The Bright Unknown Read online

  “Can you talk?” I asked him.

  “Who are you?” His voice was small and quiet.

  “I’m Brighton Friedrich. I live in that big building over there.” I pointed to it, and his eyes roamed in the right direction, but he squinted real hard. “Don’t you see well?”

  He shook his head and then looked at the ground. I looked down too. The only color besides his eyes that he had on his whole body was dirt on his feet. I looked back up at him.

  “Don’t feel ashamed.” I felt very grown up using the word ashamed. Nursey used it, but usually when she was telling me that I should feel ashamed because I’d broken one of her rules. “Maybe angels see better as they get older—you know, so they can guard over children.”

  He didn’t say anything so I kept talking.

  “What’s your name?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think I got one.”

  “Didn’t your mother give you one?”

  “Don’t have a mother either. Don’t think so, anyway.”

  “No mother?” I gasped. Was it because he was an angel? “Whose room do you sleep in then? I live with Mother in room 201. That means we are on the second floor and the first room.”

  The angel boy started digging his toe into the dirt. “There was this one woman who used to sing to me a long time ago, but I don’t know where she went.”

  “Maybe she’s in heaven.” I pointed at the graveyard. “So what do they call you?”

  “The albino.” He looked toward me.

  “I don’t think that’s a real name. I’m going to call you Angel.”

  “Okay.” He almost smiled.

  “Until you are a grown-up angel with wings and can watch over children who need you, I’ll watch over you.” This was just about the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

  “Wait till Nursey and Mickey hear about you.” I took his hand and started leading him toward our buildings. “And Joyful.”

  “I know Joyful.” He smiled again. “She told me once that she don’t know how God made someone so light as me and so dark as her.”

  “I know who God is,” I blurted out and stopped walking.

  Angel raised his eyebrows. “You do?”

  “Do you know the bright and beautiful song?”

  “No. I don’t know any songs.”

  I wrinkled up my face because I didn’t know anyone who didn’t know any songs.

  I sang my song for him. “You’re bright and beautiful.”

  “What was your name again?” Angel tilted his head; we were closer now, and I didn’t mind how close he had to get to see me. It was nice to have a friend my size.

  “Brighton.”

  “Maybe you’re my mother, Brighton?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m only five. Mothers are usually older.” I hated disappointing him. “What were you doing all the way out here?”

  We started walking again. “We were outside to get our washing. I hate washing day so I ran away.” His rubbed his wrists. “They’ll probably strap me down in my bed again.”

  “They’ll restrain you?” I stopped walking again and got real close. Yep. His eyes really were red and blue all at once.

  “It makes me cry.”

  “Nursey would never put me in restraints. But Mother is restrained a lot and everyone else I live with is too—I sneak out of my room sometimes. Nursey said that it helps them calm down, and she lets me pat Mother. Why would you need to calm down?”

  He shrugged and let out a big breath.

  “Why do you run away? I love baths. Nursey brings the tub right into my room and makes the water nice and warm, and she reads a book to me at bedtime too.”

  “We just stand in a row next to the building and the aide sprays us. The water is really cold. It’s so cold that my elbows and knees get stiff.”

  He wiggled his arms like a rag doll.

  “Naked?” I asked, and he nodded. My heart felt funny—but I didn’t know why. I had heard there were other children who lived near me, but I wasn’t allowed to play with them. But this one didn’t have a name or a mother or get to take real baths, and I wanted him to be my friend. I would ask Nursey to let him live with me.

  When we started walking again I imagined Angel tied down in his bed. My heart started pumping fast and I wasn’t even running.

  “Brighton?” He took my hand in his.

  “Yeah, Angel?”

  “What’s a book?”

  1937

  Dry Bed of Grass

  Angel was the brightest person I knew. His skin was like the whitest moon hanging in a navy sky. Brighton would’ve been a good name for him. He was left alone at the children’s ward door when he was just a tiny shining boy. Nursey said they guessed him to be about three when he was found.

