Waiting for Christopher Read online

  “No?” Feena looked away, puzzled, penitent.

  “Hey, I hate to bust your balloon and all. But this book is not one of my favorites. It’s not even mine.” Raylene picked up her things, stood up, then moved toward the girls who were waiting down the hall. Over her shoulder again: “I’m taking it back to the library for someone. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Feena watched her move, proud and graceful as a dancer, toward the hangers-on. She wore a vintage skirt with a petticoat that showed just enough from under the skirt’s hem. There was a pocket watch on a chain around her waist, the kind of waist Feena had been dieting for, dreaming of, forever.

  “Wait!” Feena saw it just as Raylene reached her friends. “Here.” Feena ran down the hall after them. “You forgot your Walkman.” She caught up, the cassette player dangling from its long neon earplugs. Next came a humiliating pantomime as she tried to disentangle herself from the Walkman. Clownlike, she twisted and untwisted the cord, then finally succeeded in freeing herself, only to watch the player separate from the cord and clatter to the floor again.

  This time, the Walkman didn’t survive the fall, its plastic case breaking on impact and skittering away like the two halves of an eggshell. Raylene stared at the halves, then at Feena.

  “Oh, my god.” Feena was on her knees in an instant. “What’s the matter with me?” She gathered up the innards, the pieces of case. “I was just… I mean…” Then, as if it could somehow reassemble itself into a working unit, she handed the whole mess back to its owner.

  Without acknowledging Feena’s stammering, or even her existence, the slender girl accepted the smashed Walkman, glanced at it once, then shook her head. As she left with her friends, she held the plastic parts away from her body, the way people keep their distance from garbage. And sure enough, as the group passed the main office, Feena saw her drop the remains into the trash.

  It was only after the others had disappeared, down another locker-lined corridor, that Feena noticed the paperback. It must have spilled from Raylene’s armful and was now wedged under the bottom of a trash basket. Feena pulled it out and studied the cover. Their Eyes Were Watching God was the title, and underneath was a picture of a beautiful black woman with a long braid down the middle of her back, a woman who looked just like Raylene.

  For a moment, Feena considered chasing after the girls, returning the book. But then she remembered Raylene’s expression, the look of contempt she’d leveled at the broken Walkman. Rather than risk another dose of humiliation, Feena tucked the little book in with her own things and walked in the other direction down the hall.

  All through next period, she did instant replays in her head. While the rest of English class was analyzing Macbeth, Feena was dissecting her run-in with Raylene: If only she hadn’t been late to class. If only she hadn’t tried to help. If only she’d ignored the book the other girl had dropped.

  Had Raylene lied about Jane Eyre? Feena couldn’t remember seeing a library number on the dog-eared paperback. But she did remember the brief furtive look in those dark eyes. Was that brassy in-your-face girl ashamed of being smart? Of reading? Of being like Feena?

  Of course she was, Feena realized. Who in their right mind wouldn’t be? Who would trade useless book chat (about a book that wasn’t even on the English reading list) for being one of the chosen ones? Second-best swimmer in school. Secretary of the student council. Resident Amazon. If she herself were any of these, Feena decided, she would have lied, too. But she knew, as surely as she knew she could never get a slip to hang that way, or move like music down the hall, that she and Raylene would never travel in the same circles. Never be friends. Not even acquaintances, now that Feena had confirmed her own status as a spastic moron. Why hadn’t she held on to that Walkman? Why hadn’t she been able to say she was sorry?

  She was sorry, of course. Sorry she’d broken the Walkman. Sorry she had freckles and small breasts. Sorry she had a mother whose idea of togetherness was pressing the pause button on the remote. Sorry she lived in a laughable house that ruled out sleepovers and guests of any kind.

  Even though the girl from history kept asking her over after school, Feena wouldn’t go because she couldn’t bear to return the favor. How could she invite anyone to the Pizza Hut? She’d made all sorts of twisted excuses: they hadn’t finished unpacking, her mother was sick, the house was being painted. Or fumigated. Or something. Finally, the girl stopped asking.

