Some Wildflower In My Heart (23 page)

“Are you ill?” I asked.

She shook her head briskly. “No, Margaret, I'm feeling just fine—physically, I mean.”

“Because if you were feeling ill,” I continued, “I was going to suggest that you make arrangements to go home.”

“I'm fine,” Birdie repeated, shaking her head. “I appreciate it, though, Margaret.”

“For we cannot run the risk of contaminating our kitchen environment with the coughing and such that typically accompany the common cold. The transfer of germs from the hands to the serving areas or to the food itself could of course be…deleterious.”

It seemed to me that Birdie colored slightly. She lifted her hands and laid them against her cheeks, her movements producing a faint crackling of her white plastic apron. “I always try to be extra careful about keeping my hands washed,” she said, “and I'll try not to—” She broke off and closed her eyes. Her voice fell to a whisper. “I just can't get over those poor babies!” Her face was a pale oval of sorrow.

I did not reply at once, for her meaning was unclear, but at last I did speak, hesitantly and perhaps even softly, though emitting a sigh of impatience. “As I have said before, you must not allow yourself to bear the collective burden of our students at Emma Weldy, for no amount of agonizing on your part will alleviate the difficulties that exist in the homes of many of these children. You must learn, as I have emphasized repeatedly, to lay aside your feelings at work or they will adversely affect the quality of your performance.”

She opened her eyes and looked at me. Dropping her hands from her face, she began nodding her head. “You're right, Margaret. I know I can't fix everybody's problems.” She smiled sadly and added, “But it's not our own little children I'm upset about today. It's those two little babies in Union.”

I suppose I already knew, though at that moment I understood it more fully, that Birdie Freeman's heartfelt anxieties on behalf of others were not restricted to individuals within her immediate circle of acquaintances. Indeed, I was beginning to discover that Birdie's concerns pertained not to a simple circle at all, but rather to a sphere—that is, to the entire planet Earth. She was referring, of course, to the recent news report that I had first heard two days earlier, on the evening of October 25, of the disappearance of two young boys in an alleged car-jacking in Union, South Carolina. Susan Smith, the mother of the two boys, aged three and fourteen months, told authorities that she had been accosted at a deserted intersection and forced from her car, after which the thief, purportedly a black man, had driven away with her two children in the backseat.

Birdie went on to explain, pausing at intervals to compose herself, that a co-worker of Mickey's at the Barker Bag Company in Spartanburg lived in the same neighborhood as the two little boys and their mother. “He told Mickey that the whole family's just torn apart over it, wondering if those two babies will come home alive,” she said. “And I can't quit thinking about what they're going through—especially that poor mother. She must be nearly out of her mind!”

Over the following week, although she carried out her kitchen duties conscientiously, Birdie bore the Smith family's grief as if it were her own. She looked as though she had been struck when Algeria cast aspersions on Susan Smith. “Huh! Ain't no mama gonna look like a blank wall the way that woman look when she talk 'bout her babies on the TV, and I
still
say she know somethin' she ain't wantin' nobody to find out.”

“Oh, Algeria, honey,
please
don't say something like that. Nobody knows how they'll act when hard times hit. People take trouble in so many different ways. Why, that woman is probably so numb by now from the shock of it all that she doesn't even know what she's saying. Let's don't be harsh with her. She needs our prayers.”

But Algeria was intractable. “Can't help it. Don't trust her. Her eyes don't look right. Oughta pray for her babies, not
her
.” However, Algeria did not state her suspicions in Birdie's hearing again.

Many readers remember the outcome of this sordid saga. When the truth came out—that is, when the woman admitted to sending her two sons to their deaths in John D. Long Lake—the entire school was abuzz with disbelief and anger. When Birdie walked into the kitchen on the morning of November 3, the morning after the news of the confession had been made public, I saw that her aspect was drained. I was in my office cubicle filling out a form.

