WE HAD ANOTHER BAD night together. A particularly bad one. The kind of bad I couldn’t ignore. I couldn’t let it sit. Some kinds of bad can’t be undone.
THE PLANKS WERE NOT held down. There were holes where the nails should be. Tiny, rusted holes. So the planks came loose with little effort. Under the porch, it’s just dirt and a few bits of trash drawn there by the wind. I didn’t know the kind of work I had ahead of me. I’m not a digger. I worked the earth for nearly an hour and had little more than a ditch. In a quilt, he seemed enormous. I just kept digging while the wind tossed the edges of the quilt around.
Eventually, the hole was nearly big enough. Then I hit something. Something firm but soft and smooth, like a stone at the bottom of a lake. I already knew what it was without looking, but I brushed the dirt aside with my palms and fingers all the same. She was mostly bone, wrapped in a thin layer of matted hair. It was short. He must have cut it. My second thought was that it wasn’t her. That there was no reason to believe it was her. That maybe it felt like her because some part of me wanted it to be her. Some part of me just wanted it all over and to know and to be done with it. That part of me was staring at the hair and trying to see it as an animal’s, trying to take the mud-caked mess into it as its natural color. That part of me was seeing a dead coyote and an old t-shirt and hearing the wind chimes tremble and maybe even a car approaching.
HER BONES MADE ONLY a small pile, gathered together. I had a sense of where some of them went, but not all. I would like to think I knew my daughter so well that I could identify each and every part of her. Any mother would like to think that probably. But it isn’t true. Her Dad might have pretended to know. He might have worked this into that, gummed one end and stuck it to the crook of another, but he was gone.
I stopped worrying about what went where and I gathered them together in a little bundle I could get my arms around and wrapped them up in a t-shirt. They had a musty smell, nothing too unsettling. They smelled like a grandparent or an old closet.
I’m worried this is all making me sound a little crazy. I’m just trying to tell you what happened, not why. Why has nothing to do with what, really. Not when it comes to this kind of thing. The why is ongoing and unsettled – always. And if anyone ever tries to tell you different, run.
HOW COULD YOU KILL a man who loved you? A man you claimed to have loved as well?
I know now that what I did was right, but I did not know it at the time. I felt it had to be done and I did it, only to discover I had done the right thing. The hours he spent on the porch, his constant movement about the house. He knew all along that she was there. He was hiding it. The only imaginable reason for doing so is that he was the one who had put her there.
What proof do you have?
The proof of the feeling and its confirmation. I knew I had to kill him, though I did not know why. I knew I had to bury him beneath the porch, keep him nearby, and again without a clear reason. I knew the truth before I understood it. I knew the truth before it was confirmed as such.
Were you aware that it is more often the case than not that parents are involved in the disappearance of a child? Parents or loved ones? It is almost always someone close?
I did not choose to believe it, but I was told as much by the sad show host at the end of the week dedicated to missing children. Were you offended by the timing of the presentation of that information?
I was offended by every aspect of the presentation of that information. The sad show host was someone I did not miss after the breaking of the television.
Have you any remaining desire to appear on his show? To present your child? To present your story?
Every day I am struck with the desire to tell everyone all the details of my story. I am rarely without that feeling.
To what end?
At first, I wanted nothing more than to find my child. The more people who knew about her, the more eyes we had on the world. I was without the ability to censor myself. Each time I told someone new, I felt we were moving forward in her pursuit. I did not ever want to be without that feeling.
And now?
I do not want these feelings to die with me.
Do you think about death often? Do you have an idea of how it might happen?
Yes.
How do you think it will happen?
I think I will vanish. I will disappear without reappearing.
Where will you go?
Nowhere. I will just be gone.
What makes you feel that way?
I simply do. I can imagine it more clearly than anything I have imagined before. It is what will happen.
Why?
That part doesn’t matter.
What is your daughter like?
She is a tender, whispering sack of bones.
SHE WAS A SILENT kind of beautiful. The fabric of the shirt that held her smoothed the edges of the more jagged bones. I ran my finger along her little curves and watched the windows as the night moved past them. Every now and then, the coyotes would gather outside and make those dreadful sounds. It was frightening without her Dad there and his shovel. But it was nothing I couldn’t handle. She was safe with me, and I knew coyotes weren’t something I needed to be afraid of. It’s just the sounds they make. The way they become more than coyotes. Like one of those nightmares where you know you’re dreaming but you can’t wake yourself up. You just have to sit there and be afraid and let whatever it is wash over you.
In my nightmares, the terror never recedes. It is always building up around me, toward me, while I wait. If I could learn to not be afraid of what I can’t prevent, then I could sleep a little more soundly, maybe. Did I mention I’ve been sleeping again? Not for more than a few moments at a time, but sleeping nonetheless. We sleep on the couch together, she and I. It’s pleasant enough to drift off every now and again.
I am not so deranged that I don’t notice how different this creature is than the one that came before. I am not so deranged that I don’t know she is, in fact, not a creature at all. I still love her. She is still the light of my life. It’s just a different quality of light. I can hold the whole of her in my arms, and I will be forever able to. Can you imagine? Even when I held her as an infant, some part of me sensed the shifts taking place right there in my arms. She was always growing. Stretching out and getting heavier. I would look away for only a moment, and she’d be up an inch, snatching something off the counter or pulling something sharp from a drawer. That will never be the case again. She will forever and always be this perfect little armful.
I marvel at this perfect animal armful and wonder how I could have ever doubted her existence. There was a time when I became so overwhelmed with missing her that I tried to erase her. My mind tried to reject what was killing it, the notion that she was out there somewhere and that I could not help her. Could not have her.
Now I have her again. Now she is here with me. And all of my love comes rushing up and through me and I feel like a perfect creature again. I feel like a mother. When I lift the shirt that holds her together the bones click and rustle against one another like a bucketful of shells. I consider all the places I could take her: the beach, the grocery, the park, another state, another country. I could carry her along with me while I travel the world. I’m excited. My hands shake when I do regular things like tear loose a square of toilet paper or try to pour the milk.
I am no longer concerned with appearing strong for her. I feel strong, but I will melt in front of her, on top of her, into her. I collapse with regularity now. I hit the floor like an old branch. I crawl and weep like a child. She sits and sees it all. I show her what a feeling is. I become sadness. I become anger. I become that numb kind of quiet.
I hum alongside her on the couch for hours. She doesn’t complain.
She can’t, I know that. I am not delusional. But objects have an air of judgment about them all their own. The rocks feel our feet. The trees smell us in the yard. The stairs hear our footfalls, our farts, when we yell and scre
am at one another. Beds breathe in our tenderness. And in this measured way, my daughter came to know me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my reader, editor, and life coach: Andi Winnette.
Thanks to Charlotte Sheedy, Regula Noetzil, and Anna Carmichael. Thanks to Mauro Cardenas, Daniel Levin Becker, Alice Kim, Reese Kwon, Vauhini Vara, and Esmé Wang for telling me which parts worked and which parts didn't. Thanks to J.A. Tyler. Thanks to Aimee Bender, and to Vanessa Place, Andrew Wessels, Teresa Carmody, and everyone at Les Figues. Thanks to Ion Mills, Claire Watts, Harriet Mallinson, and the rest of the No Exit crew.
Thanks to Julie, Miles, Katie, and Adam.
This ebook published in 2015
by No Exit Press,
an imprint of Oldcastle Books
PO Box 394, Harpenden,
Herts, AL5 1XJ, UK
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© Colin Winnette 2015
The right of Colin Winnette to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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