by Lael Littke
“Turn out the lights,” he instructed Kenyon.
The first pictures were of Heather and me as babies. There were several of them, and in the warm darkness I felt myself drowsing again.
But I came totally awake when the picture of a woman in a big black hat flashed on the screen. She held the hands of two little girls.
The woman was Mrs. Russo. The two little girls were Heather and me.
I sat up straight so suddenly that everyone turned to look questioningly at me. But how was I going to tell them that the Woman in the Big Black Hat who had lurked in my nightmares for as long as I could remember was my birth mother?
Chapter 13
I couldn't shift my eyes from that image on the screen. There she was, the dreaded woman of my nightmares. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers… In my memory byte she bent toward one child (Heather, probably) while another (me?) stood by, watching. In this slide picture she stood between us, holding our hands and smiling at the camera.
My heart slammed against my rib cage and I drew in a breath to scream, as I had done during all those years when the nightmare haunted me.
But instead of screaming, I burst into tears.
Mrs. Russo moved closer to me, gathering up both of my hands, peering anxiously into my face. “Micaela,” she said. “Sweetheart, what's wrong?”
Mr. Russo came over, too, from his place behind the slide projector and stood awkwardly by my side. He was tall, although not as tall as Dad, and he towered there not seeming to know what to do. “Micaela,” he murmured. “Micaela.”
Chelsea slid between her parents to pat my cheek and coo soft, soothing sounds into my ear.
I had no words to tell them that the woman of my nightmares was my own birth mother.
But I couldn't not tell them. I wouldn't be able to go to bed that night holding this new information inside of me, that for as long as I could remember I had been terrified of the woman who now sat beside me, holding my hands.
So I told them, blubbering out the details of my unnatural fear of the Woman in the Big Black Hat. How she seemed to be the major figure in whatever fragments of memory I had about my kidnapping and those seven months afterward. How I would repeat the words, “Bad, bad, bad,” after I'd had the nightmare.
Mrs. Russo made a move to put her arms around me, but I recoiled, sliding away from her.
“Oh, Micaela,” she cried. “Oh, darling, you couldn't be afraid of me! “
“Look,” I said, pointing at the screen where the picture of her and me was still displayed. “There you are, in the big hat. Did you give me away? Is that why I said bad every time I had nightmares about you?”
Tears started in her eyes. “Micaela, believe me, I would never, ever do anything to harm you. Then or now. You're my daughter. “
“Call me Selene.” My voice sounded ragged. “I don't remember Micaela.”
“Selene,” Mrs. Russo said. “Let's think about this thing.”
Brittany and Kenyon had come to sit on the floor, crowding as close to me as they could, their faces concerned.
Mrs. Russo shifted a little so that she wasn't touching me.
“The hat is mine,” she said. “I still have it on my closet shelf. I used to wear it all summer long because my skin is sensitive to sun. I wore it the day you disappeared, and I still have the dress I wore that day, too. Somehow keeping them made me more confident that you would return to us someday. Would you like to see the hat? Touch it? Would that help?”
I shivered involuntarily. Oh say, can you see, by the dawn's early light…
Mrs. Russo looked stricken. “I'm sorry, Mic… Selene. No, no, you don't have to see it. I'll throw it away. We'll burn it. Maybe that would erase it from your mind.”
The thought occurred to me that Mrs. Russo was wound up even more tightly than I was. She was like one of those spring things with the suction cup on the bottom. You push them down, then all of a sudden they uncoil, shooting off into the air.
Mrs. Russo seemed almost ready to launch.
Well, duh! It was no surprise, was it, that she'd be tense? I, her child who'd been kidnapped, was back home safe, thirteen years after I'd disappeared.
Choking back the terror I'd felt when I saw the picture on the screen, I put my hand on hers. “I'd like to see the hat.” My heart was still pounding, and I couldn't control the quiver in my voice.
