Читать книгу Little Girl Gone: The can’t-put-it-down psychological thriller - Alexandra Burt - Страница 13

Mia Paradise Connor and I were released from the hospital five days after the delivery. Jack went back to work, took over the night feedings on the weekends, and I slept, ate and showered whenever possible.

I was in awe of what I had created. I stared at Mia, her plump cheeks, her little bird mouth twitching in her sleep. I bathed her and padded her dry, gently rubbing lavender lotion all over her. By then she was far from the puffy-eyed, bowlegged newborn. Her curvy legs had straightened, her cone-shaped skull had rounded out, and her flaky skin was now pink and spongy.

I loved how she studied my face, trying to memorize it, as if I was all the comfort and love she needed. She’d wake up in my arms, open her eyes, and frantically search for my likeness, immediately settling down when she recognized me.

Mia’s cries were distinct, one seemed to complain about a minor discomfort, like a sock too tight, a jacket too warm. There was the tired cry, fussy, drawn out, telling me she was ready to take a nap. Then there was a more relentless cry that seemed to signal hunger. Nothing a bottle couldn’t fix. And then, at about three months old, another cry emerged. An abrupt cry, a cry that seemed to signal pain, as if stuck with a needle, a cry that made my heart pound in my chest, tuning out everything else. All that remained was her wailing and my pounding heart. And she suddenly shunned containment, something that had calmed her before, and protested every time I swaddled her. It seemed as if there were wires inside of her every time I wrapped her in a blanket; fists clenched, back arched, muscles tensed, limbs stiffened.

Need to make a fussy baby feel safe? How about the age old tradition of mimicking the condition in the mother’s womb? All you need is a blanket and a clever folding technique.

Her abrupt cry was not a mere request, but an urgent demand to fix whatever bothered her. Mia put more energy into her demands, cried more loudly, fed more voraciously, and protested more forcefully. If I didn’t respond to her needs immediately, she’d fall apart, come undone.

She seemed to feel deeply, and therefore she reacted with fierce power when her needs were being ignored. I went into overdrive to respond immediately and I became obsessive in trying to prevent her from getting upset. She extracted every bit of energy from me, and I willingly complied, but still, she wanted more.

I gave her all I had, yet something had gone amiss, had gone awry. I was somehow removed from the person who had entered the hospital and emerged with a baby in her arms, as if I had left one person behind and had returned home another. I woke up just as tired as I had gone to sleep and blamed it on not getting enough rest. Every waking hour was a never-ending stretch of time with the volume turned up. Chunks of sleep broken up into pieces that left me exhausted. Every day posed a new nightmare; not waking up when Mia is in distress. Jack too busy to help on the weekend. The pediatrician administering the wrong vaccine. I will feed her too often or not enough. Even though I went on with my life, took care of Mia, sang to her, gave her a bath, something felt horribly wrong. What had happened to the euphoric love I initially felt? Why wasn’t I happier? Who was this woman living inside of me?

Every morning when I woke up, before reality closed in on me, after a peaceful second or two, a dank layer of sadness wrapped itself around me. I felt as if I was playing a role and never was that more apparent than when I met other moms at the park. They seemed more cheerful, happier and content to be mothers than I ever was or ever could be. And even so, I could have adopted their story as mine, could have pretended to be one of them. I decided to accept my lack of enthusiasm as a personal character flaw, and make up for it in other ways.

One day during breastfeeding, Mia dozed off and unlatched. She had long unlocked her lips, but her tongue still made clicking sounds. I reached for my camera, snapped images of blue veins running across her eyelids, too small for even a thread to fit inside of them. There was a larger vein by her temple, like a widening channel of a river nearing the sea, its currents waiting to be met by the tides.

My camera, small enough to operate with one hand, turned into my new obsession. I photographed Mia from every possible angle, perspectives of feet, toes tucked under, spread apart, soft tiny nails, bending easily, and elfin hands grasping small objects. My lips seemed to sink into her, her limbs were malleable and soft, yet the core of her body remained inaccessible to me. I attempted to capture the part of our relationship that remained inadequate, and though our bodies connected - ears folded like rose petals moving up and down as she drank from my breast, pink lips curling around the nipple – we remained strangers.

I took close-ups of breast milk running down her cheek, towards her ear, as if the amount of milk had just fallen short of reaching its intended destination. I took shots of my engorged breasts, drops of nourishment trailing from my cracked and sore nipples.

The camera flash irritated her, sent her into a frenzy, up a notch from her usual agitated state. She cried and wouldn’t stop as if my attempts to capture her likeness repulsed her somehow. I rocked her, allowed her head to rest on my chest. Nothing consoled her, not my songs, my gentle voice, not my nipple, nothing. She cried every single day and nothing I ever did soothed her.

