The Most Dangerous Animal of All (12 page)

This was survival, and my mother had learned a lot about survival from Van.

As always, Judy kept her head down as she walked. The police were still looking for them, and she worried about being recognized from photographs in the newspapers. Relief washed through her when she turned the corner onto Josephine Street. Our neighbor Charlie was outside, braving the rain to make sure she arrived safely, his fragile body silhouetted by the porch lamp. Van would never think to wait up for her—she could take care of herself. The old man, his face rutted from years spent working at the port, smiled and took Judy’s arm, leading her toward the small courtyard in the center of the building.

“How’d you do tonight, girlie?” he asked, stopping her before she turned to walk up the stairs.

“I made enough to buy the baby some formula, but those sailors are rough,” Judy said. “I think I have some bruises on my backside to prove it.”

“You shouldn’t be working there, child,” the old man said. He worried about Judy. He had worried since she moved into the building with the man she said was her husband. He didn’t like Van, didn’t trust him. He could see the devil in his eyes. Charlie had lived in New Orleans all his life, had been raised with the voodoo traditions passed down through his family for generations. He knew evil when he saw it. Van scared him, and the old man did not scare easily. He had known from the minute he met them that he had to look out for my mother.

“The baby needs to eat,” Judy responded, hugging the old man before she turned to walk up the stairs.

When she reached our apartment, she gingerly turned the knob. She didn’t want the squeaky door to awaken my father. Hurrying over to Van’s old family trunk, which now served as my makeshift bed, she quickly pulled the heavy lid open to find me lying inside with blue-tinged lips.

Barely breathing.

This happened almost every night.

She picked me up and cradled me in her arms, anxiously rocking back and forth to keep me quiet while I gasped for air, grateful that I would make it through another night.

Awakened by the sound of the lid opening, Van watched jealously.

Judy had dared to ask him a few nights before why he kept shutting me up in the trunk at night. “I’m sick of hearing him cry,” Van had informed her. Judy kept silent. She knew better than to talk back to him. Van’s temper had become increasingly worse since they arrived in New Orleans, and she had seen the signs of his cruelty to me more than once.

Blood on my nose.

A cut on my head.

She was petrified that Van would kill me, but he insisted she had to work. It was her responsibility to earn the money if she wanted me to eat.

“We’ve got to get rid of this kid,” Van suddenly announced from his perch on the bed. “I’m going to bring him somewhere.”

“You can’t do that! Bring him where?” Judy cried.

“I don’t know yet, but I can’t take his constant screaming. It drives me crazy.”

Judy ran into the hallway, still holding me in her arms, afraid of what Van might do. She knew she had to figure out a way to keep me away from my father. She wished things were different, like they had been before. She tried to be a good mother but had no knowledge of how to take proper care of an infant. She knew nothing about colic or burping a baby, nothing about how to prevent diaper rash or about trying different types of formula to learn what worked best. And with no money, even buying formula had become a problem. Being hungry only made me cry more, but whenever my mother reached out to comfort me, Van became angry. He couldn’t stand it when her attention was directed toward me.

Slowly, she made her way downstairs, hoping Charlie was still by the fountain in the courtyard.

“You okay?” the old man said when he saw her.

Judy brushed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“That’s a fine boy you got there.”

Judy smiled through her tears. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”

Charlie nodded, putting his finger out for me to hold. “You got your hands full, huh,
cher
?”

“Sometimes I just don’t know what to do about things,” Judy said.

“Well, my mama always tol’ me, ‘Just do what’s in your heart.’ Dat’s all you can do.”

The old man turned and walked up the stairs, leaving Judy alone with her thoughts. She sat in a chair by a doorway, staring mindlessly down the street as she rocked me back and forth. In the drizzle, beautiful flowers and foliage poked through the lamplit balconies along Josephine Street.

