Private Eyes

I took her fingers in mine and stilled them with touch and therapeutic murmurings.

She turned silent.

I said, “Do you have bad dreams every night?”

“Yes. And more. Mother said one time there were seven.”

“Seven bad dreams in one night?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember them?”

She liberated her hand, closed her eyes, and retreated to a detached tone. A seven-year-old clinician, presenting at Case Conference. The case of a certain nameless little girl who woke up cold and sweating from her sleeping place at the foot of her mother’s bed. Lurching awake, heart pounding, clawing the sheets to keep from falling endlessly, uncontrollably, into a huge black maw. Clawing but losing her grip and feeling everything float away like a kite with a broken string. Crying out in the darkness and rolling- hurtling- toward her mother’s warm body, a love-seeking missile. Mother’s arm reaching out unconsciously and drawing her near.

Lying there, frozen, staring up at the ceiling, trying to convince herself it was just a ceiling, that the things crawling up there weren’t- couldn’t be- real. Inhaling Mother’s perfume, listening to Mother’s light snores. Making sure Mother was deep asleep before reaching out and touching satin and lace, a stretch of soft arm-flesh. Then up to the face. The good side… somehow she always ended up next to the good side.

Freezing again, as she said good side for the second time.

Her eyes opened. She threw a panicky glance at the separate exit.

A convict weighing the risks of jailbreak.

Too much, too soon.

Leaning in close, I told her she’d done well; we could spend the rest of the session drawing again, or playing a game.

She said, “I’m scared of my room.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s big.”

“Too big for you?”

A guilty look crossed her face. Guilty confusion.

I asked her to tell me more about her room. She painted more pictures.

Tall ceiling with pictures of ladies in fancy dresses on it. Pink carpets, pink-and-gray lamb and pussycat wallpaper that Mother had picked especially for her when she was a baby in a crib. Toys. Music boxes and miniature dishes and glass figurines, three separate dollhouses, a zoo of stuffed animals. A canopy bed from somewhere else far away, she forgot where, with pillows and a fluffy comforter filled with goose feathers. Lace-trimmed windows that were round on top and went almost up to the ceiling. Windows with bits of colored glass in them that made colored pictures on your skin. A seat in front of one of the windows that had a view of the grass and the flowers Sabino tended all day; she wanted to call down and say hello to him but was afraid to get too close to the window.

“Sounds like a huge room,” I said.

“Not just one room, a bunch. There’s a sleeping room and a bathroom and a dressing room with mirrors and lights all around them, next to my closet. And a playroom- that’s where most of the toys are, but the stuffed animals are in the sleeping room. Jacob calls the sleeping room the nursery, which means a baby room.”

Frown.

“Does Jacob treat you like a baby?”

“No! I haven’t used a crib since I was three!”

“Do you like having such a big room?”

“No! I hate it! I never go inside it.”

The guilty look returned.

Two minutes until the session was over. She hadn’t budged from her chair since she’d sat down.

I said, “You’re doing a great job, Melissa. I’ve really learned a lot. But how about we stop for now?”

She said, “I don’t like to be alone. Ever.”

“No one likes to be alone for a long time. Even grown-ups get afraid of that.”

“I don’t like it ever. I waited until my birthday- till I was seven- to go to the bathroom by myself. With the door closed and privacy.”

Sitting back, daring me to disapprove.

I said, “Who went with you till you were seven?”

“Jacob and Mother and Madeleine and Carmela kept me company till I was four. Then Jacob said I was a young lady now, only ladies should be with me, so he stopped going. Then, when I was seven I decided to go there alone. It made me cry and hurt my stomach and once I threw up, but I did it. With the door closed a little, then all the way- but I still don’t lock it. No way.”

Another dare.

I said, “You did great.”

Frown. “Sometimes it still makes me nervous. I’d still like to have someone there- not looking, just there, keeping me company. But I don’t ask them.”

“Good for you,” I said. “You fought your fear and beat it.”

“Yes,” she said. Astonished. Translating ordeal into victory for what appeared to be the first time.

“Did your mother and Jacob tell you you did a good job?”

“Uh-huh.” Dismissive wave. “They always says nice things.”

“Well, you did do a good job. You won a tough fight. That means you can win other fights- beat up other fears. One by one. We can work together and pick the fears you want to fight, then plan how we’ll do it, step by step. Slowly. So it’s never scary for you. If you’d like, we can start the next time you’re here- on Monday.”

I got up.

She stayed in her chair. “I want to talk some more.”

“I’d like to, too, Melissa, but our time is up.”

“Just a little.” Hint of whine.

“We really have to end now. I’ll see you on Monday, which is only…”

I touched her shoulder. She shrugged me off and her eyes got wet.

I said, “I’m sorry, Melissa. I wish there-”

She shot out of the chair and shook a finger at me. “If your job is to help me, why can’t you help me now?” Stamping her foot.

“Because our sessions together have to end at a certain time.”

“Why?”

“I think you know.”

“ ’Cause you have to see other kids?”

“Yes.”

“What’re their names?”

“I can’t talk about that, Melissa. Remember?”

“How come they’re more important than me?”

“They’re not, Melissa. You’re very important to me.”

“Then why are you kicking me out?”

Before I could answer, she burst into tears and headed for the door to the waiting room. I followed her, wondering for the thousandth time about the sanctity of the three-quarter hour, the idolatry of the clock. But knowing, also, the importance of limits. For any child, but especially this one, who seemed to have so few. Who’d been sentenced to live out her formative years in the terrible, unbounded splendor of a fairy-tale world.

Nothing scarier than fairy tales…

When I got to the waiting room she was tugging at Hernandez’s hand, crying and insisting, “Come on, Sabino!” He stood, looking frightened and puzzled. When he saw me, puzzlement changed to suspicion.

I said, “She’s a little upset. Please have her mother call me as soon as possible.”

Blank look.

“Su madre,” I said. “El telÉfono. I’ll see her Monday at five. Lunes. Cinco.”

“Okeh.” He glared and squeezed his hat.

Melissa stamped her foot twice and said, “No way! I’m never coming back here! Never!”

Yanking at the rough brown hand, Hernandez stood and continued to study me. His eyes were watery and dark and had hardened, as if he were considering retribution.

I thought of all the protective layers surrounding this child, how ineffectual all of it was.

I said, “Goodbye, Melissa. See you Monday.”

“No way!” She ran out.

Hernandez put on his hat and went after her.

I checked with my service at day’s end. No messages from San Labrador.

I wondered how Hernandez had communicated what he’d seen. Prepared myself for a cancellation of the Monday appointment. But no message to that effect came that evening or the next day. Maybe they wouldn’t offer that courtesy to a plebe.