Little Girl Gone

by Alexandra Burt

  Suddenly she cocked her head and got up, as if she’d heard something, as if a sound, undetected by me, was tearing at her. Something inside her had shifted.

  I heard a gentle sound trail towards me. Almost like a baby’s whimper the moment right before they wake up. I wanted to speak but the words never came to life. Instead I felt hot; perspiration started to form on my forehead. I felt feverish, like I was about to lose my mind. In a matter of seconds my body would be covered in sweat, flowing free like condensation.

  I’d smelled diapers – but no, there was fertilizer, clearly she was a gardener, I was smelling odors that weren’t there. No, I told myself, no, I had seen a regular spoon and imagined a baby spoon, imagined diaper smell. Now I’d imagined a baby whimper. I was hallucinating and afraid of what was going to happen next. Glimpses of figures moving about? I scanned the room for escape options. There was the back door and the front door and all I could do was get up and, with a creaky voice and shaky knees, say, ‘I think I better leave.’

  Anna eyed me curiously and didn’t move, eyeing the untouched tea, the bag still floating in the steaming water.

  ‘I’ll try to have someone show me the house tomorrow. You’ve been very kind, thank you for the tea,’ I said to give her some sort of explanation for my behavior. I grabbed my purse tighter.

  Without a word, Anna got up and walked me to the front door.

  I reached for the door knob. ‘Wait!’ Her voice, now sharp with more power than her petite body suggested, made me turn around and stop in my tracks. ‘My name is Anna Lieberman. I didn’t get your name?’

  She knew nothing about me – so what did it matter? ‘Estelle. Estelle Paradise.’ I turned back towards the door, reaching for the knob again.

  She stepped past me and stood between me and the front door. ‘You’re not looking for a house, Estelle Paradise. Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?’ Her eyes were piercing, demanding an answer.

  My mind went blank, my beating heart inside my chest drowning out everything else. I tried to think of something to say, explain myself, but my mind struggled for a coherent thought. Should I just tell her the truth or keep up the façade? I decided to give her an answer that was somewhere in between.

  ‘I’m looking for your brother David.’

  ‘You’re looking for my brother?’ Her eyes flickered as if she was checking her brain for the connection of the puzzle pieces she needed to make sense of everything. I almost felt sorry for her. ‘Why would you come here asking me about a house and why would you talk about fires when you’re really looking for my brother?’ Her voice was soft, almost gentle now. ‘What is it you want from him?’

  Again I decided on the middle ground. ‘I’m not here to cause you any trouble, I promise you. I have questions.’

  She wore a puzzled expression, one I was unable to interpret. Confusion? Fear even?

  Anna repeated, ‘What is it you want from him?’

  Where to start. My baby’s gone, your brother took her. I found Tinker Bell in his apartment and strange newspaper articles. ‘I think your brother took my daughter.’

  ‘My brother took your daughter?’ She looked around as if to make sure no one was watching us.

  I kept looking at her, undeterred. ‘Tell me where he is,’ I said.

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  She was silent for a long time. ‘David, David, David,’ she said and my heart skipped a beat. I raised my brows, clutching my purse.

  ‘He took my daughter. I have proof. I need—’

  Anna shook her head and gestured with her hand. Stop making things up, she seemed to say. ‘What is he to you? How do you know him?’

  ‘We live in the same building. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘I can’t help you, you need to leave.’

  ‘I’m not leaving until you tell me where he is.’

  She put her hand on my back and started pushing me towards the front door. I pushed her hands off me and looked her straight in the eyes.

  ‘David set the fire and killed your parents. And he took my daughter. You know I’m telling the truth. Please tell me where he is.’

  ‘If you don’t leave right now I—’

  ‘Just answer my questions and I’ll leave. Please! He can give her back … and I won’t tell the police.’

  We stood in silence for a while, then I heard her voice, childlike. ‘Why don’t you just go to the police then and tell them?’ She stepped closer. I felt her hot breath on my face. She ushered me down the hallway and out the front door. ‘If you come back I’ll call the police myself,’ she said and slammed the front door.

