Ghost Girl (17 page)

“There’s still time left before the bell rings, Jeremiah. If you hurry, I’m sure you can still have a turn at kick ball.”

“But—” Still the shocked expression on his face.

I eyed him. “But you’ll need to go right
now.
”

Getting the message, Jeremiah zoomed off.

Jadie attempted to zoom off, too, but I caught her by the shoulder. “I think we need a few words.”

Leaning down, I scooped up the puppy and cuddled it a moment. Jadie’s eyes were wide and wary, their pupils dilated.

“Last spring you put your mouth on Reuben’s penis. I explained then that that was a private place on Reuben and we don’t do those sorts of things because of it. At the time I wanted to think a bit of silliness had come over you, because I know boys and girls can get pretty silly sometimes about things like this. Now I’m beginning to get concerned that maybe there’s more to it.”

“I was just playing,” Jadie muttered and lowered her head.

“I’m not angry. And I’m not going to get angry, so you don’t have to worry about that. I am concerned, though, Jadie. When little girls do something like you were just doing, it’s usually because they’ve seen it done before. Sometimes, someone older shows them or does it to them, and so they know.”

Jadie sighed wearily.

“It’s not your fault, Jadie. I’m
not
angry. But if someone is making you touch the private places on his or her body or is touching you like that, it’s important to tell me. Or, if not me, then some other adult you can trust.”

Jadie shifted restlessly from foot to foot. I studied her, small and slight, her long dark hair rumpled over her shoulders. Even in her bent, deformed state, there was a brooding attractiveness about her.

“If something like this is going on,” I said, “chances are, someone has told you not to tell. Chances are, they’ve said something like, if you do tell, you’ll get in trouble. Or that people will think it’s your fault it happened. Or that no one will believe you. Or that you’ll get taken away from your parents or some other equally horrible thing. When a grown-up is doing something wrong, that is the sort of thing they will say to you, because they want you to stay quiet and not tell, because they know they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. They’re lying to keep you from getting help. But if someone is touching you or making you touch them, you need help. You’re just a little girl, and these are grown-up matters. You need a grown-up to help you sort it out.”

“But I wasn’t doing anything,” she said. “I was just fooling around. Nothing else. I was just playing.”

I fell into frustrated silence.

Jadie shrugged in what seemed an annoyed, put-upon way. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I won’t do it again.”

“That’s not the point. Jadie, I want to
help
you.”

She shifted her feet again, kicked a dead leaf aside with the toe of her shoe, and then sighed very heavily. When I didn’t say anything further, she finally looked up. “Can I go now?” she asked.

Disgruntled, I stared at her, willing her to talk to me.

“Please? I’m missing my playtime. I said I’m sorry, so can I go?”

At last I flapped a hand at her. “Yes, go ahead.”

T
hursday afternoon, Arkie Peterson dropped by. Like so many of her visits, this one was completely unexpected. She was wearing an unusual combination of calfskin vest and long, dangly rhinestone earrings that gave her the sort of tarty cowgirl appearance only Arkie seemed to be able to carry off and still not hurt her professional image.

“How’s it going?” she asked, sitting down on the edge of the table where I was working.

I rolled my eyes. “You found me a corker in Brucie.”

She grinned gleefully. “I told you last spring I’d picked a winner.”

“Ever notice how the really weird ones get their names reduced to silly diminutives?” I remarked, rising to get a pen from the canister on top of the bookshelf. “Like Brucie instead of Bruce? I’ve had a load of them. Dirkie. Cliffie. Jamesie.”

“Jadie,” Arkie added.

“Yes,
Jadie.
”

“Hoo-hoo,” said Arkie knowingly. “Enough corks for a winery there, eh?”

“I’m going to need to have a long talk with you about her.”

“Ah, wrangling for another expense account dinner at Tottie’s?”

“Wrangling for a chance to have you sitting still in one place for twenty minutes. I’ve
got
to talk to you. I mean really talk. Seriously. And privately.”

Arkie sobered. “Why? What’s the matter?”

“I think she’s being sexually abused.”

“Really? Has she said something?”

“Not in so many words, no, but one can put two and two together. Something very strange is up with this girl.”

“Is this all from that incident with Reuben in the spring?”

“Well, I found that unsettling, but I think I could have accepted it as a one-off incident. Kids are sexual, whether we like to think it or not, and disturbed kids can get pretty creative in that realm. But it’s adding things up.” I then told Arkie about the incident with the puppy.

Arkie frowned in revulsion.

“She was talking about sucking milk out of a penis, definitely a penis and not a teat, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to substitute ‘milk’ for ‘semen.’ Your average eight-year-old wouldn’t come up with that on her own. Most kids that age are appalled by the idea of sexual intercourse, much less fellatio.”

Folding her hands together in front of her, Arkie rested her thumbs against her lips in a pensive pose. “All it takes, though, is one blue flick. Who’s to say her daddy doesn’t have a whole porn library sitting at home on the shelf? Who says she’s not sitting up at eleven-thirty at night watching the wrong TV station? Kids know more these days, Torey. They have access to a lot more information than we had.”

“I don’t dispute that, but there’s a big difference between seeing it and doing it. Even Jeremiah was horrified by what she intended, and God alone knows what he sees at home. And that’s the point. It’s even more than doing it, it’s
wanting
to do it.”

Arkie fell silent.

“I realize there’s nothing much I can do at this point. If she doesn’t make a specific accusation, I know I can’t push. I’m all too aware of the danger of ‘leading questions’ and ‘eliciting information’ and all that crap, if something does come out and it does go to court, but I’m starting to get very worried about this kid. To use a hoary old hippy phrase, I really do get bad vibes.”