  Angel was albino. The only one at Riverside, and he was nothing like most of the other children in his ward. Neither was I. Like the women’s ward, the children’s ward was categorized in medical terms that I’d learned way too much about when I was young. The majority were children the white coats described as mentally retarded or mongoloid, but sometimes a blind or deaf child was admitted, or a runaway no one could handle in a real orphanage. Once a child displayed behavior that was deemed unimprovable or imbecilic, they were brought to Riverside.

  Angel did become a guardian over some of the patients. Some of his nurses were kind because he was helpful and didn’t give them trouble, but others were as cruel as a stepmother in a Grimms’ story.

  One afternoon we were in the graveyard and I took Angel’s hand and traced his finger over the few dips and curves in an old headstone. For a long time we had tried to figure out what had once been etched on the ancient, cracked headstone. The impressions were so old and worn that unless you looked at the stone closely, it looked blank. We’d decided it was the oldest in the graveyard. It was sunken into the soft earth at an angle and reminded me of one of Mother’s crooked teeth.

  “It might be a P,” Angel said and looked at me, his eyes a shade of violet in the afternoon light. The blue in the center of the red blended into an otherworldly color that was now as familiar as my own common blue.

  I dropped his hand and slumped back into the dry grass. I tilted my head and squinted my eyes, trying to look real hard at it. Maybe it was a P—or maybe it was a number.

  “We’ll probably never know.” I sighed.

  He helped me up, and beneath the swirling of the not-quite-white clouds, we played our game. Over the years we’d memorized every etching in the gray stones in the graveyard—always just the first initial and last name. I called out, “H. Cochran,” and Angel went searching with his walking stick to keep him from tripping over a gravestone.

  “Found it,” he yelled a minute later. He started the fictional biography. It was part of our game. “Her name is Hester. She’s a mother and bakes apple pies for her children every Sunday.” He smiled from the opposite corner. “Your turn.”

  From where I stood, E. Ray and F. Moscrip faced me. I closed my eyes and Angel yelled the name.

  “B. Bender.”

  “B. Bender,” I whispered and put my hands out to steady my first few steps. I’d have to go down four rows and then over six, and I would be at Bender. I cautiously stepped and winced when I forgot about the small hole in the dirt the exact size of my shoeless foot. I pulled it out and heard Angel snigger.

  “I’m here,” I called over my shoulder but kept my eyes shut—in case I was wrong. I knew I wasn’t, though. I could hear Angel’s feet brush through the dry grass between the small grave markers.

  “Who is he today?” Angel asked, and I opened my eyes.

  We flopped down on the grass, our faces to the sky. The April blue was thin, and the clouds moved faster now than when we’d first slipped through the basement kitchen and out the cellar doors. Both of our hospital uniforms rippled in the breeze. If anyone from the surrounding homes and farms on the outside caught sight of the two of us running through the graveyard, they wouldn’
t question why we were kept at a madhouse. What would happen if they knew the truth?

  Still, we were luckier than most here; Nursey gave us small allowances of freedom. But when Angel turned eighteen he would be removed from the children’s ward and put in the men’s ward—and everything would change. That time was growing near. What type of plan we would need to keep this from happening, I didn’t know.

  If he didn’t die within the walls of the men’s ward, he really would go mad and I’d never see him again.

  “Who is B. Bender today?” he repeated as he pulled the dry grass from the ground beside him and let the pieces rain over us.

  “His name is Bartholomew. He’s a carpenter. He’s tall and has thick black hair.”

  “You always say black hair.” He turned, facing me.

  “I do not.” I elbowed him.

  I paused for a moment and looked up. There was a break in the clouds and the sun’s rays began to pour over the edge, making the sky glow. I cupped my hand to shield the sun from Angel’s sensitive eyes and held it there until the sun moved back behind the clouds.

  I was always watching out for him. Only months after I met him in the graveyard, I found him at the bottom of the stairs in his own ward. I’d snuck in through the kitchen in the underground tunnel system, looking for him. He’d been lying at the landing for several hours with a broken leg. He still walked with a subtle limp.

