Little Girl Gone

by Alexandra Burt

  ‘But if she’s one of them, we’ll find her.’ He cringes when I said we.

  ‘Yes, I don’t doubt that but you’ll have to wait. The DNA testing will take some time.’

  There’s too much frozen anger inside of me and I’ve been waiting for too long. ‘Hear me out, okay?’ I fold my hands as if I’m about to pray. Did he grimace or did I imagine that?

  ‘Five minutes,’ he says and leans back.

  ‘All I need to know is where the children are.’

  ‘It’s been five years. What if you don’t recognize her? What are you going to do? Line them up, swab their cheeks? Demand a hair sample? This is madness.’

  ‘Let me worry about that.’ I’m not sure myself. Am I going to recognize her? A part of me is convinced that I will. Maybe it’s madness but I have no choice.

  ‘It’s illegal on my part,’ Wilczek says, furrowing his brow.

  ‘No one is going to care once they find out one of the girls is Mia.’

  ‘It’s illegal and not admissible in court. And I could lose my job.’

  ‘There won’t be any trials. The same people who crucified me when Mia disappeared owe me. You are one of them.’

  He swirls what’s left in the bottom of the cup and then downs it. ‘I can’t promise anything.’

  That night, I awake from a restless sleep. I have kicked off the covers and now I’m cold. I must have forgotten to close the blinds for the light of the moon spills into my room, its unforgiving brilliance restraining my breathing like a giant cat sitting on my chest. Reality seeps in slowly. When the pressure becomes unbearable, I sit up.

  At night, when my mind drops its guard, the extent of what my reality is becomes too much. My thoughts turn daunting, unscalable. I close my eyes, allow fright to wash over me. I lie still as the panicky wave pounds me, crashes against me, shaking and weakening my foundation like waves eroding the base of a cliff.

  I remain silent, patient. My fists are knotted, pushed against my stomach where the fear originates. I give in, offer myself like a token, and I feel the pain subside. It pearls off me like water off an oily surface, unable to hold on. Fear is no longer permanent, it passes and so will the doubts. This might be my last chance.

  I go to work. I’ve learned to operate while I’m burning from the inside out and sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring is more than I can bear. Around noon I hear a faint chime above the gallery door, its announcement so timid I almost miss it. Detective Wilczek is wearing a suit, a coat on top, and his eyes are wearier than I remember them. He has something to tell me, but I can’t read him just yet. He nods and we both stare at each other.

  ‘Do you think you could take a break?’ His demeanor lacks urgency. ‘Maybe we could go for a walk.’

  I turn towards the framing room behind me. It’s filled with sounds of hammering nails and the glue wafting towards me is making my temples pound. I grab my coat from the hanger and lead the way.

  New York in January is like living in a freezer. We stick our hands in our coat pockets as we pass naked winter trees lining the street. Temperatures are in the low twenties, spring is still months away and warmth is so far removed from people’s minds that it almost sounds like a fairytale no one can believe in.

  We turn to the right, towards a park. The cast-iron fence near the entrance is covered in ice. Our breaths mingle as we walk.

  ‘Anna’s gone,’ he says. He allows it to sink in and waits patiently.

  ‘When?’ I ask, and my heartbeat accelerates rapidly.

  ‘This morning. After the children were removed, most of the mothers were allowed to return to the compound. Her aunt told me she left the day of the raid. Took all her belongings and a car, a blue Pontiac. Aunt wasn’t forthcoming with the plates.’

  ‘Where are the children?’ I ask.

  ‘In state custody.’

  ‘Are they all in one place or split up?’

  Wilczek cocks his head and his eyes narrow. ‘I have a feeling you are about to do something really stupid.’

  ‘Do you know where they are or don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure, they usually end up in foster care or shelters, depending on their ages.’

  ‘Can you find out?’

  ‘Even if I could I wouldn’t tell you. Don’t you get it? All you have to do is wait.’

  I don’t have the patience to wait, don’t even have the patience to respond to this waiting business.

  ‘What if Anna takes her again? Are you going to believe me then?’

