There Will Be Lies (23 page)

I fall silent.

There, says Mark.

But I have already heard it – it’s the crying of the Child again, and it’s coming from further ahead, further through the forest, carrying on the night air.

We must carry on, says Mark.

Yes, I say. I start to stuff the bunny into my pocket but Mark shakes his head.

No, he says. The Crone left it there. It’s not safe.

Reluctantly, I lay it back down on the grass. It feels like abandoning something small and helpless and for some reason tears come to my eyes, which I know is ridiculous because it isn’t even alive, it’s a stuffed toy.

Then I stand up straight again. We’re totally alone there in the clearing, the sound of the crying Child a low constant hum.

Mark takes a last look at the rabbit and the cage, shifts uncomfortably, then starts to walk off. But as he turns away, his hand brushes the cage; I don’t think he realises. And … nothing happens. It
doesn’t visibly hurt him, no sparks fly. All around us, the crying of the Child, the real one far off in the distance, continues to resonate, just another part of the world, the water in which we swim.

There are two possibilities, I think: either he lied to me, about the iron. But I don’t really buy it – I saw the fear in his eyes when I said what I wanted to do.

Or, other explanation: he
can
touch iron, he just believes he can’t. But why would he believe that he can’t? It doesn’t make any sense.

Anyway, whatever: right now I just want an answer to my question about what the Child said. I follow him and grab his sleeve.

Don’t walk away from me, I say. Don’t you dare. Not till you’ve told me what she said.

You do not give orders to Coyote, he says, a little haughtily.

Oh to hell with you, I say.

His features soften. It’s not important, he says.

I don’t care. Tell me right now or I swear to God I will leave this place and never come back, and your Crone can go screw herself and that child will have to just keep crying.

Please, just –

No. Tell me.

Mark sighs. She said that you would soon find out what you really were. She said she was sorry.

What I really am? I ask. What’s that?

I can’t tell you.

I stare at him.
What?
Why not?

Because it is not for me to say, he says. It is for someone else.

Then the Dreaming is flooded with light and the clearing disappears for an instant, is replaced by my small white room, the bed,
the basin and a dark figure standing there, hands clasped in front of him.

Just a flash –

And then it’s gone, the stars are back, the forest. Mark standing beside me, looking worried.

Who? I say.

What?

You said it’s for someone else to say, I say. Who?

Mark winces as the world goes bright again, and the cell pops into being around us, glaring white, fluorescent-light illuminated, the man standing there, looking at me.

Him, says Mark.

And then he’s gone and the Dreaming is gone and it’s just me in the brightly lit cell and I look up at the man and –

– I haven’t ever seen the man standing in my cell before – he’s handsome, with greying hair and a strong jaw. He’s wearing a suit that looks tailored. The same guard as before is with him. I sit up in bed and look at them, without moving or saying anything.

The man looks – and this is weird – nervous. He comes a little into the room and then stands, fidgeting. I’m nervous too. Everything my mom taught me about men is that this is bad, this is dangerous.

He must have turned on the light – it’s a bright fluorescent light set in the ceiling above, set in the grey board of the ceiling, and he must have turned it on and woken me and that’s how the Dreaming disappeared.

This
…
ah
… he says.

Oh, yeah, right, I think. Well, that explains it.

He clears his throat.

My name’s Rick Miranda
, he says. Ridiculously, he hands me a card.

I look down at it.

RICK MIRANDA
FLAGSTAFF CITY ATTORNEY

Then a bunch of phone and email information.

I’m the city attorney for Flagstaff
, he says, confirming the details on the card, though I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. I mean, I don’t have a phone or a computer so I’m not going to be calling him or emailing him. I just hold it awkwardly in my hands.

There’s a pause. He seems to be expecting me to say something, but I don’t.

I
…
um
, he continues,
I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying. The psychiatrist thought you were lucid, but you didn’t say anything, so
…

Ah, I think. Not therapist, psychiatrist.

