Free Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

Candace had thought.
    The lorazepam, like the previous night’s sleep medication, provides you with a sensation like skiing—on a smooth slope—but does not prepare for sudden impediments on the slope like a tree rushing at you, for instance.
    Warning signs are needed: SLOW. DANGER.
    “Excuse me, w-what did you say, Dr. Wheezle?”
    Weedle repeats her question but even as Candace listens closely, Candace doesn’t seem to hear. In her ears a roaring like a din of locusts.
    “Then—you don’t know anything about Kimi’s injuries? Neither the older ones on her legs, nor the more recent?”
    Candace is trying to catch her breath. The oxygen in Weedle’s cramped little fluorescent-lit office is seriously depleted.
    “ ‘Kimi’s injuries’—I j-just don’t . . . I don’t know what you are talking about, Dr. Wheezle— Weedle. ”
    “You haven’t noticed your daughter’s bruised legs? Her wrist? The cut in her scalp? The bruises beneath her arms?”
    Candace tries to think. If she says no —she is a bad mother. But if she says yes —she is a worse mother.
    “Mrs. Waxman, how are things in your home?”
    “—home? Our home ?”
    “Do you know of anyone in your household—any adult, or older sibling—who might be abusing your daughter?”
    Abusing. Adult. Candace is sitting very still now. Her eyes are filling with tears, her vision is splotched as it often is in the morning, and in cold weather. In order to see Weedle’s scrubbed-nun face clearly Candace has to blink away tears but if Candace blinks her eyes tears run down her face in a way that is God-damned embarrassing; still worse, if Candace gives in, rummages in her purse for a wadded tissue. She will not.
    “N-No. I do not—know . . . I don’t k-know what you are talking about, I think I should see Kimi now . . .” Wildly the thought comes to Candace: her daughter has been taken from school. Her daughter has been taken into the custody of Child Welfare. Her daughter has falsely informed upon her .
    “Mrs. Waxman—may I call you ‘Candace’?—I’m sorry if this is a shock to you, as it was to us. That’s why I asked you to come and speak with me. You see, Candace—we are obliged to report ‘suspicious injuries’ to the police. In an emergency situation, we are obliged to use the county family services hotline to report suspected child abuse in which the child’s immediate well-being may be in danger.”
    Candace is gripping her hands in her lap. Why she’d chosen to wear the chic suede skirt, matching jacket with gleaming little brass buttons and the leather boots, to speak with the school psychologist/guidance counselor, she has no idea. Her heart feels triangular in her chest, sharp-edged. Despite the lorazepam and last night’s medication she’d had a premonition of something really bad but no idea it could be— this bad .
    Eleven minutes late for the appointment with Weedle. Taking a wrong turn into the school parking lot and so shunted by one-way signs onto a residential street—God damn!—returning at last to the entrance to the school lot which she’d originally missed impatient now and would’ve been seriously pissed except for the lorazepam—(which is a new prescription, still feels experimental, tenuous)—and a hurried cigarette simultaneously first/last cigarette of the day, Candace vows—and inside the school building which looks utterly unfamiliar to her— Has she ever been here before? Is this the right school, or is her daughter enrolled at another school? —bypassing the front office in a sudden need to use a girls’ lavatory at the far end of the corridor—praying Dear God dear Christ! that Kimi will not discover her mother slamming into one of the stalls, needing to use the toilet and yet, on the toilet, cream-colored spandex tights huddled about her ankles like a peeled-off skin, there is just— nothing .
    God-damned drugs cause constipation, urine retention. If excrement is not excreted, where