Her eyes darted from face to face, quickly leaving Laneer’s and Sylvia’s, as if their pain was more than she could take. They rested no more than a second on McDaniel’s and then the minister’s. Why should they? She didn’t know them at all.
They lingered on Walt’s face for more than a moment, and Faye though maybe this was the person Kali would choose to trust. After all, he was her schoolteacher, the person who had been her day-to-day parent for an entire school year. He was also the man who made sure she got two juice boxes when she wanted them, plus a weekend backpack full of food, so that she wouldn’t go hungry or thirsty. But still Kali didn’t speak. After Kali finished studying Walt, her eyes traveled on until they stopped on Faye’s face.
Reaching out a hand to grab Faye’s wrist, Kali said, “I wanna know exactly what happened to my mama. You’re the one that can tell me.”
Laneer and Sylvia took a step toward the girl and the front door where she stood, apparently presuming that they would be sitting down together with Kali and Faye to discuss Frida’s death, but Kali shook her head.
She pointed to Faye. “Just you. I don’t wanna talk to nobody else.”
Faye sat on an old brown couch, next to the window. At her left elbow, there was a single end table holding a brass lamp, its plating pitted and corroded. The carpet under her feet was rental-house tan. The walls were painted rental-house beige. The only color in the room came from a few toys lying in the corner and a few movie magazines stacked on the floor beside the couch.
She knew Laneer was standing on the other side of the window glass, straining to hear. They were all out there, behind the venetian blinds. If she pushed aside those blinds, or leaned down to look beneath them, she would see all five of the people on the porch peering in at her. But she didn’t really need to look. She knew they were there, and so did Kali.
“What happened to my mama?”
“Kali, why are you asking me? There’s a policeman out there who’s working really hard to find out what happened to your mother. He doesn’t know it all, but he’s trying to find out. He’s the one who can help you.”
Kali said nothing, but Faye could read between the lines. There was one excellent reason the child might think Faye knew the truth about her mother’s death. She would think that, if she had seen Faye find her.
“I’ve told Detective McDaniel all I know, Kali. Do you have anything to tell him?”
“Only stupid people talk to the police.”
Faye wondered who had convinced the little girl of this. In Kali’s world, it could have been anybody. And in Kali’s world, the notion that only stupid people talk to the police might even have been true.
“You still ain’t told me what happened. I ain’t got all day, Faye. That policeman won’t leave us by ourselves forever.”
Kali was right. Still, Faye stalled. How much should she say? The girl deserved to know something, but there was no way a ten-year-old should hear the unvarnished truth: “Your mother was beaten and buried alive. She must have felt a lot of pain and she must have been terrified. I don’t know how long she suffered, but it was too long.”
Instead of unloading all that truth, Faye kept stalling. “I don’t know everything that happened.”
The stern little face offered no mercy. “Didn’t say you did. You can still tell me what you know.”
Faye caved, a little. “She was beaten up pretty bad. Whoever did it buried her and left her for dead. I found her and I called the police. That’s the story as I know it.”
Kali was looking at her with a face that said, “I know there’s more to it.” And, again, Faye believed that this meant that Kali had been there, so she decided to go on the offensive, but just a little. How aggressively should a bereaved child be questioned?
Faye’s answer was “Not aggressively at all,” but she wasn’t sure what Detective McDaniel’s answer would be. She really wanted to get Kali to tell what she knew without suffering through an official interrogation that might be too harsh for a bereaved child. She decided to push her a little, gently.
“I found the ice cream you left behind and I know you were there. What did you see?”
She got no answer but silence. Silence, a steely pair of black eyes, and two lips, firmly pressed together.
“Did you see somebody hurt your mother?”
Silence.
“Did you see somebody bury your mother?”
Silence again, but there was no “No.”
“Did you see who it was? Do you know who did it?”
First silence, but then a tiny shake of the head and four words. “No. It was dark.”
“Are you saying that you were there, but you didn’t see the person who attacked your mother? Or that you did see, but didn’t know who it was?”
Try as Faye might, she couldn’t get the little girl to speak another word.
After a time spent sitting with the girl, face-to-face and silent, Faye heard a firm double-knock. McDaniel’s voice came through the door. “Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth, it’s me. We’ve got a social worker here. She wants to talk to Kali.”
Faye reached out to brush a loose curl back from the child’s brow. “This social worker is somebody who knows more than I do about how to help you. I’m going to step out so she can talk to you in private.”
Kali was shaking her head at Faye’s suggestion that being alone with the social worker might help in any way, but Faye backed out the door and closed it behind her. The arrival of the social worker brought with it the looming shadow of
