William Bernhardt: Primary Justice

Bertha Adams looked out the office window.

Emily abruptly changed the subject. “Do you play pat-a-cake?” She raised her hands with the palms outstretched and chanted. “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can—”

Ben winked at Mrs. Adams. “I don’t think I know that one.”

“I know more,” she said. She continued chanting in the same rhythmic pattern. “A bumblebee and reverie. It will do, if bees are few—”

Mr. Adams interrupted. “Bertha, don’t you have her crayons or something?”

“Yes.” She reached into her purse and pulled out an oversized book. “Emily, honey, I brought your coloring hook.”

Emily turned and stared at the book. “What is this?”

Bertha pressed the book into her hands. “It’s your coloring book, princess. We bought it just before we came here. And here are your colors. You take them and go sit in the lobby.”

Emily frowned. “Don’t remember no lobby. Don’t know this place.”

Bertha pointed out the door toward the lobby.

“You won’t leave me, will you?”

“Of course not, child,” Mr. Adams said. “Now you go sit down and wait for us. We need to talk to Mr. Kincaid here for a spell.”

Ben rose to his full height; “Bye-bye, Emily. Maybe we can play again later.”

Hesitantly, the girl started to leave.

“Wait, Emily,” Ben said. “Don’t forget your sweater. It’s cool in the lobby. Air conditioning’s down too low.”

She cocked her head at a slight angle. The puzzled expression again crossed her face.

Ben took the sweater from the hook behind the door. “Remember this?”

The girl looked at the sweater. “It’s pretty. Can I have it?”

Ben looked at Mr. and Mrs. Adams, but their eyes were fixed on one another.

“Of course,” he said, after a moment. He handed the girl her sweater.

Bertha again pointed toward the lobby. “Now run along, dear.”

Emily obeyed.

Ben gestured for the couple to sit down in the orange corduroy chairs. There was an awkward pause as all parties considered the best means of broaching the obvious subject.

Mr. Adams broke the silence. “You probably know this already, Mr. Kincaid—”

“Call me Ben.” He felt ridiculous hearing a man thirty years his elder calling him mister.

“Sure. As I was saying, Ben, I work for Joe Sanguine out at Sanguine Enterprises. I’m vice president in charge of new projects and development, have been for fourteen years. I go back even before Sanguine bought the outfit. ’Cept during the time I spent in California, I guess my title changed—”

“Stick to the subject, Jonathan.”

He grinned. “Yes, Bertha. Anyway, ’bout a year ago, I was scouting some real estate as a possible location for a new outlet in south Tulsa, out toward Jenks. Place was a vacant lot, out in the middle of nowhere. And who do I find wandering around out there but little Emily? She was filthy and so confused she didn’t know up from down. She knew her name was Emily and that she had a mommy she couldn’t describe somewhere, but that’s about it. Said she woke up nearby but didn’t know how she came to be there. Course I figured she was just kinda confused and disoriented from being abandoned.” He paused, and glanced at his wife. “Later, we found out just how bad it really was.”

Ben tried to maintain an even, professional composure. “Is there…something wrong with Emily?”

“Yeah, there sure enough is.” He rubbed his hands against his cheeks, as if rousing himself. “Korsakov’s syndrome.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s what the doctors call it. Korsakov’s syndrome. With some visual agnosia. Emily has no long-term memory. In fact, she has no short-term memory, really. Anything you say to her or show her, she’ll forget as soon as you or it are out of sight. Maybe sooner.” He paused. “Emily lives only in the present. And she doesn’t live there for long.”

Ben nodded, although he certainly did not understand. “Why does she think she’s five years old?”

“Because that’s the last time she remembers,” Adams answered. “That’s when her memory shuts down. Before that, her memory is more or less intact. Course, there’s not really much she can tell you—what do you expect from the memory of a five-year-old kid? Plus there’s the visual agnosia. She doesn’t seem to see faces . Or if she does, she can’t describe them. Can’t put it into words. Can’t draw you a picture.”

He rubbed his hand against his forehead and brushed back his white hair. “After some point in the year she was five—nothing. She can’t even tell you what happened an hour ago. That’s why, first thing, she asked you, ‘Have I met you before?’ She can’t remember.”

“She still asks me that sometimes,” Bertha added, “and she’s been living with us almost a year now.” Her stoic expression did not break, but Ben could see her sadness ran deep.

“She’s pretty good with voices, though,” Jonathan added. “After a month or so, she began to recognize the sound of Bertha and me. Now, once she hears our voices, she seems to remember, at least a little bit, and trust us.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” Ben said.

“It’s a rare brain disorder, according to the docs. An extreme form of amnesia. Usually occurs as a result of alcoholism.”

Ben’s face wrinkled. “But Emily couldn’t have been—”

“No, Ben, she couldn’t have been an alcoholic. It can also be caused by a blow to the head, a brain tumor, or anything else that might cause a”—he took a deep breath, as if gearing up for the big words—“neurological dysfunction.”

“She’s been to see doctors, men?”

“Yes, of course.” A tinge of irritation, or frustration, crept into his voice. “She’s been checked by damn near every neurologist in the Southwest. EEGs, blood tests, CAT scans, psychotropic drugs, the whole dog-and-pony show. No visible sign of brain damage. But then, they explain, the atrophying of the tiny … mammillary bodies in the brain that causes this disorder probably wouldn’t show up on any of their tests.”

“Kind of makes you wonder why they take the gruesome things in the first place,” Bertha added quietly. There was no humor in her voice.

“Then no one has any idea what caused this?” Ben asked.

“There is a theory,” Adams said hesitantly, “though no real proof, that the syndrome can result from what the docs call … hysterical … or fugal amnesia. Meaning that Emily experienced some traumatic event too awful to remember. Something her mind wants to avoid. So it hasn’t remembered anything since.”

Ben felt embarrassed about his earlier snap judgment. Jonathan Adams was obviously an intelligent man. “That might explain why her memory stops at age five,” Ben said. “But what could happen to a five-year-old girl that would be too horrible to remember?”

Bertha’s head was lowered. “I hope she never remembers,” she said quietly. “We try not to dwell on it. We love our little Emily and the thought—” She stopped, and her face tightened. She returned her gaze to a fixed spot on the carpet.

“May not have happened when she was five,” Adams added, covering the silence. “With Korsakov’s syndrome, sometimes the erosion of memory goes both ways. It moves not only forward but backward from the time of the trauma.”

The room fell silent. Ben wished to God he had a cactus or calendar or something in the office to which he could divert his attention. After a moment, he realized he had become so engrossed in the discussion of Emily’s disorder that he had totally failed to explore the legal matter at hand.

He cleared his throat. “Forgive me for changing the subject, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, but I was told that you were seeking advice on an adoption matter. Do you want to adopt Emily?”