Janice Kay - The Word of a Child

“Oh, no,” Mariah breathed. “But…how? She wasn’t kidnapped, was she?”

“No, her molester was apparently an acquaintance.” Ms. Cooper looked straight at Simon. “I’m afraid she’s named you, Mr. Stavig.”

The chair jerked as Simon’s grip tightened. Mariah couldn’t breathe.

“This is insane! I hardly know who this kid is, and you’re claiming she pointed her finger at me?”

“I’m afraid she did,” the police officer said stolidly. “We’re obligated to follow—”

“You dare to come here, into my home, and accuse me on the word of a three-year-old?”

“At this point, nobody is accusing you,” the social worker soothed. “We simply need to ask you some questions, and inform you that we will be conducting an investigation.”

“An investigation!” He shoved violently at the chair, moving it several inches despite the fact his wife sat in it. Pacing, he snapped, “How can you investigate something like that? It’s ludicrous that you’re here at all. The kid can’t even talk! I can’t understand a word she says.” He stopped to glare at them with narrowed, glittering dark eyes. “Tell me—can you?”

The police officer’s jaw muscles knotted. “Yes,” he said, voice very level. “Even in a terrified whisper, ‘Zofie’s daddy,’ was clear as a bell.”

Mariah’s head swam. She felt distant, as if she looked down on a scene she didn’t fully understand and had no part in.

Lily. Pretty, comical Lily, touched…sexually? The idea defied imagination. How could anybody do something so horrific to a child so young?

And…Simon. They were saying he had done it. Mariah’s husband. The very idea was ridiculous! Mariah couldn’t believe this was happening. Had Lily ever even met Simon, except at preschool events like the Halloween party, where too many people were around for something like this to happen?

She’d missed a couple of exchanges.

Simon was shouting, “Maybe you should be looking at her daddy. Did you ever think of that?”

Mariah stared at him in shock. He and Tom Thalberg had talked about the Mariners in front of the house just recently. Tom was a nice man.

Seemed to be a nice man. These people wouldn’t be here if Lily hadn’t been molested. Somebody had done this unspeakable thing.

She heard her own voice. “Was she raped?”

The police officer’s cold stare for her husband turned to something gentler when he looked at her. She read sympathy in his eyes. For her, which scared her even more.

“No. We can be grateful, because she would have been injured badly if an adult male had actually penetrated her vaginally. From the standpoint of the investigation, however, the ability to gather DNA would have been helpful.”

“Oh.” Penetration… No. She would not imagine Zofie, instead. No. “Then…then what?” she asked, just audibly.

He told her about oral sex and objects pushed into Lily, things Mariah wished she’d never heard. She glanced at Simon, expecting him to look as shocked, but all he did was stand across the living room from the tableau the rest of them made, his nostrils flared, fury written across his face.

“My husband would never do anything like that,” Mariah said stoutly. “We have a daughter. You saw her. Zofie is fine. Surely a man who would molest another child would do the same thing to his own daughter.”

“Yes.” Detective McLean’s voice was very soft, the gaze he kept on her husband very hard. “Unfortunately that’s usually true.”

They started talking about how she needed to take Zofie to the hospital to be checked, and that for her safety, Simon should move out of the house and not be alone with her while the investigation proceeded.

Simon exploded. “You want to take my wife and home and child from me? You have no evidence and no right!”

The police officer rose to his feet, his bulk suddenly menacing. “We have the word of the victim.”

“Get out of my house now!”

“Daddy?” In her bright red overalls, her dark hair ponytailed, her small face pinched, Zofie stood in the hall. “Mommy? Why is Daddy yelling?”

Simon’s head swung as if he were an angry bull. “Go back to your room! Now!”

Her breath hitched and tears filled her eyes. With a muffled sob, she ran.

Mariah sat rooted, unable to go after her.

Taking advantage of the interruption, Ms. Cooper said, “Mr. Stavig, if you’d just answer some questions…”

“I will answer no questions! Get out.”

“Mr. Stavig, you might be able to clear this up in half an hour if you would cooperate,” the social worker tried again.

“Simon,” Mariah whispered. “Please.”

He didn’t even glance at her. “I’ve never been alone with this girl, I hardly know who she is. Look elsewhere for your monster.”

“Monsters,” Detective McLean said, “can take many forms, Mr. Stavig. Even that of a man like you.”

Face contorted with anger and, Mariah thought, an effort to hide fear or even tears, Simon stalked to within a few inches of the police officer. “Out,” he snarled.

The detective inclined his head. “Certainly. But we will be back, and you will answer questions.” Those light, compelling eyes turned to Mariah. “Mrs. Stavig, please try to persuade your husband to help us instead of hindering. And consider taking your daughter and staying elsewhere if you can’t persuade him to leave the house for the new few weeks.”

They walked out. Neither Mariah nor Simon followed. She sat frozen, stunned, reluctant to look at her husband. She heard him breathing as hard as if he’d been running, or fighting.

The front door closed quietly. From down the hall came the sound of quiet sobs.

Mariah waited for Simon to say, How can they think I would do such a thing? Or, Help me remember. I’ve never even been alone with this girl, have I? She waited for him, to come to her, perhaps kneel in front of her and take her hands and beg her to believe him incapable of being the monster Detective Connor McLean had named him.

Instead he turned that furious face on her and said, “You will take Zofie out of preschool so that no one else can accuse us.” And then he picked up the remote control and turned on the television, as if nothing had happened.

Stiff and tired and feeling terribly afraid, Mariah stood and went down the hall to her daughter’s room.

“Martinez is rounding third,” the commentator crowed.

She wasn’t sure Simon had even noticed she’d left the room.

If he had asked her, Help me remember, she would have had to say, Last Saturday, my students did a Sunday matinee of The Diary of Anne Frank. You agreed to watch both Zofie and her friend Lily Thalberg. I know nothing happened, but you were alone with the girls.

But he had not asked that or anything else. He had not been grieving for Lily, nor bewildered at such a terrible accusation. He had been in a rage that anyone would believe the word of a three-year-old child.

A child the age of his own Zofie, who was just as pretty as Lily Thalberg.

“MS. STAVIG? CAN I TALK to you?”

Mariah looked up with a smile. “Tracy! Of course you may. Come on in.”

A seventh-and eighth-grade literature and drama teacher, she kept her classroom door open during her planning period specifically so that students would feel free to drop by. Most often it was the theater enthusiasts who hung around her classroom during breaks, but she wanted to be available to kids like Tracy Mitchell who were falling behind with their assignments, too.

Mariah had been grading papers in which her eighth-grade advanced lit students were supposed to be analyzing To Kill A Mockingbird. Josh Renfield’s opening sentence was a tangle with no subject. He liked big words and multiple clauses, but basic grammatical structure apparently eluded him. Mariah laid down her red pencil with relief.