Lullabies for Suffering

by Caroline Kepnes et al.

  By the time they check the basement, it will be too late. They’ll die like they are supposed to.

  I couldn’t see the scar girl anymore. I could only hear her voice.

  Nobody will ever hurt you with heroin again. I'm with you always.

  The darkness of the basement engulfed me like a hot bath, and I wanted to lay down next to my parents and die with them, all three of us in one final Christmas picture. The basement was going to be my tomb if I stayed any longer. Then I heard the sirens.

  I felt summoned to walk up the stairs. The voice stayed behind as I rose up and saw lights flashing outside the front window. Ambulance workers busted through the door. First, a young man in a blue uniform, then another man behind him.

  They scurried about, checking each person, calling for more help. They had their own, different needles to revive these dying people, and started poking the bodies. Some of the people were revived, coughed up more foam, and then they were taken out to the ambulance. New help kept arriving. A policeman took me outside. The sun was burning bright. Morning was over.

  Check the basement, I wanted to scream, check the basement, but each time I tried, my mouth seized up and the whispers told me, No, don’t. Don’t. They are dead, let them die.

  She wouldn’t let me scream, and that scream has been stuck inside me all my life, eating at my organs, tainting the scent of my breath.

  I spent the rest of my childhood years in three different foster homes, and I never told anyone about the scar girl. Even after all the therapists they had me talk to. Even after being interviewed by a journalist who did an expose on the Fentanyl Final Girl, the one who survived in the house of horrors, where eight people died, only four survived. One had to be forced into a coma and put on ice in the ER but woke up delusional, seeing scarred-faced demons. Another survived but overdosed the day he was discharged. (This time, nobody could save him.) One of the boys playing Xbox survived, the other did not.

  The fourth to survive was Bucky, who lived to sell another day.

  The journalist helped me find the boy who never got the visit from his mother, the one with the Tweety Bird on her neck. I swear he could hear the whispers that nobody else could. Not my whispers, but his own.

  I never want anyone else to be that boy.

  CHAPTER EIGHT:

  Lizabeth in the Bathroom with Joshua

  Joshua stood upon restless legs, more nervous than I, after taking in the blood-stained bathroom and realizing his mom had been murdered. His eyes stayed glued to the ground as if awaiting punishment, as if he were responsible for the mess. His fingers fidgeted, silently snapping, his head bowed in deference to my next move. The moment swirled outside of reality, like we were spinning a different direction than the rest of the earth.

  I might have cried. I might have screamed. I might have checked Amy’s pulse to confirm she was really dead, but I didn't need to. Whatever presence inside me that was responsible wouldn’t have stopped had she not been killed.

  My brain fast forwarded to how I wanted to spend my last moments before the coming storm. Arrest, handcuffs, press coverage, standing before the judge with a policeman behind me when the judge read my sentence. I’d be incarcerated alongside those who I’d been responsible for sending to prison.

  My life was over. I killed myself, and I sliced inside this poor boy’s heart when I’d murdered Amy.

  I needed to get to Becca and explain to her what happened in my own words. Becca—the one person who knew me, the only woman who mattered. She was Mother Universe, proof of redemption, of understanding. She would accept my darkest sides. I needed a moment in her arms, swaddled in safety, one last time before I completely shattered.

  “Joshua. I am going to call for help. The police will come. An ambulance. You sit in the green chair and when they get here, tell them I did this. I’ll be at my house waiting. I need to go home and tell someone who I love what happened. To confess what I did. To be with her before they take me to jail.”

  How can I leave him here? This house was stained and the walls were moaning in pain. Joshua heard it all, felt it all, but he didn't move, as if in catatonic shock.

  “Joshua, you should leave this room. You shouldn’t see this anymore.”

  I tried to escort him out of the bloody bathroom, but he put an arm up to stop me. His strongest move yet.

  “Will they put you in jail?” he asked.

  “Yes, but I deserve it,” I answered. My hands were red as if I’d been finger-painting with his mother’s blood.

  “No, you don’t. I knew this was going to happen. Piper-Pippen warned me my mom was sick and killing herself. He told me he would find someone to help, and I think that person is you.”

  “Joshua, please, people will come for you.”

  “Take me with you. Don't leave me here.”

  “Police will know what to do better than I do, they’ll be here soon, they can take you. Please, go in the other room,” I pleaded, I cried, the phone unsteady in my hand and ready to slip from my fingers. I dialed 911 with trembling fingers the way I had so long ago.

  And then I heard her.

  You’re making a mistake.

  Take the boy with you.

  When the operator answered I didn’t say a word, despite multiple requests to declare “the nature of my emergency.” I held the phone away from my ear, as if keeping it from my body would stop my confession.

  Do I really want to confess?

  No, she deserved to die, she had her chance long ago.

  What to do?

  Leave the body, take the boy.

  I stared in silence at Amy’s body on the ground, hoping that the dead might talk to me one more time, that words might come from her mouth, forgiving me, telling me that she understood why I killed her, thanking me for finally putting her to rest, and begging me to take care of her child.