  “Okay, Bartholomew Bender was a carpenter, and on his daughter’s tenth birthday he built her a dollhouse.” I continued my make-believe.

  I remembered a picture of a house in a newspaper wrapped around one of my birthday gifts. The caption said something about how it was being turned into a historical museum of sorts. I’d never been in a real house, but I often considered what it would feel like. I’d read fairy tales about houses made of candy and castles with servants. If I wandered through a dark forest and found a house, I wouldn’t care what it was made of or how grand it was; I would just be glad I’d found a home. And I’d be glad if there was a glow from the window so that I knew someone was waiting for me.

  “The dollhouse was yellow with a white porch. And when he worked—”

  “He whistled. His favorite food was pork chops and pancakes with—” Angel added.

  “Maple syrup,” we finished together and laughed.

  Angel and I had never had maple syrup, and no matter how much we tried, we couldn’t imagine how it tasted—or how anything that came out of a tree could taste good. We’d never had pancakes either, but those were easier to imagine. We’d learned all about this in the books I read to the two of us. Nursey’s work had gotten so busy she didn’t read aloud to us anymore. Most of our books had been read so often the spines were broken.

  Angel inhaled deeply as if he could smell the warm breath of a coming storm. He relaxed, and we didn’t speak for several minutes. Our comfortable silence made me sleepy and content.

  “Do you think we’ll ever have families?” I didn’t look at him, afraid he’d see the desperation in my eyes. “Maybe have a real house and maybe I would make apple pies for my children on Sundays.”

  “And maybe I could build a dollhouse for my daughter,” Angel added. After several slow clouds passed overhead, he sighed. “I hope we get to, but . . .”

  I took his hand that lay in the grass near mine and we were quiet together. My eyes roamed over the nearby stone markers and caught sight of one that I often avoided. It said M. Randall. M for Mickey. Kind. Warm. She loved me all the way to the end.

  “I think my mother was invisible—maybe a ghost or something.” His voice was velvety smooth like the skin of a peach.

  I turned to look at my friend, confused. Dry, brittle grass poked up between us like little broken fairy towers. Angel rarely talked about where he’d come from.

  My vision narrowed like a needle on his eyes, and I could only see the blue in the center. His eyes whispered to me, but the wind picked up and whisked his silent thoughts away. I would only catch his spoken words today.

  “Invisible?” I said, trying to match the softness of his tone. I couldn’t. My voice was low and throaty.

  Angel looked up into the overcast sky and closed his eyes to the brightness. It covered us like a dome, and the trees along the property line began to stir. Lightning flashed, but the low rumble that eventually followed was distant. I turned back to Angel. His cotton-white hair fell on his forehead and over one eye. I pushed it away.

  “When my mother left me here, no one saw her come and no one saw her go.”

  1990

  Overexposed

  I gently rock the processing tray, waiting for the image to appear. The red light in the dark room and the smell of the developer as I anticipate the photograph all have the best effect on me. The dark room cradled and nurtured me in my midtwenties—as I became my own newly processed and developed person. A new life with images I had some measure of control over. Taking photos is one thing, but seeing them come alive in front of me, like something coming from almost nothing, reminds me of new life instead of death. Something so different from the world I came out of.

  And now, even at my age, I still get a thrill when I walk into my dark room and, in the pitch black, crack open the canister and thread the film into the plastic reel and tank. It’s a solitary job, and the quiet has become part of me. A different sort of solitary than before.

  The developer in the tray ripples lightly on its own now, so I carefully let go. I watch the paper bloom into a photograph. It doesn’t take long, which never ceases to amaze me. The gray slowly darkens into real edges until an image arises. Fifty years ago I saw my life through a viewfinder and now, like some sorcery, those fragments lay before me.

