Because You Love to Hate Me(93)
What she wanted most of all was to put Sera down and pick Callie up and run.
Sera would be fine.
The thought flew away as quickly as it came, but the shame of it almost killed Kareena as she ran. Sera stilled in her arms, as if she’d heard her mother’s thought.
“Put me down, Mama,” Sera demanded. And Kareena did, but before she could capture her hand again, Sera twisted away and ran in the wrong direction.
Kareena screamed because now she could see that the man was definitely a bad man. Not just bad behavior. No. He, himself, at his core was a bad man. She screamed as Sera ran toward him and Callie screamed, and Kareena could not think what to do.
“Bang, bang,” Sera said loudly as her little legs brought her closer to the man.
He stopped moving.
“Bang, bang,” she said again as she stopped a foot away from him.
He pulled out a knife.
Sera lifted her small hands into the air and raised her little voice so that it strained around the edges. The knife was still in the man’s hands, and Sera was so close to him. Too close and her skin was pink, pinker than it had ever been, and even her hair seemed less pale. And the man held the knife and Kareena screamed and Callie screamed and Sera said “Bang, bang,” and the bad man plunged the knife right into his own heart, and then he twisted the blade.
In the weeks after, they all went to counseling. The counselor said they would learn to accept, adjust, and recover as a family. Patrick nodded—conciliatory and vaguely guilty—through these sessions.
Kareena wanted nothing to do with acceptance. She wanted to forget. She wanted Callie to forget how the blood had soaked the man’s blue shirt.
“Blue and red make purple,” Sera had said sometime later.
Kareena wanted to forget about the small spot of blood that had landed on Sera’s nose. Sera had smeared it across her face with her palm. She sucked at the palm before Kareena could get out a wipe. She looked less pale than she usually did.
SERA, AT FOUR YEARS, THREE MONTHS
“Are you sure you’re remembering correctly?” the woman FBI agent asked in every interview in the weeks to follow. “Your daughter said ‘bang, bang’?”
“Yes.”
“And then he stabbed himself?”
“Yes.”
“And twisted the knife?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
The agent told her that they were lucky. They’d been trying to catch that man for a very long time. He killed girls and their mothers in brutal ways. It was good he was dead. Kareena agreed.
She wondered if she’d imagined Sera tasting the bad man’s blood.
SERA, AT FOUR YEARS, THREE MONTHS
Sera asked, “Do you have the light, Mama?”
Kareena said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
SERA, AT FOUR YEARS, SIX MONTHS
Kareena was shocked. All the parents were shocked when they learned that Mr. Jordan, everyone’s favorite kindergarten teacher, had been fired.
“He slapped a child?” This shrieked question was from one of the preschool moms.
The parents had been summoned to an all-hands community circle meeting.
“What kind of school are you running here?” demanded one of the dads. He was the CEO of some company or another and spoke as if life were a contentious board meeting with dissenting stockholders everywhere.
Mr. Jordan had been Callie’s favorite teacher when she was in kindergarten. He was everyone’s favorite teacher. And now he was gone.
Sera had been in his class for only two months.
SERA, AT FOUR YEARS, EIGHT MONTHS
The parents were shocked anew. Another beloved teacher—another teacher of Sera’s—fired. CEO Dad pulled his son from school.
SERA, AT FIVE YEARS, TWO MONTHS
Patrick had his first affair when Sera was one year and nine months. It ended when she was two and seven months. Another one began at three years, four months and ended just two months later. This third one, though—begun at three years, nine months—seemed like something real.
When did things first start going so wrong between them? Kareena wonders. Was it the exact moment that Sera was born? They’d had a fight a few hours after her birth, right there in the hospital room. She couldn’t remember what it was about.
There was a time when Kareena bragged about her and Patrick’s relationship to anyone who’d listen. “We never argue,” she’d say. “We’re best friends. We communicate. We love each other, but we also like each other.” Other couples were jealous of their relationship. She could see it in their eyes, and it made her feel satisfied and a little superior.
Now she understood a little of what those lesser couples must’ve felt. She’d like to meet the old Kareena and the old Patrick again. She’d tell them to be gentle with each other even when they were sleep-deprived. She’d tell them to be careful with their words. Some things once heard can’t be unheard.
She’d tell them not to have a second child, not under any circumstances.
SERA, AT SIX YEARS, THREE MONTHS
Kareena didn’t love Sera as she should. Not as much as she loved Callie. She tried to, but she didn’t.
And Sera knew it.
SERA, AT SEVEN YEARS, ONE MONTH