by Nicole Trope
And then she can’t feel anything anymore. She can’t feel and she can’t hear and she can’t see. There is nothing, just nothing. And her last thought is that it’s better this way. It’s better.
* * *
When she opens her eyes, it is daylight and she is lying on her side with a pillow under her head. At first, she thinks Alice may have given her the pillow but then she has a vague recollection of crawling to the couch and grabbing it for herself before black sleep claimed her again. She sniffs. She is surrounded by her own vomit and blood. She moves her neck and sees her daughter. Alice is staring down at her, holding a dripping wet cloth in her hands. Her lips are set in a thin line and her brown eyes are dark with hatred. Margaret can see her daughter’s disgust for her, can feel it coming off the child in waves.
‘He said you need to clean yourself the fuck up,’ says Alice, and Margaret feels a flash of terror at the perfect imitation of Vernon’s voice. The incongruous harsh tone slipping so easily out of her daughter’s mouth is frightening. The wet cloth is dropped on her head.
Margaret knows that the child Alice was is gone just like the Maggie she was is gone. The open, bubbly girl Alice was has been gone for a long time and she can understand why. How could a child survive this life?
A memory surfaces of a time when Alice was four and Margaret had the flu. ‘Stay in bed,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll be home from work early. You’ll look after Mum, won’t you, Alice?’ The child nodded eagerly, always so happy to please, and Margaret remembers that at the end of the day she had five cups of water by her bedside and packets of biscuits from the pantry because Alice had been taking care of her. She had sat next to her mother on the bed, reading from memory her favourite book, Madeline, reciting the words she knew so well and stroking her mother’s head, and Margaret had remained silent, revelling in the feeling of so much love directed at her.
But today, ‘Clean yourself the fuck up,’ Alice repeats before stomping off to the kitchen, where Margaret hears her singing to Lilly.
Margaret wants to yell, to scream her pain and frustration at her daughter, but she cannot even open her mouth. The girl is right to hate her. She has let her down and now… now he is using her. What kind of a mother are you? repeats in her head. She doesn’t deserve these children. She doesn’t deserve to be loved. She deserves only pain and derision. She is no kind of a mother at all. She is no kind of human being at all.
I have to get out of here, she thinks. I have to take them away and save them. But as she struggles to pull her damaged body off the floor, she understands that escape is impossible. She hobbles to the bathroom and confronts her puffed, broken and bruised face. The pain in her side tells her a rib is broken, maybe two or three, but broken ribs heal by themselves. There is a ringing in her head and the sounds on one side seem muffled. His fists have probably burst an eardrum. She cannot see Margaret reflected in the mirror, only a shattered monster. She would prefer to be asleep, unconscious, unaware of it all.
She knows this is not how a mother should feel, not how a mother should behave, but she cannot feel anything for them. She cannot feel anything for herself. ‘Piece of shit,’ she mutters through blown lips at the mirror.
She runs the shower, bathes in the tepid water, every muscle aching, every piece of flesh screaming, and cleans up as best she can. She pulls on some clothes, dirty, unwashed clothes, but at least they are not covered in blood. She sinks onto her bed, her safe space, her oasis. There are two bottles under the bed, unopened, brimming with the promise of a blackout. An apology of sorts, she supposes. A bribe to silence her. How much is that? she wonders. Sixty dollars? She is worth so very little now, and by extension her children are worth even less. It was up to her to show them and the world their worth, and that is perhaps her greatest failure of all.
‘Mum,’ says Alice, and Margaret sees her standing by the bedroom door, her little sister’s hand clenched in hers. ‘Mum, we’re hungry.’
‘I’m not well, Alice,’ she murmurs, twisting off the bottle cap. She takes the first delicious sip and then another and another. The alcohol pours into the cuts on her lips, burns and stings, but it’s the burn she craves. She curls up around the bottle, feeling safe, feeling protected from the ugliness she has seen.
‘He hurts me, Mum,’ whispers Alice. ‘He does stuff to me that’s for grown-ups.’
‘Leave me alone, Alice,’ she says, the alcohol numbing everything. ‘I’m not well and I’m tired.’
Twenty-Two
Now
Alice
* * *
I lie in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. It’s Tuesday morning and after ten, and I’m still in bed, cocooned by my heavy duvet.
My head is pounding. When the alarm went off at seven this morning, all I could do was groan.
‘I think I’ve caught a bug,’ I said to Jack, who was getting ready to go downstairs for breakfast. ‘Do you think you could get the boys to school for me?’
I rarely ask him to do this. It makes him late for work and his patients and throws his whole day off schedule.
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘and then when I get home tonight, we’re going to… we’re going to talk and you’re going to explain exactly what’s going on.’
I groaned again. Jack rarely gets angry, rarely raises his voice. I could hear him controlling his fury at me, and when I looked up at him, I could see that anger came from fear. He is terrified for me.