  Which was why every day now Feena found herself doing the same thing after school she’d done all summer—reading. Sometimes she lay on the floor under the air conditioner in her bedroom; sometimes she took her book across the highway to the shady carcass of an abandoned restaurant, complete with a gutless kitchen stove and two booths you could sort of sit in if you avoided the curling edges of their slashed plastic seats. But mostly she just stayed in the Chevy and let the air run.

  That’s where she headed as soon as Macbeth had been picked apart and eighth period ended. Still nursing her embarrassment, she decided to skip the play that had been assigned for the next day and read Raylene’s book instead. The author was a black woman; Feena saw her posed on the back cover in a flapper hat and beads. A powerful love story, it said under the photo. One of the finest novels of all time.

  The heat built up behind the car’s window, even with the AC roaring and sputtering. Stretched across the front seat, both vents aimed at her face, Feena went into the trance she always did when she read. Soon she was lost. To the heat, to the drone, to everything but Janie Woods, the lonely heroine:

  So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment.

  This Janie, Feena saw right away, was no frightened Jane Eyre. She was regal and proud and strong. She walked right into town by herself, with the whole neighborhood gossiping and staring.

  The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume…

  No, nothing like poor stammering Jane—or Feena, for that matter. Janie wore her brave heart for everyone to see. Graceful and serene, she moved down the street, parading past a porch full of gawkers and busybodies, just like Raylene striding down the halls at school.

  …nobody moved, nobody spoke, nobody even thought to swallow spit until after her gate slammed behind her.

  Feena was still living the book’s dream, still sitting with Janie on the stoop of her old house, listening to her hard story, when the woman and the little boy named Christopher came back to Ryder’s. Feena had no idea how long they’d been there before she looked up from the book and recognized the child. Not only because he still wore the same filthy T-shirt she’d seen him in last time, not only because he was still being yelled at by this foul-tempered mother, but because, she thought, she would have known him anywhere. Would have singled out that white hair, those solemn eyes, even if it had been years instead of weeks since she’d seen him.

  This afternoon was different, though. The play Christopher and his mother acted out today had a new uglier script. The toddler’s mother was no longer slapping him; she was kicking. By the time Feena had turned off the car’s engine, slipped the key into the pocket of her shorts, and run to the gate, the woman was standing over him, screaming.

  “Don’t you dare get up!” She shoved a sneakered foot into Christopher’s leg when he tried to raise himself from the asphalt. He crumpled like a rag doll. “I told you to stay right there and think about how rude you was.” Again he attempted to stand, and again she tripped him back into a sitting position on the pavement.

  As Feena rushed toward them, she glanced around the park. She didn’t see Mr. Milakowski anywhere. The only adult she spotted was the mother of a small unsmiling girl who rode by herself in one of the fire engines. The woman scowled disappr
ovingly at Christopher’s mother, but when her daughter pointed, showing interest in the proceedings, she hoisted the child from the ride, grabbed her by the hand, and rushed off, as if she were hustling them away from an accident.

  “You keep mouthing off, you gonna be pretty sorry.” The little boy was crying steadily now, scrambling to his feet but being knocked down again and again. It was as if his brain hadn’t gotten the message that it would hurt less to stop trying to get up. “Okay, Mister. See how you like it when you got no audience.”

  Feena wished there were somebody—anybody—else around. She almost ran after the other mother and her little girl, but then she heard a car start up in the parking lot and knew it was too late. Knew she was the only one left, Christopher’s last hope. She remembered, as if it were a dream, running, pushing her way through a forest of adults. Christy? Where’s Christy? Trembling with an old, speechless indignation, she had no idea what she would say, how she would stop the angry woman. All she thought about, all she felt was the forward motion, the race to save him.

  four

  Righteous, angry words formed themselves in Feena’s head as the woman pushed past her. I hope your little boy held up a bank or murdered someone, lady. But now, just as she had the last time, Christopher’s mother was sailing off, her back to them. Unless he has, you’ve got no right to treat a baby like that. But before Feena could run after her, the woman turned and headed, thick legs churning purposefully, for the parking lot.

