Maybe I can take them.
The thought strikes me. I fall back a step and then two. If I could get inside without waking Kyle, if I could get them to be quiet, if I could walk them out into the night. If I could get them back to the car, all without Kyle ever waking up. That is the solution to all my problems. I’ll tell them that they can see their daddy later. I’ll say that we’re just going on a little trip for fun. They’ll be all right. They’ll miss him, but it won’t be like I killed him.
It won’t be like . . .
I shiver. I’m frozen in the middle of the dirt road, halfway up the last hill. There will be a little curve in the road, and then the cabin will come into view. I have to be quiet if I’m going to do this. Now that I’ve thought of it, I can’t think of anything else. I can’t imagine going back and staying with Kyle, not trying to take them away with me. I don’t know how I even thought I could do that, when this plan is obvious, when this has to be the only way.
I begin to walk again. I can see only the road in front of me now, as I place one foot in front of the other. I know there are trees on either side of me. I pass the spot beyond which I never went, the cluster of four trees together that marked the boundaries of our lives. I pass it and I don’t falter in my steps. It’s not a real boundary; I know that now. I ran down this road and past it once, and now I know that I can again.
But I’m home now. I’m walking through my backyard. I lived here six years, and I know every tree and every bush and every pit in this road. I know all the squirrels and the snails and the grass. I know the stars, each one by names Lola and I made up. I knew enough about constellations to know there were some, but the only one I could remember was the Big Dipper. So we made up the rest, sitting there in the place where the trees parted to leave room for the cabin, but as far from the cabin as you could go without entering the forest. That was two years ago, when Lola was three and Barbie was one, but when Barbie was old enough, we showed her. And she wanted to play with the pinecones. She didn’t care about the stars at all.
The cabin sits dark and small in its clearing. Kyle’s Subaru is parked crookedly to the side. It has seen better days. It’s old and dirty now, with two windows taped over with duct tape. I used to think driving was so hard, so impossibly out of reach, but I just did it. I drove all the way here on the highway. Now I have two things I can do. I can walk past the line, and I can drive.
I slow my steps, making sure not to make a sound. One step after another, and I’m in front of the three stairs that lead up to the tiny wooden porch in front of the door. One stair, two, three. I reach for the doorknob. I’m ready to scream, to tell Kyle it’s just me, no cops. But not yet. Not until I at least try. The doorknob doesn’t turn. It rattles the tiniest bit, and I pull my hand back. I wait. Two seconds, three. There is no sound from inside. I peer in the little square window. There is no curtain and never was one. I can see to where the cots were . . . I strain my eyes. They must be there. My heart beats and my head pulses and my eyes blur. They must be there. And then I see her. Lola is sitting up on the cot where I used to sleep. She is staring right at me.
We stare at each other.
I put my finger to my lips.
She stares.
I wave her toward me. My hand shakes. She’s wearing a frilly pink nightgown. It’s frayed at the edges and, I know, faded from bright pink to dull. Her blond hair is messy around the edges of her face. She slides off the cot and takes a glance behind her. I can’t see what she’s looking at; it’s either Kyle or Barbie, or maybe both.
I beckon her. I don’t know if she can see my eyes. They are saying, Now. Please. Quiet. Please, Lola, please.
She takes a step forward, then another, then another. She disappears from view under the window, and there is the faint click of the lock, and then the doorknob turns, slowly, and the door moves inward. Lola pulls it with care, making no noise.
I kneel on the porch, my face pressed into the crack.
She opens it wider. “Chel,” she whispers. Her blue eyes stare into mine. She’s frightened; it’s as if she thinks I’m a ghost.
I hold my hand steady in midair. I might reach out to grab her any second. I might pull her in close, and I might burst into tears, and she might burst into tears, or she might scream.
“I’ve come back for you,” I whisper. “And Barbie. I would never leave you. You know that.”