Getting quickly to her feet, Mrs. Russo hurried to her bedroom, returning immediately with a large, floppy-brimmed black hat. She sat beside me again, holding it in her lap.
I forced myself to look at it, aware of dampness in the palms of my hands. Bad, bad, bad repeated in my mind.
Taking a deep breath, I said, “Put it on, please.”
She hesitated with the hat halfway to her head. “Are you sure?”
I nodded again.
She put it on.
There was no mistake. This was the woman who haunted my dreams. Terror returned, almost blacking me out. I heard a voice saying over and over again, “Bad, bad, bad.”
It wasn't my voice.
It didn't seem to be Mrs. Russo's voice, either.
“I think,” I said, “that…” What? What was it that I was remembering? “The voice.”
“What voice?” Mrs. Russo asked gently, folding my hand in hers.
“The voice that said bad. Somebody…” I strained to remember. “Somebody told me you were bad.” I remembered another fragment. “She had a picture.”
It formed in my mind, the picture of the Woman in the Big Black Hat, gazing down at a little girl while a smaller girl stood nearby, looking at them. I was the smaller girl.
“She told me you didn't want me anymore,” I blurted. “She said you liked the other girl better. She showed me a picture and said, ‘See? She doesn't even like you.’ Something like that.”
Mrs. Russo slid off the couch to kneel beside me. “What else?” she urged softly. “What else do you remember?”
I searched my memory. “Nothing,” I said.
“Is there anything else about the person who took you?” she asked. “Did she call you by name? Did she call me by name, or Heather?”
“No,” I said. “I'm sorry. I can't remember any more. I'm sorry.”
My throat was so tight I could barely get the sound out.
Mrs. Russo reached out to hug me, and this time I didn't slide away.
“We'll talk about it some other time,” she said. “Right now I think you should go to bed.”
I looked up at Mr. Russo, who still held the control to the slide machine in his hand. “What about the rest of the pictures?” I said. “You wanted to show them to me.”
“It doesn't have to be now,” Mr. Russo said. “There'll be lots of time to see them.”
His tone implied that I would be around for a long time. I was suddenly too tired to discuss it.
I let Mrs. Russo help me to stand. With an arm around my waist, she supported me down the hall, telling me to get ready for bed and she would tuck me in.
“I will too,” Chelsea said, following close on my heels.
I managed a shaky smile. “It's been a long time since I've been tucked in, especially by two people.” I reached back to take my little sister's hand.
“Get used to it, Micaela,” Mrs. Russo said. “We have a lot of years to make up for.”
No, I thought. There wasn't time to get used to it because I was going home in four days.
I must have fallen asleep as soon as I closed my eyes, in the middle of a lullaby that Chelsea insisted on singing. It seemed familiar to me, something about bunnies.
I didn't dream, or if I did at least it wasn't the nightmare.
• • •
I awoke in the morning to see Kenyon peering through the bedroom door.
“Are you awake, Micaela?” he whispered.
“I am now,” I said, stretching. I felt much better, which surprised me. Was it because I knew now who the Woman with the Big Black Hat was? She was my mother. I
no longer needed to fear her.
But who had told me she was bad? Who had taken me from her? Why had that person selected me instead of Heather? Just because I was younger? I stumbled a little as I finished that thought: younger and more adoptable. So had I been sold? Had my first set of adoptive parents paid a large sum for me? Had they known I was kidnapped?
I would find out someday what had happened. Someday there would be a clue, just as there had been a clue about Grandpa's Selena Marie. But would I have to wait for fifty years to find it?
I sat up, peering around the sunny room with still-sleepy eyes. Heather wasn't in her bed. It was neatly made up, with the stuffed animals seated against the wall the way they'd been the day before. Had she even slept there last night? I didn't know.
Kenyon came farther into the room. “I wanted to show you my collection,” he said, still in a whisper. “My barf bags.”
I almost laughed aloud. How many people in the world, I wondered, would awake that day to the pleasures of seeing a barf-bag collection?
