Remember Mia

by Alexandra Burt

  My hand starts trembling and I jerk back when something pecks at my finger. I stare at the crimson forming and realize I have sliced my finger on a tiny shard sticking out of the groove where the dome used to be. I rub my bloody index finger against the tip of my thumb. The blood is warm and sticky, and somehow it has turned a crank and, like a jack-in-the-box, a thought forms, takes shape, bobbles, then rests, finally comes into focus. Its melody is one of thunder rumbling in my head and I witness my mind reassembling the moment the memory was created.

  Tears, feet, shards, cuts, blood.

  Blood, lots of blood.

  Tears forging a soft trail down bloody cheeks.

  Naked feet stomping furiously among the shards.

  Bloody footprints leaving a path the length of the front crib rail.

  Wounded hands and feet, covered in cuts and nicks.

  My mind shuts down, unwilling to proceed. I grip the image as if I’m floating in the middle of an ocean clinging to a piece of driftwood. The image returns, the random vision of a figment of my amnesiac imagination, a halfhearted truth then, the very first day I woke up in the hospital.

  It wasn’t a vision after all. The blood was real.

  The assembly continues: the night of the hurricane, the power outage, the smoke detector. The molten bottle parts and pacifier.

  I have to go further, I am so close.

  I forcefully run all four fingers of my right hand over the rim of the domeless turtle lamp. I press hard and I linger, feel the spiky glass cut my skin. As my flesh splits, the blood forms into thick beads and I run my fingers over the spiky shards, again and again and again, pressing harder, and harder, and harder.

  A glass dome.

  KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.

  Not a toy. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.

  I wait the memory out, allow it to spiral its circular path like a balloon without its opening tied up, until it lies there, deflated, empty. And then the memory appears in its entirety. Seeing is believing, they say, but feeling is the ultimate truth.

  My heartbeat slows and I allow myself to connect the dots. I had left the projection lamp with the glass dome next to her crib. Mia must have grabbed it, pulled it into her crib, and somehow broke the dome. Mia’s fingers and feet were covered in tiny nicks but after I cleaned her up she didn’t look half as bad as she had while covered in blood. Her vaccination appointment was two days later. I didn’t know how to explain the nicks and cuts on her hands to the doctor. That’s why I missed the appointment. And consequently without a shot record, there was no day care. And before I could make another appointment, Mia had disappeared.

  KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN, the sticker had said.

  I also remember not knowing half the time how I ended up on the couch or in my bed. Not being able to figure out if Mia was crying or I was merely hearing an echo in my head. And then leaving something clearly dangerous so close to her crib. Not as dangerous as leaving a baby unattended in the tub, no, but a sticker giving me explicit instructions. I couldn’t even get that right. And I wonder what else I had neglected to do.

  I leave Mia’s room and go to my bedroom, where everything is covered in a layer of dust. My clothes are still in the closet, there’s an empty glass sitting on the nightstand, its yellow content dried up like honey. The scented candle fragrant with bergamot and despair hangs in the air.

  But as I walk through the rooms, I feel as if I’m disturbing the past, my mere presence is upsetting the layer of microscopic particles deposited the day Mia disappeared. I want to leave it undisturbed, to maintain its crime scene status for all eternity, and I wish for supernatural powers so every thumbprint and DNA trace will expose a hint as to what happened within these walls.

  I feel tired suddenly. I sit at the foot of the bed and close my eyes. Sitting here, I don’t remember her first words (was it something like ba-ba or da-da?), the first time she sat up (was it on the floor or in her stroller?), the first time she rolled over, held her own bottle. There were smiles, but they didn’t fill me with joy. Bottles, diapers, crying, over and over, twenty times over, day by day. I was covered in dust, just like this apartment.

  The kitchen still smells of stale coffee, the living room of extinguished fireplace ashes. I’m bombarded with odors more powerful than words, captivating me, odors I can’t identify—new-carpet smell maybe, bleach, Pine-Sol—and I feel the urge to leave this place. The tangs and whiffs go topsy-turvy in my mind, and I can’t think of anything but escaping the stench of guilt this house holds.