At first Judy had liked New Orleans, had felt safe there, hidden among so many people. It was a lot like San Francisco—edgy and beautiful, yet ugly, too. The Vieux Carré, or French Quarter, was a striking contrast between intricate French, Creole, and Spanish architecture, with balconies dressed in lacy wrought iron, and dark alleyways where winos drowned their sorrows in bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. Scantily clad prostitutes paraded up and down the narrow streets, earning meager wages for their talents, while wealthier ladies dressed in the latest styles perused antiques stores. The stench of urine from the alleys mingling with the tantalizing aroma of spicy seafood streaming from open restaurant doors permeated the Quarter. Beauty and degradation weaved together in a splendid cacophony thirteen blocks long and six blocks wide.

But the homes lining St. Charles Avenue, only blocks away, were part of a different and more gracious past in which huge mansions, many built in majestic Greek Revival, Italianate, or Colonial styles, with massive Corinthian columns and sprawling porches, had ostentatiously displayed the wealth of cotton moguls, politicians, and industrial tycoons. St. Charles Avenue was paradise plastered on the fringes of hell, the same hell that was filtering into Haight-Ashbury, back home in San Francisco. Judy could handle that sort of thing, even at her age. It was the hell inside her apartment that she couldn’t handle. She dared not defend me against Van’s rages, for fear that he would turn on her or, worse, leave her all alone.

When I began stirring, Judy hurried back to the apartment to boil water to warm my bottle. Van walked up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “You’re not mad, are you, baby? You know how much I love you.”

Judy squeezed his hand. “Of course I’m not mad. I can’t stay mad at you.”

She checked to make sure my formula was not too hot. “Just let me feed Earl and put him to sleep. Then I’m all yours.”

“That’s my girl,” Van said, slapping her on her behind.

Judy winced, the night’s bruises still fresh. She fed me as fast as she could and laid me in the trunk, covering me with the receiving blankets the hospital had given her, leaving the lid open.

“Come get in bed,” Van commanded. “I’ve got a busy day planned for tomorrow, and I can’t sleep without you.”

Judy quickly shucked her clothes and climbed into bed. Van pulled her into his arms and nuzzled her hair. “I’m going to make everything better soon,” he whispered.

The next morning, Van got up and dressed while Judy was still asleep. Fumbling through her purse, his frustration rising, he jolted her awake. “Where’s the money you made last night?” he demanded.

Judy looked at him without understanding.

“I need cash for the train. I’m taking the baby to Baton Rouge. It’s the closest big city to New Orleans, and the capital of Louisiana,” he informed her, as if these facts were of importance.

My mother looked around anxiously and saw me wrapped in my blanket on the floor next to the bed.

“He will be given a good home there,” Van cajoled when he saw the stunned look on her face.

Judy jumped out of bed and grabbed for me. “Please, can’t we keep him? I’ll keep him quiet, I promise.”

“No. I’m sick of him. All he does is cry,” Van said, picking me up and jerking me out of her reach. “I want my life back.”

My mother was no match for him. She knew she wouldn’t win this fight. She had known since the day I was born that something bad was going to happen. Van hated me, and that was that. She was a fugitive dependent on my father to keep her safe, and there was nothing she could do except let him take me.

Judy turned to hide her tears as she handed him my bottle. Van refused to take it. “He doesn’t need to eat right now,” he said firmly, walking toward the door.

My mother grabbed my pacifier and put it in my mouth, fervently hoping that it would keep me from crying. When she tried to kiss me good-bye, Van pushed her aside.

The bang of the closing door reverberated through the room, and Judy sank to the floor, crying.

16

“All aboard!” the conductor of the Southern Belle yelled as people from all walks of life hurried toward the train bound for Baton Rouge. Part of the Kansas City Southern Railway, this passenger train, with its brightly colored yellow-and-red engine, traveled from New Orleans to Kansas City, Missouri, between the 1940s and the 1960s, with stops at cities like Baton Rouge and Shreveport, Louisiana.

Van hurried with the others to reach the train station on time. It was a short walk from the apartment, about ten minutes. Charity Hospital, known to the locals as “Big Charity,” was only a few minutes’ walk past the train station, but in the early 1960s, there were no “safe haven” laws that allowed parents to leave unwanted children at hospitals, police stations, or fire stations. If you wanted to dispose of a child at that time, you had to get creative.

“That’ll be nine dollars even, four-fifty each way,” the ticket master said. “The little guy rides for free.”

