Seasons of Heaven (16 page)

She pulled the car into a poorly-lit parking lot, maneuvering around the deep puddles that the rain had left behind. The majority of the lights in the area emanated from the windows of a nearby building. It was the building they were headed to and Shirley looked at it with despair in her heart. It was so lifeless and cold looking. It looked more like a sanitarium than an orphanage to her. Children shouldn’t live in such a dark and dreary place….The building was immense, stretching out in all directions with hundreds of windows dotting the outside of the edifice, some were lit up and others completely black. Once they parked the car and got closer to the building, it gave Shirley the eerie feeling of a prison, like whoever went in never came out. She shuddered at the thought and glanced at Yann. He wouldn’t look at her and she didn’t blame him.

A woman, shorter than Shirley stood in front of the main building. Her hair was swept back into a severe bun and her dark and close-set eyes only added to the harshness of her look.

“Good evening,” she said, “You must be Shirley?” the woman’s voice had an edge to it, and it instantly struck Shirley the wrong way. The woman looked down at Yann and in a sharp, swift tone she said, “I assume then that you’re Yann, aren’t you?” The woman looked him over and her eyes came to rest on Ani who Yann was clutching in his arms. “This institution does not accept…these…you know, that black thing you have there! Animals are not allowed at Saint Josephs.”

“You are?” Shirley asked her, not fond of the way the woman was speaking to Yann.

“I’m Miss Pearce, the person in charge of the children.”

“We know of course that the dog can’t stay…they just wanted to say good-bye.” The older woman gave Yann another disdainful look and told them,

“Follow me this way.” They followed her through the big main doors and began walking down a long, poorly illuminated corridor. Shirley leaned down near Yann’s ear and said,

              “A few days, maximum a few weeks…I promise!”

“Please Shirley. Please let me go back home with you. I don’t want to stay here,” Yann pleaded. Ani whimpered in his arms. Although the dog didn’t understand all that was happening, he knew his best friend was sad and afraid.

Miss Pearce stopped walking and turned towards Yann, “I know this is not easy son, but we are all here to help you. We will take good care of you until we find you a real family.”

“Don’t worry please, sweetie! Just give me a little time,” Shirley felt a tear escape down her cheek, she couldn’t hold them back any longer.

“Please! I want to stay with Ani!” The little boy’s voice was desperate and his eyes wide with the terror that came from being separated from everyone he loved and sent to live in such a horrid place.

“Yann, listen to me…” Shirley begged him. “Come with me to the car and we’ll get your suitcase from the trunk. I‘ll walk you to your room. I promised you we’ll find a solution to this and I meant it. Once that happens I’ll be back to get you. It’ll be in no time, honey. I promise.”

“Come on,” Miss Pearce told them over her shoulder. “I’ll show you where the room is and which one is your bed. Once you’ve seen it we’ll sign the admission papers in the office and you can get your luggage. Then Shirley and….The dog can be on their way.”

Yann tightened his grip on the little dog, clutching him to his chest. Ani licked the boy on his neck and the side of his face. He was shaking…sensing Yann’s fear.

As they walked further into the dismal place Shirley found herself thinking that a place filled with children shouldn’t be such an abysmal place. It should radiate with warmth and joy. This place was as welcoming as a penitentiary and she completely understood why Yann was afraid.

The main hallway had a sign that pointed one direction for the cafeteria and the other for the administration offices. As they passed the main staircase Miss Pearce pointed out that it separates the building into two parts. One wing of the building hosted the boys and the other the girls.

The only color in the place seemed to be represented by the many drawings and doodles and old film posters hung along the walls of the long corridors. Yann was terrified, and it was only made worse by the fact that he was going to miss Ani so badly. He hadn’t left him yet and Yann’s heart already ached for him.

The austere woman showed them a dull, bland room and a cold looking metal bed where Yann would be living until Shirley came back for him. Shirley shuddered once more at the bleakness of it all. The poor boy had lost his parents and now while he was still grieving and trying to understand it all, he felt like he was losing everyone else he loved.

When Shirley finished up the paperwork and went to say good-by to Yann, he was no longer begging her to go home. Now, he was silent, having withdrawn into himself. Shirley hugged him tightly and promised him again that she would be back for him. She let Ani lick his face once more and then with the little dog tucked under her arm she left him there on his bed, all alone.

Yann lay down on the bed, engulfed by the darkness and overcome by loneliness. The dormitory that housed the bed he lay on was huge with rows of beds on each side lined up with military preciseness. There was no sound in the room other than the heavy breathing of the other boys who slept there. The large windows that lined one wall of the room let in nothing but more darkness and Yann missed the window in his room, the one where he and Ani could look out and see the moon and the stars.

The thought of Ani caused another arrow of sharp pain to tear through his heart and land like a boulder in his already upset stomach.  He thought about his parents then…Shirley had tried to explain things to him without coming right out and saying the word. She had said they’d had to go away…they could never come back…they were watching over him…they were in a better place. Yann had spent many hours processing all of that. He came to the realization that what she was trying to say, without saying it was that they were dead. Yann understood dead….kind of. He didn’t want his parents to be dead. He missed them and he’d give anything to see them again, but he understood that he couldn’t. He’d gotten through it so far by holding Ani, pressed to his chest…against his heart. It made him feel safe and warm and like everything would be okay someday. Now that he was really and truly alone, it was hard to hold on to that belief. His mood was as bleak as the building he now lived in. His emotions were as torn up as the walls and the floors. As he at last drifted off to sleep, he couldn’t help but wonder how the other children here were going to receive him. Yann knew he was different and within the circle of friends his parents had created for him, he’d done just fine….But these children were not likely to be as kind and tolerant as his friends had been….

