Read Online When She Was Bad by Tammy Cohen - Free Book Online Page A

senior. But I’d got used to a certain level of . . . appraisal. It gave me a slight feeling of power. And it was galling to discover that power was all in my head.
    Kristen was a plump girl with a wide, doughy face, who always blinked before talking to you as if trying to expel an unwelcome image that had come unbidden into her head. After she’d led the children off towards the lifts on the way to what was cheeringly called the ‘cafeteria’ on floor one but was actually just three vending machines and a few padded chairs in faded pale blue and orange, Ed depressed the pause button on the cassette player and we leaned in towards Jana, partly to better hear what she was about to say and partly because she was just the kind of person you instinctively want to get closer to.
    ‘There were two incidents, but they’re nothing really,’ she said now, pulling her long silky ponytail forwards over one shoulder so she could play with the ends. The sun was slanting through the slats of the blinds, striping the planes of her face with golden bands of light.
    ‘Everything you tell us is useful, Jana,’ said Ed, leaning so far in I thought he would end up with his head on her lap. ‘Every little piece of information helps us build a picture of what’s going on inside Laurie’s head. And that’s the only way we’re going to be able to really help her.’
    ‘The first incident happened a few days ago. Laurie was playing with Barney and, as I say, normally she’s very good with him but on this day she was tired and a bit out of sorts and he was playing with something she wanted and she gave him a little slap. Not hard, but I guess I rebuked her quite sharply. Anyway, she ran upstairs and by the time I followed her up there, she’d locked herself in the bathroom. I tried to talk to her through the door but she just said she was bad and bad children needed to be locked up. Then it went quiet for a while and when she came out, it was just like none of it had ever happened.’
    Ed and I exchanged glances. This was distressing to hear, but at the same time not unexpected.
    ‘And the second incident?’
    Ed Kowalsky leaned still further, looking as if he would like to take a giant straw and suck Jana up in one big gulp.
    ‘It’s probably nothing, really. It’s just that I was reprimanding Lisa – that’s my eldest – about something. I can’t even remember what it was now. Laurie was in the room colouring or something, but I hadn’t really been aware of her, you know. Then all of a sudden Lisa says, “Mommy, what’s wrong with Laurie?” and I looked and she was just standing there with this really kind of weird expression.’
    ‘Weird?’ I queried, wanting to understand.
    Jana shrugged her shoulders.
    ‘No, not weird – she’s only four years old. More like disturbing. It was a kinda set expression like someone much, much older. But it was her eyes that were the problem. It’s like they were totally empty, like there was nothing there.’
    ‘Did she say anything?’ asked Ed.
    ‘She was muttering. I think she was saying something like “bad Lisa”. Or “Lisa’s been bad”. But it wasn’t really what she was saying as much as that dead look on her face.’
    ‘How long did it last?’ I asked.
    ‘Oh goodness. Really not long, at all. Minutes. Seconds even. Then she was completely fine again. And like I say, most of the time she’s a little doll.’
    ‘And still no curiosity about her parents? Her brother?’ My voice stumbled over the last word as if it contained an untruth.
    ‘Like I said before, she mentions them from time to time but mostly in terms of things. Like she’ll see someone wearing red shoes and say “Mommy has red shoes”, or like when I was reading the other night, she said, “Daddy has lots of books in his study.” But she doesn’t really ask about them in terms of where they are. Debra, the child welfare officer, has told her that sometimes parents aren’t very nice to their