  Christopher’s mother didn’t stop the way she had last time. She didn’t change her mind and come marching back to claim her son like so much forgotten baggage. Feena and the baby watched her get into a battered, beige convertible. They watched her start the car, and together, in silence, they watched her drive away.

  When Feena turned to the little boy, he was still staring at the spot where the car had been. Not knowing what else to do, she knelt down and held out her hand. He took it. “Don’t worry,” she said, afraid he might startle, might run away. “Everything will be okay.”

  He turned his solemn gaze on her now, as if deciding whether or not to overlook the ridiculous promise she’d just made. His eyes were so blue, so like a painting or a photograph, Feena was glad of the brown stain—juice or ice cream or who knew what—that ran from the side of his mouth almost to his right ear. It made him real. “Mama,” he said, regarding her with mild curiosity.

  “Your mama’s gone,” she told him. Then, because this probably wasn’t what he wanted to hear, she added quickly, “Want to wait for her with me?”

  He didn’t nod, but he didn’t let go her hand, either. And when she picked him up, when his sticky fingers closed around her neck, it felt as if he’d always perched there, solid and warm and only a little heavy in her arms. They might have waited for his mother where they stood, might have toughed it out, faithfully scanning the parking lot for her car. But it was too hot, Feena reasoned, studying the empty, sun-beaten rides, the stretch of gooey asphalt. It was too hot, and they’d be more comfortable in the shade across the highway, where they could stay cool and still keep an eye out for the tan Buick.

  They crossed the street quickly and stood for a while on the other side. Then Feena remembered the can of orange soda she’d left in the abandoned restaurant. They’d waited only a few minutes, but suddenly that seemed long enough. “Christy,” she said, shifting his weight against her hip, “want to see an old castle? It’s got a whole garden growing right up through the floor.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, just looked one more time at the parking lot, then headed down the highway. She didn’t stop until they’d reached the pile of fallen timbers under a broken neon sign that hadn’t flashed in years, LER’S, was all that was left on the sign’s first line; AUNT, it announced on the second. Sometimes, here by herself, she’d made a game of guessing what the full name of the restaurant had been. But now, the only thing she cared about was ducking into the shade.

  She brushed aside a pile of dried palm fronds and jagged glass, moving them with her toe as she stepped through what had once been a door. “Isn’t this great?” she asked in a bright solicitous voice she hardly knew. “Doesn’t it make a perfect hideout?”

  As she set the baby down on one seat of a cracked vinyl booth, a tiny lizard the color of new grass shot between Feena’s feet. Like the pink chameleons she sometimes surprised on the tile walls of the girls’ room at school, the lizard made a fast break for cover, disappearing under the two-legged Formica table that had collapsed at a useless angle between the seats.

  “There,” she told Christopher, as if something had been settled between them. “There you are.” The soda, which she’d stashed under one of the booths, wasn’t exactly cold. But it was liquid, and the baby covered both her hands with his, pulling the can close, gulping it down.

  “Mu,” he said.

  There was no more. But she didn’t tell him that. Instead, she adopted a prissy maternal tone. “That’s enough for now,” she said. “We’ll get some milk later.”

  “Mu,” Christopher repeated, eyeing her calmly. “Want mu.”

  The way he looked at her! It was as if she were a goddess, a minor deity of some sort, who could supply his every need. As if she were everything good and beautiful in the world. When she picked him up again, she knew ahead of time how it would be, how he would collapse against her, yield himself completely.