He woke up the next day and as the morning light streamed in through the dirty windows, he was able to see just how vast the room actually was. He could also see the other boys and they all seemed to be looking at him. One of the boys, much bigger than Yann started to approach him and although Yann didn’t know why, fear began to coil in his belly like a snake. The door opened before the boy reached him, however and faced with a choice at that moment, Yann would have chosen the bigger boy.

In through the door marched the “general” of the orphanage. He walked briskly up to Yann’s bunk with the loose and flabby skin of his body shaking and rolling with each step. Yann didn’t know yet who he was or how bad his reputation fared at St. Josephs, but he was intimidated by the man’s size alone.

“Yann Northman.” It seemed more like a statement than a question, but to be polite, Yann said,

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m Mr. Pratt. I’m the director here at St. Joseph’s orphanage.” The man spoke in a cold, controlled voice. His face seemed to move involuntarily as well as he spoke just above his lip like a nervous twitch or a tic. His black hair and inky little mustache stood out against his almost glowing white skin.

“Hello,” Yann said, casting his eyes down towards the scuffed linoleum floor. Mr. Pratt didn’t return Yann’s greeting. Instead, he launched into his “welcoming” speech which was a litany of rules and regulations. When he finished with that he called another boy over.

“Lyle, this is Yann. You are to proctor him and make sure that he knows where everything is and keeps to the rules until he commits them all to memory.”

“Yes sir,” the other boy said. He looked to be a year or two older than Yann. He had strawberry blonde hair and freckles and he wore a tattered pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt. From what Yann could see of the other boys, it seemed to be the uniform of the place. The larger boy that had started towards him earlier was still giving him the eye. Yann was trying to ignore him, but something about him seemed so threatening.

Over the course of the following weeks, Yann found out that the bigger boy was indeed threatening. He was the leader of a group of boys who liked to fight and went out of their way to make life miserable for the smaller, younger or weaker ones. Yann was not a fighter neither in terms of strength or attitude. He was blessed with a witty astuteness however and he was often forced to use it to avoid or escape a confrontation. He learned a lot of other things about his new “home” as well.

He learned that it was a place with a lot of staff…twenty total nurses and caregivers during the day and five at night, as well as a security officer or two on each shift. In spite of all the people with ample opportunity to care for children that society had all but forgotten, there was very little caring that went on. It seemed as if everyone were out for him or herself only.

The toys were always old and broken and with missing pieces. They were all donated toys and no one ever donated “new” stuff to an orphanage. The coloring books were filled with pages colored by children who were still in possession of their parents and if one was lucky enough to find a page uncolored, he colored it with broken, chipped crayons.  

Personal things were practically non-existent and the reason for that was two-fold. Most of the children had no one to bring them personal items, and the ones who were lucky enough that they did rarely remained in possession of them long before they were stolen. Some of the lucky ones held onto their things by stuffing them underneath their mattresses and sleeping on them at night. Unfortunately that only worked for the boys that were large enough not to be moved or intimidated into moving when one of the bigger boys told him to.

The bathrooms were appalling even to an eleven year old boy. One bathroom was used by twenty-four boys. Some of these boys had never been taught the proper way to use the toilet or clean themselves and the bathrooms were cleaned about as often as they were at the local gas station.

Yann found out that the holidays and birthdays were rarely recognized much less celebrated, everyone wore everyone else’s clothes and the bigger kids bullied the smaller ones. Three different groups of boys constantly fought over who “ruled” which part of the orphanage. The group called “The eagles” had already been in the orphanage for a few years and felt like they’d “earned” the right to rule the entire place. They were too old to get adopted and too young to be on their own. Most of them were big and all of them were mean and it was futile to defy their orders. Yann decided that even if they had been adopted, the poor, unfortunate souls who adopted them would likely be asking for a return.

The other two groups weren’t quite as threatening. The “Hares” and the “Squirrels” were what they called themselves. Their “territory” as they saw it was the toys that they fought over eternally.

Overall, it was not a place that someone might choose to live, and the first chance he got, Yann made up his mind, he was getting as far away from it as he could.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“ESCAPE”

ORPHANAGE

As the days passed, Yann spent every waking hour either practicing self-preservation or plotting his escape. The self-preservation came in the form of avoiding the attention of the gangs, or the wrath of Mr. Pratt. For some reason, the director had taken a disliking to Yann and seemed to have the staff hovering around him at every juncture looking for things to cite him over. Once a citation had been issued, Yann would be summoned in front of Mr. Pratt and Mrs. Pierce, two of the most frightening human beings that he’d ever personally known. The punishment the hefty man doled out was harsh and sometimes cruel, but preferable to Yann than standing before them. To Yann, Pratt’s dark eyes seemed to be harboring a deep-seeded evil behind them, and Mrs. Pierce just appeared to be the most miserable human being on Earth.

Shirley visited often but not Ani. Ani wasn’t even allowed to visit and sometimes when Yann thought about him, he could actually feel his heart breaking. He craved his best friend’s company and he’d reached the point where he was willing to do whatever had to be done to make his way back to him. He started by observing the surveillance cameras. There were only a few and only in common areas. He wrote down their positions and in what rooms they were in inside of his diary that he kept wrapped in his extra sheets and tucked deeply underneath his cot.

The next thing he observed and wrote down was the patrol patterns of the nurses and assistants. They made rounds every half an hour. There was also a nurse on call that sat in a small room near the front exit. When she wasn’t there, a guard sat in her place.

The entrance door was always locked with a key and from what Yann had been able to discover. He knew that all of the staff had keys, but he also knew that there had to be a spare set somewhere. He was sure that Pratt had one, but that would never do. Pratt’s quarters were all the way on the fourth floor and getting up there and back down would be a problem in itself.