Pretty Girl Thirteen

by Liz Coley

  I didn’t have a reply. What was he looking for here? Forgiveness? From me?

  As we approached the cabin, I tested my emotions. Nothing stood out—not terror, not happiness—just a numb sense that this was how things always were.

  I suddenly had the impression that Brogan had stopped walking. I turned to see him, hands on his hips, staring up at the trees.

  “I have a daughter,” he said. “Two of them. The oldest is just the age you were when Samuelson grabbed you.” His voice trembled, and I realized with horror that his eyes were wet. “Angie, there’s one more thing we discovered when we investigated him. I wanted to tell you before your parents. I’m just not entirely sure how to start.”

  “At the very beginning?” I suggested lightly.

  “Maybe.” He thumbed his eyes. “Let’s go inside.”

  Crime-scene ribbon was staked around the cabin, and a padlock had been screwed into the door. Brogan pulled a key from his shirt pocket and unlatched the padlock, which he left dangling from the hook.

  Everything was just the way Girl Scout remembered it, except far dustier, I noted with concern. I brushed the thought away. I wasn’t the housekeeper anymore. The iron stove, the small kitchen table, the chipped chamber pot in the corner, the pantry, the woodpile—running low. Stop, I told myself. I looked with dread toward the bedroom door—my dread or the dread I inherited from Girl Scout? I can face this, I reminded myself. I am a survivor.

  I stood on the threshold, one I’d never crossed, and stepped through. The room looked ordinary. Faded comforter, sheets rumpled. Books on a shelf nailed to the wall. Oil lamps on another shelf.

  I felt Brogan’s eyes on me. I turned. “What?”

  He sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know how else to tell you this, kid. About eight months ago, Samuelson gave up an infant to County Children and Family Services.”

  My head throbbed behind my eyes. I raised my hands to my temples and pressed.

  Brogan misunderstood. He patted my back. “Given the timing and the age of the infant, it’s likely … it’s quite likely …”

  “He’s mine.” I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain. It didn’t help.

  Brogan’s arm tightened on my shoulder, offering support.

  “I can’t believe he used his real name on the adoption papers,” I said. “That must be why the Harrises named him Sam.”

  Brogan’s eyebrows practically popped off his head. “You know? Knew?”

  I shrugged. “I half remembered, half figured it out. You haven’t told the Harrises, have you?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Obviously, though, to regain custody we’ll have to tell them, and you’ll have to take a maternity test, all those legal hoops.”

  “Don’t,” I said bluntly.

  “Don’t?”

  “Don’t tell them. Don’t tell my parents. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “Angie …”

  “Please. Not yet. I haven’t decided what to do. I don’t know what the best thing is for Sam. Or me. Or my parents. I only know what’s best for the Harrises.”

  “Complicated.” Brogan scratched his cheek. He watched me carefully.

  I spoke into his waiting silence. “The Harrises are wonderful parents. They adore Sammy. He adores them. I don’t want to taint his precious life with any hint of … of where he came from. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what that would do to a kid?”

  Brogan sighed. He ran a hand across the top of his short cut, scratched his eyebrow. “Yes. Unfortunately, I can. But are you sure, Angie? Not even your parents? They could help you with this decision.”

  “They’re still raw and grieving for their lost little girl. I can’t layer another thing on top. I think Dad would totally crack. He’s barely holding it together now.”

  “How long do you need? The longer the child stays with them, the harder—”

  “I know. Look, I think I already know the answer. I just have to convince … myself.”

  Silence fell like the dust motes we’d stirred up with our breath and movement through the room.

  “Okay,” he said. “Are we done here? See anything you want to take away?”

  I glanced around the two-room cabin, familiar and strange. “Nothing,” I answered. “Let’s get out of here. The light’s going.”

  I followed Brogan through the kitchen. “Oh, wait. There is one thing. I’ll be right out.” I went back into the bedroom for a battered copy of Song of Myself propped on a shelf. No wonder I loved it in school. Girl Scout had read it over and over here.