I sang to her, Sleep, baby, sleep, your father tends the sheep, your mother shakes the dreamland tree, and from it fall sweet dreams for thee, Sleep, baby, sleep.

In what twisted universe is a mother incapable of consoling her own child? How it must feel to live in this tiny helpless body with such obvious discomfort and your mother just looks on, incapable of easing the suffering, inept to give you what you need. It was undeniably my fault. My way of making up for my shortcoming as a less than mediocre mother was by going from doctor to doctor and the same diagnosis was thrown at me as if I ought to know what to do with it: Colic. Otherwise healthy. Cause unknown. No obvious reason.

While her constant state of crying seemed acceptable, Jack became increasingly worried about the bills and out-of-network doctors; ‘Colic,’ he said. ‘They all told you the same thing. A lot of babies are colicky. It’ll be gone before we know it.’

Jack’s objections were logical to say the least; after all he seemed so natural, capable of bouncing her on his knee as he studied case files, putting her to sleep within minutes, never a single sound of fury directed towards him. But his logic fell on deaf ears.

‘I want to take her to another hospital. Maybe there are some more tests they can do? If I can’t get a referral, we’ll have to pay out of pocket.’

I saw pity in his eyes but at the mention of money Jack stiffened. Ever so slightly, but I saw it. The way his spine straightened, his eyes narrowed. I was afraid to mention that my credit cards were maxed out.

‘Give it another month or two,’ he added on his way out the door, ‘she’ll be fine.’

I nodded, even more exhausted than I had been minutes earlier, as if that were even possible. Two months, that was 60 days and 60 nights.

‘You know you’re nuts, don’t you?’ Jack said and slammed the door shut.

One morning, a Saturday, too early to get up and too late to fall back asleep, I reached beside me and found Jack’s side of the bed abandoned.

I heard a voice that almost made me panic, a high-pitched babble voice unknown to me. I got up and went to Mia’s room. There was Jack, holding Mia, a five-month-old grouchy bundle of anxieties with fingers moving around like an orchestra conductor, under her armpits.

‘Why won’t you sleep?’ Jack said.

Then he switched over to a whiney, high-pitched voice. I don’t want to. I want to be awake so I can look around.

‘How come you can talk?’ Jack pretended to be confused.

I can do anything, daddy. Jack, mimicking a conversation, impersonating Mia, switching from his regular tone to a squeaky voice.

‘Why won’t you settle down, little girl? Something on your mind?’ Jack’s facial expression was sheer concern.

Mia’s arms were flailing, her legs kicking.

Nothing wrong with me, daddy.

‘I know there’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve been fed, you’ve been changed, you’ve been burped. No need to be fussy.’ Jack then rocked her gently in the cradle of his arm, the crook of his elbow a perfect fit. ‘There you go, princess, that’s better isn’t it?’

Much better, daddy.

‘Just relax, go back to sleep. Mommy doesn’t like it when you cry so much.’

I’d go one, sometimes two days without closing my eyes. When I did sleep, I crashed. Hard and deep. And I always woke up with a start. I went from comatose to alert, as if someone had grabbed my shoulder and shaken me awake.

Life was a blur, the bottles, the diapers, the crying. Zombie-like, I shopped for baby clothes, loaded the cart, walked the aisles, and bought multiples of everything: booties, outfits, socks. I purchased everything that promised relief from her crying; rosemary-scented satchels, calming lotion, and alarm clocks with waterfall recordings, white noise boxes, and a bear with recorded womb sounds. Regardless of how much I purchased, I never felt as if I could give her what she needed. I could buy entire stores and yet my attempts didn’t amount to anything. Because deep down inside I was a fake.

One day, with another collection of bags in hand, I went home. Jack was in his office, talking on the phone, holding Mia in his arms. She looked peaceful and calm, her face relaxed, her lips loose. The moment I reached for her, her face tensed, her lips curled downward as if to say how dare you approach me. I immediately let go of her as if my fingers had touched hot stone.

‘Every time I pick her up, she cries. She hates me. What am I doing wrong? It’s me, Jack, it’s all me. I’m the one who is to blame. You are everything to her while I might as well be her nanny.’

‘How do you come up with that kind of stuff?’

‘But she cries when I hold her. I must be doing something wrong.’

‘You’re not doing anything wrong. Relax, she’s just a baby,’ Jack said.

I told Jack that I constantly worried; of someone hurting her, her suffocating on a pillow or blanket, choking on something. Jack told me to stop imagining the worst.

