Trespassing(11)

Chapter 5

Somewhere between dreamland and wakefulness, a memory surfaces, as clear as if it happened only yesterday.

My mother sits on a stool at our kitchen table, which she’s recently painted blue.

She’s wearing the sweatpants smudged with every color of paint she’s opened the past few years, and a men’s tank-style undershirt, which she says used to belong to my father.

Every time she wears it, I find myself staring at the worn material, hoping to find a clue somewhere within the threads. Something that might tell me where my father is, what kind of man he used to be.

The pants practically hang off her hips. She’s so thin. Her nubs of breasts are like tiny topographical bumps on a map now, but I remember when she looked like an hourglass. I remember when she looked like a woman.

Her hair hasn’t been washed in over a week, and lately she’s been pulling at it, strand by strand. There’s a scabby bald patch at her right temple now.

But she’s still my mother.

I long to feel the warmth of her embrace, to hear the pretty sound of her voice—almost musical—when she speaks to me.

The radio is broken, so I wind the crank on my music box to play a tinkling version of some Broadway hit—something from Cats, maybe?—and Mama hums along with the melody.

She places a tiny red crystal into a pronged opening. Two more stones to go before the pair of earrings is complete. Quietly, I watch from a distance. Can’t disturb her; I learned my lesson last time.

A whisper in my ear. She’s watching you, waiting for the right time to strike.

I flinch when I realize it’s my mother at my side, her lips brushing against my ear as she speaks.

Be careful, little Veri. They don’t want you here.

And they’re looking at me now.

I feel it, that tingling sensation that settles into the back of my neck whenever I sense someone looking at me.

Someone’s in the house.

I can’t open my eyes.

Can’t move.

Wake up! Wake up!

“Mommy?”

I startle out of the deepest sleep I’ve had in more than a month.

Bella. She’s standing over me in her purple jacket in the dim, still room. Her hair is mussed, and she’s backlit by the setting sun filtering in through the patio doors. In this light, she looks like an angelic messenger.

“I told you, Nini,” she whispers to no one at her side. “She’s asleep.”

“Hi, baby,” I say through a yawn. I straighten in the chair and feel an instant ache in my back from the awkward position I slept in. An overwhelming sense of loss sucker-punches me square in the chest—the feeling that something horrible happened before I fell asleep.

It’s an oppressive feeling. Instantly, my mind travels back to April, when I awoke in a puddle of blood. Bleeding out my babies. Elizabella’s brothers. Our family. A sticky, scarlet mess on our white cotton sheets.

It’s the embryos, I remember. Sad news. Only one survived, and it doesn’t look good.

My daughter is staring at me, head cocked to one side, the same way she did when Micah and I told her the sad news about the miscarriage—as if she doesn’t understand why we couldn’t make it better, why we couldn’t fix it.

“Are you hungry, Bella?”

“Yes!” Her concerned, if not somber, expression dissipates, and she jumps into my lap and cuddles against me, all warm and sweet.

There’s a smudge of something on her cheek, and when I wipe it off, I catch the scent of chocolate.

“Nini and I ate chocolate pudding!”

I glance to the child-size table in the corner to see the evidence of two now-empty pudding cups and spoons littering the scattering of papers. How long has Bella been awake and entertaining herself? I forego reprimanding her for eating in the great room, which is against the rules. Claudette wouldn’t approve, but I’m picking my battles today.

“How about dinner?” I touch a button on my phone, which brightens the screen. It’s after five. And no call from Micah. “Come on, munchkin. Let’s get some real food in that tummy.”

Bella scrambles off my lap and into the kitchen. “Ronis!”

“Okay, macaroni and cheese it is.” Claudette wouldn’t approve of this meal, either—high in sodium, chock-full of preservatives—but children have been subsisting on this crap for years. I take out a pot and fill it with water. Once it’s on to boil, I try Micah again, hitting the “Speaker” button so Bella can talk, too.

“You have reached the mobile phone of Micah Cavanaugh . . .”

I hang up.

Screw him, if he won’t turn his phone on.

“Mommy, he won’t answer.”

“I can see that. We’ll try him again before bed.”

“He won’t at bedtime, either.”

I crouch to look my daughter in the eye. “Of course he will.”

She shakes her head, tears rimming her eyes. “Nini says you don’t listen. Daddy is gone. He went to God Land.”

My grip tightens on her arms. “Stop saying that!”

Fat tears now glisten on her thick lashes. “Nini says you don’t believe it, but it’s true. He won’t answer. He won’t come home.”

I give her a sharp shake. “Don’t say things like that!”