  As I reached for the worn paperback, a shattering pain exploded in my head, as if something had smashed me from behind. My skull echoed with the impact. Blind with agony, I fell to the bed. A terrible cracking and wrenching noise came from a distance. Then a slam. I staggered up, lurching toward the front door. Through squinted eyes, I found my way, heaved on the door handle. Pushed on the door. It was jammed. Or locked.

  “Brogan? Detective Brogan,” I yelled. “Help me! I’m stuck.”

  I tugged and tugged on the door, hammered with my fists. Useless. It wouldn’t budge. A window. I could break a window. Get his attention that way.

  No windows? Where were the damned windows?

  In the bedroom? I rushed back toward the bedroom and slammed into a wall. My head spun. Pinpoint stars danced at the edges of my vision, then winked out, leaving me in the gray gloom. I reached around frantically. The stove was gone, the table was gone, the pantry—gone.

  Walls pushed in, closer and tighter. In the shadows, I made out the silhouette of a rocking chair, just a chair in the middle of a dark, dusty floor dimly outlined by an oil lamp sitting in the corner. And I knew where I was.

  I heard my own voice from far outside of myself. “All set, Detective. Thanks for waiting. Let’s go.”

  CONFLAGRATION

  HOW? HOW HAD SHE BROKEN OUT?

  As my voice faded into the distance, chatting with Detective Brogan, I knew Lonely One was running the show. Would he be able to tell the difference? Would she give herself away?

  I paced her room in near panic. The walls felt tight. I found it hard to breathe, which was stupid. I didn’t need to breathe. She was breathing for us.

  I pinched myself experimentally. Yes, it hurt. Of course it did, because I expected it to hurt. So I kept breathing, because I expected myself to breathe.

  Six steps across, six steps back. Again. I avoided the chair. No way was I going to sit down there and wait passively for Lonely One to come back for me. What if she left me here for three more years? Oh God. What if she left me here … forever?

  I imagined all the terrible things she could be planning now—stealing Sammy and running away, dropping out of school, saying unforgivable things to Mom and Dad, ditching Lynn—the only person who might realize what had happened. If I could imagine them, surely she’d thought of them too.

  My footsteps took on the rhythm of heartbeats or ticks of the clock, and I realized I’d lost any sense of time. Time had no meaning in here. It could be minutes, hours, even days since she’d switched places and locked me in.

  I rattled the door again, banged and yelled till my imaginary voice was hoarse. No response. I stared at my hands, trying to will an ax to appear so I could chop my way out. It didn’t work. Maybe my mental conjuring only worked when I was the one in charge.

  My heart squeezed bitterness. How could she do this to me?

  And then I had the terrible thought—I’d done it to her first, hadn’t I?

  Stupid. Stupid to think I could keep such a powerful part of me locked away once she’d tasted freedom, once she’d seen Sammy, once Brogan had confirmed that the sturdy toddler was her stolen baby.

  I added another element to my pacing. One more step and I could crash hard into the wall at either side. The jolting kept me mad, gave me energy. I needed energy. The chair looked awfully tempting.

  I could sink into it, and rock, and it would feel like no time passing. Nothing would ever change
in this twilight dark room. I could rock, and mourn my life, and wait. I would become the lonely one. And she would become the Angie.

  I took a step toward the chair. That wouldn’t be so awful, would it? Just to rest for a moment?

  It was so quiet in here, except for the imaginary sound of my footsteps, my unnecessary breathing. The air was still. The flame in the oil lamp was steady and low, unflickering.

  It burned there like a metaphor for my Self, my consciousness. Alive but unchanging, unmoving.

  I left the path I was wearing across the room and went to the corner, picked up the lamp. It was warm, as I expected it to be. A warm metaphor. Light in the darkness, heat in the cold, a tiny flame of hope. The human brain is so weird, finding symbols and meaning in everything. Here I was, trapped in a metaphor of a walled-off compartment in my brain, holding a metaphor of something that gave me a shred of hope. Why? Why hope?

  A spark of inspiration, like the spark of a match, came to me.

  I threw the lamp to the wood floor. It crashed into pieces, oil spilling everywhere, catching, lighting all around. I would burn my way out.

  Flames rose up the walls, as I knew they would.