  “We’ll have more later,” she said. “Now it’s time for a nap.” She felt the dampness on her arm. “And a change of diapers,” she added, wondering how on earth she’d manage that.

  She didn’t want to move him again, didn’t want to risk going back to the parking lot, where the beige convertible might now be parked, waiting. She didn’t want—she had to admit it now—to give Christopher back. Not yet. Not before she’d shown him, for just a little while, for a tiny slice of time no one else would miss, that things could be different.

  So she stretched him out full-length on the seat, let him bat at strands of her hair, while she tugged off his jeans. After she’d slipped the sodden, smelly diaper from between his legs, she took off her own shorts. She stepped out of her underpants, folded them into a thick pad, then tucked them under his bottom. It was the only thing she could think to do. It was just what she’d done two years ago, when her period had started in the girls’ room at school and she’d been too embarrassed to go to the nurse.

  “There,” she said again. She didn’t know if it was perverted to look at him naked. Still, she couldn’t help thinking that his penis reminded her of an extra finger, a tiny, misplaced digit. It wasn’t like the pink wilted worms you saw on cherubs in old paintings. It was standing straight up and it was pointing right at her.

  In Connecticut, most of their neighbors had been elderly, and Feena had only babysat once. For a couple with twin boys. The babies had been asleep when she got there, and were still asleep when she’d left. She’d spent the whole week before, folding a paper napkin into diapers for an old doll, reading about diaper rash and colic, feeding and burping. At first, she’d been sorry she never got a chance to put her skills to the test. But later, when girls in her class told stories about baby boys who peed all over you the minute their diapers came off, she thought maybe she hadn’t missed too much.

  “All fixed.” She pulled the front of her underpants between Christy’s legs and covered him up, then put her own shorts back on. Maybe it was the soda or the relief of being dry, but now the baby’s eyes shut and his breathing slowed. “That’s good,” she crooned, reaching for his jeans. “Time to sleep.”

  She had slipped both his feet into the pants legs before she noticed the marks on his right thigh. There were seven tiny reddish circles arranged like the Big Dipper on his pale skin. Though it didn’t appear to be necessary, she repeated it, her voice hushed and singsong. “Time to sleep.”

  When Feena was little, her father had taken her out under the night sky. “Right up there, honey. See it?” Feena had craned her neck, fou
nd the bright dots. “That’s the Big Dipper. And just to this side? That’s the Baby Dipper. See?”

  But the constellation on Christopher’s leg was different. The spots were oozing and inflamed, like poison ivy. “Somebody’s been letting you walk around wet,” she told him, pulling up his jeans, covering the sores. “That is some case of diaper rash, Christy.”

  He didn’t seem to mind, though. He turned on his side in his sleep, his head on one dirty arm, the fingers of his other hand still caught in Feena’s hair. Gently, she unwound each strand, then sat down beside him to think. Crickets were already thrumming in the grass around her feet, and she listened for the music coming from the amusement park. It had stopped.

  There, in the quiet, it hit her: She was a kidnapper. She had snatched somebody’s child! Granted, anybody would have done the same thing, wouldn’t they? Nobody, she was sure, could watch what she had and not take action.

  But now what? Maybe the woman with the sweet face and too much makeup was missing her baby. Feena pictured her: remorseful, tears and mascara streaming down her cheeks, driving back to Ryder’s. She imagined her flushed with despair, searching the empty park, then racing to the police.

  The police! If Christopher’s mother had gone to the police, they’d be looking for him by now. They’d probably start at Ryder’s, then fan out, the way they did in detective stories. It wouldn’t be long before they’d find Feena’s hiding place.

  She could see it all—the baby, handed by a beaming police officer back to his mother; the woman, relieved, sniffling. Then she saw another picture, a picture of what would happen when the two of them got home. “Who do you think you are, Mister?” Christopher’s mother would yell. “Just who do you think you are, running away like that?” Then Christopher would duck his head, go into his fighter’s stance, and the hitting would start.