  But like a passing rain, the image comes and then goes entirely black. I’ve overexposed and lost the image. I grumble a word to myself that I am glad no one else hears and flip up the light switch. I grab the negative strip again and my magnifier loupe. Am I exposing the right image? With anxiety and reluctance, I bend over and look at my contact sheet, using my loupe. This keeps me at an emotional distance. Seeing these images that I know so well is like being outside of myself. Usually these recurring pictures are held tightly within the confinements of my mind, but now suddenly they’re free.

  I hold my breath and let my gaze wash over the small image. The loupe magnifies it enough for me to see. The foreground and the subject are in focus, but the background is not. That isn’t the one I wanted. I move to the next frame. This is the one. My breath catches, and my eyes squeeze shut.

  I reach back and turn off the dark room light again. I flip back on the safe bulb, and the red glow anesthetizes me and I breathe evenly. I pull out another piece of printing paper from the sealed box and put it carefully on the enlarger. Then I return the negative to the enlarger, snap the light switch on, fit it so the image is straight, then check my notes on the exposure. I decrease it by half. It has to work this time.

  I’m not in the dark room as often now since I quit teaching at the local art center. But my hands still move deftly—like they lived in this world to cure my own melancholy, slipping from one reality to another. It’s hard to leave all you know. The retained scars and damage don’t repair on their own. But when your hands can walk you through, eventually your mind and soul follow.

  I expose the paper once again, then move it from the enlarger into the developer. I tilt the tub a little back and forth to get the agitation going again. Then I wait. Surely the exposure is close and this will reveal the photo I took when I was a mere girl of sixteen.

  The image surfaces on the paper, and after about a minute I carefully pull it out and put it in the stop bath. My heart thuds against my wrinkled-up chest. I feel as young as, well, maybe a fifty-year-old, but my heart is still that teenager who held the viewfinder to her eye and the image in her cast-iron memory.

  I put the print in the last tub to fix. The red hue in the room doesn’t give me enough light to know if this is going to be a good print,
but I can see I’m getting close. Closer than I ever thought I’d be.

  I hear the phone ring through the thin walls of my dark room. It is probably Doc. That’s what I call my husband—Doc. He finds it irritating but cute. I started it when he graduated almost forty years ago, and it’s rare I use his name anymore. Names are slippery things, aren’t they? I’ve been prone to nicknaming since I was a child. Nursey. Angel. Aunt Eddie. I did it with my own children. Martha Annabelle became Marty-Bell and Lucas John was L.J. before we came home from the hospital. Oh, hospitals, what wonder and awe and disappointment they offer. My Rebekah Joy never had the chance to be nicknamed or to come home. I trap that memory away and focus on the ringing phone.

  I shake the names from my rattled brain, and after another quick glance at my newest print I turn on the light and walk out of the room. The light in the rest of the house feels brighter than it really is, and for several moments it’s unwelcome. Brightness sometimes has that effect on me after so many years of darkness.

  I scold the phone that I’m coming. It doesn’t hear me. Only the birds through the open windows hear me. And they don’t care.

  The ring rattles my beige phone. It shakes the kitchen counter and my nerves.

  “Hello,” I say when the receiver isn’t quite to my ear yet.

  “Hi, Mrs. Friedrich?” An unexpected articulate voice cuts through my annoyance.

  “Yes? Who is this?”

  “My name is Kelly Keene.” The articulation has ceased and stuttering has begun. “I-I wanted to see if you received my package?” She has a young-sounding, pleasant voice, but it doesn’t keep my leeriness away. “Mrs. Friedrich? Are you there?”

  “I received your package, yes,” I finally say. “How did you happen to have it? And the others?”

  There is silence. Is Kelly Keene as unsure about this conversation as I am?

  “I-I’m calling from the Standard here in Milton.” Her words are stammering yet rushed.

  “So you’re a reporter,” I say flatly. So she isn’t after anything but a story, and I am not about to give her anything to talk about. I don’t do sideshows. But my heart betrays me still and reminds me that this woman has my film, and for that I plan to make nice. “What’s this about?”