For Love of Audrey Rose (16 page)

The next day was Saturday, and Janice took the bus up Riverside Drive. She crossed to the northeast, just past the park, until she was in Spanish Harlem. Though it was cold, the day was ferociously bright, and it hurt her eyes to look down the crowded streets. Radios blared music out of the pawnshops. There was not another white person in view.

On 118th Street were a series of small grocery stores, a laundromat, and a Pentecostal church. Opposite them was an enormous block of public housing. Janice looked in vain for the numbers. If there was a 385, the house number had long ago been ripped from the door.

She crossed the street and went into the first entrance. A tattered sign read 200 - 300. The hall stank of mildew. Overhead were harsh, rubbery sounds, as though a child were ramming a wheeled toy repeatedly over a linoleum floor. Graffiti everywhere denoted death and crude love for whites. Janice walked slowly to a door down the hall and listened. A radio played disco music inside, the announcer speaking excitedly in a liquid Spanish.

She knocked.

When the door opened, a slight man with a pencil-thin mustache stood before her in his undershirt. He retreated, embarrassed before her, and then defiantly stood his ground.

“Is Mrs. Hernandez here?” she asked hesitantly.

He shook his head and prepared to close the door.

“Upstairs?” she asked.

He glared blankly at her.

“Um,
donde es Senora Hernandez?
”

The man shrugged, smiled politely but firmly, and gently closed the door.

Just then, two boys, aged fifteen or sixteen, came up from the basement, carrying lead pipes. They stopped and stared at her.

To ease the awkwardness of being stared at, Janice asked, “Do you speak English?”

The taller of the two stepped closer, his hand fingering the rusted edges of the pipe.

“I’m looking for the Hernandez family,” Janice said.

The boys continued to stare at her, as though wondering what had brought her to this block of flats. The shorter of the two looked her up and down until she felt self-conscious.

“Hernandez,” Janice repeated.

“Upstairs,” said the tall one.

“What?”

“Upstairs. We take you.”

Janice did not like the way he said it, nor the way his friend or brother kept looking at her. The taller one pointed to the stairs and smiled.

“Come on,” he said. “We go upstairs.”

“Could you just tell me which floor?”

“No. You go. We go. We show you.”

“Yes,” seconded the other boy. “Hernandez family is upstairs.”

“No,” Janice said slowly. “I’ll go there myself.”

The taller boy stepped forward, a bit angry. “Luis. Go help the lady. Bring Mrs. Hernandez down.”

“Really,” she protested, “it’s not necessary.”

But the other boy was already climbing the stairs, two at a time. While Janice waited, curious, she noticed that the tall boy kept smiling at her.

“Luis bring Mrs. Hernandez,” he confided.

“I’m very grateful.”

After several minutes, two pairs of footsteps circled down the stairwell, coming down from at least the third floor. Luis appeared, casting an ambivalent glance at Janice, and behind him was a tall, black-haired woman, wiping her hands on a towel. The woman’s hair was so black, it gleamed an almost blue. She studied Janice closely, then braced herself.

“Yes? What you want?” she asked in an even voice.

“Are you Mrs. Hernandez?”

“What you want with my sister?” the woman asked suspiciously.

“I’d like to see Juanita.”

The woman’s features softened, then immediately hardened again.

“You’re from Welfare?” she said, casting anxious glances at Janice’s face, hands, and clothes.

“No, I’m a friend. That is, I’d like to be a friend.”

“I no understand.”

Janice smiled, and a small laugh of frustration escaped her.

“If I could explain, I would,” she said. Then, more slowly, “I want very much to see Juanita. It has to do with my own daughter.”

Puzzled, the woman wiped her hands, though they were certainly dry. She shrugged.

“You work for the city?” she asked, once again.

“No. I’m a writer,” she lied.

“Well, if you want to come up, follow me.”

The four of them went into the stairwell. The plaster showed in rough oblongs along the wall, where sharp implements had gouged holes and then enlarged them. At the first floor the two boys left, running down the corridor. Janice followed the woman into a narrower, darker stairwell.

“My sister not feel so well,” the woman said. “So you not stay a long time. Okay?”

“Yes, okay.”

