The Spellman Files (6 page)

Some minor verbal sparring between my sister and the fourteen-year-old seventh grader ensued. But Brandon soon learned that talk was Rae’s weapon of choice and he resorted to the only weapon he knew. While I have never met a girl as mentally tough as Rae, she favors my mother and, at the age of twelve, was still under four foot ten and barely eighty pounds. She can run fast, but there were times she didn’t have the chance. When I saw the unmistakable rash of an Indian burn on her wrist, I asked her if she wanted me to take care of it. Rae said no. When she came home with a black eye from a “dodgeball accident,” I asked again. Rae insisted everything was under control. But I got the feeling that the constant bullying was starting to break her.

I had just picked up Petra from her apartment and we were on our way to a movie when my cell phone rang. Petra answered it.

“Hello. No, it’s Petra, Rae. Izzy is right here. Uh-huh. What happened to your bike? Yeah. We’re not far. Sure. ’Bye.” Petra hung up the phone. “We need to pick up your sister at school.”

“What happened to her bike?”

“She said it doesn’t work.”

We were five minutes away. Rae was sitting on the grass outside, her bike in pieces in front of her—the five-hundred-dollar mountain bike that David had given her for her birthday. I saw several boys standing some distance back, laughing at her expense. Rae told me to pop the trunk and Petra helped her gather the spoils of the wreckage and put them inside. Rae jumped into the backseat, took out one of her schoolbooks, and pretended to read. I could see her eyes watering, but I couldn’t quite believe it. I hadn’t seen Rae cry since she was eight years old and ripped open her arm on a barbed-wire fence. She had bled so much that day that it had been impossible to see the actual wound.

“Rae, please. Let me handle this,” I said, dying for a chance to set things straight. We sat in silence for a few minutes, then she looked over at the flock of boys and caught sight of Brandon waving cheerily at her. And that was it.

“Okay,” she whispered. I was out of the car.

As I swaggered across the grounds to the pack of future frat boys, I tried to gauge what level of bully I was dealing with. I have a knack for looking menacing (at least for a woman), so I made sure to walk slowly and purposefully, deep down hoping that a few of the boys would scatter before I got too close. Three answered my prayers and took off, leaving four behind. At five foot eight, I had at least three inches and fifteen pounds on Brandon, the tallest. And I
knew
I could take him. But if all four boys decided to stick around, I could not predict the outcome. Petra read my mind and got out of the car. Leaning against the passenger door, she slipped a knife out of her back pocket and started cleaning her fingernails with it. The blade reflected the sun and before I reached Brandon, the rest of the boys decided that it was time to go home. In fact, so did Brandon.

“You. Stop,” I said, pointing at my target. Brandon turned around and forced a sneer in my direction. I moved closer, backing him up against a chain-link fence.

“Wipe that dumb-ass smile off your face,” I seethed.

The smile disappeared, but not the attitude. “What are you gonna do? Beat me up?”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m bigger than you, I’m tougher than you, I’m angrier than you, and I fight dirtier than you. Plus, I’ve got backup. You don’t. So if I were to make a wager on how this fight would turn out, I’d bet on me.”

“What’s the big deal? We were just joking around,” Brandon said, his nerves showing through.

“Joking. Interesting. Do you think destruction of property is funny? A black eye is funny? Intimidating a girl half your size is funny? Well, then we are going to have a good time.” I grabbed his shirt by the collar, twisted it around, and shoved him against the fence.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered nervously.

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Listen to me very carefully,” I whispered back. “If you lay a finger on my sister or her property ever again—if you even look at her the wrong way—I will fuck you up. Got it?”

Brandon nodded his head.

“Say ‘I understand.’”

“I understand.”

I released my grip and told him to get lost. Brandon ran away, a changed man, I told myself.

When I got back into the car, Petra suggested we go rough up some punks at the preschool around the corner. I looked at Rae through my rearview mirror.

“You okay?”

Rae returned my gaze with dry eyes. Then she asked, “Can we get ice cream?” as if nothing had happened at all.

I wish that were the end of the story, but it isn’t. Brandon ran home crying to his father, who in turn called my parents and followed up by filing assault charges against me. When Rae and I arrived at home with our ice cream cones, my mother and father had already received the first threatening phone call from Mr. Wheeler. Their stern expressions offered a flashback of my misspent youth. I’m sure they were wondering whether the Old Isabel was making a comeback. My father suggested we speak privately in the office and told Rae to go watch TV.

Rae, of course, didn’t watch TV. She lurked by the door (which my father had locked), eavesdropping on our conversation.

“Isabel, what were you thinking?”

“Believe me, you would have done the same thing.”

“You threatened to kill a twelve-year-old boy.”

“First of all, he’s fourteen—”

“He’s a kid—”

“—and I didn’t threaten to
kill
him; I threatened to
fuck him up.
There is a difference, you know.”

“What is wrong with you?” my mother yelled.

“That is the most reckless, irresponsible thing you’ve done in years,” screamed my father.

Then Rae smacked her hand against the door and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Leave her alone!”

My mother shouted back, “Rae, go watch TV.”

Rae banged on the locked door again. The thud was so loud it sounded as if she was throwing her whole body against it. “No. Leave Isabel alone! Open the door.”

My father sighed and let Rae in the room. Rae pled my case, which I didn’t, because I’ve got too much attitude. My father was forced to tone down his reprimand to, “In the future, let us handle this sort of thing, Izzy.”

