Author's Note: Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. To all my lovely readers, if you've stuck with me this far, I thank you. This is a rather long chapter and sort of Carmen's nadir. Her turning point is coming soon, I promise. Hang in there, little tomatoes.
An hour later, Carmen found herself sitting in the head matron's office of the Golden Gate Girls' school. Her backside remembered its uncomfortable wooden chairs well from her tenure as a less- than-perfectly behaved orphan. Overall, not much had changed; Mrs. Sacrimoni's office still reeked of cheap potpourri and expensive cigarettes, the same faded Currier & Ives print still hung on the wall, and sitting in front of the matron's desk still made her nervous.
And then a petite Asian woman briskly swept into the room and planted herself across from her. "Alma Wong, Executive Director," she introduced herself in clipped tones. Apparently more had changed than Carmen had originally thought.
"I used to live here, Ms. Wong. I'm…"
"I know who you are, Detective Sandiego. What can I do for you?" Like many public servants, Ms. Wong wore the beleaguered look of someone who frequently had much to do and had neither the time nor the money to actually get it done.
"Where's Mrs. Sacrimoni? Can't I talk to her?" Carmen blurted out, oddly childlike.
Though she couldn't be much older than Carmen herself, Ms. Wong looked down on Carmen contemptuously. "Lucille Sacrimoni retired two years ago and is living with her son in Tucson. We sent you an invitation to her retirement party, but you didn't show," the other woman's spoke, her tone as sharp as the angles of her blunt-cut bobbed hair.
Carmen seemed to recall a crème-colored envelope arriving from the Girls' School, quickly lost accidentally-on-purpose in the shuffle of her busy life. "I was out of the country." Most likely, she was.
"I can give you her new address, if you like. Is there anything else? Because I really must be getting back to work."
"I'd appreciate that. But actually, yes, I was hoping you could help me." Carmen put on what she hoped was her most winning smile. "You see, I'm investigating my background…trying to find my parents. I was wondering if I could have a look at my file."
The new director looked back at her, blank and unyielding. "I'm afraid that won't be possible. The records are sealed."
It was all Carmen could do to keep from snarling. "I don't understand. The file is about me. Aren't I entitled to information about myself?"
Alma Wong shook her head. "Not unless you come back with a court order from a judge. Or a FOIA."
Carmen spoke over a dozen languages, but FOIA wasn't a word in any of them. "What the hell is a foy-ah?" she asked, exasperated.
The other woman raised a dark eyebrow at her mild cursing. "A FOIA is a Freedom of Information Act request that a citizen can use to get access to restricted state and federal documents. It can take a few months, but as the record pertains to you, it's likely your request would be approved." Sacrimoni's replacement gave a tiny shrug. "I'm sorry, these are the rules. I don't make them."
Many, many times over the years, the criminals she chased after had called her a "goody-two shoes." Next to Alma Wong, with her pin-straight hair and perfectly ironed suit, Carmen felt like a rogue. How to persuade this rigidly by-the-book bureaucrat? Her eyes drifted toward a framed diploma, the only new decoration that wall had seen in twenty years. Alma M. Wong, Master of Social Work, University of California-Berkeley. The new director's youthful appearance made Carmen wonder if the ink was even dry on that thing. Hmmm.
As a general rule, Carmen tended to avoid mental health professionals. They unnerved her. Especially ACME's in-house David Kaplan. Suhara and the Chief had recently become attuned to the fact that all was not well with ACME's star detective; Carmen suspected Kaplan had been onto her for years. His gentle blue eyes always seemed to see right through her, and his soft voice threatened to elicit all her secrets. She mentally pushed away these traitorous thoughts as one would swat an unusually persistent mosquito.
Social Workers…more meddlesome than school counselors and less trouble than shrinks.
People generally became social workers out of a desire to help others. While Director Wong seemed overworked and underpaid, Carmen doubted she was actually heartless. Though the brilliant young woman preferred to deal in facts, reason, and the occasional intrigue, she knew there were times that only a genuine emotional appeal would do.
When the words finally came out, Carmen was stunned by how much she actually meant them.
