Come Back (12 page)

In a flash I’m buried in squealing teenage girls, all fighting for “a mother hug! Can I have a mother hug!” They take turns hugging the breath out of me: I got Level 3 today, ma’am! Oh, I miss my mom so much! You gotta do the seminars, they’re awesome! You shoulda’ seen me, Miss Fontaine, I was a gutterpunk! Oh, hug me again, Miss Fontaine! Don’t cry, Miss Fontaine, she’s gonna be fine! Please don’t cry, Miss Fontaine, we’ll take good care of her, I promise!”

I come back from a shower to find my clothes gone and a uniform on my bed. If there’s a God, he hates me. Denim pants with an elastic waist and elastic cuffs, a red T-shirt I have to wear tucked in and Day-glo pink fuzzy slippers.

Zuza appears. “It’s time to say good-bye to your mother.”

“Just tell her I said bye and I hate her.”

It doesn’t work, she leads me back to the lobby. I see her waiting for me and already feel that cloud of expected intimacy. She knows there’s nothing to say but talks anyway, some bullshit about thanking her in the end. She ought to be thanking me that I’m not strangling her on the spot. Her lips are moving, she’s crying, but all I feel is a cold fascination at how little I feel for this woman I’m supposed to love. That and an anger I can hardly control.

I’m told I can’t come back tomorrow, it will “set Mia back.” I have to say good-bye now. I’m caught completely off guard, I thought I could visit the rest of the week.

Mia’s brought into the lobby and stands there with wet hair, a scrubbed face, her eyes glassy with hate. I approach her awkwardly and put my arms around her. I try to hold her tightly, but her anger has condensed her into something hard and cold. She has disappeared into herself and left me this statue to hold.

“I’m doing this because I love you too much to lose you,” I whisper to her. “You’re angry now but I know in my heart that you’ll thank us later.”

Without moving a muscle, my stone-child whispers back to me, “No, I won’t, because once I get out of here you will never see me again. Ever.”

I shut the car door and sobs burst out of me that shake the whole car. I cry like I haven’t cried since the Saturday night we found her. I thought the relief from knowing she was locked up safe would mitigate the pain, that it would finally yank out the spearpoint of fear that’s been jabbing so relentlessly in my back for so long.

But finding and losing her all these months, the constant vigil and pursuit, has been like dancing on a fire pit. Bearable only as long as you keep it up. Relief in this situation merely means being able to finally collapse onto hot coals.

“This is Lupe. She will be your buddy and teach you what you need to know.”

Buddy? They can’t be serious, I haven’t heard that word since kindergarten. When my “buddy,” a stocky Latina with bright, black eyes, walks in, chest out, arms swinging, with two fat, brown braids like Princess Leia, I nearly laugh in her face. This girl’s probably never even had a cigarette.

Lupe smiles and rattles off some rules in a thick New York accent.

“You can’t speak at any time unless the staff says so. You gotta line up heel-to-toe and do a head count before leaving any room. You can’t smoke or drink. Until you’re on the upper levels, you’ll never leave this building except for PE or fitness. Looking out the windows is considered run plans, so you can’t look outside. I don’t even remember what the moon looks like.”

The rules all drone into one big “you can’t, you must, you can’t, you must.” I
could give a shit. So far, all the doors have been bolted and the fire exits are guarded, so the windows are the best way to go.

As if reading my mind, Lupe says, “Don’t bother, you’re never left alone and even so, they only open a few inches.”

As she points to the window, I notice a large gang tattoo on her upper arm.

The Santon Hotel is a squat, white splat on a verdant hill sloping into the lake opposite Morava. Nirvana is playing in the lobby. American rock is ubiquitous in this country. My room comes with a lake view and Aretha Franklin. Playing from a radio inside the wall with the knobs sticking out of two crudely made holes. Talk about theft prevention. It won’t turn off and my head is splitting from crying.

English and Czech share no common word roots, not Latin, Greek, Romance, Germanic, nada. Yes = an, ice cream =
zmrzlina,
there you have it. Which renders the phone useless. Back downstairs I go, where I’m reduced to making knob motions and humming “Love in a Pink Cadillac” to the desk clerk, a stunning young woman who knows all about us, we shell-shocked Morava parents. She nods sympathetically and comes with me to do whatever it is one does to turn off a Czech wall.