  I enter the stairwell and reach for the smooth rail covered in layers of glossy paint. The blood that flowed so freely from my fingertips earlier has coagulated. I hook my fingers around the railing. As I walk farther up I hear a familiar sound: a creak on the third step. The creak remains, echoes in my head, and my hand tightens even harder around the railing. I watch my knuckles emerge from under my skin like white river rocks in a riverbed. Suddenly I’m covered in anguish; it soaks through my clothes, opens the pores of my skin, and seeps all the way to my bones.

  This time, I see nothing, not a single image. But I feel everything. I hear a voice from far away but I’ve no idea where the words are coming from until I recognize them as my own. And I return to the day I walked up these same steps.

  “She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone, gone,” I hear myself cry. “I can’t find her anywhere.” And then floodgates open. I’ve returned, been magically transported through time and space. The sound of buses, garbage trucks, and children laughing shoots through me like an arrow. I hear pigeons cooing and a sharp slapping sound of wings.

  I remember twisting the doorknob and the attic door swinging open. There was light shining through a windowed door at the end of the attic leading to the rooftop. A mummified pigeon lay in the corner, its feathers devoid of vanes, merely spiky shafts attached to a skeleton.

  I felt dizzy. I closed my eyes and my knees hit the floor. I felt the impact, accompanied by crowing pigeons, and a feeling wrapped itself around me like a coat, skintight; I was unable to undo its buttons, the fabric had merged with my skin and there was only one way out.

  Don’t be misled, I wasn’t delusional, I didn’t think I could fly. I knew why I climbed up in the attic. I wanted to jump off the roof but darkness came before I could make good on my plan.

  When I woke up, my knees were throbbing. As I made an attempt to push myself off the ground, I felt something soft beneath me. I scooped it toward me.

  When I inhaled, I sensed a sparkle, but not the sparkle of glitter or fireworks, not the sparkle of glistening snow, a sparkle with the freshness of chamomile and lavender and camphor . . . but at the same time it had warmth, but not the warmth of cinnamon or brown sugar . . . the scent was a combination, a juxtaposed blend, delicate and robust all at the same time, like a worn, soft quilt from your childhood . . . yet daintier than cotton, more refined, but strong at the same time. This scent was pure and grand, and it was all around me.

  I opened my eyes. I was holding Mia’s blanket. Silver stars stitched in the corner, next to a moon and sun.

  Mia’s baby blanket was staring at me as if to say Look harder, don’t give up so quickly. What kind of mother are you?

  —

  We stand in the kitchen as Dr. Ari eyes my fingertips.

  “I have to draw the line when you’ve hurt yourself like this.”

  I shrug, looking down at my hands. The bleeding has stopped and the blood has dried to a glossy reddish-brown, giving my skin the appearance of having hand-dyed some sort of garment. Dr. Ari turns on the faucet and wets a handkerchief. I wipe my fingertips, turning the pressed and starched cotton carmine. For the first time since we started our sessions, Dr. Ari feels the need to clarify, to put a name to the madness.

  “You found Mia’s blanket in the attic. You were not sure about what happened, you even thought that Mia didn�
�t exist. Your postpartum depression had progressed into psychosis.”

  Where is he going with this? I was a monster. I had stopped loving my baby; I was afraid of what I was capable of. And maybe I had hurt her. But I knew for sure I had failed her.

  “You needed help, Estelle. This is nothing mothers can just get over by themselves. You needed medication, therapy, support, and friends. Many mothers imagine hurting their infants, even drowning them, burning them. Understand this, if you don’t understand anything else: When mothers imagine hurting their children, their mind doesn’t signal a wish. It’s the mind’s mechanism visualizing the worst outcome so you can counteract. It’s the part of your mind that is still functioning, jerking you awake, warning you.”

  I consider his explanation but I’m torn.