‘Don’t overthink everything,’ he said, ‘and don’t be so tense all the time,’ as if taking it in strides was going to make it better. In his world, everything was fine. In his world, children didn’t die of SIDS, didn’t choke on marbles, didn’t succumb to high fevers, didn’t suffocate on their vomit. Didn’t have mysterious illnesses that went undiagnosed until it was too late.

There was this animal inside of me, created while she was in my womb, born on the same day Mia was born. At first, it had quivered ever so slightly, then it stirred, agitated at times, but I was able to pacify it by keeping watch. Lately it scrambled and thrashed and I was powerless. I went there. I went there all the time and then I stayed there. The thought of impending doom loomed over me, tethered like a wild animal with a rope, making it impossible for me to get away. And nothing could convince me otherwise. I didn’t want to hold her because as long as she was in Jack’s arms she was his responsibility, as if I could pass my duty like a baton on to him. On his watch, she’d be fine.

That day in his office, Jack handed Mia to me, one hand under her head, the other supporting her legs, her body wrapped tightly in the blanket.

‘I have to go to work, I’ll be back in a few hours.’ He presented the bundle as if she was an offering.

Suddenly images of a sacrificial goat slaughtered on a mossy stone altar flashed across my mind. I could almost feel the sticky blood between my fingers. I saw a radiant light the size of a baby’s pupil glowing beneath the soft spot on her head. There was a demon trapped beneath that spot, a demon that made her reject me, made her cry and wail every time I touched her. If I could get to that spot, create a tiny hole, the demon could escape, and we could both find peace.

I remained still, didn’t reach for Mia. Jack looked at me, bewildered. His lips curled into a half-smile as he tried to gain control. I grabbed the scissors from the pencil holder and left his office.

In the hallway powder room, as the scissors rested on the edge of the sink, I pumped antibacterial foam into my palms. I studied my reflection in the mirror and tried to come up with some sort of courage to tell him about the darkness and the shadows that had become my life. A life reduced to a small pinhole, depicting the entire world misshapen and distorted. Through this tiny hole, I saw blood, I saw the cold stone of an altar, covered with sharp instruments, jagged and spiky and able to drill their way through soft fontanel tissue. A sharp instrument, like a pair of scissors, resting on the edge of the sink.

The nursery was fecund with smells: powder, oil, lotion, chamomile and rosemary, and dirty diapers. Jack had scolded me many times not to let them pile up.

The mobile above her crib – a colorful array of butterflies, June bugs, blossoms, and Tinker Bell at its center – moved gently in the breeze of the ceiling fan. The blinds were drawn, the curtains closed. The rocker sat silently next to her crib, covered in white linen, its footstool soiled with black shoe polish streaks from Jack’s shoes.

I emptied the shopping bags, one by one, placed every item in baskets on the white shelf, convinced that as long as I kept her room in order, I could also keep the chaos at bay. I took out the clothes, and reached for the scissors to cut off the tags.

The cold metal rested in my hand. Before I even cut off a single tag, Jack walked in, Mia in his arms. She was quiet and her eyes scanned aimlessly about. Then she focused on the ceiling fan. Jack placed Mia’s body against my chest, and kissed her on the forehead.

‘I have to go to work, I’m already running late.’

I needed him to stay home, but I didn’t know how to ask for it, didn’t even know what exactly I needed from him. Was I supposed to admit defeat? Acknowledging I was a fake as a mother was no longer a concern of mine. This was beyond me, I had nothing left inside of me to give.

Jack gently brushed Mia’s cheek with the back of his index finger. Her lips opened and the pacifier popped out of her mouth as if giving way to the pressure inside of her. Her lips searched for its comfort and came up empty. Her face contorted.

The front door slammed shut. Jack was gone and so was Mia’s composure.

I held her inches away from my body as if distance between us could soothe her; take the edge off her discontent with my presence. She broke out in a wail, its volume increasing with every passing second. I turned to place her on the changing table when my eyes caught a glimpse of a shiny silver object. The light and the turning blades of the fan created ghostly shadows that prompted me to pick up the scissors and cradle them in my palm. Her body seemed to be vibrating, her crimson face determined to ignore the need to fill her lungs with air.

I willed myself to ignore the scissors, but they seemed to pulsate as if they had a life of their own. I pinched my eyes shut, yet the scissors floated up and towards me, first only inches, and then farther up, turning their sharp points towards Mia’s skull, determined to release the glowing demon underneath its connective tissue.

I gently placed Mia in her crib. As I pulled my hands up from under her body, I prayed that she would survive. Despite me.

That day, I knew I was capable of anything; capable of silencing her cries. That’s when I knew her life was at stake. And I screamed and for the first time the volume of my screams topped hers.