Van paid for the round-trip ticket to Baton Rouge and boarded the train, which had been designed for passenger comfort, making his way down the spacious aisle to his seat. Other passengers had no clue that the nice-looking gentleman holding the infant was on such a dastardly mission. A few minutes later, the train pulled out of the station, and the rocking motion and the rhythmic sounds of the steel wheels upon the rails lulled me to sleep. Van held me while I napped, by all appearances a loving father as he settled further into his seat.

As the train rolled alongside Highway 61 toward its destination, it paralleled the Bonnet Carré Spillway, built in 1937, after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Its purpose was to divert water from the Mississippi River into Lake Pontchartrain whenever the mighty Mississippi threatened to overspill its banks and flood the soup bowl that is New Orleans. In the distance, Norco Refinery, with its smoky plumes billowing into fluffy clouds, cast an eerie glow on the dreary, misty horizon.

Once we were past the swampland that borders Lake Pontchartrain, sugarcane fields, rice fields, and tall willows lined the tracks. As the Southern Belle approached Gramercy, the train’s horn sounded, signaling drivers to beware its massive strength. Before long, passengers could see wooden shotgun houses fronted by rickety porches where families and friends often gathered to drink beer and feast on large, simmering pots of gumbo or jambalaya.

Our journey was almost over when the train passed the towns of Gonzales and Prairieville, the landscape here turning to marsh filled with huge live oaks whose branches, weighted with moss, hung low.

About twenty minutes later, a voice over the intercom announced, “Baton Rouge Depot” as the train squealed to a stop.

Van stood up, pulled me close to him, and exited the train on the west side of the station. He walked across the tracks and made his way up South River Road. My father could not help but notice the Old State Capitol, a neo-Gothic structure located on a hill overlooking the Mississippi River that is so memorable Mark Twain once wrote, “It is pathetic enough, that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things—pretending to be what they are not—should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place.”

A light wind began to swirl as Van turned right onto North Boulevard. My thin blanket did little to shield me from the cool air. Looking for the perfect spot, my father passed by the State Library of Louisiana and then the police and sheriff’s departments, housed together in one building. Fallen leaves and acorns from the plentiful live oaks that decorated downtown Baton Rouge crunched beneath his feet as he walked. Reaching the top of a hill, Van could see a needle-like structure that resembled the spaceship NASA was planning to send to the moon one day. Built by Huey P. Long, the Louisiana State Capitol stretched upward 450 feet and housed thirty-four floors, making it the tallest state capitol building in the country. To his right, the Old Governor’s Mansion, home to Louisiana’s singing governor, Jimmie Davis, who had risen to fame with his song “You Are My Sunshine,” bore a strong resemblance to the White House.

Bells sounded out a chorus of the traditional Westminster chime from an old Anglican church. It was 11:00 a.m.

Just a little farther up North Boulevard stood an apartment building bordered by St. Joseph and Napoleon Streets. Built in a Georgian Colonial style, the redbrick building housed eight single-family dwellings. White-tile steps with the number 736 inlaid in blue tiles led the way to the front door. Crape myrtles and azalea bushes decorated the yard with brilliant splashes of color.

It was perfect. Because there were no spots allotted for parking on the busy street, Van knew there must be a back entrance. He carried me around the corner to St. Joseph Street, searching for the gate in the wrought-iron fence that he guessed would be there. Opening it, he stepped into a courtyard behind the building that featured beautiful oaks, an old sugar kettle with a fountain, and seclusion. He scoured the parking lot to the left to be sure he was alone and unobserved.

Climbing up two steps, Van turned the knob on the back door and walked into the building unseen.

He stepped onto a black-and-white checkerboard floor and noticed two apartment doors on either side of a foyer. A staircase straight ahead beckoned to him. He climbed three stairs and then walked onto a landing. Looking up, he saw more apartments. He hurried up the stairs, noted the apartment numbers, and went back down to the landing, determining that it would be the best place.

Van wrapped me tightly in the dirty blue blanket and laid me there on the floor, making sure the pacifier was in my mouth so I would not cry before he was able to make his escape.