  I fought the urge to knock again. I walked to my car, got in, and sat without moving. The air in the car was sticky and stale and I rolled down the window. I had no idea what to do next or where to go. There was a scent of ozone in the air as though a storm was approaching.

  I glanced at an open window, upstairs by the side of the house, facing my car. I watched Anna’s silhouette holding something in her arms. It was small and seemed to shift back and forth. I couldn’t remember seeing any bowls or litter boxes, nor did I hear a puppy whine or a dog bark. The silhouette bent over, one arm extended, grabbing something and whatever she held in her arms, it stirred. It moved away from her body and then it broke out into a wail. A wail with a familiar urgency and intensity. The crying stopped as suddenly as it had started.

  My hands started shaking. Another cry sped towards me, making me gasp for air. There was a part of my brain that responded to the scream, to the familiar frequency, some sort of acoustic cue of recognition, etched deeply into my brain. The baby spoon, the garbage smelling like soiled diapers, the whimper. Not even close to being a figment of my imagination.

  I fought the contents of my stomach and the urge to get away from the primal response to the wavelength of a baby’s cry. Mia’s cry.

  My mind burst into a riot of images and questions, none of which I could understand or answer. A tremor took over my body and I felt as if millions of flames were igniting all over my skin. My hands shook uncontrollably. I closed my eyes and allowed the adrenaline to flood my body. Spoons, and diapers, and a whimpering baby. Mia. A stone’s throw away. All I had to do was wield the gun at Anna, grab Mia and run. It sounded so easy and uncomplicated, yet I couldn’t move a single muscle. Completely paralyzed, I sat in the car, and the more I thought about grabbing the gun and barging into Anna’s house, the more I felt discouraged and utterly terrified. I didn’t remember ever being this scared in my life. And that was just the beginning. The fact that I just sat there, motionless, only made it worse. If that was even possible.

  Overhead, lightning exploded in a flicker of lights. Like two sides of a coin, thunder followed and a booming sound fell from the sky. Then the skies unleashed steady droplets of rain. The drips turned into large drops, then a million spatters covered the pavement. The air was fecund with the scent of soil and earth and, within seconds, water ran down Anna’s driveway and joined the runoff, disappearing into the storm drains of Waterway Circle.

  The rain eased just long enough for me to see a truck pulling into Anna’s driveway. The man who got out of the driver’s seat was the same man who had taken my child, and he was no more than one hundred feet away from me. David Lieberman opened the trunk, took out a bulky bag of what seemed like clothes, or blankets. He walked towards the house, opened the front door, and stumped his feet twice on the door mat on the front stoop. He turned and scanned the skies, then stepped over the threshold.

  Suddenly I was afraid. They were two and I was one. Right now Anna is telling him about me and any second Lieberman is going to emerge from the front door and there’s no telling what he’s going to do to me. What were the odds that, if I were to politely ask for my child, they’d just hand her over? Zero.

  I could feel the blood draining away from my gut, making my muscles twitch. I felt like an animal in a fight or flig
ht situation. My heart beat as if it was going to crack my ribs. Flight I thought, leave. My heart wanted out of my chest and the only thing I could think of was to step on the gas and drive. Incapable, even now. Knowing she was right there, I was still incapable. I hated myself as I listened to the metronome-like flip-flop of the windshield wipers marking every inch of distance I put between my daughter and me.

  Chapter 21

  The merciless rain had shrouded the afternoon in unnatural darkness. The sun managed to peek through a layer of gray clouds when I passed one of the barns I had seen on my way into town earlier. I slowed the car and turned into the dirt road by a tree line. The unpaved path, rendered awash with mud, seemed as if it could easily bury car tires and the standing puddles grew larger by the minute. I opened the car door and made my way towards the barn.