“Why did you decide to start a collection like that?” I asked as I got out of bed and pulled my robe around me. The robe made me choke up for just a moment. My mom had made it for me last Christmas, from soft, green-striped material that I had picked out myself.
“I collect lots of stuff,” Kenyon said. “Dad brings me peanuts and pretzels and little salts and peppers in the barf bags when he has to fly somewhere. I keep them and write the date and airline and all that on them. I want to be a pilot someday.”
I didn't exactly see the connection, and he hadn't totally answered my question, but it was close enough. Besides, I knew about boys and what they collected, didn't I? Keith had a whole roomful of stuff at home. Owl pellets and snakeskins and abandoned swallow nests, among other things.
“My brother Keith,” I started to say, then amended it to, “One of my other brothers collects owl pellets.”
“What's that?”
“Well,” I said, “after an owl digests a mouse or what-ever he's had for dinner, he coughs up the bones and fur and other junk that's collected in his craw. It dries out into a little ball called an owl pellet.”
“Cool!” Kenyon said. “I wish I could see some owl pellets.”
I smiled at his eagerness. “You can when you come to my house.”
Kenyon slanted a look at me. “This is your house.”
“Yes. I mean my other house.”
Kenyon gazed at me for a moment before saying, “I'm glad you're my sister. I like you, Micaela.”
“Enough to call me Selene?”
His look was candid. “Why? You're Micaela when you're here.”
“But I've been Selene for thirteen years,” I said. “I'm used to that name.”
“You'll get used to Micaela now that you're here.”
Suddenly the day wasn't so bright anymore. I'd found out about the Nightmare Woman, but things were far from being sorted out.
“Life is complicated, pal,” I said, laying an arm across Kenyon's shoulders.
“Yeah.” He took my hand, grinning up at me as he led me to his room. “Hold your nose,” he said. “Mom says my room smells like a compost heap.”
It did. Earthy and sweaty. It reminded me of Keith's room, shared by Hoover and a hamster as well as those owl pellets and other stuff.
“I'd like to see all your collections,” I said.
So he showed me the barf bags and some rocks that he said came from the shores of the boundary waters between the United States and Canada. He had a shelf of favorite books, including a tiny box of Beatrix Potter books. I remembered those books. I remembered how they'd felt in my hand as I'd turned their pages. They'd been mine. Micaela's. They made me think of the little china doll that still lay wrapped in a sock in my suitcase.
Maybe I would bring it out that night.
In the meantime I stirred through the stuff Kenyon showed me, just enjoying his company.
Chelsea and Brittany liked me too. But I wasn't sure about Heather.
What was it with her? She barely greeted me when Kenyon and I went to the kitchen for breakfast. She was standing at the door, a toasted Pop Tart in her hand.
“Hi,” she said briefly, then turned to Mrs. Russo. “I'll be home late. Brianna and Lisa and I are going to the mall after work.” Then she added, without looking at me, “I have a part-time summer job.”
“Be home for dinner,” Mrs. Russo said. “I've invited Uncle Rich and Aunt Marissa.” She came over to put an arm around me, her eyes bright. “If that's okay with you.”
“Sure,” I said. I didn't find any Uncle Rich and Aunt Marissa in my memory bank. Apparently they were relatives. It would be okay to meet them.
“We might go to a movie,” Heather said.
“Not tonight,” Mrs. Russo said. “Go sometime when Micaela can go with you. Tonight I want the whole family here to celebrate her return.”
“We did that last night.” Heather went out the door, closing it firmly behind her.
Mrs. Russo started after her but stopped before she got to the door.
“I'm really sorry, Micaela,” she said. “It's not like Heather to be rude.”
“Yes, it is,” Brittany said. “She's rude to me all the time. And to Kenyon and Chelsea and Mrs. Randall and Dolly Anderson and…”
“She's seventeen,” Mrs. Russo said, as if that explained everything. “Now, everybody have some breakfast. Dad has already eaten and gone to work. French toast was always your favorite, Micaela. Would you like that this morning? It's your pick.”