… It’s … if it were up to me, we would do this differently
, continues the city attorney.
I don’t know, find some kind of halfway house for you. People to talk to you. But you haven’t committed a crime, and we can’t just hold you forever
.

I stare at him.

OK
… he says. He comes closer and hunches down, bending his knees, like a father squatting to bring his kids in on some game.

I’m now officially and 100 per cent freaked out. Is Mom dead or something?

The city attorney looks at me, and I see pity in his eyes.

What the –

Your mother is not your mother
, he blurts out.
I don’t know – we don’t know – what she told you. Your name is Angelica Watson and you disappeared from Juneau Hospital in Alaska in 1999. You were being treated for burns to your legs
.

This is my mind, right now:

That’s it. Just blank. Just white, like snow.

Then: Angelica, I think.

Shaylene Cooper, we know now, posed as a nurse and took you away. She moved a whole lot – Albuquerque, right? And Phoenix? And I’m guessing she homeschooled you?

Me:

He scrubs his face with his hands, as if it’s dirty, as if he wants to pummel off his skin, and find something cleaner underneath.

Your parents never stopped believing
, he says.
They paid private detectives. They appeared on TV. They … ah
… He turns away, and so I miss the next bit, I don’t catch it. Then he turns back to me.
They’re here now, in Flagstaff. They’ve rented an apartment. We … we have to release you into their care
.

I think: You can trust him to take order and replace it with chaos.

I think of my life with Mom, the routine, every day the same, apart from Fridays, and then every Friday was the same, anyway. Now a stick of dynamite has been put under all that and it has been blown into the sky.

I think:

THERE WILL BE TWO LIES AND THEN THERE WILL BE THE TRUTH.

I think:

Screw you, Coyote.

And then I don’t think anything.

There’s nothing in my head, just air, but air can build to a high pressure – it’s Boyle’s Law, I learned it with Mom, or with WHOEVER MOM REALLY IS, it’s P
₁
V
₁
= P
₂
V
₂
, which means that if the volume of something contracts then the pressure goes up, and right now the volume of my mind is a tiny tiny thing because there are NO THOUGHTS IN IT, and so I guess that means the pressure is going crazy, needle pushing into red, because –

When I wake up, I’m lying on the bed. Did they put me here?

There’s no one else in the room, and I feel groggy. As if I’ve been sedated. It’s possible: my memory is all fragments, like something delicate dropped on the floor.

For a second I look at the ceiling, the thin grey panels, whorled with dust. Then I think:

My mother is not my mother.

Something like goose bumps, or like the evil twin of goose bumps, goes through me. It’s as if I’m a ghost, because I don’t know who I am any more. It’s like I’ve died.

I suddenly realise:

I don’t even know if my name is really Shelby. I am standing now though I don’t remember doing it, and I think that I’m naked on this floor, naked on the surface of the earth, with nothing to protect me or name me. Nothing to claim me. I’m insubstantial; a wraith.

The door opens and the city attorney comes in, Rick Miranda, a detail I remember, absurdly. I half expect him to walk through me, as if through droplets diffused in the light by a garden hose. But he doesn’t. He walks right up to me and kneels down on the floor.

I blink at him, surprised, but it’s smart of him too, because I had
blades in my mind, turned towards him, and he has taken them from me with that gesture.

I’m sorry
, he says.
I told you too suddenly. I’m new to this. I’m
… He winces, but stays down on one knee.
I’m part of a response team. We had training. But no one said … no one said how you … how you tell. Someone
.

I don’t say anything.

I mean
, he says, like he doesn’t need me to provide the other half of the conversation,
you figure the child knows, right? That they want to go home? That’s what you think when you’re in training, learning how to handle these cases
.

He sighs.

I lead this city’s CART
, he says.
Child Abduction Response Team. There’s a bunch of people on it. Fire department; obviously not needed in this case. Police. Child Protective Services. Me. But we don’t … I mean, this is our first case
.

