Little Girl Gone

by Alexandra Burt

  That day in his office, Jack handed Mia to me, one hand under her head, the other supporting her legs, her body wrapped tightly in the blanket.

  ‘I have to go to work, I’ll be back in a few hours.’ He presented the bundle as if she was an offering.

  Suddenly images of a sacrificial goat slaughtered on a mossy stone altar flashed across my mind. I could almost feel the sticky blood between my fingers. I saw a radiant light the size of a baby’s pupil glowing beneath the soft spot on her head. There was a demon trapped beneath that spot, a demon that made her reject me, made her cry and wail every time I touched her. If I could get to that spot, create a tiny hole, the demon could escape, and we could both find peace.

  I remained still, didn’t reach for Mia. Jack looked at me, bewildered. His lips curled into a half-smile as he tried to gain control. I grabbed the scissors from the pencil holder and left his office.

  In the hallway powder room, as the scissors rested on the edge of the sink, I pumped antibacterial foam into my palms. I studied my reflection in the mirror and tried to come up with some sort of courage to tell him about the darkness and the shadows that had become my life. A life reduced to a small pinhole, depicting the entire world misshapen and distorted. Through this tiny hole, I saw blood, I saw the cold stone of an altar, covered with sharp instruments, jagged and spiky and able to drill their way through soft fontanel tissue. A sharp instrument, like a pair of scissors, resting on the edge of the sink.

  The nursery was fecund with smells: powder, oil, lotion, chamomile and rosemary, and dirty diapers. Jack had scolded me many times not to let them pile up.

  The mobile above her crib – a colorful array of butterflies, June bugs, blossoms, and Tinker Bell at its center – moved gently in the breeze of the ceiling fan. The blinds were drawn, the curtains closed. The rocker sat silently next to her crib, covered in white linen, its footstool soiled with black shoe polish streaks from Jack’s shoes.

  I emptied the shopping bags, one by one, placed every item in baskets on the white shelf, convinced that as long as I kept her room in order, I could also keep the chaos at bay. I took out the clothes, and reached for the scissors to cut off the tags.

  The cold metal rested in my hand. Before I even cut off a single tag, Jack walked in, Mia in his arms. She was quiet and her eyes scanned aimlessly about. Then she focused on the ceiling fan. Jack placed Mia’s body against my chest, and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘I have to go to work, I’m already running late.’

  I needed him to stay home, but I didn’t know how to ask for it, didn’t even know what exactly I needed from him. Was I supposed to admit defeat? Acknowledging I was a fake as a mother was no longer a concern of mine. This was beyond me, I had nothing left inside of me to give.

  Jack gently brushed Mia’s cheek with the back of his index finger. Her lips opened and the pacifier popped out of her mouth as if giving way to the pressure inside of her. Her lips searched for its comfort and came up empty. Her face contorted.

  The front door slammed shut. Jack was gone and so was Mia’s composure.

  I held her inches away from my body as if distance between us could soothe her; take the edge off her discontent with my presence. She broke out in a wail, its volume increasing with every passing second. I turned to place her on the changing table when my eyes caught a glimpse of a shiny silver object. The light and the turning blades of the fan created ghostly shadows that prompted me to pick up the scissors and cradle them in my palm. Her body seemed to be vibrating, her crimson face determined to ignore the need to fill her lungs with air.

  I willed myself to ignore the scissors, but they seemed to pulsate as if they had a life of their own. I pinched my eyes shut, yet the scissors floated up and towards me, first only inches, and then farther up, turning their sharp points towards Mia’s skull, determined to release the glowing demon underneath its connective tissue.

  I gently placed Mia in her crib. As I pulled my hands up from under her body, I prayed that she would survive. Despite me.

  That day, I knew I was capable of anything; capable of silencing her cries. That’s when I knew her life was at stake. And I screamed and for the first time the volume of my screams topped hers.