Normally, I’d be amused by this, but I’m so cracked and fragile now it’s just aggravating, it feels like a punishment, a further indictment. My life as a Santon Hotel room, nothing works. For some reason, I think of Anne Lamott, the “cranky Christian” whose books have been pressed on me by a friend who thinks her spiritual wisdom and humor will help. The things she endured, the accoutrements of addiction—vomit, snot, fear, poverty—would have made me a pagan, a witch, an atheist at least. I can hear Annie now, exhorting me in her best church voice to do what she always does when troubled, “Pray, child!”

What, I have to tell Him? Like it isn’t obvious even for the non-omnipotent? Some deity.

Well, now I’ve done it, I’ve snapped at God.

“Dear God, forget I said that, but more important could you watch over Mia, please knock some sense into her before she—”

Stop, this is stupid, disrespectful. I have no idea how to pray properly, but I’m pretty sure it’s not in the epistolary manner. Once again, Claire, and this time at least bow your head and use proper language: Lord, cleanseth
my child of evil substances. Maketh her thoughts of me not vile, that she may gaze upon my countenance with gladness, for it is not right nor holy that a little lamb should desire to killeth the ewe that hath nursed her.

I hateth this. I sound like Latka’s half-wit sister auditioning Shakespeare. Religion’s supposed to be a comfort; instead, it’s turning out to be a skilled profession for which I am singularly unqualified.

I feel so throbby and irritable, I leave to take a walk around the lake. Fifteen minutes later, I realize my mother was right. Czechs really don’t smile much and they don’t have a taboo against staring the way Americans do. My sisters and I always thought it was just her. Growing up, we’d be embarrassed when she’d stare at someone. “What do you people have against looking at someone?” she’d huff. “You people” being Americans, like her children, for example. She also smiles less than most. “You Americans are always smiling. Only a fool smiles all the time.”

Well, I’m sure as hell not smiling today, and I don’t dress like a typical American tourist, so why is everyone rudely staring at me? I stop by a woman my age to make restaurant gestures, but she quickly shakes her head and hurries away like I have the plague. This happens two more times. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Is misery like drugs, exuded from the pores? Do they think it’s contagious?

Then it hits me that, yes, I have experienced this. Every time I’ve skirted a smelly homeless person and avoided their gaze. As if their misery were contagious. Surely, they felt my unease and rejection, just as surely as I now feel the Czech’s. Do I have to get this lesson now, TODAY?

Another realization makes me feel even worse. The beggars I avoided could have been how Mia ended up had I not found her. How she still could end up being if she escapes or if this place doesn’t help her. Hustling for drug money, sleeping in hovels, dying young or getting old before her time. It never entered my mind that all those desperate vagrants, the dead-eyed women with rotted feet and scorched, peeling faces, were once someone’s laughing, bright-eyed children. Like my child.

The setting sun has made the lake glitter and I have such an urge to wade in, to feel the cold water on my legs and the warm sun on my face. To short-circuit my emotions with physical sensation.

I remember Mia’s laughing third-grade face on a lake like this one, canoeing at Mammoth. She was paddling and flinging her oar from one
side of the canoe to the other, giggling hysterically, soaking us both. My God, that girl loved to laugh.

Happy memories are almost worse. I feel like my screenplay’s protagonist, who found herself in a strange, unwelcoming land, where nothing held promise or tenderness, where everything, even the land itself, sang to her of her lost child.

Dinner is a bowl of something so oily I can see my reflection in it, served with six long, thin rolls. If my mother saw this she would die—“You call this food? Where are the dark, leafy greens?”

This is the first time I get to see who I’m stuck in here with. A dozen pimple-faced, silent girls in the same ugly uniform. They’re my age, a few Asians, no blacks, one Latina, Lupe, the rest Anglo. A lot of them are pretty, even with no makeup and awful haircuts. One girl catches my eye and smiles at me. I stare back—what the fuck is there to smile about?

