Lucy (3 page)

For the next hour Lucy recited stories and poetry from memory, and gradually other passengers crowded around to listen. For her finale, Lucy recited “Jabberwocky,” by Lewis Carroll. Then she announced that she was tired and promptly fell asleep again.

Jenny watched Lucy sleeping in her filthy clothes. David asked, “Are you quite sure about this, then? Taking her home with you?”

“No. Far from it. But when I found her in the jungle, afraid, alone … her father shot … I don’t know. It was just horrible, David. And now this: Reciting Shakespeare and Kipling? What am I supposed to do? Abandon her?”

“Most people would.”

“I don’t think I can. She reminds me of the girls at the shelter where I volunteer at home. I’d always be wondering, you know.”

David seemed to fall into deep thought for a moment. “Come to think of it,” he said, “there are a couple of chaps who might help us out with that passport.”

“Who’s that?”

“Two SAS types who owe me a rather large favor. I helped to get them out of a Congolese prison. I take it you’ve never seen the inside of a Congolese prison.”

“I think I’d remember.”

“Well, they were thorough thugs and frankly belonged in a jail of some sort if you ask me. But when we’d sprung them, they made a point of telling me that if I ever needed anything—the more irregular, the better—I was to look them up. I quite think they meant it, too.”

Heathrow was swarming with African refugees, many in native dress, along with throngs of escaping businessmen clamoring for preferential treatment. David took advantage of the confusion to press Jenny and Lucy to the head of the line. He flashed his diplomatic passport at a functionary, who gave no more than a cursory glance at Jenny and Lucy before waving them on.

Once they were safely through customs David made a phone call and a car came to take them to an accommodation address in a London slum called Heygate Estate. The car stopped before a towering concrete apartment building with torn curtains billowing out of broken windows. The apartment was even more foul than Jenny had guessed it would be.

“I’m sorry about this,” David said. “But it’s where these people work, for the sake of security. I promise we’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.”

Jenny examined the small apartment and found that the bath and shower were unusable. Fortunately, the toilet worked.

A man arrived a few hours later, a large stooped figure who might have been some sort of city inspector in his cheap suit and threadbare trench coat. “Give us the old passport,” he told David. The man studied it for a moment and then looked at Lucy, who was squatting against the wall, her arms wrapped around her muddied knees. He crossed the room and knelt before her.

“There, then,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot, eh?” Lucy said nothing. “Cat got your tongue, eh? Well, all right.” He reached into his pocket, brought out a small colorful plastic bag, and offered it to Lucy. She merely stared at it. “Go on then. It’s gummy bears. Big fan of gummy bears, I am.” At last Lucy took the bag and held it in her hand.

The man stood up, chuckling to himself. He pulled a wooden chair up against a wall, scraping it across the floor. “Sit there, please.” Jenny rushed over and wiped the dirt off of Lucy’s face with a wet cloth. She straightened her hair as best she could. Then the man took Lucy’s photograph with a digital camera and went away.

David went out and came back with takeout Chinese food. Jenny ate voraciously, but Lucy just looked at her plate. When Jenny encouraged her to eat, all Lucy said was, “Am I going to be all right?”

“Yes, dear, you will. You’re coming home with me, and then we’ll find your family.” Jenny glanced up to see David’s skeptical frown. She shrugged at him and shook her head.

David left them alone for the night. Jenny thought she heard Lucy cry out in her sleep but was too tired to verify it.

The next day David returned and another man arrived a short time later. He looked like a truck driver in jeans and a flannel shirt. He handed David a brand-new British passport wrapped in tissue paper. “You never saw this,” he said. “And you never met me. I think we’re even now, mate.”

“Absolutely. Super. Thanks.” But the man had already turned on his heel to leave.

David helped Jenny to get money wired from the States for plane tickets. Then he drove Jenny and Lucy to the airport and stood with them at the curb amid the roaring buses and taxicabs.

“David. Please promise me that you’ll help find Lucy’s family.”

“Of course.”

“She must have someone. You’ll do that, won’t you?”