"Ms. Wong, it has taken me a long time to get here…eighteen years, in fact. My job at ACME lets me run, and I've been running from my past for a long time. I understand if you can't let me see the file and I can come back with a court order. But honestly, I can't say for sure that if I leave here empty handed today, I won't just start running from this again." She paused and clutched her locket hard enough to feel the metal bite into her palm. "Please. If there is anything…anything at all you can tell me from the file that might give me a clue as to who my parents were, it would mean the world to me." When she finished, Carmen was surprised to find her eyes had glazed over with unshed tears.
Something flickered in the dark pools of the other woman's eyes and she bit her lip in a nervous gesture. "I..I can't give you the file, but I could look through it for you, bend the rules a bit." She gave a small smile. "Hold on." She rose and crossed to a file cabinet with a combination lock. 23…8…15… Carmen couldn't help observing.
Director Wong returned with a thick file, the color of pea-soup, on which the words Sandiego, Carmen were neatly typed in the top left corner. It was a strange thing, to see the history of one's life assembled, catalogued, documented…and in the hands of someone else. "I'm very curious about when I first came to the orphanage. According to the police report, I didn't speak English. Was an interpreter ever called?" Carmen prompted.
Wong's dark eyes scanned the file. "You were brought here May 1, 1967, estimated to be two to three years old….with severe burns on your hands." The director's eyes narrowed in on her leather gloves as if she had X-ray vision, making Carmen feel self-conscious. "The police were not able to provide an interpreter, but Child and Family Services brought one here within the week….unfortunately, by then, you were no longer speaking. In fact, you didn't speak at all until approximately a year later when you started conversing in fluent English." She paused thoughtfully. "It's not atypical; this kind of behavior is consistent with trauma."
When the interpreter finally came she had stopped speaking. Carmen consciously felt her blood begin to boil. I am going to have O'Leary's shield for this. For lunch. With fries and a Coke.
Director Wong continued, a tone of unsolicited admiration creeping into her voice. "Mrs. Sacrimoni says here you were exceptionally clever, a prodigy. You were reading and writing by age three; your mathematical and linguistic capabilities were off the charts."
Carmen's genius was old news to her. She didn't want Wong's praise, just her information."Did I ever say anything about my parents or my family? Did anyone ever come for me?"
Wong flipped a few more pages and shook her head. "If you did, it's not in here. And no, they didn't. She does note that you were terrified of fire. Which makes sense, given the burns." Her manicured index finger tapped gently at a point of interest. "According to these reports, you ran away a lot."
The memory made Carmen smile. She frequently snuck out to Golden Gate Park, or went down to Fisherman's Wharf to gaze at lonely Alcatraz. Her little adventures had driven the matrons crazy. Once she made it all the way to Oakland before they even noticed she was gone. "Yes. 'Jailbreaks,' Mrs. Sacrimoni called them."
"Hmmm. And these escapes of yours usually coincided with visits from prospective parents." Alma Wong fixed her with a curious look.
Carmen had no desire to rise to that particular bait. Instead her mind honed in on something that had been bugging her since she arrived. The orphanage was oddly….quiet. Absent were the sounds of girlish laughter and youthful hijinx she remembered from her childhood. She nearly kicked herself for her lack of observation; Suhara was right, she was slipping. "Ms. Wong, where are all the girls?"
"The Golden Gate Girls' School is, as of last year, no longer a permanent residential institution. It's more of a halfway house now. Most of the girls have been moved on to foster homes while they wait for adoption."
"Why?" Carmen asked, feeling strangely defensive.
The young Ms. Wong's face clouded over with the familiar mixture of concern and pity that everyone seemed to have reserved for her lately. "To keep children institutionalized in a facility like an orphanage is considered...harmful…to their psychological well-being. Studies have been done. Children housed in orphanages…like the old Girls' School…frequently develop attachment disorders and can have difficulty forming emotional bonds." She paused and looked Carmen dead in the eye. "Even into adulthood."
Carmen said nothing, felt nothing. Her bright blue eyes took on a hard look, dark and unfathomable.
