Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

The day Alma Southerly was sent to us, my wife Silvia and I had been caring for foster children for close to twenty years. We were in our front yard, tying vines to a trellis, when the county station wagon pulled to the curb. Mrs. Dunbar of the county probation department climbed from behind the wheel; and Mrs. Snyder of the city welfare department got out on the passenger side, pulling the reluctant Alma after her. The women were big-hipped and considerably overweight, so there had been little room between them on the seat; however. Alma hadn’t needed much space.

We had been told to expect a thirteen-year-old, but Alma Southerly looked more like an undernourished ten-year-old. She was hardly more than four and a half feet of skin and bones, and her flesh was so translucent that blue veins could be seen at her temples and along her bare arms. She had large, sad eyes, like a waif in a painting by Keane, and her straight, shoulder-length hair was such a pale blonde it was almost white. Her lips were trembling and her face was wet with tears when Mrs. Snyder deposited her in front of us.

“I done wrong,” she sobbed pitifully. “I done wrong,” and our hearts went out to her immediately.

When Silvia and I first began taking children into our home, we had received referrals from both the courts and the welfare agencies. Soon, however, we established a record of success with delinquents, and the children sent to us were invariably wards of the courts with suspended sentences or waived prosecutions in their pasts.

It wasn’t uncommon to discover that a child could lie, cheat, or steal effortlessly. Over the years, we found just about every aberration that causes maladjustment in society. Since we’d had no children of our own, we treated each foster child as though he or she were one of the children we’d never had. We gave them love, trust, understanding, and a taste of genuine family togetherness which many had never experienced.

As a result, we became expert at breaking through the facades of even the most hardened offenders, and we did it without reference to their prior records. We seldom read a child’s file. We believed that whatever a child had done in the past was unimportant. We didn’t feel we had to know of what devilry a child might be capable. If we had a fear, it was that we would someday be sent a child we couldn’t help, a child like Alma Southerly.

Silvia and I bent to comfort the little girl and, surprisingly, instead of turning to my wife as the younger children always did, she turned to me. She stood in the circle of my uncertain arms and pressed her tear-streaked face against my side.

“I done wrong,” she said between muffled sobs. “I done wrong, an’ I awful sorry.”

From her manner of speech, it was apparent Alma had spent most of her life in the hills of West Virginia or Tennessee, but if it hadn’t been obvious, we would never have known it. Except for confessing she had “done wrong” and professing repentance, she volunteered no information. At the end of two weeks we knew as much about her as we had known a few minutes after her arrival. We hadn’t been able to stop her tears and didn’t even know how to try.

“Tom,” my wife said after breakfast one morning, “you’d better drive down to the Youth Bureau and read Alma’s file.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I had better...”

Alma was on hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor, when she heard her father call, “Al-mah! Al-mah!”

She stood up and wiped her hands on the hem of her dress. Then she hurried into the front room where he was sitting on the couch. He was wearing only his shorts and a sleeveless undershirt; but he seldom dressed during the daylight hours, so Alma thought nothing of it. That morning’s newspaper was spread out before him on a low table.

“Come here, child,” he said, indicating the seat beside him.

She went to him and sat down. She got along well with her father. He was usually laughing and in a good mood. He was more fun to be with than her mother, who was seldom home, and Alma liked the smell of tobacco and whiskey that clung to him like a sticky cloud. She knew he would have helped her with the housework if he weren’t always feeling poorly.

“Yes, Papa?”

He cleared his throat. “Your ma ain’t comin’ home no more, child. We all alone now.”

Alma didn’t know what to say. She looked around dumbly for an explanation but found none. The newspaper was open to a story about an unidentified woman who had been found dead from an overdose of barbiturates in a motel room, but that had nothing to do with her ma.

Alma climbed onto her father’s lap and put her arms around his neck. “I don’t understand, Papa. She just went on a date, like always.”

He cradled her in his arms and began to rock her back and forth the way she liked him to do. “There’s nothin’ t’ understand, child. She just ain’t comin’ home no more, an’ we gonna have t’ find some new way t’ make money.”

“Papa, I betcha I could get dates,” she offered brightly.

He paused in his rocking, as though considering the suggestion, then shook his head. “No, you’re too little. It’ll be another couple of years before you’ll be big enough for dates. Till then, I’ll just have t’ think o’ somethin’ else.”

“Maybe we could go home?” Alma asked hopefully.

“No, cain’t do that. They just waitin’ for your ol’ pa to show his face back there. Don’t you worry, though. I reckon I’ll think o’ somethin’.”

True to his word, within the week he had thought of something — robbery. Alma listened to him explain her part as he drove his rust-spotted old sedan to the Tall Towers apartment complex in the center of the city. Each apartment tower was twenty stories high and almost self-sufficient. Their bases held laundries, markets, restaurants, and most necessary services. The parking garages were on the third level, and self-service elevators operated from there.

He drove his car up the ramp to the parking area and left it in a space reserved for visiting clergy. Alma followed him, carrying a small, battered case that had once held roller skates, as he led the way to the elevator and pushed the button marked Roof.

“Now, remember what I tole you, child. These be all rich folks live here. Why, the newspaper said it costs at least a thousan’ dollars every month t’ live in these apartments, an’ the higher up you goes, the more it costs. We should get enough money tonight t’ last us for two — three months.”

Alma followed close at his heels to the edge of the roof. She looked fearfully down while he tied a loop at one end of a length of dirty rope and placed it under her arms.

“You see that little balcony jus’ below us?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Well, that’s where I gonna put you. When you’re down, see if the glass door’s locked. It prob’ly won’t be if the people is home. Then slip outta the rope and wait a couple o’ minutes before you slide open the door. Move real quiet across the room, an’ open the door t’ the corridor for me.”

Without further preliminaries he picked her up and dropped her over the edge. Alma swung precariously at the end of the rope for a few seconds, then landed on the balcony below, skinning her knee. She sat on the cool concrete, trying to control her fear, until he shook the line from above to remind her to check the door. It was unlocked. She wouldn’t have to swing to another balcony, seeking an unlocked door. With a sigh of relief, she took off the rope loop.

She waited a couple of minutes, listening. Then, shaking with apprehension, she carefully slid the glass door open and paused. She could hear only the ticking of a clock, so she tiptoed across the deep-pile rug to the corridor door. In a moment she had removed the chain latch and quietly eased back the bolt.