“Absolutely.” He turned to Lucy and said, “You’re a very lucky young lady.” Then he hugged Jenny and got back in the car. Fifteen hours later, Jenny and Lucy were in Harry’s car, arriving in front of Jenny’s ivy-covered house in a quiet suburban community north of Chicago.

3

LUCY STARED UP
at the moon and thought: It looks so pale and weak here. Flat, not round. The stars and planets looked as if they were being smothered in the fog that rose from the new place in which she found herself. She watched the fog rise all night long and then before morning saw the moon dissolve and heard the dogs begin to bark. The dogs frightened her.

When Jenny had gone to sleep, Lucy had opened the window to let the air in. She removed her clothes and lay out on the bed and gazed at the sky through the trees. When the moon swung into view she felt a sadness in her stomach, an aching for home. She mused on her home, thinking that she’d likely never see it again. She felt a longing to drink in the aroma, the million scents of flower and dung, of water and life, of the exploding growth, the eternal rot. She wanted to hear the wild braying of the forest song as she went to sleep.

Jenny was kind, and Lucy knew that she wanted only to protect her. But she felt that she might never fathom this place. She felt that she ought to be grateful for all she had, thankful to be alive. Lucy understood that Jenny could have left her for dead in the jungle. As she lay there, she tried to feel grateful, but all she could feel was loneliness, sadness, even anger.

She had cried in bed those first few nights, watching the lonely moon. There was too much light. The forest had been dark, but here the night glowed like a phosphorescent fungus. Even after the moon went down there would be a dull glow. Lucy was aware that she could not have stayed in the forest. The soldiers would have come back. Jenny had told her that she’d get used to this place, but Lucy felt hopeless. The food was strange. The water tasted bad. She hated clothes.

Clouds moved across the moon. She smelled the air and knew that it wouldn’t rain that night. She feared another thunderstorm. In the forest she had loved the thunderstorms. When they came, everyone danced on the top of the ridge in the flashing light and the pouring rain. She recalled Grandpa Dondi tearing branches and dragging them around and Faith and Viaje hiding in the trees, afraid. But in this place the other people lived so close. Lucy wondered what would happen if they saw her dancing.

She put her feet over the side of the bed and stood shivering in the cold night air. Summer was almost over. Jenny said that it would grow cold, cold such as she had never known. She said that Lucy would have to return to England and go to school. Lucy crossed the room and closed the window and slipped back into bed beneath the sheets. She tried to imagine what snow was like. She had seen it in pictures. Solid water. Such an odd concept. She wondered what it felt like.

She tried to drift off to sleep but the machines kept growling on the road beyond the end of the street. Cars. Trucks. A train crying plaintively in the distance. She heard night sounds, too, but they didn’t tell her anything that she could understand. In the forest Lucy would know if a sound was from a monkey or a bird, a cat or pig. When she heard a sound or a voice, she could tell if it was good or bad or nothing that concerned her. Jenny had told her that the far-off wail of a siren meant that something bad was happening. But what sort of bad? And who might be in trouble? Jenny said to ignore the sounds, you couldn’t tell what they meant. Lucy thought that learning such a thing in the forest might be fatal.

The night was half over before the road quieted down. The mechanical noises faded away and Lucy drifted into sleep. In her dreams she was back in the forest and Papa was listening to her read in French from the book by Montaigne: “A mere bookish sufficiency is unpleasant.” The day was over and she felt safe in her home, but she worried because her father was weak from a bout of malaria. He’d contracted the disease long ago, before the good medicine. He’d been in bed for days.

Then the explosions began in the distance. Her father stopped reading and held the book loosely on his lap. Lucy had never seen him so concerned. He turned to her. Like cool water in mountain terrain, his blue eyes, bloodshot from illness, looked upon her from out of his chiseled features. His shock of gray hair was in disarray, his skin pale. They listened to the advancing guns and began to smell their sharp smoke. At last her father said, “Go with Viaje and the others and hide. I can’t run. I’m too weak. You must hide in the trees.” He kissed her and said, “I love you, Lucy. Always remember that.” Lucy followed the others into the trees. As she slept, she was vaguely aware that she was in a dream, struggling to get out. She wanted to say something to her father but couldn’t speak.