The young social worker paused for a moment and seemed to be weighing what to say next. "Detective…Carmen. You and I both know you had a difficult childhood. While I have the upmost confidence in your skills, no doubt this particular investigation has taken a bit of a personal toll on you." Her dark eyes, earlier so hard, now pleaded with her. "Given your past history of trauma, I would encourage you to seek the services of a professional. A counselor at your Agency, perhaps? Or I could recommend a colleague…"
"That won't be necessary, Ms. Wong. I think we're done for the day." Carmen pronounced tersely, effectively terminating the discussion. "Thank you for your time. I'm sure it will be no trouble to obtain a court order." And if for some reason it is, I just might come back in here and steal the file myself, she found herself thinking contemptuously.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful," Wong added, disappointed and cautious.
"Yes, well." Carmen tugged her fedora down lower over her eyes. She couldn't resist offering a parting shot, her voice dripping with elegant sarcasm. "And Ms. Wong, spare me your pity. I've grown up to become the greatest detective in the history of ACME and one of San Francisco's most beloved citizens. Your studies might apply to the average person, but Carmen Sandiego is several standard deviations away from the mean. Good day."
It was only three o'clock, but her interview with the orphanage director had left her so exhausted, Carmen found herself hailing a cab and directing the driver to take her home rather than back to the Agency. It hardly mattered lately whether she came in late, left early, or took a three hour lunch; it's not like there was anything for her to do.
Her mind was still reeling from her meeting at the orphanage when she arrived at her apartment in fashionable Russian Hill. Carmen had faced down Alma Wong with the bravado she normally reserved for criminal masterminds like Dr. Maelstrom. That she couldn't handle a tête à tête with a newly minted social worker without losing her trademark cool was nothing short of pathetic.
She checked the mail; bills, bills, junk mail, bills, and a postcard from a fellow agent working a case that involved industrial espionage in East Berlin. Carmen was stung by an irrational pang of jealousy. She'd give anything for a case right now….any case but this one.
She climbed the narrow wooden stairs with uncharacteristic slowness and wondered if she was indeed losing her touch, the part of her veterans like the Inspector called "natural police." At this point in a case, Carmen expected to sense the pieces falling into place. Her mind always ran with the precision and efficiency of a Swiss clock. Except now, it felt like someone had poured molasses into the works. She was unequivocally stuck. A Spanish speaking orphan…possibly Mexican…with burns on her hands...turns up in San Francisco wearing an outrageously expensive necklace from London's most famous department store. Which detail was more important- the locket or the burns? Was she a pampered princess or a victim of abuse? The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, she reminded herself ruefully.
Carmen kicked off her shoes and flung down her satchel and notebook, frustrated and petulant. She yanked open the refrigerator door as if she were clocking henchmen instead of retrieving a carton of orange juice. And there it was…simmering beneath the surface …a vast red well of anger. She was so very angry. Angry enough to march over to police headquarters right now and beat O'Leary to a bloody pulp, or at the very least, demand the Superintendent fire him on the spot. But her wrath enveloped so much more than just one lousy cop. Her life…who she was…a consequence of racism, red tape, and budget cuts. Carmen raged against the mundane bureaucracy, the inhumanity of a welfare state that realized- too late for her sake- that it was inhumane to warehouse children in orphanages. Words like trauma, disorder, and institutionalized kept circling around in her mind like a broken record. Even if she did manage to find her family, could the damage ever be undone?
Absently, she dropped her glass, which shattered on impact, sending sticky juice flying everywhere. "I just can't do anything right today," Carmen complained to no one in particular. As she began cleaning up the broken glass, one particularly sharp shard penetrated the leather of her gloves. Ruby red droplets mingled with the spilt orange liquid as an all too familiar wave of nausea washed over her.
Carmen never fainted at the sight of blood, especially her own. Which can only mean you're cracking up, Sandiego. Should have let Wong give you that referral.
She staggered to her bedroom. There was really no sense in fighting it any longer; the thinly veiled sense of panic and dread had hovered around her all day, a gathering storm waiting to break. If she was going to pass out, she would do it in her own bed. And thankfully, this time, there would be no one to see.
Carmen made it halfway over the threshold before the floor exchanged places with the ceiling and she let the dark oblivion carry her away.
Postscript: While Carmen has little appreciation for the talking cure, I hope it is clear that Madame Author does. Just trying to give a sense of how a very proud woman, very much in denial, might feel about pyschotherapy at a time when mental illness carried much more stigma than it does now.