Paper work, as I said earlier, constitutes the bulk of my duties as lunchroom supervisor, and because the particular form on which I was working at the time—one that bears the heading of
Free and Reduced Meals
—is confidential, I had closed the door to my office. Aside from the principal, I am the only person at Emma Weldy who is privy to the names of the children whose meals are subsidized by government funding.

As Algeria and Francine had not yet arrived, Birdie set about her breakfast duties alone, counting out the miniature boxes of cereal and packets of jelly in the pantry and transferring them by tray to the serving line. She was spreading melted oleo onto slices of bread with a pastry brush when Algeria walked into the kitchen. Thermos in hand, I left my office, first turning the form face down on my desk and then closing the door securely, and approached the ice machine. As Algeria donned her apron, I heard Birdie speak. “Well, Algeria, honey, I guess I owe you an apology.” I slowly filled my thermos with ice cubes. I could see them both in my peripheral vision. Algeria did not reply audibly, but I could well imagine her typical response, that of shrugging her shoulders.

Birdie continued. “You saw right through it all, but not me. No, sir. I just went along so foolishly, thinking that little mother was telling the truth and
insisting
that everybody else think the same thing. You turned out to be right, and I was wrong. I sure wish I was quick enough to see things like you can. I feel just completely empty inside. Not that it matters about me being wrong. That's sure not the first time that's happened. But I just can't figure it all out—how she could
do
what she did.”

I walked to the sink and turned on the faucet. Allowing the water to run for a few moments until at its maximum coolness, I then decreased the water flow and slowly filled my thermos. Appearing beside me at the other side of the large double sink where I stood, Algeria turned on the hot water to wash her hands. She replied with her back turned to Birdie, slowly and ponderously as if wishing it were not necessary to formulate sentences so early in the day. “She
bad
, Birdie. No way to figure that out. Can't nobody figure out liars 'n killers.”

“I'm always so
gullible
,” Birdie said, then again added, heatedly this time, “but that sure doesn't matter at a time like this!”

“You just used to thinkin' everybody good like you,” Algeria replied.

Birdie made a choking noise, a mixture of self-deprecation and scorn. I held my thermos aloft and began wiping off the sides with a brown paper towel. Algeria scrubbed her large hands violently, sudsing them generously, and the discussion appeared to be finished, though I knew it would be resumed and extended ad infinitum in the hours, days, weeks, and months to follow.

As I deposited the paper towel into the trash can and turned to walk back to my office, I glanced at Birdie's face, bent over the large tray of bread slices while she methodically brushed them one by one. Her features were set in lines at once mournful and indignant, and I knew that the taking in of the horrible truth concerning Susan Smith was to require excruciating effort on Birdie Freeman's part. Though she did not look at me when I passed her, she addressed me. “How a mother could do that, Margaret—it just doesn't make sense, does it? There's got to be something more to it than we've heard on the news.” Clearly, she was still giving Susan Smith the benefit of the doubt.

No
, I thought, though I did not speak aloud,
wanton cruelty and deception make no sense whatsoever in your safe and orderly world, Birdie Freeman. Had you sojourned in a strange land as I have, you would know that evil needs nothing, certainly nothing as cold and fixed as logic, to grow and thrive. Evil breeds upon itself and multiplies to horrific proportions
.

Had Birdie Freeman eaten at the same table with me, she would have expected from others no pleasant bread, no cup to quench her thirst, no strong hand to shield her from injury, no
reason
to explain corruption. Had her eyes seen what mine have seen, she could have easily envisioned manifold scenes of human depravity, including that of a young mother watching her innocent children, utterly dependent upon her, roll down a ramp into the dark waters of a lake.

It is the helplessness of the two boys—and all victims of all crimes—that incites me not to compassion but to anger. I recently read parts of Joyce Carol Oates's novel
Foxfire
and was drawn to its premise of
protection
by a society of friends. Although I put the book aside for its disturbing coarseness, I could not help contemplating the direction my life might have taken had such a society been available to me after my mother's death, had there been even one person to love and defend me, to seek retribution against my grandfather on my behalf.