  Wilczek inhales sharply. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying the fact I didn’t die in the ravine messed up her plans. No one wants a baby the entire state of New York is looking for. She didn’t keep Mia all this time just to leave her behind now.’

  ‘If Mia is one of the children … if.’

  ‘If she takes her again it’ll be too late. And where will I look then? How likely is it that I find her again?’ I’ve raised my voice and stare back at a couple who are eyeing us, wondering if we’re having an insignificant lovers’ quarrel.

  ‘Tell me where the children are and leave the rest to me.’

  ‘That’s a frightening thought. You can’t possibly expect me to do that.’

  ‘You can’t possibly expect me not to ask.’ I won’t give up, he must know this. ‘How long do you think until she finds out where she is? She’ll try to abduct her again. She’s smart, she’s been under the radar for five years and never got caught.’

  I do the math in my head. Days, we have merely days to act. And I have no clue how to convince him to help me.

  As we walk on we pass a little girl with sleek hair dancing on her head. She’s skipping up and down the sidewalk while her mother rocks a stroller back and forth.

  I take in a deep breath, then I slow down my steps, peek at the kid in the stroller. Wrapped up in a pink blanket, hat and mittens, is a toddler with a round face and rosy cheeks.

  ‘What a beautiful baby,’ I say. ‘She looks so happy.’

  As mom goes on and on about how Emma, that’s her name, cries a lot and is difficult overall, ‘drama queen’ she calls her, but calms down when she’s being rocked, I just nod when appropriate and manage an occasional smile.

  ‘You have kids?’ Mom asks me.

  I stare at her for a second. ‘No,’ I say and I feel the word vibrate in my throat, as if my body recognizes the lie I just told. It’s complicated, not the sort of thing you discuss on the street in passing.

  Mom looks back and forth between me and Wilczek. I assume she’s torn between ‘are you trying,’ ‘maybe one day’ or some other friendly token of sympathy for a still childless couple.

  I nod and manage a ‘stay warm now’ comment, and Wilczek and I silently continue our walk.

  ‘Do I have kids? That’s a hard question to answer, isn’t it?’ Wilczek’s eyes narrow. Then he looks away. He knows what’s coming but he can’t get away.

  ‘You said you had a son?’

  ‘Yes,’ hesitantly, his eyes move around as if he wants to make sure no one is watching us.

  ‘You see him a lot?’

  ‘Every Sunday.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘What does he like?’

  ‘The usual, you know, cars, trucks, that sort of thing. Ice cream. Cookies.’

  ‘Let me think … two years old you say.’ I point to my temple as if I try to remember something. ‘He turns the pages of a book, he can open drawers and cabinets, he feeds himself with a spoon, is easily frustrated, and shy around strangers. Very affectionate, lots of hugs and kisses?’

  Wilczek stares straight ahead.

  ‘He can walk up and down the stairs as long as he holds on to your hand, right?’

  I step in front of him and stare straight at him.

  ‘Do you know how I know this? Kids’ social and emotional development? Physical milestones of toddlers?’

  I step forward ever so slightly and p
ut my hand on top of his coat where his heart is. Do I feel a slight tremor underneath his coat? I have to improvise and I have to be good. I grab his other hand with mine.

  ‘I read it in a book.’ I hold his cold hand in mine until it warms up. He’s trying to pull back but I squeeze even harder. When I finally allow him to pull his hand away he steps back and hides it in his coat pocket.

  He turns and walks away, but his steps are no longer defiant. I’ve won.

  After I leave work that day I clean my apartment. I start on one end and obsessively wipe down every surface, vacuum every corner, spray Lysol in every nook and cranny. I am reminded of the police questions that I left unanswered as to why I bleached North Dandry. There was the stale air and the filth, the dust, and the remnants of my shortcomings. There was also the urge to right some sort of wrong, and my clouded mind believed – just like the police – that I had cleaned up a crime scene – but now I consider the fact that it was an attempt of a deranged woman to bring Mia back to a proper home. A home with clean kitchen counters, shiny bathrooms, and a lit fireplace. When I grant my thoughts this directness I realize I wanted to have just one chore left; to hold Mia in my arms.