Another sigh.

What will happen, we’ll try to manage the transition as best we can. Your parents will stay here in Flagstaff for some time, we have yet to determine how long. CPS will visit with you, to make sure you’re OK. There’ll be counselling, which the state will provide
.

The truck that just powered through my chest is halfway through the wall behind me now; there is brick dust and plaster and debris raining all over us, turning us grey, turning us black and blue with bruises, but he doesn’t see any of it.

Slowly, peeling them off my tongue because they don’t want to leave it behind, I say two words with my mouth.

My parents?

He looks at me, and I can see how out of his depth he is, because his eyes are very clearly saying, Oh crap.

Ah
…
yes, um, your birth parents. Custodial parents, we call it
. He’s babbling now.
They’re, ah, here and
–

And nothing, because at that moment something snaps inside me, some essential restraining elasticity, and I am on the other side of the room as if there were no intervening space between, banging on the door, it hurts my hands but I don’t care, and the door won’t open so I hit it with my head, and then there is blood on my fingers, I guess it’s mine, and I fall over because I ran on my bad leg, forgot my CAM Walker was there, the bulk and unfamiliar-still weight of it, and the city attorney is shouting for help, I think, anyway, because of course I just see his mouth moving –

and then there’s a gap in what I’m aware of, and there’s a guard in the room, moving towards me, and I –

I must hit the guard or push him or something because then he is kind of powering at me and wrapping his arms around me, then spinning me around to drag me out of the door, but before he can I whip-lash my head back and feel something crunch, and the guard staggers back and now my hands are free so I shout at the city attorney, I shout,

What are you doing to me? What gives you the right? What gives you the fricking right?

And here’s the thing:

I don’t think. I shout it with my hands.

The guard circles around so that he’s in front of me. There is blood running down from his nose, but his eyes are wide, wide open with shock and his jaw hasn’t dropped because that doesn’t happen in real life, but it’s pretty close.

The city attorney is also standing very still.

Then he turns to the guard, but not so much that I can’t see his lips.
We didn’t know she was
deaf? he says.
Seriously? This wasn’t information anyone thought might be useful?

The psychiatrist is back – he just gave me a shot of something, and now I’m sitting on the bed all loose, all warm, all cotton-wool headed.

The city attorney is speaking to him, and I guess they don’t know that I read lips, or they don’t care, because they are just standing there talking about me.

It doesn’t make sense
, says the city attorney.
The Watsons never said she was deaf
.

Maybe they didn’t know
, says the psychiatrist.

She was two, for God’s sake! They wouldn’t have noticed she wasn’t speaking?

Don’t ask me
, says the psychiatrist.
Maybe she developed it later. But full deafness … I mean, if she is fully deaf … that’s usually congenital
.

We need to get a translator in here, a … you know
…

Sign language interpreter?

Yes
.

The psychiatrist nods and leaves the room. The city attorney has his head in his hands again; I figure he had other plans for this weekend. Maybe he has a cabin too, I think.

He looks so sad, so vulnerable, that I get up and walk very slowly over to him, or kind of hop, actually, because I don’t want to put
weight on my leg. Even moving like this, undignified, it’s like my feet aren’t touching the floor, like there’s a layer of feathers between me and the ground.

I keep walking. He is so far away.

In my mind is moonlight and stars, sunshine and flood. I am a tree, I think. I am rooted to the earth and that is all the mother I need, I move in years not seconds.

He is still a million miles away.

I go through all the seasons in the blink of an eyelid: I am weighed down by apples; I sleep under frozen earth; I burst into green life under warm air.

Then I am there, in front of him, and he flinches away from me, and the guard, who is still there but not important to me, steps forward.

I shape my lips. I can do it – (Mom) taught me, (Mom) would say yes, that’s right, or no, that’s not, here’s how you should tap your teeth, here on the palate is where your tongue goes.