  Jack’s ‘few hours’ that day turned into a full twelve-hour work day. I did the only thing I knew how to do; remain on autopilot all day. As I pressed my forehead against the window that night, waiting for his return, I tried to recall for how long he had been avoiding my company. Jack was becoming more and more detached, icy even, barely talking to me. Working late was no longer an exception but a rule and his distance added more insecurities to my already frazzled thoughts. He never answered his cell, hardly ever returned my calls at all. There were files he closed when I entered the room, the phone he tucked in his pocket when it rang and he had been shunning all physical contact. When was the last time he had hugged or kissed me, and for how long had he been secretive?

  I watched Jack exiting a sleek black town car. When he walked through the front door his eyes were two seas of silent reproach.

  ‘Sorry, I’m late,’ he said meaning if you had picked up the dry cleaning, I’d have been on time. And with all the time you have, why isn’t dinner ready and why is the house still a mess?

  ‘Took me forever to get a cab,’ he added.

  His briefcase was already open, his BlackBerry in his hand.

  ‘A cab?’ Hadn’t I just seen him exiting a town car?

  We stared at each other for a moment, then I lowered my eyes. I knew I had changed physically, I could see it in Jack’s eyes every time he looked at me. I weighed about as much as I did in high school, maybe even less. My facial features seemed to have corroded and I had aged a decade in the past two months. Before Mia, I had a haircut every couple of months. I used to go to the gym, yoga, Pilates, you name it. Now, I never seemed to have any energy anymore.

  ‘You said you’d be back in a couple of hours.’

  ‘What the hell, really?’ Jack said. ‘Can you tell me what you want from me? I just want to understand because I can’t see how making money is not the right thing.’

  I tried to work out what to say. How could I explain when my head felt so cluttered and fragile? For a fraction of a second he looked like a little boy about to listen to a parent preach, and I saw how afraid he was that I was going to say something else, would question him further, something neither one of us had the energy for. Even if there was another woman, I didn’t have the energy to even entertain the thought for long periods of time. What else could it be? I wanted to ask him why he’d tell me he took a cab when he got out of a town car, and if he was having an affair, but I wasn’t sure I really cared. His distance paled in comparison to whatever crazy I had living inside of me.

  Hey, honey, welcome home! Guess what, there’s a demon trapped inside of our daughter’s head and with every passing minute it’s getting harder to resist the temptation of jamming a sharp object into her fontanel.

  ‘She cried all day, Jack. I don’t know what to do anymore.’

  It’s because of the demon.

  ‘Did you take her out?’

  You haven’t left the house in days.

  ‘All she does is cry. Why would I take her out?’

  The demon is making her cry. If I can get to the demon, everything will be okay.

  ‘Well, what did you do?’

  I didn’t answer.

  Help me Jack, help me. I’m afraid of hurting her.

  ‘She doesn’t cry all the time, Estelle. She’s not crying right now, is she? She cries sometimes, all babies do, that’s how they communicate.’ He plopped on the couch and opened his briefcase. ‘I have work to do, let’s talk later, okay?’ Jack absentmindedly jabbed chopsticks at Chinese leftovers while hacking away on his BlackBerry.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said more to myself than Jack. I stared out the window, my reflection nothing but a distorted body in a sea of darkness.

  Jack’s mood tended to i
mprove the sleepier he became. Later, in bed, he caught me staring at the ceiling. He asked, his voice now soft and gentle, what I was thinking about.

  ‘Dark, horrible thoughts,’ I answered but kept my voice light and cheerful. ‘Demons. Blood. Murder. That kind of stuff.’

  He brushed my words off with a half-hearted smile. ‘Well then … as long as it’s nothing serious. You can always get a sitter a couple of times a week. I’ll help out as much as I can.’

  Which means what? You hold her while I get a bottle?

  ‘Sure,’ I said. Our conversations had turned into a distorted reality we both liked to believe in. There was nothing he could do for me.

  ‘Well, then let’s not dwell on it.’

  ‘Yeah, let’s not,’ I said and felt a cold fist tightening around my heart.

  ‘I’m sorry about earlier, how was your day?’ Jack said, flipped over and pulled the blanket over his shoulders.