  The phone rings. I pull the yellow latex gloves off my hands and toss them into the kitchen sink. The oven cleaner fumes linger in the air, making my temples pound. I watch the gloves float on the surface of the murky water. Then they sink. Their cheerful, sunny color swallowed up by the depth of the ceramic farmhouse sink. My pruney fingers struggle to hold on to the pen as I scribble down the address.

  St. Pancras’ Path is an unassuming three-story building covered in beige siding with a screened-off porch. A side door leads onto a spacious playground with a slide, three swings, a sandbox, and a see-saw, all equally spaced behind a cast-iron fence. There’s an alcove above the front door with a stained-glass window, depicting Saint Pancras the patron saint of children, a man in usual saint garb, baring his hands outward in a welcoming gesture.

  I’ve been sitting in my car for hours. I hardly slept last night and it’s catching up with me. My back is stiff and the urge to get out and stretch my legs is getting harder and harder to ignore. The Ritz crackers and diet soda are getting old. It’s been raining on and off and the possibility of the children spilling out the side door to go to the playground is waning.

  I can feel the fear in my chest waiting to take over. It wants to propel me to an even darker place but I don’t allow it. I take a deep breath in, I close my eyes and imagine sweet air and birds in the sky and my body begins to relax. I conjure up a scene that’s been hatching inside of me since I recognized Anna Lieberman on TV. Seeing Mia again, for the first time.

  It’s a weekday, a comfortable forty degrees, and Prospect Park is deserted except for a few joggers with headphones in their ears, closed off in their own worlds. And a handful of people walking their dogs.

  Trees and benches are all around us, squirrels, and a scent of wet soil. There’s a playground by the park entrance and a small lake to the right. A lake with ducks a short walk from the park entrance.

  I imagine a small Ziploc bag filled with stale, cubed bread that I prepared earlier that day. I sit on a nearby bench and a car stops behind me in the parking lot. The crunch of gravel echoes in my ears. Then the ding-ding-ding of an open car door.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see a child in a purple puffa jacket, jeans, and black boots running towards the playground. Her knitted hat is rainbow-colored with earflaps and a large pompon on top. It bobs as she runs.

  A social worker, let’s call her Elena Cruz, a kind, tired and overworked middle-aged woman, is trailing her.

  In my vision the playground is surrounded by a fence; the only way in or out is through a small gate. Mia runs straight for the gate and before I’m able to take her all in, she’s swinging off a monkey bar.

  Mia’s body is stretched as her little hands hold on to the bars. The metal is cold and she’s not wearing gloves, but she doesn’t mind. Her midriff is exposed as she dangles back and forth, trying to gain some momentum by swinging her legs.

  The social worker sees me, smiles and nods at me encouragingly. I get up off the bench and make my way to the monkey bars. Mia’s head is stretched backwards, her legs and feet are kicking.

  She is beautiful. Not in a way a mother thinks her child is beautiful, but in a saintly way. Curls spill from under the earflaps, her eyes are large and brown and remind me of Jack’s. Her eyelashes are sparse yet long and her little miniature teeth, placed perfectly in a row, smile at me.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, her voice strong and confident. ‘Look what I can do.’ She swings her legs harder and harder.

  ‘Guess what I have here.’ I pull out the bread bag and hold it up by its corner and I swing it back and forth.

  She looks at me, her eyes questioning, pondering the significance of the bag with its odd contents.

  ‘Bread. Wanna go feed the ducks?’

  Her eyes widen and I can see her excitement. Her curiosity is taking over, she jumps off the monkey bars and scans the surroundings. ‘Ducks? There’s ducks?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s ducks. Right around the corner.’

  She looks at the social worker, and when Elena nods, she jumps off the monkey bars and grabs my hand. Holding the hand of my daughter is otherworldly. I feel chipped paint flakes between our skin and I gently wipe the paint chips off her palm. Feeling the warmth of her skin is almost undoing me and I try to keep from shaking. I blow in my cupped hands pretending I’m cold, all the while I feel like burning from the inside out.