But I seek no pity. There is security in having known the worst.

I shrink from the chapter at hand. While I have been viewing it with dread from afar, as if through a spyglass, I have been powerless to stay its inexorable approach. Now that it has arrived, I wish to skirt around it, if not to flee from it altogether, at least to fend it off while I grasp for other material to place before it. Yet I know that my tale will fall short of its mark if I guard this secret. It must be told.

For years I have striven, on the one hand, to eradicate from my mind the memories that I am preparing to divulge, yet on the other, to shelter them from such expunction. Such ambivalence is common in cases of tragedy, I suppose, and quite simple to strip to its cause, for while the yearning to forget originates from the final tragedy itself—that relatively brief moment in literal time of inexpressible anguish—the pleasure of remembering finds its source further back and over a greater expanse of measurable time. To forget the tragedy, one would have to erase from his mind all things relevant to it, for the ending is fused with the context. To divorce the tragedy from the prior happiness, therefore, becomes impossible, and in a sense, I believe, undesirable.

I admit, even as the reader must recognize, that these ramblings are merely additional tactics of postponement, but the reader must permit me to creep forth at my own pace.

Four years ago I read a novel by Mary McGarry Morris titled
A Dangerous Woman
. The protagonist, a pathetic figure named Martha Horgan, was the dangerous woman. I was puzzled by the title at the outset of the story, for though Martha Horgan was many things—feeble-minded, clumsy, inept, despised, stubborn, unlovely—she did not seem in the least dangerous, that is, not at first. However, in the course of my reading, I soon understood that
because no one loved her
, Martha Horgan's final act in life could be nothing but destructive, to herself certainly but most likely to others as well. (One is not labeled “dangerous” if he brings harm only to himself.)

My predictions proved true, for by the end of the book Martha Horgan did indeed inflict severe and irreversible damage upon others. The thesis of Mary McGarry Morris's novel, as I see, is this: A person who knows no love is dangerous; that is, he is ripe for the carrying out of indefinably malicious and despicable acts against his fellowman. It matters not whether the mental faculties of the unloved individual are acute or sluggish. The potential danger is equally grave.

Miss Morris's book left its mark upon my mind, not only for its superlative integration of life and art but also for the posing of a timely question. Is one truly and perpetually accountable for his conduct? Was Martha Horgan's culminating crime to be laid at her feet, or was it the fault of others—her callous-hearted aunt, the man who gently but nonetheless knowingly misused her, the co-worker who pointedly spurned her friendship, the great whole of society who should have taken note of her loveless state but did not?

Freedom from personal accountability is busily promoted in today's media, the word
victim
being bandied about at every turn. Lawyers for confessed murderers routinely dredge up and exhibit the unhappy circumstances of a client's past in an attempt to obscure the truth that a life was taken at the killer's hand. Was Martha Horgan guilty? Was Susan Smith guilty? Yes, I vehemently reply. An individual must bear the responsibility for his own actions.

Yet one could question—indeed one
has
questioned—whether my principles are consistent in matters closer to my own heart. In recent months I have given considerable thought to my personal responsibility. To clarify, am
I
guilty? Though certainly I have not committed a capital offense, am I to be held culpable for lesser peccadilloes—for instance, my misanthropic spirit toward my fellowman? Or, given my history, am I not justified in withholding from others my faith and affection? I have Birdie Freeman to thank for reducing the question of grand-scale guilt to the daily allowances I make for myself—that is for my inhospitable, though harmless, behavior toward others—for it was she who put the point to me one day in February. But I shall come to this later.

Unlike Martha Horgan, I am not a dangerous woman, for I have known love. In fact, were she a living human instead of a fictional character, Martha Horgan would surely deem me a child of fortune, for I knew love two times before I reached the age of twenty.