I haven’t caught a bug. I’m dealing with what I assume is my very first proper hangover, and for the first time, I understand why people cannot function with one. The sour taste in my mouth brings back the smell of my mother’s breath in the mornings. She felt like this every day for years and years.
When Jack got home last night, he found me in the kitchen with an empty bottle of vodka on the counter. The boys were already upstairs getting ready for bed and I was drunk, not tipsy, but drunk.
‘Alice… Alice what…?’ Jack said, his shock obvious in his high tone. ‘Are you okay? What’s going on?’
‘I’m fine, just fine.’ I giggled because right at that moment I was fine. One shot had been followed by another and then another. The first one had burnt, making me cough, but I noticed that it slowed my racing heart and warmed my anxious stomach. I started thinking about the emails and the stuffed frog.
I know what you did.
I thought about the things my mother had said, trying to work out if her words had just been coincidental and the product of her fading mind or if she was actually capable of sending messages to taunt me. That made me start to panic again so I took a second shot and then another two and the alcohol hit me like a sledgehammer and suddenly everything was funny instead of terrifying.
‘Where are the boys?’ he whispered fiercely.
‘Oh, they’re fine, Jack. My mother was drunk more than she was sober, and I turned out just fine.’
‘Alice, what’s wrong? What’s happened? I’ve never seen… Why don’t you go and have a shower and I’ll get the boys to bed, and then we can talk… We obviously need to talk.’
‘Don’t you stand there judging me,’ I hissed at him, furious. I picked up the bottle to pour myself another slurp of vodka but my hands were unsteady and the lip of the bottle hit the rim of my glass, sending a long crack snaking down to the base. The bottle was already empty anyway.
‘Oops.’ I laughed and then I felt the vodka rise in my stomach. I covered my mouth with my hand.
Jack took the bottle away from me gently, but even in my haze I could see that he was deeply sad. Shame washed over me, shame and fear that the boys would be downstairs any minute to greet their father and that, horrifyingly, they would find not their mother, but my mother. My drunk, neglectful, self-absorbed mother.
‘Go and have a shower, Alice. I’ll tell the boys you don’t feel well.’
I was only able to nod, and all the way up the stairs I held myself rigid in case one of my sons saw me. In the bathroom, I stuck my finger down my throa
t, forcing the alcohol from my body. I had only taken the vodka out of the freezer to look at it, to try and once again determine what it was about this particular spirit that had meant so much to my mother, so much that she sacrificed one child and lost another.
I’m sure I hadn’t meant to take that first shot.
‘You’re just like her,’ I whisper in my bed, punishing myself for my behaviour. I break out in a sweat and sit bolt upright, my head thumping in pain, bile rising in my throat. ‘No, I’m not!’ I shout, grateful for the empty house.
I get out of bed and into the shower, where I stand until my fingers prune.
Downstairs I eat breakfast, toast and peanut butter to soak up the alcohol. I drink two cups of strong, bitter coffee, and when I can put it off no longer, I open my new laptop. ‘I was carrying it and I tripped over something and it just fell out of my hands,’ I told Jack. The lie slipped out of me so easily.
‘What did you trip over?’
‘Um… a ball, you know those small bouncy balls the boys are always playing with. One of them was on the floor.’
‘I told Gus and Gabe last time that if they left them on the floor again, I was going to take them all away and throw them in the bin.’
‘No, don’t do that. It was an old computer and I needed a new one anyway. I’ll talk to them tomorrow, remind them about putting the balls away.’ I felt eaten alive by guilt. What kind of a mother blamed her children for something she’d done?
The new shiny machine looks incapable of harbouring a distressing message.
But there is another one, just as I knew there would be. It occurs to me that since the emails have begun, I have seen my mother more than I ever have. Is that what she’s trying to achieve? And if she’s capable of thinking like this, then why is she where she is?
I know what you did.
My whole body shakes. I cannot let this go on. I need to talk to Jack and the police. I pick up my phone but then I immediately end the call. It’s my fault she was there.
Alice did a terrible thing. Alice did a horrible thing. It’s all Alice’s fault.
I drop my head in my hands. ‘But I didn’t mean to,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to. I was trying to help. I was trying to help. Please, I didn’t mean to.’ I don’t know who I’m pleading with.
I stare at the email and then I type:
What do you want?
Maybe this will mean a request for money or something tangible. While I wait, I check my blog but there are no new messages.
Finally, my inbox pings.
I want everything you have, Alice. Everything.
My whole body trembles, my hands immediately clammy. Jack and my boys are everything. Is that what this person wants? My breakfast rises in my throat and I make it to the bathroom just in time.
Panting and sweating, I sit back down and stare at the email for a long time. Then I pick up the phone and call Jack, leaving a message for him to call me back. ‘We have to talk,’ is all I say.
Twenty-Three
Molly
Sydney Morning Herald
20 January 1987
Toddler Found Wandering on Pacific Highway
Asquith
A toddler was found wandering along the busy Pacific Highway at roughly 2 am this morning.
