"But it keeps not ending."
"So far, so good."
At first all Bean cared about was the food. There was enough of it. He ate everything they put before him. He ate until he was full--that most miraculous of words, which till now had had no meaning for him. He ate until he was stuffed. He ate until he was sick. He ate so often that he had bowel movements every day, sometimes twice a day. He laughed about it to Sister Carlotta. "All I do is eat and poop!" he said.
"Like any beast of the forest," said the nun. "It's time for you to begin to earn that food."
She was already teaching him, of course, daily lessons in reading and arithmetic, bringing him "up to level," though what level she had in mind, she never specified. She also gave him time to draw, and there were sessions where she had him sit there and try to remember every detail about his earliest memories. The clean place in particular fascinated her. But there were limits to memory. He was very small then, and had very little language. Everything was a mystery. He did remember climbing over the railing around his bed and falling to the floor. He didn't walk well at the time. Crawling was easier, but he liked walking because that's what the big people did. He clung to objects and leaned on walls and made good progress on two feet, only crawling when he had to cross an open space.
"You must have been eight or nine months old," Sister Carlotta said. "Most people don't remember that far back."
"I remember that everybody was upset. That's why I climbed out of bed. All the children were in trouble."
"All the children?"
"The little ones like me. And the bigger ones. Some of the grownups came in and looked at us and cried."
"Why?"
"Bad things, that's all. I knew it was a bad thing coming and I knew it would happen to all of us who were in the beds. So I climbed out. I wasn't the first. I don't know what happened to the others. I heard the grownups yelling and getting all upset when they found the empty beds. I hid from them. They didn't find me. Maybe they found the others, maybe they didn't. All I know is when I came out all the beds were empty and the room was very dark except a lighted sign that said exit."
"You could read then?" She sounded skeptical.
"When I could read, I remembered that those were the letters on the sign," said Bean. "They were the only letters I saw back then. Of course I remembered them."
"So you were alone and the beds were empty and the room was dark."
"They came back. I heard them talking. I didn't understand most of the words. I hid again. And this time when I came out, even the beds were gone. Instead, there were desks and cabinets. An office. And no, I didn't know what an office was then, either, but now I do know what an office is and I remember that's what the rooms had all become. Offices. People came in during the day and worked there, only a few at first but my hiding place turned out not to be so good, when people were working there. And I was hungry."
"Where did you hide?"
"Come on, you know. Don't you?"
"If I knew, I wouldn't ask."
"You saw the way I acted when you showed me the toilet."
"You hid inside the toilet?"
"The tank on the back. It was hard to get the lid up. And it wasn't comfortable in there. I didn't know what it was for. But people started using it and the water rose and fell and the pieces moved and it scared me. And like I said, I was hungry. Plenty to drink, except that I peed in it myself. My diaper was so waterlogged it fell off my butt. I was naked."
"Bean, do you understand what you're telling me? That you were doing all this before you were a year old?"
"Yo
u're the one who said how old I was," said Bean. "I didn't know about ages then. You told me to remember. The more I tell you, the more comes back to me. But if you don't believe me . . ."
"I just . . . I do believe you. But who were the other children? What was the place where you lived, that clean place? Who were those grownups? Why did they take away the other children? Something illegal was going on, that's certain."
"Whatever," said Bean. "I was just glad to get out of the toilet."
"But you were naked, you said. And you left the place?"
"No, I got found. I came out of the toilet and a grownup found me."
"What happened?"
"He took me home. That's how I got clothing. I called them clothings then."