  The inside greeted me with a scent of hay, manure, and the lingering perspiration of horses. The interior was even more dilapidated than I expected. The wood was cracked and gray, enduring the elements, bearing storms and scorching sun. One strong puff of wind, one more breeze catching the rafters just right, and it would be gone. The heavy doors swung shut behind me. I heard the pitter-patter of the raindrops surrounding me like calming white noise.

  I had imagined this moment so many times, the moment I found my daughter, yet I felt empty inside. I’d thought when the time came I’d scream bloody murder, call 9-1-1. But none of that had happened. I was paralyzed with fear, incapable of doing what I needed to do. I had failed Mia yet again.

  I sat on the ground. My back propped up against a post, I pulled my knees to my chest. I remembered the first night Mia had slept between Jack and me. The full moon had spilled through the windows, casting an eerie silver-blue hue on the entire room. I had looked at Mia and she seemed to be made of ice. I was afraid of what was ahead of me, being a mother, responsible for someone’s life. And with every passing day my attempts to live in a carefully constructed realm, my house of cards, had collapsed. Images popped in my head like jumpy disjointed pictures from an old reel-to-reel family movie.

  The hospital, Mia being born. Me, not sleeping, being hyper-alert for days on end, being too tired to function and too tired to go to sleep. I operated on autopilot, never told Jack, never told the doctors or nurses, never told anyone. I waited for it to pass, yet that moment never came. The windstorm that had started to rage inside this little creature that I loved with all my might, but my love couldn’t turn the storm into something gentler. My milk not coming in adding to the guilt I felt of not being able to provide for her. The intrusive thoughts that had begun to seep into my mind, elusive at first, then they had taken shape.

  I reached inside my purse and cradled the gun in my hand. I had failed Mia and failed her again. I’m not worthy of being a mother at all. There’s only one choice left; leaving her for good.

  Leaning against a pole in the barn, something snuck into my mind and tore at me, this one image, this one thought, this one realization. Within all this darkness, I leaned towards this feeling of primitive attachment: when Mia was born and they put her into my arms, her eyes were covered in medical ointment. They were sleek, roaming, and unable to focus. As she slept, her little fist held on to the tip of my finger, her hand too small to grab it in its entirety. Her need to attach herself to me was ancient, primal, her knowing that I was her salvation. Her thin and translucent skin had stretched over her skull, her weightless hair, her purple nails, like a message from the universe.

  With the gun in my right hand, pointed at my temple, I forced myself to imagine the future and I completed the story. I saw flashes of a girl, her life, a succession of milestones – crawling, walking, running – flashes that branded themselves into my mind.

  Mia dancing, twirling, reaching for a hand to keep her from falling.

  Reaching for me. Bows in her hair.

  Bandanas tied around her head like good-luck charms.

  Chipped nail polish and crooked tiaras.

  Birthday cakes.

  Playground games and friends and sandcastles.

  Goodnight stories.

  While I sat there, feeling the icy metal of the muzzle, seconds before I’d allow a bullet to rip a hole through my brain, in that very moment, I felt as if some higher power was watching over me, sitting on the dirt floor of the barn next to me.

  Rain ran down my back when another lightning burst was followed by thunder, shaking the barn, and sending a spark of light through the holes and gaps of the rafters and the worn-out wood. For a second, a bright flicker descended onto the ground, dirt particles floating about like magic fairy dust.

  I remembered my mother’s voice, soft and soothing, telling me that thunder is the sound that lightning makes, how one thing occurs and another follows. I knew it was not too late. Mia was a drop of ink in a glass of water; I was forever changed by her existence and she was right down the road. This is about more than consoling a crying baby, about more than being able to stop tears from falling. It’s about growing beyond my limitations. In the past I might have been the worst mother but today I’ll become the best I can possibly be.

  I left the barn doors gaping open behind me, got in the car, and drove back to Dover to claim my daughter.