Two members of the public found the child near the intersection of Rupert Street and the Pacific Highway. Police were immediately notified and have issued an appeal for the parents of the toddler to come forward. The little girl is aged between eighteen months and two years old. She was wearing a red T-shirt in a size 10 and a nappy. Police think the T-shirt may have once belonged to an older child.
Constable Berriman of the Hornsby Police Department says a young couple heading home from a party saw the child and stopped to help her. They then transported her to the Hornsby police station.
Police took a photo of the child door to door in the surrounding neighbourhood but nobody recognised her.
The child, unable to communicate with police, cannot tell them her name or give any identifying information.
Constable Berriman says nobody has filed a missing child report prior to or since the child was found. ‘We just want to see this child reunited with her family,’ he said. Anyone with any information is urged to contact the Hornsby Police or to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
The child is now in the care of the Department of Community Services.
* * *
Molly reads the article twice. The print has faded but she can still clearly see that the picture is of her. Her parents have a lot of photos of her from two years old on or what they have always assumed was two years old, and this little girl is the same child. This is her. She was left on the side of the road like a dog, like a piece of rubbish. She shivers, thinking of her niece wandering alone in the dark wearing nothing more than an old T-shirt and a nappy. The road dream washes over her, forcing her to slump back down onto the couch. She has been remembering more than dreaming. She has been remembering. She must have been so scared. What goes through the mind of a child in that situation? she thinks. When Lexie was pregnant with Sophie, she shared everything she was learning about motherhood with Molly. ‘Do you know that when you leave a small baby alone to cry, it feels like it’s dying because it has no concept of time or place yet? Imagine how hideous that must be.’
At eighteen months, Sophie understood so much. She knew if someone was angry or happy or sad.
‘I was all alone,’ she says, staring at the article unearthing her past. She looks over at Foggy, her stuffed frog. If she had been found with him, she would have been certain that she and Meredith, the woman from the blog, were connected. She has only had Foggy since she was three years old. There was a whole other life before that, a whole other family – a family who didn’t want her.
The second article is from a week later.
Sydney Morning Herald
27 January 1987
Parents of Toddler Still Not Located
Asquith
Police are desperately trying to find the parents or carers of a little girl found wandering on the Pacific Highway last week. She was dressed in a large red T-shirt and a nappy. Despite repeated appeals on television and radio and in the press, no trace of her parents or carers has been found. ‘It’s not possible that no one knows who this child is,’ Constable Berriman of the Hornsby Police said. ‘We understand that there may be difficulties in the lives of this little girl’s guardians, and we are fully prepared to help.’
The child has been temporarily placed with a foster family until her relatives can be located.
Crime Stoppers 1800 333 000
Molly wonders if she was immediately placed with her parents or if she was with another family. She would like to call her mother and ask but she can feel her eyelids getting heavier. The stress of the last few days feels like it has caught up with her. There are more articles to read but she assumes they will be more of the same, more heartache spelled out in black letters. Obviously, they never located her parents; obviously, no one came forward. Obviously, no one wanted her. This thought makes her want to weep. All along she has been drawn to stories of the unwanted and unloved children of the world, never realising that she is one of them. The irony is not lost on her, and she would laugh if it weren’t so tragic. She slides down on the couch and closes her eyes, giving in to the sleep trying to claim her.
She dreams of the road again, can feel the stones poking into her soft little feet, can smell the tar that still holds the heat of the day. She sees Foggy in her arms, her small arms, and then suddenly her arms are empty and she knows in the dream that she has nothing and no one to comfort her.
When she wakes up, feeling lethargic, still in the claws of the dream, she can see the sun is setting. Hunger twists her stomach and she goes to the kitchen and grazes from the fridge, indiscriminately eating fruit and cheese and cold leftover pizza until she feels satiated.
When she is done, she thinks about calling Peter,
who is once again working late, but decides against it. She wants to be able to study the articles alone for just a little while longer. She’s not ready to discuss this yet, not until she knows how she feels, because right now her reigning emotion is confusion.
There are four more articles in the folder, each one shorter and shorter and further and further back in the newspaper as interest in the abandoned child waned.
Sydney Morning Herald
31 January 1987
Toddler Unclaimed
Asquith
A toddler found wandering on the Pacific Highway in Asquith 11 days ago is still living with a foster family. Relatives have yet to come forward to claim the child. ‘She’s doing very well with her foster family but we would like to see her reunited with her parents,’ Constable Berriman of the Hornsby Police Department told reporters. Another appeal will air on television and radio in the coming days.
* * *
Sydney Morning Herald
5 February 1987
Police Appeal for Relatives of Abandoned Toddler to Come Forward
Asquith
Constable Berriman of the Hornsby Police Department has issued another appeal for the parents or caregivers of a toddler found abandoned on the Pacific Highway to come forward and claim the child.
‘We have had many calls but none of them have led to the location of any of the child’s relatives,’ he told the press. ‘As a father myself I cannot imagine that this little girl’s parents are not concerned about her welfare. We would really like the family to come forward and we are prepared to offer all the help they need.’