She scrambled into the trees with Toby and Viaje and Faith and watched as the soldiers moved in disorderly columns, swinging their eerie lights through the darkness while the bombs fell ahead of them. She saw her father slouch into the hut, and then Leda came running out of the forest screaming and trying to reach the hut to protect him. A soldier raised his rifle and fired. A loud crack split the air. Leda jerked and staggered into the hut. Lucy’s father appeared at the door and several soldiers fired at once. He fell back into the darkness. Toby and Viaje and Faith cried out and the soldiers shot them, too. Lucy watched in horror as the bodies fell. The soldiers ransacked the camp and left.

Lucy woke with a start. On several nights she had tried to stay awake to avoid that dream. But even when she was able to stay awake it made no difference. She’d remember and couldn’t keep herself from going over and over the attack in her mind.

She had come out of the forest as soon as the soldiers left, but the others were frightened and stayed away. Lucy ran into the hut and saw her father lying on the floor. She fell on him and wept. Then she found Leda behind the curtain and held her and cried.

She couldn’t remember how long she lay like that. Her mouth grew dry from crying. Her eyes hurt. Then Jenny came.

•  •  •

Lucy had dozed off. She woke to find that the moon had gone. The light was coming. She had loved the first moments of morning in the jungle, the crescendo of voices in the trees; the rising smells of life around her; the big cats flowing through the forest in the dim light; and then the drama of the sun pushing thin cylinders of light through the murk as if searching for something. As she watched the light swell behind the window, she felt sad for the sun. It had grown so weak. She feared that its fire might go out and then everything would freeze. She was aware that it was a childish thought. Her father had taught her all about the cosmos. But she was unable to control her thoughts at times.

She lay in bed trying not to think at all. But a word rose to the surface: School. Her father, who had been her only teacher, had told her about school, but she still had no idea what it might be like. She worried that there would be too many people. It would be loud. Everything in this new place was loud. Already she could hear the roaring of the road. Sometimes men came in the day with frightful machines to cut the grass up and down the street and blow everything around with a terrible noise. Lucy hid in her room and trembled when they came.

Now she could smell Jenny’s coffee. She had heard her rise a while ago. Jenny had tried to tiptoe to the bathroom. But Lucy could hear her. Lucy thought it no wonder that Jenny didn’t know how to be quiet. How could she when she lived in such a loud place? Lucy knew quiet. Termites, she thought. Termites are quiet even when they’re making their sounds. Quiet sounds.

When Jenny and Lucy had arrived after their long journey, Jenny had showed her this room. By that time they had been on the move for many days. Lucy had worn clothes the entire time, but the moment she was left alone, she took them off and reveled in the feeling of freedom once more. She had stood looking around at the strange room, which was populated with things that she’d seen only in books: The framed prints of Monet’s water lilies on the wall, the vase with dried weeds in it, a decorative rug, a writing desk, lamps, the big bed with the flowered bedspread, a box of tissues, and an electric radio that told the time in lighted red digits.

That first day, she had crossed the room naked and approached the floor lamp. She turned it on. Then she turned it off. She switched it on and off and on and off over and over, marveling at the light, feeling its heat. So much light, she thought. The street was brightly lit all night like a stage set for a play. But no one ever came. Her father had rationed the light. They often didn’t have enough fuel for the generator. But when they did, he would make light in the evening and play music on an old machine and teach Lucy to sing arias.

That first day in her new home, Lucy had heard a sound as she switched the lamp on and off. She stopped to listen. It was faint, coming from the floor. She moved toward it, listening: It was termites. Quiet but not silent. A pleasant and familiar sound. Something was living after all, eating the house. Lucy took a straw from the vase of dead weeds and went to the wall, smiling to herself, thinking about what her father had always said: Life will find a way. She worked the straw into a small gap where the wall met the floor. She’d had to eat such strange foods since leaving the forest. She thought that termites might be a welcome treat.

As she squatted on the floor, listening and fishing with the straw, Jenny came to the door. “Good morning, Lucy. What are you doing?”

“Looking for termites.”

“Termites? Really? Termites?”