“Daddy said you can’t,” Lola whispers. She learned how to whisper from me, thank God. Together we learned how to have our time, how to not set Stacie or him off.
“Daddy is sometimes wrong,” I say.
She stares at me. Maybe I went too far with that. She’ll never believe it. I struggle to find something else to say, some way to convince her. She needs to be quiet. She needs to come out, and let me come in and get Barbie.
I hold out a hand.
Lola slides through the door.
I pull her into my arms. The tears fall. I can’t hold them back, but I’m quiet. Her arms circle around my neck. She’s crying, too, but miraculously, she’s just as quiet.
“He said you meant to, but you didn’t,” she says.
“I didn’t mean to,” I say. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Daddy says she’s up there.” Lola looks up at the stars.
I wipe the tears off her face. “Yes, she is,” I say. “She’s up there, and we need to go that way.” I point at the road.
Lola begins to shake.
I pull her in. “It’s okay, baby. I’ve been down there, and it’s good. There are a lot of people who love you. You’ll be happy.” That’s not what I planned to say. Everything I planned is forgotten.
She is still shaking. I can’t wait any longer. Kyle could wake up at any second.
“You need to stay here,” I say. “I’m going to get Barbie, and then we’ll go. Okay?”
“Okay,” Lola whispers.
I almost gasp with relief. “Okay. I’ll be back in one minute, baby. One minute.” I carefully set her aside, and she stands on the porch in her nightgown. She’s only wearing socks on her feet, and her face is wet with tears, and she’s shaking, but she stays quiet. She is so strong. She is the strongest little girl ever. So I can do this. I can be the strongest mom.
I rise to my feet, and I push the door open a little more. The hinge creaks. I step in on my tiptoes. It’s darker inside, and it takes my eyes a second to adjust. Kyle is lying on the bed. Barbie is behind him, on the side of the bed next to the wall. I can’t get to her without reaching over him, and I can’t carry her away without her agreeing, without convincing her to be quiet. But she’s only three. She can’t understand the way Lola can.
There must be a way past him. This can’t end here, with Lola outside and Barbie inside. I can’t leave without Barbie. I step forward, one step, two, three. I am standing over Kyle. He is lying on his right side, one giant ear facing up, mouth slack. He’s snoring gently. Breathing. Fast asleep, but how fast? My vision blurs, and I rock on my toes. This is the same as when I tried to get Dee, when I tried to run. I cut the rope and got the key, but when I woke Stacie up, I woke Kyle, too.
Barbie is smaller, I tell myself. I couldn’t carry Dee, but I can carry her.
My vision clears, and I see Barbie. She stirs in her sleep.
I reach over Kyle with one hand and tap her cheek.
She opens her eyes and stares at me.
I smile and pray she can see me, pray she recognizes me, pray she doesn’t wake Kyle up. I reach out both hands. I am leaning dangerously far. I hope I can lift her from this angle.
“Chel?” she says sleepily.
I get my hands on either side of her, and I lift. I lift her up off the bed and my arms are straining and she goes over Kyle’s head, and I pull her close to me, and I step back. I take another step back, and another.
Kyle is still sleeping.
&
nbsp; Another step. I turn slowly. I step out through the door.
“Chel?”
I pull the door shut behind me, as quietly as I can. “Yes, it’s me, baby. It’s me and we’re leaving. Lola?” She is still on the porch, still waiting, still shaking. “Lola, you’ll have to walk. Can you do that?”
Lola doesn’t walk. She takes off down the steps at a run. She races out across the dirt of the driveway and heads down the road. Her lack of shoes doesn’t slow her down at all.
I burst into tears, and this time they’re not quiet. I run after her, carrying Barbie, and Barbie begins to cry, and we make a great noise as we all run, down the hill and down and, finally, we run past the imaginary line, the one that used to form the border of our whole world. Lola doesn’t stop but begins to walk, and I catch up to her, and we don’t look behind us. I take her hand, and we keep walking. I look up at the stars and I think, If you’re up there, Dee, if you’re watching over them, thank you.