On the fourth floor, the woman walked quickly, but soundlessly, down the cluttered corridor. A far door with a cracked glass window let in a gray, dirty light over the tricycle and boxes of woolen cloth left for unknown reasons in the middle of the hall. Crayon marks left long trails where a child had run the length of the corridor with first one color and then another.

Janice followed the woman into the doorway of a small apartment. They stood in the kitchen. On the stove an enormous aluminum pot bubbled with a thick sauce. Small laundry hung from white cord that led into the tiny living room. A crucifix hung on the wall.

“Rosa!”

A short woman, gray twined neatly into her black hair, came into the kitchen, shuffling on bedroom slippers. She stopped when she saw Janice.

For a long time, Janice looked at her, as though there might be some common bond between them. Then she realized it was foolish, and she smiled, extending her hand.

Rosa Hernandez looked at her sister, who shrugged; then, she took Janice’s hand and smiled back. The woman had uncommonly pretty features, Janice thought, diminutive, oval-shaped, and her eyes were brilliant and black.

“She come to see Juanita,” the sister put in.

“Juanita? But why? She’s fine.”

“No, no, Mrs. Hernandez. It’s not like that. I want to see her for myself. For my own sake.”

Mrs. Hernandez smiled, confused. The sister hovered at the stove protectively, stirring the sauce.

“Juanita is sleeping,” Mrs. Hernandez said. “Maybe you sit down and tell me why you come.”

Janice sat at a small, wobbling table with a brown vinyl cloth cover. Mrs. Hernandez folded her hands opposite her and waited patiently.

“Why you want to see Juanita?” she asked again.

“I’m writing an article for a magazine. About growing up in this building.”

Mrs. Hernandez laughed.

“It’s not very interesting here. Why you don’t write about other people?”

“Well, you’re curious about other people, aren’t you? Other people are curious about you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Mrs. Hernandez spoke more out of modesty than objection. Janice marveled at the simplicity of life in the broad stone building, where suspicion flourished, but trust did, too. It would never occur to Mrs. Hernandez to ask for credentials, for the name of the mythical newspaper Janice wrote for, or anything else. Janice came from the great outer world, and therefore, what she said could not be questioned.

“But it’s true, Mrs. Hernandez,” Janice said. “Haven’t you read the articles on the Lithuanians in New York City? It’s part of the same series.”

Mrs. Hernandez laughed, a modest, embarrassed laughter.

“What’s your name?” Mrs. Hernandez asked.

“Janice Templeton.”

The name meant nothing to Mrs. Hernandez. Nevertheless, she held Janice to be a celebrity of sorts, and found it difficult to hold her own in conversation. In the next room, the sister turned the television on softly.

“Well, what you want to know about Juanita?”

“We could start from the beginning. Was she born here?”

“I was in the hospital. But yes, I was living here.”

“And the birth was normal?”

“What you mean?”

“There were no problems? She was a normal baby?”

Mrs. Hernandez thought, picturing what she remembered of the delivery room. She shrugged.

“I think she was a little—yellow—in the skin.”

“Jaundice?”

“Yes. The doctor said it was nothing to worry about.”

“And she’s not been sick since then?”

“Oh, no. Juanita is a fine girl.”

In the living room, the sister turned up the volume of the television set. Mrs. Hernandez brought a plate of a flat bread, not quite a tortilla, with a sugary coating.

“And she’s lived here all this time?” Janice asked.

“Yes.”

Janice leaned forward slightly.

“Does she ever—change? Ever seem to become different—?”

“Juanita? No. Always the same.”

“She never cries for no reason?”

Mrs. Hernandez laughed. “All babies cry for no reason.”

There was a slight stirring sound beyond the living room. Mrs. Hernandez looked up brightly.

“She’s waking up. You like to see her?”

“Yes. Yes, I would.”

Smiling, Mrs. Hernandez stood up, and Janice followed her over the linoleum floor into the living room, past the sister who leaned around them to see the television screen, and into a bedroom where the shades were drawn. It was dark, dank with the smell of the baby, and the large bed beyond was still unmade.

In the crib a small girl lay. The ears were already pierced with two shining brass studs, though she could not have been old enough to more than crawl awkwardly on the floor. The tousled black hair was exactly as Janice had imagined. But the eyes were filmy, dark but not black, more a kind of deep gray that was almost brown in the gloom of the room. Janice stepped slowly to the crib and peered down.