  The dry pine siding caught like kindling.

  Flames danced across the floor, as I expected them to.

  Golden-red tongues flicked everywhere, hot and hungry.

  I felt their heat, soaked in their campfire light, waiting for the walls to char and crumble.

  But the walls held.

  The fire crept closer to the center of the room. With a whoosh, the rocker itself went up in flames, consumed to ash in moments. A wall of fire danced, circled me now. The heat intensified.

  I moved to step through, but a blast of hot smoke pushed me back. My sleeve caught fire. Just a metaphor, I told myself, but no—the cloth burned and fell away, then my skin was on fire, painful, black, blistering. I screamed and tried to thump it out against my body.

  Stop, drop, roll. The safety mantra ran through my head. Useless! The floor was burning.

  Flame licked up the legs of my jeans. The smell of burning cloth and hair and flesh was overwhelming. The pain was unbearable. This must be the hell Yuncle warned us about.

  “Lonely One,” I screamed. “Unlock me! Save me!”

  I ran through the flames to the door. Black pegs I hardly recognized as arms banged against it weakly. “Please! Hear me!”

  Oh God. This is it. The air, too thick, too smoky to breathe. I closed my eyes to pray.

  The door gave way. It swung open, and there she was. Lonely One, a wide and terrified look in her eyes. A large blanket bundle in her arms. She thrust it at me.

  “Take him,” she screamed. “I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”

  I reached for the bundle. It was heavy and crying. “Annee, Annee,” it sobbed.

  With an electric jolt, my heart hammered again in my chest. I felt it. I heard it. A blast of real heat struck me across the face. My true body solidified around me. I clutched Sam tight with real hands.

  Smoke billowed through the doorway.

  “Hurry! Leave me!” Lonely One pushed past me toward the inferno in the cabin of our mind, groping through the smoke for her rocking chair.

  I dragged her back by one arm, pulled against her protests with all my strength. “You can’t go back in. It’s all gone.”

  Ceiling beams crumbled as I spoke. Sparks shot up from the ruined timbers. Lonely One struggled in my grip, willing herself to be destroyed with her refuge, her prison.

  But I couldn’t let her. “Come with me. Sam needs you. And I need you. Now.”

  With a cry of fear, she fell into me, pushing me through the doorway and into full control, full consciousness. I blindly reached behind me for her hand, but she was gone.

  The world spun crazily, and the burning cabin dissolved, and the room was Sammy’s, and the hallway outside was a mass of flame.

  Lonely One’s memories tumbled, gushed into my head. She was with Sammy, reading. She was entranced, captivated by his sweetness. The smell of wood smoke all around was so familiar, she didn’t realize what was happening until the vaulted ceiling in the living room came down on the flaming Christmas tree with a shattering crash. That thunderous crack finally alerted her. She opened the bedroom door into a fiery hell. The house, the Harrises’ house, was burning, roaring, falling around us.

  Sammy twisted in my arms. We had to get out. Six feet from his door was the bathroom, my only hope if we were going to make it out alive. Sirens sounded from outside the house, far down the street. We couldn’t wait for them.

  “Be brave, little guy,” I whispered in his ear. Tucking him back inside the blanket, wrapping one arm across my eyes and nose, I took a last gasp of air from the bedroom and sprinted through the flames to the closed bathroom door. The handle scorched my fingers. I slammed us inside and turned on the shower full blast. In seconds we were drenched from head to foot with icy-cold water. Sam howled with shock.

  I pulled two bath towels under the stream, soaked them, and wrapped Sam into a wet cocoon. A hand towel wrapped my nose and mouth. His blanket draped my head and upper body like a shroud. Outside the door, something crashed. Good God. The whole roof was coming down.

  I hated to leave the wet, tiled sanctuary, but we had to or else be crushed under flaming beams. Sam struggled and squirmed in his casing. I squeezed him tight and muttered soothing nonsense words through the towels, my face pressed against the hard bulge of his head. “We’re going for it,” I said. “Now!”

  Searing the other hand, I wrenched open the door. I couldn’t see past the hall, but no matter. I knew the only way out was through the hall and out the front door. If the living room had gone already, so had the kitchen and garage.