• • •
I was down by the river, carrying Barbie in a sling across my belly that I made myself out of a sheet. Kyle had bought that sewing machine at the flea market, and I made all the girls’ clothes now, and I repaired all of Stacie’s and my clothes.
Barbie was only five days old, and I was thirteen. She was so tiny that carrying her was almost nothing at all. She’d come earlier than we expected, but then, we didn’t really know the date she was conceived. It could have been any one of a million nights. Each one of them, Stacie was so quiet that it seemed like she wasn’t even there. I would take Lola into the bathroom, and through the door all I heard was the sound of Kyle breathing, heavy and strong. I tried to pretend I didn’t know what he was doing to her, that it was really just Lola and me. Kyle would pretend, too, after.
Why are you in the bathroom? he’d say. As if what he did to her was nothing.
Now Barbie seemed too small and fragile, and I held her close and listened, making sure I could feel her and hear her, every second. It would be time to feed her soon, and I couldn’t do it. I would have to take her back inside to Stacie and wake her. But I didn’t know how she’d react. Barbie’s birth was worse than Lola’s—more painful, longer, awful.
Kyle came through the bushes. His large feet crunched on the rocks; his shadow cast itself over me.
“Where’s Lola?” I asked.
“Stacie’s awake,” he said. “She’s with her.” He sat down next to me, on the small rocks where the grass peeked through. The river flowed in front of us, foaming and loud. But Kyle’s voice carried easily.
I looked up at him. His hair was longish. He cut it himself, when he thought of it, and it never looked anything like normal. But today it looked worse. It was tinged with gray already, and it was plastered against his head, the back longer than the front, pieces sticking out over his ears. He hunched his shoulders, leaning over his great body.
“Is she . . .” I didn’t know how to ask it. I couldn’t say a bad word about Stacie. Kyle wouldn’t hear of it. One time I got frustrated with her and called her a bad name, and Kyle slapped me across the face. He slapped me so hard that my head hurt for days.
“She’s quiet,” he said.
She had been quiet, after the birth, for a couple days. And then she had not been quiet. She had screamed and cried and thrown the dishes around the room until they were only pieces on the floor, and I went scrambling after them while Kyle held Barbie in the sling and picked up Lola in his arms, and as I picked up the pieces and swept them and vacuumed the floor to catch the tiniest of the shards, she screamed at me.
You want them. You want them. You want them, she screamed, and her face was red and blotchy from crying, and she could barely sit up, because she’d hurt herself destroying everything so soon after giving birth. Finally her voice gave out, and she could no longer scream at me. She collapsed into tears and rolled away from me on the bed.
At the river, I held Barbie close. Stacie wasn’t right. I never wanted to be a mother. I never wanted how it happened. But this baby was precious. And Lola was precious. They were innocent, and they loved us, all of us, no matter what we did or who we were, and how could you not love someone like that?
She hadn’t hurt Lola yet, then. But since the birth, I didn’t like to sit there and leave Lola alone with her. Something had happened to her during those twenty-four hours of pain, something that opened the fracture inside her and broke her apart. I began to stand up, but Kyle pulled on my arm. I fell back into the rocks, clutching Barbie close.
“Where’s Stacie?” he asked. There were tears in his eyes. He wasn’t asking where she was, but what had happened to her. Why was she no longer the girl he had followed around the streets of Grey Wood? Why was she no longer his little doll?
“That day,” I began. I knew I shouldn’t say it. I knew that the fact that I was holding Barbie might not keep me safe. But I opened my mouth, and it came out. “When we were at the river, before you took us, she had just gotten her period.”
He stared at me. His eyes were filled with tears, but hard. He did nothing. Barbie and I still sat there on our rock.