Jack’s ‘few hours’ that day turned into a full twelve-hour work day. I did the only thing I knew how to do; remain on autopilot all day. As I pressed my forehead against the window that night, waiting for his return, I tried to recall for how long he had been avoiding my company. Jack was becoming more and more detached, icy even, barely talking to me. Working late was no longer an exception but a rule and his distance added more insecurities to my already frazzled thoughts. He never answered his cell, hardly ever returned my calls at all. There were files he closed when I entered the room, the phone he tucked in his pocket when it rang and he had been shunning all physical contact. When was the last time he had hugged or kissed me, and for how long had he been secretive?

I watched Jack exiting a sleek black town car. When he walked through the front door his eyes were two seas of silent reproach.

‘Sorry, I’m late,’ he said meaning if you had picked up the dry cleaning, I’d have been on time. And with all the time you have, why isn’t dinner ready and why is the house still a mess?

‘Took me forever to get a cab,’ he added.

His briefcase was already open, his BlackBerry in his hand.

‘A cab?’ Hadn’t I just seen him exiting a town car?

We stared at each other for a moment, then I lowered my eyes. I knew I had changed physically, I could see it in Jack’s eyes every time he looked at me. I weighed about as much as I did in high school, maybe even less. My facial features seemed to have corroded and I had aged a decade in the past two months. Before Mia, I had a haircut every couple of months. I used to go to the gym, yoga, Pilates, you name it. Now, I never seemed to have any energy anymore.

‘You said you’d be back in a couple of hours.’

‘What the hell, really?’ Jack said. ‘Can you tell me what you want from me? I just want to understand because I can’t see how making money is not the right thing.’

I tried to work out what to say. How could I explain when my head felt so cluttered and fragile? For a fraction of a second he looked like a little boy about to listen to a parent preach, and I saw how afraid he was that I was going to say something else, would question him further, something neither one of us had the energy for. Even if there was another woman, I didn’t have the energy to even entertain the thought for long periods of time. What else could it be? I wanted to ask him why he’d tell me he took a cab when he got out of a town car, and if he was having an affair, but I wasn’t sure I really cared. His distance paled in comparison to whatever crazy I had living inside of me.

Hey, honey, welcome home! Guess what, there’s a demon trapped inside of our daughter’s head and with every passing minute it’s getting harder to resist the temptation of jamming a sharp object into her fontanel.

‘She cried all day, Jack. I don’t know what to do anymore.’

It’s because of the demon.

‘Did you take her out?’

You haven’t left the house in days.

‘All she does is cry. Why would I take her out?’

The demon is making her cry. If I can get to the demon, everything will be okay.

‘Well, what did you do?’

I didn’t answer.

Help me Jack, help me. I’m afraid of hurting her.

‘She doesn’t cry all the time, Estelle. She’s not crying right now, is she? She cries sometimes, all babies do, that’s how they communicate.’ He plopped on the couch and opened his briefcase. ‘I have work to do, let’s talk later, okay?’ Jack absentmindedly jabbed chopsticks at Chinese leftovers while hacking away on his BlackBerry.

‘It’s okay,’ I said more to myself than Jack. I stared out the window, my reflection nothing but a distorted body in a sea of darkness.

Jack’s mood tended to improve the sleepier he became. Later, in bed, he caught me staring at the ceiling. He asked, his voice now soft and gentle, what I was thinking about.

‘Dark, horrible thoughts,’ I answered but kept my voice light and cheerful. ‘Demons. Blood. Murder. That kind of stuff.’

He brushed my words off with a half-hearted smile. ‘Well then … as long as it’s nothing serious. You can always get a sitter a couple of times a week. I’ll help out as much as I can.’

Which means what? You hold her while I get a bottle?

‘Sure,’ I said. Our conversations had turned into a distorted reality we both liked to believe in. There was nothing he could do for me.

‘Well, then let’s not dwell on it.’

‘Yeah, let’s not,’ I said and felt a cold fist tightening around my heart.

‘I’m sorry about earlier, how was your day?’ Jack said, flipped over and pulled the blanket over his shoulders.

‘Just the usual.’

Let me see. I haven’t slept longer than one hour continuously for the past five months. I use wet wipes more often than I shower. The thought of tomorrow being just like today makes me want to jump off a bridge. Any moment I’ll hit rock-bottom which I imagine to be similar to the bottom of a dark well. Murky ankle-deep water, toad cadavers floating atop the slimy water’s surface, spider webs full of dried-up cocooned bugs and beetles. And that’s before I light a match and look closely.

Jack’s breathing was slow and steady. I didn’t have to look at him to know that he was asleep.

But it really didn’t matter because even if he was awake, he couldn’t bear half of what I had living inside of me.