I'll Be You(104)

Probably not. I had already been my own worst enemy. I screwed up my family all by myself; I didn’t need GenFem’s help.

The confessions were accompanied by pages and pages of psychological analysis of each member on steno notepad paper in Dr. Medina’s neat handwriting. They read exactly like the notes a therapist might jot down after a particularly insightful session, except for when they didn’t. Suzy has a classic case of insecure attachment and a reinforced positive response to authority due to emotionally abusive parents. Traumatic memories of mother withholding love after C+ report card; forced to clean toilets with toothbrush because she was “a piece of crap” herself. Responds well to enforced structure, not emotion. Use praise sparingly. Sufferance: Enemas.

And so on.

Elli had disappeared with her own folder before I could read it; though honestly, I didn’t want to anyway. I’d spent so much of my life longing to climb inside my sister’s mind, wondering why we were no longer the same, but now that I could, I had no interest in knowing her truly secret thoughts. How much of her folder would be about me? The twin sister she’d blamed for ruining her life. I knew I was in there, but I didn’t have to read the folder to know exactly how much damage I had done.

It felt like Elli and I had become the unwitting keepers of the GenFem members’ secrets. We knew the innermost workings of their minds, their vulnerabilities and weaknesses, the things that might land them in jail. And we didn’t want it, any of it.

We ended up burning the confessions in a trash barrel in my sister’s backyard. Maybe Dr. Cindy still had copies of the confessions sitting on a hard drive somewhere, and our bonfire was pointless, but we didn’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s future. It was hard enough being responsible for our own.



* * *



—

There was another news article that I’d found on the internet, one that I hadn’t shared with my sister, because we had an unspoken agreement not to speak about her. I knew that the wound was still too raw, and that it hurt my sister to even think about her. I knew because it also hurt me.

“Miracle Child Returns from the Dead.”

That was the headline of the story that I found on Facebook, published by a Christian news service, one week after Emma’s return.

    Emma Gonzalez, missing since she disappeared from an Arizona garden last March, and presumed dead, reappeared at her parents’ home last Sunday. Marco and Tiffany Gonzalez were awakened by a noise and found her, unharmed, in their yard. It is assumed that she was kidnapped and returned.

Although the child is too young to explain her whereabouts, police report that they are seeking leads on someone named “Mimi.”

Meanwhile, her parents are overjoyed at her return, which they describe as the work of God.

“It’s a miracle,” said Marco Gonzalez, father of the missing child. “We prayed that she’d be returned to us, and she was. She’s healthy and she’s smiling and laughing and that’s all that really matters. The Lord listened to us and we thank Him for keeping her safe and bringing her home.”



I showed Caleb the story, since he was the only person I knew who might be able to put this in context.

“So who exactly is God in this scenario?” I asked. “Me? My sister? Iona? Or maybe it was Dr. Medina, for setting the whole thing in motion.”

We were lying in bed in his apartment, naked in a beam of late-summer sun, the damp sheets abandoned on the floor. He slowly ran his palm over my bare head, back and forth across the growing stubble, until my scalp was so exquisitely sensitive that I had to grab his hand to stop it. He was a good lover, it turned out—attentive and gentle, as if he’d broken people before by mistake but now knew better.

“None of those things, and all of them,” he said. “You’re still missing the point. As I see it, God isn’t necessarily the force that makes things happen. It’s the force that keeps you going despite those things. It’s just another word for hope.”

Hope. Funny how, despite what had happened over the last year, that word didn’t sound like something from a foreign language anymore. I couldn’t say why I was suddenly feeling it again, hadn’t yet found a name for the reason that kept me pushing forward against the forces that would push me back. It wasn’t God, or a belief system, or an organization or movement to which I subscribed. It wasn’t a person, not Elli or Caleb, although they were both excellent reasons to wake up in the morning and face the bullshit of the day.

Maybe it was just that I’d finally caught a glimpse of something new inside myself, a seed that had the potential to grow. I was curious what it might become.

I turned and kissed Caleb. “Well, I hope that the parents are too busy thanking the Lord who brought their little girl back to spend a lot of time worrying about where she’s been.”

“I hope so, too,” he said soberly, and kissed me back.



* * *



—

But of course the parents were going to worry; how could they not? And the truth was, even now—almost five months later—Elli and I still lived in a constant state of fear. Every time the doorbell rang unexpectedly, I would watch my sister turn ghostly white. And I would know exactly what she was thinking, because I would be thinking it, too: Was this finally it? Had the authorities figured out who kidnapped Emma? Maybe someone had finally dug up security camera footage that had led them to my sister’s door. Maybe there was incriminating evidence that we’d left behind on the blanket with Emma: dead skin cells that they’d scraped out from under her fingernails, a stray eyelash that had come from my head, a tire tread, a footprint in the desert sand, the label on her fancy French footie PJs. Something would be the clue that would solve the case and land my sister—and, most likely, me—in jail.