  When I reached Waterway Circle, the wipers squeaked their way across the windshield, their slow motion allowing for a clear view of the world, but only for a second. When the rain stopped, my heart rate slowed, mimicking the pace of the wipers. Suddenly everything was clear. There was no more room for interpretation, just my heart beating in cadence with my daughter’s heart in the house in front of me.

  The rust-red Chevy Caprice still sat under the carport, Lieberman’s truck was still parked in front of the house. I got out of the car, walked to the front door and knocked.

  There was no answer.

  ‘Anna, I need to talk to you.’ I knocked again. ‘Anna, please, open the door.’

  I knocked again. Nothing.

  I stepped away from the house to get a good look at the nursery window and saw that the shades were drawn. Suddenly I heard the front door screech and Anna stood in the doorway.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked, her right hand resting casually on the doorframe. Anna’s face was relaxed, her posture loose, almost bored. She now wore a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and had her hair in a high ponytail. She also wore makeup.

  ‘Anna, I heard her cry. I know you have my baby. I know all about—’

  ‘I think you’ve got the wrong house.’ She hesitated for a second, then furrowed her brows. ‘Are you okay? Are you in some kind of trouble?’ Anna looked over my shoulder, scanning the street. ‘You’re soaking wet.’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no. Please don’t play games with me. I know what I heard, and I smelled diapers, I saw the baby spoon.’ I reached inside my purse and grabbed my phone. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  A shadow appeared next to Anna. David Lieberman, the Prince of Darkness, and together they stood on the front porch like Grant Wood’s image of American Gothic. Only more sinister, and without the pitchfork.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ David Lieberman spoke softly, as if not to upset me any further.

  ‘You know who I am. Where’s my daughter?’

  They both stepped further out on the porch. I took a step back.

  ‘I told her she’s at the wrong house. Maybe a mix-up or something? She’s insisting on a baby being here,’ Anna said, her voice slow and soothing.

  ‘A baby?’ Lieberman put his arm around Anna’s shoulder. ‘Like my wife told you, maybe you got the wrong address?’

  ‘Tell him Anna, tell him I was here. And I know you have a baby upstairs, my daughter, Mia. I heard her cry. Tell him I was here earlier, tell him, Anna.’

  She remained perfectly still. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen you before in my life. You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘We sat in your kitchen, you made tea, and the cups were white, with yellow flowers, you—’

  �
��I’ve never seen you in my life. This is the wrong house.’

  My voice had turned into a pleading stream. ‘You made tea for me, and you told me about the house next door. We talked and you told me about the fire.’ I stopped just long enough to catch my breath. ‘You plant vegetables in your garden. And flowers. You have my daughter. He …’ I pointed at David Lieberman, ‘he took her from me. He climbed down into my kitchen, he took her, and I want her back.’

  David Lieberman’s face was blank. ‘Lady, there’s no baby, there are no teacups with yellow flowers, no diapers, none of that. I don’t know what to tell you, but you’re freaking my wife out and I need you to leave.’ His voice rang false, high-pitched, almost forced in its controlled state.

  ‘I was here earlier. Please, Anna,’ I pointed at the chime dangling off the rafters, ‘all this was here earlier. The chime, the chair on the porch, the house next door for sale, everything.’

  ‘You don’t take no for an answer, do you? I’m telling you you’re at the wrong house and I need you to stop screaming on my porch and leave. We don’t know you.’

  I stuck out my neck, trying to look past them into the house. They mistook my movement as threatening and David Lieberman stepped forward, grabbing Anna’s hand. They were closing ranks.

  ‘Don’t come any closer. Get off my porch.’

  I took a step back, decided to play my last trump card. ‘I’m going to call the police. They’ll sort it all out.’ I reached into my purse and pulled out my cell phone. ‘I’m not bluffing. I’m calling the police.’ I pushed a random button and the phone came on just long enough to see the charge indicator blinking. Then it turned off.

  ‘Go ahead, call the police.’

  ‘My phone is dead,’ I said, barely able to control the tremor in my voice.