Don't Look for Me(57)

Or maybe the first mommy tried as I now do, to lie perfectly still even as the air rushes in and out. Feeling nothing but the fear.

He moves out of the bed. He does not kiss Alice or give her a hug. Instead, he scoops her into his arms and carries her out of the room. He does this quickly as though wanting to remove himself from me.

I am relieved. I am despondent.

Yes, leave.

No, come back.

Want me. Desire me. Let me be enough. Don’t leave this house and find my daughter.

I do not move. I do not turn my head. I simply feel the arms slide across me until they are gone, and then the bed gets lighter behind me, and then the floorboards creak as he walks.

There is whispering outside the room.

Then the sound of the metal grate closing. Metal on metal as the key turns the lock.

I hear little feet stomping. A high-pitched voice whining. Alice is not happy about the locked grate.

The front door opens and closes. I hear a car in the driveway. Not the truck engine like before. It has been three days since I heard the truck. Not being able to see outside has made my hearing perceptive.

The car is light on the gravel. Turns with ease. I imagine it’s small. From there, I am out of guesses. I do not know this man. Mick. I do not know if he would drive a sports car or a fuel-efficient smart car. I don’t know if he’s rich or poor or where he goes all day and now most of the night.

I shift my head away from the camera and go to the bathroom. I have searched in here for a camera and have found nothing. Not even in the vent for the shower, or inside the light fixture. I have inspected every inch of this room and have allowed myself to believe I am right. I need to believe.

Still, I close the door and turn off the light before I let myself be free.

I sit on the floor and cover my face with my hands. Alice’s words fly through my mind. Ominous words carried on that sweet little voice.

I refuse to hate her, though I feel it creeping in. She is a victim as much as I am. As much as her first mommy, I have come to believe.

I am trying not to hate you, my little prison guard.

This is how it begins.

The end.

I don’t know how much time has passed when I hear her voice. I have fallen asleep on the bathroom floor.

“Hello?” It’s Alice.

I push myself to sit. I have slept in a puddle of tears. Wet hair sticks to clammy skin. I am exhausted.

“Just a second,” I say. I manage to sound perky, though my voice cracks.

I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Not with the hatred. It is toxic. Hating a child, a victim. Poison.

“What have you been doing in there?” she asks.

I stand up and find the light switch. The light is bright and it burns my eyes, causing them to squint.

“I had a long bath,” I tell her.

“I didn’t hear the water,” she says.

God help me but it’s back. This hatred will kill me before Mick does. I have to make peace with it. With her.

I don’t push the hair from my face. I don’t wipe away the tears. I open the door and walk to the edge of my cell. And I let her see me.

She is startled.

“What’s wrong with you?’ she asks.

I sit on the floor and she sits down on the other side of the bars. I reach through them and take both her hands.

I pull from inside me everything I know about children, from being their teacher, from being their mother. It does no good to lie now. She is smart enough to put together the evidence and lying will unnerve her. Children need to trust grown-ups. The moment they realize we are liars is the moment they lose their childhood.

“Alice,” I say. “You’re right. I did not take a bath. I told you that because I was crying in the bathroom and I didn’t want you to know.”

Her empathy appetite is strong today so she starts to cry.

“I feel so bad for you. What made you cry for so long?”

I do not let go of her hands.

“Alice,” I begin, then pause. I think of how to say the things I want to say to her. The things I want to tell her so maybe she will understand. Maybe she will empathize with the person I really am—the mother taken from her own family, missing her own children and her own husband and her own home. Maybe she will understand, even from what little she knows of the world, that no one can be happy as a prisoner. I’ve seen the books in her playroom. I know the things she reads for her schoolwork. She has begun to learn about the world, and about human suffering. I think that maybe she can use that knowledge and apply it here, to our situation. The words begin to form. If I can make her see me, then maybe I can rid myself of this hatred.

None of this is her fault.

But something about her makes me stop. Something I know in my gut. The exaggerated sobs. The flow of tears. It is not normal. It is reactive. Responsive, but not like any child I have ever known. Whatever has happened in this house, it has invaded her mind, wired it in a way that I cannot comprehend. And if I cannot comprehend it, I cannot trust it, either.

“Alice,” I say. “I’m sad because you told me this might be the end and I don’t want to leave you. It makes me scared because I don’t know what it means.”

Her eyes widen. New tears fall from them.

“Well,” she says, trying to find words to explain things, “when my first mommy started to sleep with me, she said it was to get away from him. But then he would sneak in with us anyway, and that was when she got lost in the woods. That was when she died.”