Robert Beatty - Serafina and the Black Cloak

The shock hit her like a blow. She looked up at her father in astonishment. ‘I’m the baby!’ she shouted, leaping to her feet. This wasn’t just a story, this was her story. She’d been born in the forest. That meant her pa had found her and taken her in. She was like a baby fox who’d been raised by a coyote. She stood in front of her pa. ‘I’m the baby!’ she said again.

Her father looked at her, and she saw the truth of it flickering in his eyes, but he didn’t acknowledge it. He didn’t say yes and didn’t say no. It was like he couldn’t reconcile his memory of that dark night with the daughter he had now, and he had to tell the story the only way he could: as if it wasn’t her at all.

‘The bones of the baby’s back weren’t connected to each other the way they should have been,’ he continued. ‘The nuns were half scared out of their wits at the idea of caring for this child, like it was some sort of demon spawn, but to me she was a little baby, a little chitlan, and you didn’t abandon such a thing. Who cares how many toes she had!’

Serafina kneeled on the floor in front of him, trying to understand it all. She was beginning to see the kind of man her father was and maybe where she got some of her own stick-to-it-iveness. But it was all so confusing. How could she get anything from him if she wasn’t even his?

‘I took that baby away, fearin’ them nuns would drown her,’ he said.

‘I hate them nuns,’ she spat. ‘They’re terrible!’

He shook his head, not in disagreement, but more like the nuns didn’t mean anything at all because they were the least of his problems.

‘I didn’t have any proper food,’ he said, ‘so I crept into a farmer’s barn and milked his goat – stole a bottle too. Felt ashamed doin’ these things, but I needed to get some food into her, and I couldn’t see a better road. That night, I fed the little chitlan her first meal, and as bad off as she was, and with her eyes still closed, she drank it down real good, and I remember praying that somehow it’d help. The more I held her and watched her suck down that milk, the more I wanted her to live.’

‘Then what happened?’ She slid closer to him. She knew that outside the locked door of the electrical room, somewhere above them, the lawful inhabitants of Biltmore Estate were searching from room to room, but she didn’t care. ‘Keep goin’, Pa,’ she nudged.

‘I looked for a woman who could mother the baby proper, but none of them would do it. They was sure she was gonna die. But two weeks later, while I was fixin’ an engine with one hand and bottle-feedin’ the chitlan with the other, somethin’ happened. She opened her eyes for the first time and stared straight at me. All I could do was stare right back at her. She had these big, beautiful yellow eyes that just didn’t stop. I knew then and there that I was hers, and she was mine, that we were kin now, and there was no denyin’ it.’

Serafina was so mesmerised by his story that she barely blinked. The yellow eyes that her father spoke of were still looking at him, and they had been for twelve years.

He rubbed his mouth slowly with his hand, looked over at the dynamo, and then continued the story. ‘In the time that followed, I fed the little chitlan every morning and every night. I slept with her tucked under my arm. I nestled her in an open toolbox beside me when I worked. When she started growing up a little, I taught her how to crawl and run about. I was tryin’ my best to take good care of her – she was mine now, you see – but people started askin’ questions and government types started comin’ around. Men with badges and guns. One night when I was out workin’ in the train yard, three of ’em waited until she wandered off a bit, and then they cornered her, trapped her in real tight. They was gonna take her away and put her someplace, God knows where, or maybe worse. I hit the first officer so hard that he went down bleedin’ and he didn’t get up, then I struck the second one and grabbed for the third, but he skedaddled on outta there. The little chitlan was all right, thank God, but I knew we were in trouble. They’d be comin’ back with more men next time, chains for me, and a cage for the chitlan. I knew then that we had to go. We had to escape the pryin’ eyes and yammerin’ mouths in the city, so I quit the train yard and found a new job way up in the mountains, workin’ the construction of a great house.’

She gasped as she realised that he hadn’t just been hiding her ; he’d been hiding them . That’s why we’re in the basement , she thought as a wave of relief passed through her. He was protecting her.

‘I took care of her through good times and bad,’ her pa continued, ‘just doin’ everything I could, and over the years the strange little creature that I found in the forest grew up into a fine little girl, and I did my best to forget how she came into the world or how I got her.’

And here, finally, her father paused and looked at her in earnest. ‘And that’s you now, Sera,’ he said. ‘That’s you. It’s plain to see that you’re not like other girls, but you’re not misshapen or hideous like them nuns said you’d be. You’re remarkably graceful in your movements – fast and agile like I’ve never seen. You’re not deaf and blind like they said, but real sharp in your senses. I’ve been protecting you every day for the last twelve years, and the God’s truth: they’ve been the best twelve years of my life. You mean the world to me, girl. There’s no shame here, none at all, just a strong desire to keep us both alive.’

When he stopped and looked at her with his steady dark eyes, she realised that she’d been sobbing, and quickly wiped the tears off her face before he got mad at her for crying. In some ways, she had never felt closer to her pa than at that moment, for his story had snagged her heart, but there was something else roiling up inside her too: her father wasn’t her father. He’d found her in the woods and taken her. He’d been lying to her and everyone else for her entire life. All these years he’d refused to talk about her mother, just let her wonder on and on, and now here it was. The truth. Tears kept streaming down her face. She felt so stupid imagining fancy ladies and her mother forgetting her in a washing machine and all that stuff she used to think about when she was little. She’d spent countless hours wondering where she came from and he had known all this the whole time.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked him.

He didn’t answer her.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Pa?’ she asked again.

Staring at the ground, he shook his head slowly back and forth.

‘Pa . . .’

Finally, he said, ‘Because I didn’t want it to be true.’

She stopped and looked at him in shock. ‘But it is true, Pa. You can’t just wish things aren’t true when they are true!’

‘I’m sorry, Sera,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to be my little girl.’

She was angry, very angry, but she felt a lump in her throat. He had finally reached deep down into his heart and told her what he was thinking, what he was feeling, what he was frightened of, and what he dreamed of.

And what he dreamed of was her .

She clenched her teeth and breathed through her nose and looked at him.

She was angry and confused and amazed and excited and frightened all at the same time. She finally knew the truth. At least some of it.

Now she knew that she didn’t just feel different, she was different.

The thought of it terrified her: she was a creature of the night.

She came from the very forest that her pa had taught her to fear all her life and had forbidden her to enter. The thought of coming from that place repulsed her, scared her, but at the same time there was a strange confirmation in it, almost a relief. It made a twisted kind of sense to her.