  ‘Just the usual.’

  Let me see. I haven’t slept longer than one hour continuously for the past five months. I use wet wipes more often than I shower. The thought of tomorrow being just like today makes me want to jump off a bridge. Any moment I’ll hit rock-bottom which I imagine to be similar to the bottom of a dark well. Murky ankle-deep water, toad cadavers floating atop the slimy water’s surface, spider webs full of dried-up cocooned bugs and beetles. And that’s before I light a match and look closely.

  Jack’s breathing was slow and steady. I didn’t have to look at him to know that he was asleep.

  But it really didn’t matter because even if he was awake, he couldn’t bear half of what I had living inside of me.

  Chapter 8

  The very next night – Jack again phoned me telling me he’d be late – I parked in front of his office building and kept an eye on the front desk behind the glass doors. Was Jack hiding something? A thought had grown, slowly at first and I was reluctant to listen to it, but lately the voice had become louder. I wanted to see for myself, after all, had I not asked for it? Was I not incapable as a mother and just as incapable as his wife? I couldn’t blame him, looking in the rearview mirror seeing myself, couldn’t blame him at all. Even I didn’t recognize the woman staring back at me, pale and haggard.

  I sat in my car, watched the traffic lights change and cars float by, and I waited until the security guard made his rounds. I took the elevator up to the fifth floor and found all the offices dark, except Jack’s.

  I couldn’t make sense of the contorted voices drifting towards me through Jack’s office door, and so I imagined what hands were doing, where tongues slithered like snakes, what pieces of clothing were draped over office chairs or bunched around ankles like turtlenecks, what the room smelled like. As I listened to the voices and the laughter, I observed myself in the glass door panel, and I was dumbfounded by the woman I had become. No longer a woman, really, but a crone, in baggy clothes and stringy hair with a chilly triumphant cackle. I knew I was helpless, for the crone’s powers were infinite.

  Seconds after I began pounding the door with my fists, Jack ripped open the door, looked at me, with surprise at first, then his eyes turned into rage. I didn’t speak, just turned and ran. I reached my car, shaking, unable to think, but I managed to drive home. When I pulled into the driveway, I was surprised I had made it there.

  Aashi, the sitter, was asleep on the couch in Mia’s room. A medical student from India, chronically sleep-deprived yet easy-going and patient with Mia’s colicky behavior, she smelled of cardamom and anise and her upper lip appeared darker than the rest of her face.

  My hand still hovered over her shoulder when she opened her eyes.

  ‘Ms Paradise, she didn’t wake up at all. I fed her around ten, and she fell back asleep right away,’ she whispered and brushed a blanket of black hair from her face, her colorful bangles dancing on her wrist.

  ‘She must have been really tired,’ I said. ‘We spent all day at the park, all that fresh air …’ What sounded like a pleasant outing had been nothing more but a screaming baby in a stroller until she fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

  I looked over at Mia, picture perfect in her crib, her face angelic and placid while earlier she had thrashed her hands towards my face, her mouth a gaping wound.

  Aashi left and I wandered around the house, unable to settle. I found myself in front of Jack’s office. I didn’t want to snoop; the trip to his office earlier, now nothing more than a moment of lunacy – but Jack was going to demand an explanation and I had nothing to give him. Nothing but a sea of irrationality. He was going to ask questions, he’d want to know what had possessed me to do what I had done. I needed a logical reason, proof of his infidelity, proof that he couldn’t be trusted any longer. I had to find a picture, a letter, a photograph, anything that would justify my outburst.

  I stood in the doorway, taking in the shelves and filing cabinets. I had no idea what I was even looking for. Jack had started paying all the bills after Mia was born, handled all the paperwork, and I was glad he did. There wasn’t another chore I could manage, especially not anything that involved deadlines. But maybe his taking over the finances was just a way of increasing control over the woman who had floundered. It was ironic that the differences that brought us together – Jack’s sense of purpose, and his attraction to my carefree attitude towards life and, as he saw it, unpredictability – were the very things that were also driving us apart. That and the fact that I was an absolute failure as a mother.

