lock me up. Look what’s happened to my poor Ryan. My children can be unreasonable. But when I realized who you were, I knew it was all right for me to tell you.”
“No one’s going to lock you up,” I say in my best calming tone.
“I knew you looked familiar,” she says. “It still took me a while to place you. Of course, there is the name, but you look like your brothers and sisters.”
The summer air sneaks under the sleeves of my nurse’s uniform and gives me a chill. I don’t know why in that moment I begin to take her seriously. I don’t know why I no longer believe she is confused. I say, “You know my brothers and sisters? How?”
She is gazing at me, her head tipped to the side. Her blue eyes on my blue eyes. “You were the baby,” she says. “Patrick and I knew your mother, poor Mrs. Ballen. We brought her a casserole, or maybe it was a pie. But you were the baby outside my window, tied to the tree with your brothers and sisters. Noreen Ballen. Baby Ballen.”
I cannot look away from her eyes as she says my name. I don’t understand what is happening. I know I should, and I am searching . . . and then suddenly I remember. When I was very young, that was how my mother kept track of all thirteen of us. My mom was alone and afraid that one or more of us would run off and get in trouble. To keep control she would tie us to a big tree in the center of our backyard while she cooked and cleaned inside the house. My brothers and sisters and I developed games that we could play with one another around the trunk of the tree. We tried to forget how embarrassing it was when someone stopped by and saw us there, or when Mom didn’t hear one of us calling and calling that we had to go to the bathroom. And how the neighborhood stray dog would run around and around us, just out of reach, taunting with loud barks because he was free and we weren’t.
I speak carefully, wondering how it is possible that my past lies in this old woman. In this stranger. “You saw my family in a vision?”
“Your oldest brother and sister want me to set them free. They wave their arms at me, pleading.” Mrs. McLaughlin’s eyes darken, then grow light again. I wonder if she is seeing them now. I feel a pang beneath my ribs.
“Maybe your brother and sister sent you to me,” she says. “Maybe they think I can set you free.”
I put my free hand on the waist of my white uniform where the material gathers into a neat seam. I am too shaken to speak, but I feel the nurse, the professional in me, summon words. “We should keep walking.”
“I don’t know how to do it, though,” Mrs. McLaughlin says. “I can’t seem to help my own children. I couldn’t keep them safe and alive. I wasn’t there for Ryan. I can’t make the ones I have left be happy. I don’t know why I’m being expected to help a stranger.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” I say, in a voice I don’t recognize. “I’m not your responsibility. I can take care of myself.”
But suddenly I am not sure that I can. I am not certain at all. I can feel the soft cloth wrapped around my waist leading to the rough bark of the tree. I hear the sound of constant laughter flowing like a river over my head as I crawl beneath the feet of my brothers and sisters. I hear Eddie’s musical voice, Jessie giggling, Eddie Jr. snorting like he does when a joke is so funny that he can’t stand it.
The old woman shakes her head. “This is not about responsibility. I’ve been given the chance to fix things before I die. I never thought I would get tired, but I’m tired now. It might end before I’m ready, if I’m not careful. I have to focus.”
My temper surges up from behind the wall of grief I carry around every single day. This old woman is saying that my life is beyond my control, and that I am here to facilitate her needs, her visions. “I want to be clear,” I say. “My brothers and sisters didn’t send me here. This job was a gift from my husband.