Suddenly, a loud Southern drawl fills the room. “Well, hello there! I’m Zig Ziglar!” Where Zig is coming from, I don’t know, but his booming voice informs us that we “have the seeds of greatness!” The girls just keep on eating in silence as if nothing happened—some of them actually start taking notes! Whatever wrong my mother thinks I’ve done her is nothing compared to this.

When no one’s looking the girl next to me points to my untouched rolls and looks at me questioningly. I slip her all six. I have no appetite anyway.

The lakeside restaurant is a Heidi-like affair nestled in the trees. A chorus of birds chirps back up to Barry Manilow and everyone stares at me when I enter. Big surprise. “Excuse me,” I say politely, for lack of a better greeting. A surprised waiter hurries over. “You are American! Hallo! I speak English, leetle.” I will learn two things tonight. One, an American here is always a Morava parent; the exchange rate and a broken heart means a tip equal to a night’s pay. They’ll trip over me the rest of the week. Two, when they say English a leetle, it is, in reality, far leetler.

Carp is a national dish, so I draw a fish. “Kapr, yes, good very!” He assures me no fried! Fresh yes total
never fried
! He bows and vanishes. He returns quickly with my fish, beaming. It’s been fussed over, beautifully garnished. And very deeply fried.

After so long without food, the smell of the grease makes me queasy. I ask for a bag to take it back to my room.

A handsome young man at the next table who’s been observing me leans over. He looks at me like I’m the Antichrist and sneers at me, actually curls his lip at me. At this point, I’m not offended, I’m actually interested, in an anthropological kind of way.

“American culture is
sheet
.” As in “shit.” He leans back, crossing his arms, quite satisfied with himself, rolling his eyes as Madonna’s “Vogue” plays. He’s wearing torn Levis, Nike knock-offs, and a black Metallica T-shirt.

You picked the wrong night, kid.

“Well, that’s true,” I say, politely, “my country does make a lot of shit. You seem to like eating it.”

I leave a great, big American tip and feed my fresh yes kapr to the stray dog in the parking lot of the Santon Hotel.

“It’s your complexion.”

“My what?”

“They probably think you’re a Gypsy,” my mother tells me in her I-told-you-so voice, except she never told me. “They think all Gypsies steal.”

“What, so they think I’m going to pick their pocket?”

“Well,” replies my mother the communist, “Czechs avoid giving them jobs or apartments, what do they expect, serves them right. They couldn’t get away with that when the Russians were there.”

“They couldn’t do a lot of things when the Russians were here, Ma. Like leave.”

“Don’t start with me. It’s after midnight there. Go to sleep. Wear a hat. And don’t smile so much, they’ll think you’re an idiot.”

I haven’t been in bed this early since I was ten. My leg is shaking and even though I’m shivering, the sheets are soaking with my sweat. I feel like a colony of ants is crawling around under my skin. I have to get OUT OF HERE!

Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mia, calm down. There’s always someone who can get stuff and you’ll find them tomorrow. Just stay calm like you did at that hellhole in Utah until the right moment. I start taking deep breaths, like my mom told me to do before tests.

Mom. I see her as clearly as if she were in front of me. How she looked when
she said good-bye, my iron-willed goddess of a mother, bent over, shaky and small. I want to console this woman, so unlike the mother I’ve always known, tell her to give up. I want to tell her to move on with her own life and maybe I’ll eventually come back. She looked so pitiful today, so desperately hopeful. I feel a pang when I picture those big sad eyes swimming in the hollows I’ve carved. I did this to her.

But fuck her for doing this to me.

It’s after midnight, but I’m too antsy to sleep and I’ve already called Morava twice to make sure she hasn’t escaped. Around 2 a.m., my brain launches into its new favorite game—obsessing over the moment our fates changed. Finding the exact second in time, the One Thing. Do I think that finding the tip of our history’s funnel will narrow the focus of my guilt?

An event of such magnitude should be obvious, but it’s tricky, the choices are many. Such things are always and only visible in hindsight. Which means that all of our choices are carried out ignorant of their true significance, their final, lasting impact.

The exact second in time my hindsight focuses on tonight is this—that my child is imprisoned here because I stood in a doorway thirteen years ago and didn’t understand the questions of a sad, puzzled monster who wanted some explanation, some reason why decent people found sex with children a problem. Because I didn’t see his transformation any more than I saw hers, till too late.