There was almost nothing my mother wouldn’t do to protect her children, even if it was morally ambiguous. It was Mom who handled the potential assault charges, mostly because she can spot an Achilles’ heel with almost X-ray vision. If there is a single unfiltered trait I inherited directly from her, that might be it.

Olivia ran a civil lawsuit check on Mr. Wheeler and discovered a handful of sexual harassment suits in his wake. The pattern piqued my mother’s curiosity and she ran an informal tail on Wheeler over the next week. She caught him with a mistress, snapped some revealing photographs, and then cornered him at the coffee shop on his way to work. My mother suggested he drop the charges. Wheeler said no. My mother showed him the photos and repeated her suggestion, adding that she expected Rae’s bike to be replaced within the week. Wheeler called her a bitch, but the charges were dropped by the afternoon and a new bike was delivered on Friday.

Rae never forgot what I did for her that day. However, I should remind you that Rae’s brand of loyalty takes an entirely different form than the devotion to which one might be accustomed. While she can readily tell you she loves you, it is entirely void of the sappy heart of a greeting card. She is merely stating a fact for your own edification. There were times it seemed Rae lived to please our parents and sometimes even me. But this often lulled us into a false sense of security. Rae’s interest in pleasing ended if it didn’t align with her own agenda. Yet there were times she followed instructions with the blind faithfulness of a well-trained dog.

How to Evade Capture

When Rae was about thirteen, the local media began to cover child abductions with the regularity of weather reports. Statistically, there was a decline in abductions compared to previous years; however, the media’s alarmist tactics engendered a veritable mass paranoia among parents of school-age children. Even my own mom and dad took the bait.

On the six o’clock news, when retired special agent Charles Manning presented a series of preemptive tactics to ward off child predators, my parents took notes and implemented the only one that was not already in use. Avoid routines. Rae was instructed to lose her habits, to mix up her daily routine, to become a moving target.

To see the difference, you’d have had to be acquainted with her previous morning ritual: She staggered out of bed at 8:00, brushed her teeth, grabbed a Pop-Tart on her way out the door, and rode her bike to school, slipping into the classroom at 8:30 on the dot. On the weekends, she slept until 10:00 and then spent an hour making an enormous sugar-laden breakfast.

She was given her assignment Sunday night and by the next morning, Rae had fully implemented an entirely new routine.

MONDAY

Rae wakes up at 6:00
A.M
. She goes for a twenty-minute jog and takes a shower. Rae doesn’t like jogging—or showering, for that matter. She drinks a glass of calcium-fortified orange juice and eats a bowl of cornflakes. She walks to school, arriving thirty-five minutes early.

TUESDAY

Rae sets her alarm for 7:30
A.M
. and hits the snooze button for the next forty-five minutes. She crawls out of bed at 8:15, meanders downstairs to the kitchen, and begins preparing chocolate-chip pancakes from scratch.

Even though my apartment has a fully functioning kitchen, I usually head downstairs in the morning and drink my parents’ coffee and read their paper. I observe Rae’s activities and determine that she is in no rush. Then I state the obvious.

“Rae, it is eight twenty-five.”

“I know.”

“Doesn’t school start at eight-thirty?”

“I’m going to be late today,” Rae says casually, as she scoops the pancake batter onto the griddle.

WEDNESDAY

I arrive in the kitchen at 8:10
A.M
. Rae pours me a cup of coffee and hands me the newspaper.

“Read fast,” she says. “You’re driving me to school.”

“Don’t you think you’re taking this too far, Rae?”

“No, I don’t,” she says, as she takes a bite out of an apple.

The last time I saw Rae eat an apple it was pureed and came in a tiny jar with a picture of a baby on it. In fact, produce in general has never been a part of Rae’s food pyramid, which is primarily built on ice cream, candy, cheese-flavored snack food, and the occasional beef jerky. I’m so pleased to see her ingest something that fell from a tree that I don’t protest when Rae grabs her backpack and tells me she’s going to wait in my car, a 1995 Buick Skylark.

THURSDAY

At 7:45
A.M
. my father yells from the bottom of the staircase, “Rae, you still need a ride to school?”

“Yeah!” Rae shouts from a distance.

“Then hurry up,” my father bellows back.

Rae rushes to the top of the staircase, jumps onto the banister, and slides down to the bottom. As she and my father head out the door, my father says, “I asked you not to do that anymore.”

“But you told me to hurry.”

My father tosses Rae a Pop-Tart as they get into the car.

FRIDAY

I enter the kitchen at 8:05
A.M
. Rae sits at the table, drinking a glass of milk (another first) and eating a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich.

“How are you getting to school today?” I ask, praying that she won’t hit me up for another ride.

“David’s driving me.”

“How did you swing that?”

“We negotiated.”

I don’t bother with a follow-up question. I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down at the table.

“You’ve done that five days in a row, Isabel. Drinking coffee and reading the paper.”

“No one is going to abduct me, Rae.”

“That’s what all abductees say.”

My Evidence

The sprawl of facts that I am piecing together comes from an assortment of methods. Through direct contact or indirect observation, by questions after the fact, tape recordings, interviews, photographs, and eavesdropping whenever an opportunity presents itself.

I don’t pretend that my evidence is flawless. What I am offering is a documentary of my own making. The truth, in the individual facts presented, is reliable. But don’t forget that every image I submit is in my own frame and there are countless frames I cannot provide.

Inspector Stone has said that the past is irrelevant, that my treasure hunt of evidence has no real purpose. But he is wrong. Knowing
what
happened to my family is not enough. I need to understand
how
it happened, because maybe then I can convince myself that it could have happened to any family.