“She was upset,” I said. “She didn’t want to grow up.” I had just turned thirteen, and I didn’t have my period yet. I could feel it coming, though. I had boobs now. They weren’t large, nothing near like what I thought I wanted, before. Now, I hoped they would stop growing. I hoped the blood would never come, and I could be a child. Kyle loved dolls, but he liked women, too. Women made him feel that way. At least, you had to be a little bit of a woman. Not a whole woman like our moms. But you had to have boobs, and blood. Those things made Kyle feel it.
“She’s my Stacie,” he said. He hung his head low over his body.
You raped her, I thought. That was something I couldn’t say. He already knew it, of course. But he acted as if that were nothing, as if what he did to her at night and these babies had no relation, as if Stacie could possibly be the same, after that.
I wasn’t the same, and it wasn’t me.
“She doesn’t like them, but they’re beautiful.” He turned his face back to me. “Aren’t they?”
I nodded.
“I don’t hurt her,” he said.
I put my hand on Barbie’s head and pulled her even closer. I curled around her, and I could see nothing, not Kyle, not the water, not the rocks; nothing.
“I don’t mean to.” His voice came through the blur, overrode everything. He was plaintive, almost whining, a sad tinge to his voice. “I love her,” he said. “Why does she have to be this way when she knows that I love her?”
I couldn’t answer, could barely breathe.
“You love her, too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. He knew I did. He knew that was why I would never try to run again, even before Lola was born. I would never leave Stacie. I knew he meant it when he said he loved her, and I also knew what his love meant.
“I’m going to stop,” he said.
Stop? I let out a little gasp. Did he really mean it? And what if he did? What if he stopped with her and turned to me?
Barbie began to cry. She was hungry. I had to take her back to Stacie, the only one who could feed her.
“There won’t be any more,” he said, “if she doesn’t love them. And if she doesn’t want it.”
“I think . . .” I choked on my words. “I think that will help her,” I said.
• • •
And he really did stop, and very soon after that, I got my period. But he didn’t start doing it to me. He told me to clean this and change that diaper and cook and sew, but that was all he asked me to do for him. We both tiptoed around Stacie, and kept the girls away from her as much as we could. We watched and waited and said only kind things, no matter what we received back. But by that time, the cousin who had been my best friend was gone, and the doll who Kyle said he loved was gone, too.
WE’RE WALKING SLOWER now because Lola’s feet are hurting after running over gravel, and so she takes each step carefully. Barbie isn’t wearing shoes either, and she’s heavy, maybe even heavier than she was only a month ago. I’m sweating and stumbling down the hill, suddenly exhausted. But I can see the bend where I left the car now, and I get new strength. We only have to make it that far.
• • •
I didn’t mean to.
I will tell them how much I loved their mommy.
I will tell them that their mommy loved them.
She was going to cut the dress to pieces. She had the sewing scissors in her right hand. But Kyle was saying, We’ll have more children. We’ll be a family. Everything will be perfect.
And Barbie got away from me. She ran toward Stacie because she loved that pink princess dress. “Mommy, don’t cut it,” she said.
Dee grabbed her by the hair, and she said, This is your fault. She pulled out a whole clump of Barbie’s hair.
I was screaming, Stop. Stacie, stop. Stop. Stop.
You wanted them, she screamed.
Barbie was bawling.
Lola tried to go to her.
I pulled her back, and Stacie wrenched her out of my arms. She threw Lola, and Lola fell.
You wanted them.
No, baby doll, Kyle said. He picked up Lola. Barbie ran to them, and so did I.
You wanted them. She raised the scissors.
Mommy, no, Lola said.
Stacie rushed toward us with the scissors raised.
I jumped in front of them. I grabbed the lamp.
I never thought about how hard to hit her. I never thought about where. I just swung.
We all heard the crunch as the base of the lamp broke. And she fell like it was slow motion. She landed on her back with her hair covering one side of her face. One blue eye stared up at us.
Kyle got down on his knees. Baby, baby. Baby doll. Wake up, baby doll. He sobbed.
Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee Page 17