“They’re in the floor. They’re good to eat. Do you want some?”

“Well, are they the same as the ones we had in Congo? Those were good when I tried them once. But who knows what sort of chemicals our local termites might have. I’d be afraid to eat them here.”

Lucy stopped. She withdrew the straw, looking disappointed.

“I didn’t know the house had termites.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Lucy said. “I just felt happy when I realized that there were termites. The food here is so strange.”

“I know. Speaking of chemicals. Who knows what’s in our food for that matter? But we’ll have to make do. So about your clothes …” Jenny gathered them up and put them on the bed. “I know you don’t like clothes. Actually, I don’t either. I often went without in the forest. It’s okay with me if you want to go around the house naked. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to clothes. Come on. I’ll find something that you’ll like to eat. I promise.”

Lucy admired Jenny, such a good and caring person. She allowed herself a momentary vision of the two of them racing through the forest together enjoying the bounty and the beauty. Then Lucy realized that Jenny would never be able to keep up. And that made her think: I have no one else in the world now. Lucy wanted Jenny to know her but she didn’t know how.

But now it was a new day. She could hear Jenny clanking dishes in the kitchen. I’m here, Lucy thought, and I’ll just have to make the best of it. She sighed and rose and began to dress, thinking, I guess I’d better get used to clothes, as Jenny says.

She went down the hall to the bathroom and turned on the water in the sink. She let it run over her hands. She splashed it on her face. She bent down to drink from the spigot. Such a miracle, she thought. Water is life, as her father used to say. And here it just gushed endlessly out of a silver spout as if all the rivers of all the world had magically flowed to this one spot for no purpose other than to please Lucy.

She dried her hands and face and descended the stairs to find Jenny standing at the counter reading a newspaper. Lucy watched as Jenny calmly pored over the endless tales of catastrophe and meanness while sipping coffee from a mug decorated with paintings of yellow pears tinged with pink. Jenny was pretty in a sturdy sinewy way, tall and thin with sandy-red hair curling past her shoulders. She had long delicate fingers, but her hands were calloused from working in the forest, the fingernails battered. Her hands looked as if they had an intelligence all their own.

On the table where Jenny rested a hand, Lucy saw a shiny silver toaster, a pepper mill, coarse salt in a small ceramic bowl, a wicker basket of paper napkins, all these things that she’d seen only in photographs from the books and catalogs and encyclopedias that her father had sent upriver. Those books were tiny windows that connected the dark jungle to a bright and alien world, and Lucy had spent hours on end just peering through, trying to imagine what it might be like to be there in the flesh. Now here she was, and she saw that it was real, so real and bright that it almost hurt her eyes to look. She watched as the light fell through the window and crept over those magical objects, illuminating them as if each one had a living heart within it.

Jenny sighed, wearied by something she’d read. Then she put on a bright smile and turned to Lucy. “Well, Lucy, what would you like for breakfast? I can make you just about anything you want.”

“Thank you.”

“How about fruit and yogurt?”

“That would be fine.”

Jenny busied herself slicing peaches and laying out bowls of berries and nuts and yogurt. She poured orange juice into a ceramic pitcher that matched the coffee mug. Lucy admired the kitchen. It was all very pretty. But somehow it struck her as almost too pretty. She tried to reconcile the bright prettiness with the ominous sounds of the place. She felt as if all the prettiness concealed some truer, deeper, and more menacing world that lay just beneath the surface.

Jenny spooned Greek yogurt into bowls, and they sat together at the small table. Lucy regarded the fruit with curiosity. It seemed not quite real. She tasted a strawberry. It tasted only faintly like fruit. She missed the fruit of the forest, dark and sweet and musky. And she told herself, Stop your whining. You’re homesick. Snap out of it.

To distract herself, she asked, “What will we do today?”

Jenny bit her lip and thought for a moment, scooping berries into her bowl. “Well, what would you like to do? There are so many things to do in the city.”

“May I please watch your television? I caught only glimpses of it at the airports. I’ve not really tried to watch.”

Jenny shrugged. “Sure. Okay. But daytime television is pretty stupid. Come to think of it, nighttime television is, too.”