  The floorboards creaked as I entered the office and a familiar aroma of leather greeted me. Like an observer I stood beside myself, watched a woman scan fake paneling between rows of books, push at conspicuous spots. I observed her as she looked around, expecting an antique oil painting to fall off the wall, an envelope yellowed by age dropping to the ground, containing some clandestine content. The woman pulled open the desk drawers. Her fingers slipped, almost snapping her nails off, as she tried to open a locked drawer. I watched her run her fingertips alongside the bottom of the desk’s surface. She pushed here and there, looked under the keyboard and mouse pad and in the desk organizer. Reality greeted her harshly: no hidden drawers, no secret compartments, just a piece of contemporary office furniture. The woman jerked back into reality when the phone rang.

  I backed away from the desk. The chair fell to the floor. Thud. The phone continuously nagged to be picked up.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  Its pesky urgency was followed by a faint gurgle of an infant echoing through the house. The baby monitor on Jack’s desk with its light display indicated the volume of Mia’s cries. Six out of ten. Then the lights alternated from the middle scale of the digital display all the way to the top. The phone went silent and so did the baby monitor. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was midnight.

  The phone rang again, slicing the air with urgency. I wiped the tears that were running down my neck, trailing inside my sweater.

  Once again, the gurgling baby monitor turned into a whimper, the whimper into a howl and then into a full-blown bellow. The lights remained at the very top of the display window, until one last gurgle drifted off into the distance. Then there was silence. I left the study and went through the bedroom into Jack’s walk-in closet. A masterpiece of built-in shelves constructed of maple wood and hardware of brushed steel, next to mine, separated by a wall, both accessible by individual doors. Jack’s dress shirts, arranged by color, immaculately pressed, aligned on one wall, his shoes along the other. I looked up at the top row of storage shelves, reachable only with the attached rolling ladder.

  Reluctantly I passed Jack’s full-length mirror in which he checked his designer suits, belts, and shoes every morning, afraid of the woman I’d encounter. I stepped closer and she stared back at me. I tried to force a winsome smile, yet her opaque eyes seemed empty, like doll’s eyes. Not one of those pretty dolls with an elaborate dress and curly hair, no, less than that, really more like a rag doll with crooked button eyes. I was unable to
lift my gaze off her for she was familiar, a grotesque twin, a chilling replica of myself. When did the woman in the mirror become so powerful, so potent that I allowed her to make off with my prized possessions? My composure, my sanity, my joy, and the part of me that was a mother. The figure in the mirror was a stranger, one who looked at me with anger.

  White noise on full blast. A voice escaped the subdued grain of the maple shelves, and unlike mine, it made sense.

  The box, it said. Where is the box?

  The box that didn’t fit with the rest of the items in the closet?

  Yes, that one.

  The box that was old and torn, which I noticed every time I hung up his clean clothes, he moved from the overhead storage one week to a lower shelf the next?

  Yes, the old yellowed photo box with reinforced metal holes, rectangular and flat, larger than a shoebox.

  Am I supposed to look for it and open it?

  Yes, look for it. Then open it.

  I pulled the ladder to the far corner of the shelf, its metal balls sliding along the tracks, humming like a swarm of hornets. I kicked off my shoes, and climbed up.

  There it was. A quite unremarkable and ordinary cardboard box. I managed to climb down the ladder without dropping it, sat it on the floor and knelt next to it.

  The box was cumbersome to open; the lid had to be lifted on both ends simultaneously. I recognized the castle logo in the lower right-hand corner: Rosenfeld, Manhattan – one of the largest wedding gown stores in New York, maybe even the country.

  I parted the tissue paper. Photos with scalloped edges, tinged yellow by time, depicting people unknown to me. A little boy in a blue coat, a woman standing next to him, leaning on him, her arm around his shoulders.

  A property deed. Jack had mentioned that he had flipped properties while in Law School but I didn’t know he owned a house. A deed for a brownstone on North Dandry in Brooklyn.