“Yeah,” said Arkie, “I can appreciate that now. I’ll make a note in her file, and I’ll have a browse through all the old notes to see if there’s anything mentioned that might contribute. Otherwise, I think you’re following the best path. If she is being abused, either we need concrete evidence or she has to say something outright; so it’s eyes and ears open and let’s see if we can ask the right questions.”

“Yes,” I replied, but, in fact, what I’d been hoping for were the right answers.

During the following week, just after afternoon recess, all of us were seated around the table in the classroom. Reuben, Jadie, and Jeremiah were doing written work from their folders; Philip was cutting and pasting pictures from a magazine as part of his project on foods; I was working with Brucie on color identification. Indeed, we were just reaching the stage where, as a class, we could all sit down and work together and genuinely accomplish something in the process, so I was finding the peace blissful. Then, Jeremiah started making a quiet scrabbling noise with his fingers on the underside of the table.

“Jeremiah, please finish your work,” I said. A pause ensued and then the scrabbling again. “I’m going to get you,” he whispered playfully to Philip, sitting across from him.

“Jeremiah,” I said, a little more firmly.

He brought his hand back up onto the table and feigned work.

This time he laid a sheet of paper over the top of his hand and then wiggled his fingers. “It’s one of them tarantula spiders,” he whispered with mock malevolence and made the paper edge toward Philip. “One of them great, big, hairy boogers and he’s coming to get you.”

Jadie’s eyes went wide and dark as she watched Jeremiah’s obscured hand. Reaching over quickly, I snatched the paper off, exposing his creeping fingers. “Silly boy,” I said to her. “Just pretending.”

Showing Jeremiah up didn’t stop him. His fingers scrambled the rest of the way across the table to Philip. “Coming to getcha!” he shrieked and then, with the lightning swiftness Jeremiah was renowned for, he leaped over the table and had Philip playfully by the throat.

“Jeremiah!
I mean it. Settle down. This is your last warning.”

Rolling his eyes, Jeremiah settled back into his seat. “Probably just say that ’cause I’m an Indian kid. Wouldn’t always be getting so mad at some kid with white skin.”

“White, brown, black, or purple with pink polka dots, I’ll get after you, if you keep disrupting everything. It’s not your skin I’m worried about, it’s your actions.”

“Whew, listen to this lady, man,” he muttered. “Not even worried about our skins.”

We returned to our activities for perhaps three or four minutes before Jeremiah’s fingers began to wiggle yet again. With exaggerated effort, he tried to control them, falling off his chair and pinning them to the floor.

“I’m
trying
to, man,” he said to my unvoiced disapproval and got back up on his seat, “but these fingers, they got a life of their own.” And with this comment, he wriggled them again, running them up his other arm and leaping them over onto Jadie’s shoulder.

Jadie jumped with a scream from her chair. “Get him
away
from me!” she cried. “Make him
stop!
” Before I could react, however, she had bolted from her chair. Scuttling across the room and into the cloakroom, she slammed the door behind her. I struggled to catch up with her, but before I could, I heard the key turn in the lock.

“Jadie? Jadie, let me in.”

No answer.

Gently, I tried the doorknob to make sure it was actually locked, but I didn’t rattle it, in case I frightened her further. “Would you please let me in?”

No reply.

“It’s only me, Jadie. Let me in, please.”

Nothing.

At last I turned and went back to the table, where the boys sat, wide-eyed, watching.

“How come she did that?” Jeremiah asked.

“How come do you think?” I replied irritably.

He looked at the door a moment, then wearily shook his head. “You know, you can probably hate me for saying this, but you’re really not such a hotshot teacher. You’re supposed to be making it so they don’t keep thinking there’s crazies in here. Now she’s gone and locked herself in the closet.”

“She just wants to be alone for a bit.”

Jeremiah frowned and ran a hand through his dark hair, making it stand straight up. “Just that last year she didn’t talk, but there really wasn’t nothing wrong with her otherwise. Now she talks and you find out she’s fucking crazy. And I hate to say it, but that’s probably your fault.”

Throughout the remainder of the afternoon, Jadie stayed in the cloakroom. The occasional muted thunk of movement passed through the wall to us, but otherwise, there was no indication she was in there. Certainly, there was no indication she was coming out. At last, the going-home bell rang.

“What the fuck we gonna do now, lady?” Jeremiah asked. “We don’t got no coats or nothing.”

Rising, I approached the door. “Jadie? It’s time to open up. That was the bell, and the boys need their things so they can go home.”

Beyond the door there was no sound whatsoever.

“Gonna have to break the door down, lady.”

“Open up, Jadie. The buses are waiting. The boys need their things.”

Reuben, distressed by this change in the usual routine, began to cry.

“AHHHHHHH!” shrieked Jeremiah with ear-splitting loudness. He gave the air a martial arts-style kick. “Gonna bust that door right down!”

“No, you are not. Now cool it,” I said and grabbed him.
“Jadie!”
I called through the door.

Nothing.

I knew I could get in there if I had to, as Mr. O’Banyon had a master key for all the doors, but I was reluctant to call him up. A major part of Jadie’s and my relationship revolved around the security of these doors, and I didn’t want to damage her faith in them. On the other hand, I was growing desperate.

“Now, if I have to, I
will
open that door, Jadie,” I said in my sternest, most definite teacher’s voice. “Or else you can. And I think it’d be a much better idea if you opened it.”

At last came the soft sound of the key turning in the lock. The latch snicked and the door came open. Jadie, her eyes red and puffy, stood forlornly inside the cloakroom.

“Jeremiah,” I said, “pop out and see if Mrs. McLaren is still in the hallway with her boys and girls. Ask her if she’d be kind enough to see that you and the others get down to your rides.” Going into the cloakroom, I quickly snatched up the boys’ wraps and lunchboxes and Reuben’s ever-present Dutch girl cookie jar top.