  “I remember a pair of scissors by her crib when I was still living with Jack. I had cut off the clothes tags. Every time I saw the scissors, I imagined myself stabbing her. I moved the scissors, stuffed them in the very back of the linen closet. I thought I was a monster.” The last words come out in a wail.

  The more upset I’ve become, the calmer Dr. Ari appears. It all makes sense to him but I wish it made sense to me, too.

  “Postpartum psychoses require immediate treatment,” Dr. Ari says. “You lost touch with reality and you still don’t know what was real and what you imagined. The statistics are very clear in that most women who experience postpartum psychosis do not harm themselves or anyone else. They don’t want to kill themselves or their children. But their thoughts can become so delusional and irrational that their judgment is impaired. Suicide is rare, infanticide extremely rare. It’s even rarer that they kill and commit suicide.”

  I latch on to the word and. “Commit suicide and kill the infant. I didn’t kill myself. But I wanted to. What does that mean?”

  “You wanted to kill yourself. But then you found the blanket.”

  “I looked for her,” I say.

  “You looked for her?”

  “In every closet and under the furniture. I opened every drawer, looked behind every curtain. I went outside and looked in the Dumpster. I walked up and down the street, looked in cars. I want you to know that I looked for her.”

  “I believe you, I know you looked for her. But we’re not done, we have to keep looking.”

  We leave the building and sit in the van. Dr. Ari pulls a golden watch from his pants pocket. It dangles on a gold chain and attaches to the belt loop of his trousers. The sunlight hits it and sends a blinding ray my way.

  Oliver is standing by a food truck. He holds a wrapper in one hand and a cup with a straw in the other. He puts the cup next to him on the bench and lifts his face upward. The sun is bearing down on the van and my eyelids are heavy. The past hour is weighing heavily on me. I’m thirsty, famished.

  “Estelle”—Dr. Ari’s voice is laden with fatigue—“tell me what you know for sure. Tell me what you know to be the truth. Everything we have spoken about, everything you remembered today, tell me what you know with absolute certainty.”

  I sit in silence for a while. The first thought that enters my mind is sadness. It’s located in my stomach and feels like thirst, but no liquid has ever cured it. Even antidepressants have never limited its reach. Sadness had turned into the carnivore of my life, eating up everything in its path. It’s a vortex that pulled everything else downward, toward this moment. I wanted someone to unearth me, hold me up against the light, brush me off with a shirt hem, and consider themselves lucky to have found me.

  “I’ve been sad for a long time.”

  “And after you had Mia it got worse, didn’t it?”

  “I love her more than anything in the world. But it was so hard.”

  “Hormonal changes can be so dramatic that they push mothers from a general anxiety to a more severe disorder. Family members don’t pick up on it because mothers appear to be fine for long periods of time.”

  “I understand what you’re telling me, but what now? How does that help me now? Or Mia? She’s still gone.”

  Dr. Ari takes off his glasses and wipes his face with the palm of his hand.

  “But you are here. And you have to do everything you possibly can to find out what happened.”

  “What if I hurt her? What then?”

  “Let’s not ask that question.”

  “I should have tried harder,” I say and cry again.

  “Estelle, you have to be aware of this sadness from here on out. A mild depression in childhood can turn into a full-blown depression after adolescence, and you were certainly predisposed to postpartum depression. Slipping into a psychosis could have been prevented.” He clears his throat and I’ve a feeling he has something else to say. “We’re still in the infancy of brain research, we know there’s a common mechanism, but its nature is still unknown to us.”

  “Do we have to come back here again?” I ask and look over at the front door of 517.

  “I doubt it. You made great progress today.” He looks at me for a long time. “You seem to have something on your mind. Can I answer any questions for you?”

  “I don’t understand this whole memory thing. The doctors told me I had memory loss because of my injuries and that it might take a long time for my memories to return. And some memories would never return, but the MRI didn’t show any brain damage. So what is all this . . . this scent”—I point at the blanket in his hand—“and the moment in there, on the steps, how can it just come back to me? Where were those memories? I don’t understand.”

