He nodded again.
The priest took Bobby’s hand and, without another word, led him away as his grandmother watched, her eyes narrowing.
Thatwas the beginning of “the bad time,” as his parents called it, whispered words, even years later, their eyes downcast, as if in shame. The situation did not end with that visit to the priest. His grandmother would not drop the accusation. He was a changeling. A faerie child dropped into their care, her real grandson spirited away by the Fair Folk. Finally, his parents broke down and asked the priest to perform some ritual—any ritual—to calm his grandmother’s nerves. The priest refused. To do so would be to lend credence to the preposterous accusation and could permanently scar the child’s psyche.
The fight continued. He heard his parents talking late at night about the shame, the great shame of it all. They were intelligent, educated people. His father was a scientist, his mother the lead secretary in her firm. They were not ignorant peasants, and it angered them that Father Joseph didn’t understand what they were asking—not to “fix” their son but simply to pretend to, for the harmony of the household.
They took their request to a second priest, and somehow—for years afterward, everyone would blame someone else for this—a journalist got hold of the story. It made one of the Chicago newspapers, in an article mocking the family and their “Old World” ways. His family was so humiliated they moved. Hisgrandmother grumbled that his parents made too big a fuss out of the whole thing. It didn’t matter. They moved, and they were all forbidden to speak of it again.
That did not mean no one spoke of it. The Gnat did. When she was in a good mood, she’d settle for mocking him, calling him a faerie child, asking him where he kept his wings, pinching his back to see if she could find them. When she was in a rare foul temper, she’d tell him their grandmother was right, he was a monster and didn’t belong, that their parents only had one real child. And even if it was all nonsense, as his mother and father claimed,thatpart was true—he no longer felt part of the family. They might not think him a changeling, but they all, in their own ways, blamed him. His parents blamed him for their humiliation. The Gnat blamed him for having to leave her friends and move. And his grandmother blamed him for whatever slight she could pin at his feet, and then she punished him for it.
He came to realize that the punishments were the purpose of the accusations rather than the result. His grandmother wanted an excuse to strap him or send him to bed without dinner. At first, he presumed she was upset because no one believed her story. That did not anger him. Nothing really angered him. Like happiness, the emotion was too intense, too uncomfortable. He looked at his sister, dancing about, chattering and giggling, and he thought her a fool. He looked at his grandmother, raging and snapping against him, and thought her the same. Foolish and weak, easily overcome by emotion.
He did not accept the punishments stoically, though. While he never complained, with each hungry night or sore bottom, something inside him hardened. He saw his grandmother, fumbling in her frustration, venting it on him, and he did not pity her. He hated her. He hated his parents, too, for pretending not to see the welts or the unfinished dinners. Most of all, hehated the Gnat, because she saw it all and delighted in it. She would watch him beaten to tears with the strap, and then tell their grandmother that he’d broken her doll the week before, earning him three more lashes.
While there was certainly vindictiveness in the punishments, it seemed his grandmother actually had a greater plan. He realized this when she decided, one Sunday, that the two of them should take a trip to Cainsville. He even got to sit in the front seat of the station wagon, for the first time ever.
“Do you think I’ve mistreated you lately?” she asked as she drove.
It seemed a question not deserving a reply, so he didn’t give one.
“Have you earned those punishments?” she said. “Did you do everything I said you did? That Natalie said you did?”
He sensed a trick, and again he didn’t answer. She reached over and pinched his thigh hard enough to bring tears to his eyes.
“I asked you a question, parasite.”
He glanced over.
“You know what that means, don’t you?” she said. “Parasite?”
“I know many words.”
Her lips twisted. “You do. Far more than a child should know. Because you are not a child. You are a parasite, put into our house to eat our food and sleep in our beds.”
“There’s no such thing as faeries.”
She pinched him again, twisting the skin. He only glanced over with a look that had her releasing him fast, hand snapping back onto the steering wheel.
“You’re a monster,” she said. “Do you know that?”
No, you are, he thought, but he said nothing, staring instead at the passing scenery as they left the city. She drove onto the highway before she spoke again.
“You don’t think you deserve to be punished, do you? You think I’m accusing you of things you didn’t do, and your little sister is joining in, and your parents are turning a blind eye. Is that what you think?”
He shrugged.
“If it is, then you should tell someone,” she said. “Someone who can help you.”
He stayed quiet. There was a trick here, a dangerous one, and he might be smart for a little boy, as everyone told him, but he was not smart enough for this. So he kept his mouth shut. She drove a while longer before speaking again.
“You like the folks in Cainsville, don’t you? The town elders.”
Finally, something he could safely answer. She could find no fault in him liking old people. With relief, he nodded.
“They like you, too. They think you’re special.” Her hands tightened on the wheel. “I know why, too. I’m not a foolish old woman. I’m just as smart as you, boy. Especially when it comes to puzzles, and I’ve solved this one. I know where you came from.”
He tried not to sigh, as the conversation swung back to dangerous territory. Perhaps he should be frightened, but after months of this, he was only tired.