  ‘Have you ever fed ducks before?’

  She shakes her head and I hand her the Ziploc bag with the cubed bread.

  ‘First time for everything. Ready to go?’

  We walk towards the lake, her hand in mine, the bag dangling off her other hand. I long for someone to take a picture, to capture this very moment – with her hand in mine – as we walk to the lake. In the sunshine the lake’s surface looks like a perfect looking glass.

  As we stand at the lake shore and throw in the bread, the ducks zoom in on the cubes, then slightly speed up. Their necks are elongated and their green feathers glimmer in the sun as their heads dip into the water. As soon as their beaks emerge again, they are off searching for the next piece of bread to devour. They search for another cube of sustenance, zoom in and peck at it all over again.

  We watch the ducks trail away from us, rippling the water, disrupting the lake’s smooth surface.

  ‘I’m Mia,’ she says and sounds grown up, her voice still high-pitched, yet mature. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

  ‘Mia,’ I repeat her name. ‘That’s a beautiful name.’

  In the distance, we hear the quacking of the ducks.

  The sound of a car door jerks me out of my imagined scene and back into reality. A shadow slides into the passenger seat.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Wilczek seems even more disheveled than yesterday, his eyes are bloodshot and he smells of cigarette smoke.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I say to make this moment seem more mundane. I’m surprised, to say the least. I never expected him to show, can’t even grasp what his role is going to be. I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here myself, I just want to catch a glimpse of my daughter. I don’t dare hope for more. ‘And you look like you’ve been up for days,’ I add and look at my wristwatch. It’s not as cold as it was earlier but I shiver nevertheless.

  He ignores my comment and checks his cell phone. ‘So … what’s been going on?’

  ‘Just people coming and going,’ I say lightheartedly. ‘So far there was a UPS delivery and the morning paper.’ After a moment of silence I ask, ‘Do you think Anna knows where Mia is?’

  ‘She won’t find out unless someone, theoretically, tells her aunt, I guess.’

  Theoretically. Someone tells her aunt. I think about the implications of his statement. I study his profile and fight the urge to hug him. He’s come throug
h for me in a big way. Telling Anna’s aunt, knowing that word will get back to Anna about the children’s whereabouts is a possibly dangerous situation but I get it. He’s a cop and he wants to solve this case. He wants to put handcuffs on Anna, make her pay for what she did, unravel the ball of yarn of evidence found in her house; pictures, toys, children’s clothes. Justice is what he’s after. I just want my daughter.

  ‘So what’s the overall plan?’ Wilczek asks.

  ‘I don’t have a plan per se at this very moment,’ I say and wonder what got to him in the end; his son, my pleading eyes, or the woman with the stroller.

  Wilczek puts his hand on top of mine. ‘I’m going to go talk to them. You stay here and don’t move, okay?’

  His hand on mine feels awkward and part of me wants to move away – the touch seems almost intimate – the other wants his hand to remain.

  Wilczek gets out of the car and I watch him walk up to the building in his wrinkled coat. He presses the buzzer and I hear a prim female voice through the intercom.

  The rain has stopped and the sun is breaking through the seemingly insurmountable layer of clouds. I step out of the car fearing my legs will end up cramping on me if I sit still any longer. I appease my stiff knee joints by walking up to the cast-iron fence of the shelter playground. The playground is covered in wood chips and an occasional candy wrapper sparkles in the sunlight. A lonely woolen cap soaked by the rain, sits abandoned on a red bench by the backdoor of the building.

  I stand by the fence next to an oak tree. The roots have warped the concrete and I step further towards the property. The trunk’s girth hides me perfectly and while I stare at the backdoor, I see movement through its glass window.

  Then everything slows down and speeds up at the same time. The front door closes and faintly I hear footsteps on the concrete coming towards me. When I turn, I see Wilczek running towards his car. Simultaneously the backdoor opens and children spill into the playground. Wilczek gets in his car and slams the door shut, as if he’s on a mission, has seen something I don’t know about. I scan the area but nothing seems out of sorts.