  “I think it’s safe to say that it’s impossible to untangle the entire ball of yarn that caused your amnesia. There was trauma, there was postpartum depression, psychosis, your injuries, and whatever other condition might have played a role. In my opinion you suffer mainly from dissociative amnesia. I don’t think we need to define it just yet, if at all. Dissociative amnesia is nothing more than a mental interruption or breakdown of your memories. You blocked out information that is too stressful or too dramatic for you to deal with. That’s the difference between dissociative and regular amnesia; dissociative means that your memories still exist but are deeply buried in your mind. Those memories usually resurface the moment they are triggered by something. Hence the scent trigger.” He points at the blanket in the Ziploc bag. “If your brain was damaged in any way, the memory would have been lost forever.”

  “So, in a way I’m lucky.” I remember the doctor in the hospital indicating the tiny sliver of luck I had to be alive. “I’m lucky and this close,” I say and hold up my fingers. “Right?”

  “That’s the spirit,” Dr. Ari says and motions to Oliver.

  Oliver stands up, stretches, and drops the cup in a nearby trash can. He gets in the van and turns the ignition key. I smell the chemical reaction of his skin’s melanin to the UV rays. My stomach contracts violently.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I say and cover my mouth.

  “Here you go,” Oliver says and shoves a paper bag at me.

  I take deep breaths and he appears next to me out of nowhere, standing in the open van door. I hear the sound of paper tearing and then a citrus scent drifts my way. I watch Oliver hold a wet wipe in front of the AC vent. Then he presses the cold wipe against my forehead.

  A lemon scent seems to drown out everything around me, the waft of onions from the hot dog stand, the exhaust from the van, the musty odor from the van’s AC, turning into the force of Oliver’s hands pressing the wipe to my forehead, allowing me to breathe.

  My heart is pounding in my ears, yet suddenly this is a safe place to be.

  There’s another scent mixing with the lemon, earthy and sweet at the same time. It’s almost as sharp as pine, but not quite, more secret and not as obvious, as if the fragrance itself was clandestine, meant only for a chosen few. A scent so pure as if it was cut straight from a hole in the ground, ripped from the earth itself. />
  CHAPTER 16

  Dr. Ari takes in a deep breath and rests his folded hands in his lap. “You found Mia’s blanket in the attic. Tell me what you did next.”

  “I don’t know why I’m so . . . so afraid.”

  Afraid is not the right word. Paralyzed, maybe? No, paralyzed means “incapable of movement.” Transfixed? Yes, transfixed, as in motionless, spellbound in a way. But by what I cannot say. Why do I feel as if I’m a hare mesmerized by the curved talons of an eagle? Something I can’t quite put my finger on, a complicit state of silence, an almost Manchurian conspiracy wall I feel I’m not allowed to climb. Like a promise I had made, a promise of silence.

  “Fear is an autonomic response, don’t allow it to distract you. You can’t get to the bottom of it unless you let it run its course. Just accept it, but don’t make it more than it is.”

  He pushes Mia’s blanket toward me. My hands move but then hesitate slightly. I grab the blanket and I know that I have to search for all the jagged pieces of the puzzle. I close my eyes and enter the elevator.

  I hold the blanket as if it is a relic, a sacred object. It still smells like Dreft and baby lotion, but more than its scent its energy travels through my fingertips, up my arms, and straight into my brain. Clutching the fabric tight, squeezing it like a wet rag, wringing it in an attempt to extract every single drop of water, I return to North Dandry, back to the attic.

  —

  I went back downstairs, where I found my door still unlocked and the building silent. There was a ringing in my head and my body was tingling. When I entered the kitchen, I broke out in a sweat. Then it all went dark.

  The first thing I became aware of was a melodious tolling of church bells. It surrounded me before I even opened my eyes. I listened for a while and realized it was St. Joseph’s across the street, summoning parishioners for Sunday Mass. The second thing I realized was that I had pulled Mia’s blanket over my shoulders. It barely covered my upper body but the solace it gave me was boundless.