incapable of speaking anything but the truth.
Only this time, the answers were not inside her, not most of them.Last night, in her sterile rental, she had started jotting down, stream of consciousness, what she could remember. Her list wasnât confined to Calliope but covered every detail of life at Dickey Hill Elementary, no matter how trivial, because she knew from experience that small details could unearth large ones. The memories of the latter had come readily: foursquare, the Christmas pageant, Mrs. Klein teaching us about Picasso and Chagall, the girl group. The girl groupâshe hadnât thought about that in ages, although it had been key to a scene in the first book. Now and Later candiesâdid they even make those anymore?âthe Dickeyville Fourth of July parade, her own brief television appearance, lumpy in a leotard, demonstrating how adolescent girls cannot do a full, touch-your-toes sit-up at a certain point during their development. She couldnât decide what was funnierâher desperation to be on television or the fact that people believed those sit-ups accomplished anything.
But where was Calliope in all of this? The girl-woman who was supposed to be at the center of Cassandraâs story remained a cipher, quiet and self-contained. No matter how hard Cassandra tried to trigger memories of Callie, she was merely there. She didnât get in trouble, she didnât not get in trouble. Was there a clue in that? Was she the kind of child who tortured animals? Did she steal? There had been a rash of lunchbox thefts one year, with all the girlsâ desserts taken. Was there something in Callieâs home life that had taught her early on that it was better not to attract attention? Cassandra had a vague impressionâit couldnât even be called a memoryâof an angry, defensive woman, quick to suspect that she was being mocked or treated unfairly, the kind of woman given to yanking children by the meat of the upper arm, to hissing, You are on my last nerve. She had done that at the birthday party, upon coming to gather Callie. No, waitâFatimaâs mother had picked the two up, and she would not have grabbed another womanâs child that way. Still, Cassandra believed she had witnessed this scene with Callie, not Fatima.
Abuseâinevitable in such a story, but also a little, well, tiresome.She hoped it didnât turn out to be that simple, abused child grows up to be abusive mother. Hitting the wall of her own memory, but feeling too tentative to press forward in her search for the living, breathing Calliope, she decided to spend an afternoon at the library, researching what others had learned about the adult woman presumed to have murdered her own child.
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THE ENOCH PRATT CENTRAL LIBRARY had been one of the places where her father brought her on Saturday afternoons, after the separation. That was the paradox of divorce in the sixtiesâfathers who had never much bothered with their children were suddenly expected to do things with them every other weekend. It was especially awkward in the Fallows family because Ric wanted to involve Annie in their outings and Lennie had expressly prohibited Annieâs participation. Ric defied his estranged wife, setting up fake chance encounters with his girlfriend. At the library, at the zoo, at Westview Cinemas, at the bowling alley on Route 40. Why, look who it is! You couldnât even say he feigned surprise; it was more as if he feigned feigning. Annie, at least, had the grace to look embarrassed by their transparency. And nervous, with good reason. People were not comfortable with interracial couples in 1968 and not at all shy about expressing their objections.
Cassandra liked Annie. Everyone liked Annieâexcept, of course, Cassandraâs mother, and it was hard to blame her for that. In fact, the outings were more fun when Annie was along because Annie didnât give the impression that she felt