Pancakes and gooseberries were a favorite. But that was with my other family.
“I like French toast,” I said. But my mind was still on Heather. Maybe I shouldn't take it personally that she didn't seem to like me, since she was rude to other people, too.
Maybe she hated me. Maybe she always had. Maybe she'd given me away that day when I was just a trusting little kid.
My ugly thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.
Brittany answered. “Hello? Yes,” she said. “She's here.” She handed me the phone.
Who was calling me at seven-thirty A.M.? Six-thirty at home. Was something wrong?
Before I could even say hello, Mrs. Russo reached over and jammed a finger down on the disconnect button.
The connection was broken, and all I could hear was the hum of the dial tone.
Chapter 14
I had to make three attempts to put the handpiece of the telephone back on its cradle because I was staring, perplexed, at Mrs. Russo and wasn't watching what I was doing.
“What did you do that for?” I demanded. “Why did you cut me off?”
Her face was red. “Because they promised,” she said in a tight voice. “They said they wouldn't intrude while you were here. This is our time with you.”
I didn't know what she was talking about. “Who promised?Who wouldn't intrude?”
“Your…” She hesitated, then said, “Your other family.”
I could tell how hard it was for her to say those last three words, but nevertheless, I was really ticked. “You hung up on my family? How could you do that? And what's this about not intruding? “
Mrs. Russo straightened up, held her head high, and looked at me. “I asked them not to call. It would only make it harder on you to have them calling.”
“Am I a prisoner, then?” My voice rose. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brittany watching, her face scared. But I couldn't stop now. “I can't receive phone calls? How dare you hang up on my family? It's six-thirty in the morning back home. Back there, “I amended, not wanting to spark a debate about where home was. “If they're calling at this hour, something must be wrong.”
Mrs. Russo held her defiant pose for only a moment longer, then wilted. “Micaela,” she said. “I'm sorry. It's just that I treasure every minute you're here. I don't want to be reminded that…”
She didn't have to finish the sentence. It made me wonder what was going to happ
en when it was time for me to go home.
Her eyes were filling with tears. “I'm sorry, Micaela,” she said.
“Selene,” I said firmly, ignoring the tears. Ignoring the fact that my own eyes were threatening rain. Like mother, like daughter. “My name is Selene. Selene, “I repeated.
I could see that she knew she'd lost ground. “Call them back, Selene,” she said. “I'm sorry I was so impulsive.”
Impulsive? Or had she revealed her true self?
Could I trust her?
I turned to Brittany. “Was it a man or a woman calling?”
“A guy, I think.” Brittany said. “I couldn't really tell. He just asked if Selene Swensen was here.”
Who would have asked for me by my full name? Dad would have just asked for Selene, wouldn't he? I put my hands on Brittany's shoulders. “He asked for Selene Swensen, right? My entire name? Are you absolutely sure ?”
Brittany nodded, her eyes shifting from me to her mother and back to me. “Did I do something wrong?”
I realized then how harsh my tone had been. “No, sweetie,” I said. “Of course not.” I slipped my arm down around her waist, hugging her. This was my little sister. None of this was her fault. Whose fault was it? We were all victims of someone who'd kidnapped me so many years before.
But Mrs. Russo had gone too far when she'd forbidden my family to call me.
So why had someone called?
I sank down on a nearby chair, feeling weak and trembly, realizing that I was stalling about calling back. Something bad must have happened. My mind skimmed rapidly over what it might be. Maybe Mom and Dad and Keith had had a wreck on the way home from Salt Lake City. Maybe Tyler had been in an accident returning to Provo. Maybe Grandpa's sore foot had needed to be amputated or something. First Nephi, Second Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Jarom…
I picked up the telephone. Mrs. Russo came over to stand by me. She didn't touch me, but I knew she was trying to make amends by being supportive now.