“She’s very quiet baby,” Mrs. Hernandez whispered.

The infant looked upward at Janice. The tiny eyes seemed familiar, a spark of recognition leaped outward. Janice recoiled.

“Pick her up,” Mrs. Hernandez said.

“What?”

“Go ahead. She no cry.”

Hesitantly, Janice edged her hands and arms under Juanita and brought the child up out of the crib. The filmy eyes closed for an instant and then opened. Janice slowly removed the white blanket from the soft, small neck.

“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Hernandez asked.

“No. I was looking for something.”

“She seems to know you. Look. Her hands grab for your hair.”

The small hands curled and uncurled, delicately, tenderly, twining into the black hair at Janice’s temple. Janice looked again at the smooth neck. There was no scar.

“She’s so light,” Janice said, smiling. “My own daughter was much heavier.”

“I think, because she was born small,” Mrs. Hernandez said, taking pleasure in watching Janice warm to the girl.

Janice gently lowered the girl and tucked the blankets back around her neck. The girl was lively, displaying a kind of quick intelligence that absorbed things instantly.

“You say she was born small?” Janice said.

“Yes. Five pounds. Just under.”

“Was she premature?”

“Two weeks.”

Janice turned slowly. “Two weeks?”

“Si. Suddenly, Juanita wanted to come, so I had my labor.”

“She wanted to come?”

“All of a sudden. A bad day in February. I had to take the bus with my sister and the bus got stuck in the snow. It was a very easy thing to have her. I wasn’t sick, I no fall down. And she come.”

Janice felt perspiration forming on her forehead. She looked down again at Juanita. The child appeared to be looking back into her eyes, looking into her, into the thunderous thoughts of her own brain.

On an impulse, Janice slowly removed the blanket and gently picked her up once again, her eyes exploring the soft, perfect neck and chest.

Juanita’s small hands went to her throat.

“What—what is she doing?” Janice asked, turning quickly.

“She do that all the time. Try to touch her throat.”

“It’s like she’s choking—”

“No. I take her to the doctor. He look at her and say, ‘this is one fine girl, Mrs. Hernandez.’”

Juanita twisted and turned, trying to get out of Janice’s arms. Again and again, the tiny fingers clutched at her own throat, and the tiny legs kicked futilely against the blankets.

Mrs. Hernandez laughed pleasantly.

“I take her now,” she said.

In Mrs. Hernandez’s arms, the girl became subdued; the kicking stopped; the small hands relaxed. Janice grew dizzy.

“I—I think I should be going, Mrs. Hernandez—”

“Yes?”

“I’m very glad to have come today. I’ll come back again.”

“Any time. I don’t go out much.”

Mrs. Hernandez followed her back through the living room, into the kitchen, where they said good-bye.

9

J
anice walked down the flight of stairs, faster down the next flight, faster, until she practically ran from the housing block. She stumbled across 118th Street and waited for the bus. It finally came, and she took one last look at the building, and at the third floor where Juanita lay in the security of her mother’s arms.

Riverside Drive, its broad pavement snaking down by the river, looked more real as the bus took her down into the better parts of town. Des Artistes rose like a haven on Sixty-seventh Street, though Janice no longer believed in havens.

She went to the bar and did not stop until the fourth glass of white wine. Then she felt sick and went upstairs, slept until the late night and awoke with a start on the couch. Sounds were stirring, cruel sounds. Were they in her head? She rose. Upstairs on the landing, Ivy’s door had drifted open. Inside, a soft echo of tiny feet, scampering in pain. Was she truly hearing a mouselike voice, twittering in horror and an insatiable need to escape, calling on her mother instead of her father? Janice shook her head violently. She felt as fragile as glass.

Juanita couldn’t be Ivy!
Surely it was all roaring delusions and guilts—a premature birth, clutching the throat— It meant nothing,
nothing!
she repeated to herself. Having gone to the Hernandez apartment was an act of madness, and it had the predictable results. Gradually, but surely, she was being drawn into the nightmare world of Bill’s sickness. She resolved not to let it happen. She would fight it, maintain her balance, her sense of reason. And somehow strive to divert Bill from the final, horrible destination his research was inexorably leading him toward.