  The rest was a blur, running, feeling, burning, protecting Sam’s cocoon with my body as best I could, until tile was under my feet, the huge scalding brass handle of the front door in my hand, and then running out into the front and stopping, dropping, rolling the two of us on the front lawn.

  A fireman swore loudly, and a heavy smothering blanket dropped on us, along with several bodies.

  “They’re out,” I heard. With my last ounce of coherent thought, I dragged the smothering towels off Sammy’s face.

  He glared at me, drew a huge breath, and hollered his annoyance. “No, Annee! No baff.”

  Thank God.

  The burning pain I’d been holding off swamped every nerve ending in my scorched skin. And then I really was out.

  DECISION

  MY EYES CRACKED OPEN. I PEEKED FROM SIDE TO SIDE. Lots of white, lots of equipment. I was in a hospital again.

  I raised a hand to rub the grit out of my eyelashes and nearly bonked myself with the giant Q-tip my arm had become. Both arms. Bandaged to the elbows, hands swaddled in gauze. Seeing them, they suddenly itched like crazy. I banged them together and immediately realized what a stupid idea that was as a wave of pain rippled up the length of my arms.

  A nurse appeared out of nowhere and held them gently apart. “Don’t do that, honey. There’s healing going on in there.”

  “Where am I?” I asked, blinking away the tears.

  “You’re in the burn unit at UCLA Medical Center. It’s Saturday morning. And I’m Marie, your nurse for the next twelve hours.”

  Twelve hours? “How—how badly am I hurt?” Stupid question. I felt like a giant bandage.

  “Your hands got the worst of it. Third-degree burns. Your legs escaped with second degree. No skin grafts needed.” She gave me one of those encouraging tight-lipped nurse smiles. “You’ll live to play the piano again.”

  “Guitar,” I corrected. I shifted uncomfortably.

  She adjusted my pillow and smoothed my hair under my head. “Given the rest of you, I’m not sure how you escaped with all your beautiful hair unsinged.”

  “I ran out of the fire with a wet blan—oh my God.” It hit me like a two-by-four in the face. “Sammy. My … my child, where is he? Is he okay?” I stoppe
d breathing while I waited for her answer.

  Marie’s face twisted in confusion. “Your …? They said you were the babysitter.”

  “I was. I am,” I quickly corrected. I wracked my mind, literally. Lonely One? Where are you? Why did I say my child?

  “The little boy was perfect. Untouched. Somehow you got him out of that inferno before the bedroom wing collapsed, and you took all the damage.” She patted my shoulder. “You’re a very brave girl, from what I understand. A hero. The parents have been to see you while you slept. As have your own, of course.”

  Of course. “Can I see them now? Mine, I mean?”

  “I believe they’ll all be back up here in a few minutes. They all went off for coffee together. It’s been a long, long night for them.”

  I closed my eyes, already exhausted from the short conversation. Marie smoothed the sheet under my chin and stroked my hair one more time. “That’s it,” she said. “Rest and recover.”

  But with my eyes closed, I couldn’t sleep, could only wander the halls of my brain. I found them deserted. Where I had created the girls’ cabin, there was only a pile of imagined ash. So where had Lonely One gone when I pulled her out after me?

  “I need you. Now,” I had ordered her. Was it possible? Had she merged into me in the blink of an eye? In the unbearable heat of the moment? Perhaps. Yes.

  I gave myself permission to remember, and then—I did. I remembered everything: the gentle swell of my belly, already large when I first emerged as a person; the sickness that came and went; the man’s kinder, softer side, making it all the more unexpected when he tore my heart out by stealing the baby, the one we named Sam, after his father, he said; the hours spent rocking and crying alone and forgotten after Girl Scout and Little Wife came back; the bright Angel who came and gave me hope that I’d see my baby again; the nights spent peeking at a sleeping child, who looked and smelled familiar and just might be the one; the detective’s words that gave me the strength to burst from my detention cell and make my way back to Sam.

  Yes. That was it. We were—I was—together. Complete.

  And together we’d done it. My strength and her mother love joined against the fire.