’t. As I watched her, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her turning her head ever so slightly and looking to see what I was doing. I love it when I learn something from my patients and I had just learned something.

I pretended I didn’t notice her watching me.
I sat cross-legged on the floor and began arranging the furniture and people in the playhouse.

T
he lesson I had just learned from her was sometimes it’s better to just do and not talk. She soon came over and squatted next to me and watched what I was doing. As I was putting the daddy inside the house she grabbed my hand and took him away from me and put him behind me.

I usually would have said something like, “You don’t want the daddy in the house?” or, “Did daddy leave?”

I remained silent and moved aside while she rearranged everything. She took out all the people except the mommy and little girl. She laid the mommy on the kitchen floor and put the little girl standing over the mommy. I almost had to bite my tongue to keep silent. She looked around like she was searching for something and finally got up and went over to the shelves where I kept tiny toy weapons.

There were tiny knives, swords, nooses, and gun
s of all types. I never brought them out unless a child asked for them.

She searched through the knives until she found what she wanted and brought it over.
It was a long thin knife like a fish filet knife. She tried to stick it into the mommy’s chest. She dropped everything and scooted back across the floor until she was almost to the door and then she lay down on her stomach on the floor and cried silently.

When I see a child cry, my natural tendency, as most all women and men I know
, is to want to hold and comfort them. But in therapy it’s not always the best thing in order to accomplish what you need to do. It broke my heart to sit and watch her cry without making a sound.

When I took her back home I told Mrs. Frazier
that Jane might have nightmares now if she hasn’t had them already.

I went home early and Mimi made chamomile tea
. We sat at the kitchen table and drank in silence. Our relationship didn’t always require a lot of talking, and we were both still grieving Ben.

CHAPTER 11

The next day I got up early.
I was excited about seeing Jane. I felt like we had made a lot of progress. It was nice to be able to have something else beside Ben to think about. I think Ben would have approved.

I picked Jane up at the Frazier’s house and she appeared to be glad to see me.
It was hard to tell but she gave me a quick glance before dropping her head.

As I pulled my Land Rover out into traffic I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Bert Jamison behind us in his Crown Vic.
I was glad to have someone on my tail but I wished Huck would hurry and get well and take over.

I had made arrangements with Dr. Alvarez to use the playroom everyday at 10 a.m.
Jane went to the shelf where the playhouse was kept and took it down along with several other pieces.

Still without saying a word, she began putting the furniture in the house.
After she had all the furniture in the house, she took the mommy and little girl and placed them in the bed in the master bedroom. She curved the arms of the mommy around the girl then sat back on her heels and looked at her work.

My mentor, Dr. Anna always told me to go with my gut instinct which was really my sub-conscience.

I hesitated and then began, “Tell me a story to go with what you’ve done, Jane.”

“Bettina,” she said.

“Your name’s Bettina?”
When she nodded I continued. “That’s beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever known a Bettina before.”

For the first time, she looked me in the eye and smiled, but then immediately dropped her head and let her hair cover her face.

“I appreciate you telling me your name, Bettina. May I tell your foster family?” She again nodded but didn’t look up.

Our progress was very slow.
I learned that the best way to get her to talk was to wait until she was busy with something. Then she would respond without thinking about it.

One day I was sitting on the floor while she sat at the tiny table on one of the little chairs painting.
The painting was mostly in reds and blacks.

Without looking up she suddenly asked, “Where is the other lady?”

“What other lady, honey?”

“The mean one.
The one you was with.”

I thought and thought but couldn’t think what she was talking about.
“I’m sorry, Bettina. I don’t know who you are talking about. I’ve never been with another woman since you and I met.”

Now she looked at me like she didn’t trust me and it dawned on me that she was talking about my evil triplet.

I got out my wallet and opened it to a picture of Julia and me and handed it to her. “This is Julia, my sister and this is me.”

She looked up at me and then down at the picture, “You’re a twin?”

“Actually I’m a triplet. I just found out recently we have a third. None of us grew up together. Julia and I found each other when we were sixteen. The one you must have met is the other one. I haven’t met her yet but she may be traveling with a very bad woman. Is that who hurt your mommy?”

She started shaking and I pulled her into my lap and held her.
When she started crying, I wasn’t as worried about her. These were real feelings and the shaking stopped.

I wanted so badly to question her but I held my tongue.
I had to follow her lead. As a psychotherapist this had always been the most difficult thing for me to do. As I held her she began to calm down and I had an idea. I decided to drive around the area where she had been found and see if she could lead me to the house where her mom might have been stabbed.

I asked Bettina if she wanted some ice cream and she nodded yes.
We got in my car and I stopped for ice cream and then drove around in the neighborhood where she had been found. I kept glancing at her but she was busy with her ice cream and didn’t seem to notice where we were going.

“When do I have to go back to school?” she suddenly asked.

“You go to school?”

I saw her smile for the first time and she had a look of pride on her face, “I’m in the second grade.”

I had to pullover for this. I found an Indian restaurant and pulled into the parking lot.

“How old are you?”
I asked.

“I’m seven years old.”
She said with pride in her voice.

I was getting excited, “Where do you go to school?”

“The one around the corner from my house.”

This was the most she ha
d spoken since I had met her. I needed to be careful and not cause her to shut down again.

I laid my hand on her leg, “Honey, what is the name of the school?”

“Lady of Mercy, the catholic school.”

I had driven past there on my way home many times.
It was in Montrose. “Why don’t we go see your teacher? What’s her name?”

“Miss Kimberly.”

CHAPTER 12

The bell rang when I pulled into the parking lot of the school. It was good timing. When we got out of the car, Bettina took my hand and led me to her class.

A beautiful woman who resembled Grace Kelly was sitting at her desk grading papers.
When she looked up and saw Bettina, she stood and rushed over.

“I’ve been worried about you, Bettina.
I’ve tried to call your mom but no one answers the phone.”

As soon as Bettina’s mom was mentioned, Bettina clammed up.
She became as withdrawn as she had been when I first met her.

I introduce my
self and she shook my hand, “Riana Kimberly. What’s happened?”

I explained how we found Bettina and how she had not spoken much until today, “Do you know where they live?”

“No! No! I don’t want to go home,” Bettina screamed.

I pi
cked her up and held her, “It’s okay. You don’t have to go home,” I said. As soon as I said those words she calmed down.

Miss Kimberly walked over to her desk and wrote something on a piece of paper.
She handed it to me and I put it in my jeans pocket.

I took Bettina back to the Fraziers
and started home. When I stopped at a red light I got the paper out of my pocket and read it. It was the address where Bettina and her mom had lived.

I s
wung by there on the way home. The building was an old house that had been divided into four apartments, two up and two downstairs. This was common in the Montrose area of Houston.

These houses had once been family homes.
Sometimes they had made the bottom floor into a restaurant or boutique and had living quarters above as there were no zoning laws in Houston.

I walked up onto a wrap-around porch and knocked on the door.
No one came to the door and I realized I would have to knock on one of the doors to one of the apartments.

Miss Kimberly hadn’t put an apartment number on the paper she gave me so I knocked on the door to the right of the stairs.

The woman who opened the door looked to be almost 100 years old. She had no teeth and I had a hard time understanding what she said but I thought she was asking me what I wanted.

I looked at the paper the te
acher had given me, “Emily Goddard?”

“Up pose stars, lef side.”

I started up the stairs but before I got half-way up an anorexic looking woman came out of the right side apartment. Her hair, what little there was of it, was dyed pitch black. It was shoulder length and I could see her scalp underneath.