  How could I explain myself to the operator on the phone, who seemed just a voyeur to this tragedy? She couldn’t understand. The judge, the jury—they would never understand. Neither would the journalist who’d certainly want to interview the Fentanyl Final Girl who’d become a killer.

  How can I explain myself?

  You can’t.

  Joshua bent down beside his mom. He reached his hand towards her face. Her cheeks were dotted with syringe holes, and blood streamed down like mascara-lined tears. With one finger, he touched her flesh.

  “I heard fingerprints stay on things forever.”

  All my crisis training, all my trauma training, meant nothing, for this little guy was suddenly in charge, while I felt lost.

  The 911 operator kept asking, “What is the nature of your emergency?” The world needed my answer.

  “Somebody died. Please send an ambulance to 15356 Ellen Drive. Check the bathroom.”

  I hung up.

  “Get your stuff.”

  Joshua gathered things as if he’d been ready for this evacuation plan for years. Taking his drawings was his first priority.

  One last look at Amy. I needed the image of her murder burnt into my brain. Her body seemed punctured by a thousand thorns, her eyes mutilated, her jaw slack. I had failed her even before tonight. We had failed her. We never really helped her. Police and punishment and threats did nothing to stop the addiction, we needed to find a way to dig inside her hijacked brain, but never could. Maybe love for your child, for your partner, for your own life, mattered not when the lizard brain of addiction took over.

  I shut the front door of the house. I left the dead behind, and I took the child away into the night.

  CHAPTER NINE:

  Lizabeth Drives Home

  My grip on the steering wheel was sticky from blood. It was my birthing blood, my red badge of courage.

  I was a mom, driving my child to safety. Joshua was buckled up securely in the front seat and gazed straight out the window to what lay ahead.

  I’ve always had poor boundaries in my work. I’d once left Christmas gifts on the porch of a single dad w
ho had lost his job. I’d delivered groceries to another man who’d been living off of Kraft Mac and Cheese as his only meal. I once befriended a woman under a fake Facebook profile and sent her messages of support.

  I’d fallen in love with yet another.

  And now I was bringing a probationer’s child home, and I planned to smuggle him across the border to Canada. First, I needed to tell Becca what happened and convince her to go. I wanted more than my bloody hands as exhibit A, but the face of this young boy, suddenly an orphan, as exhibit B.

  I rehearsed my opening statement.

  Something came over me. Something came out of me. Amy was going to die of an overdose, I know it (That’s not true. That’s your monkey bar lie and she’ll see through it.)

  Let’s leave for Canada. All three of us. Tonight. You were right. I didn’t fall in love with this one, I killed this one, and now her son has nobody. We have a duty to care for this child. He wants to go with us. Foster care will tear him apart.

  I’m not fit to adopt anymore either. I have a criminal past, worse than Becca’s, and I needed to run to our safe room before I got crushed under the weight.

  They would have questions at the border. I could show my badge to the border agent and explain that his mother just got incarcerated, and I was transporting him back to his family. Yes, we need two people—he's a minor—you don't stay alone with minors. Then we’d descend through the white-tiled tunnel to Windsor, driving through leaky walls where the Detroit River drips all around, then ascending into Canada, emerging out a birth canal into a new life.

  I pictured Joshua and I on the cabin porch, the forest overgrown around us, the only sound of humans the occasional plane overhead, not an interruption, just a reminder of how isolated we were. We’d sip iced tea, waiting for Becca to get back from her hike. She likes to hike alone where there’s no trail, no matter how much the thicket tries to stop her.

  The fresh air will penetrate every cell. The wild will accept us.

  We could get fake names, new birth certificates. Becca’s uncle knew people in Canada, he had friends in strategic places. I got a guy for that, was always his answer. Well, we would need things done, but I had to get Becca’s buy-in first.

  I pulled into an empty driveway—no sign of Becca at home.

  Where is she?

  Joshua stayed in the foyer as I dashed about the house, expecting to see Becca, but each room was empty, mocking me, laughing. She left without you. Couldn't you see it coming? She told you as much. The rejection by the adoption agency was too much. I knew it. I could sense it, but I left her alone in the house anyway.

  I was a single parent suddenly, on the run with nobody to help me. I needed to move fast. How long until people with badges showed up? I was like Amy now and would always be afraid of people with badges. Joshua saw the terror in my eyes. I was just another person who let him down, who didn’t know how to live.

  I can’t do this alone. Not without Becca.

  My dark fears were washed away when shining headlights appeared in the driveway. Joshua and I squinted out the front window and watched Becca get out of her car. I watched her walk to the house as if witnessing Jesus walk on water, coming to save me. As soon as she stepped through the front door, I started to explain.

  My rehearsal was useless.

  Everything changed as I spoke. Voices in my head clanged in confusion. She coached me through my narrative with her eyes best she could, knowing that I was out of balance and needed an anchor. Becca had been in situations like this before, when the unexpected moments of life surprise you sharp as a papercut. She could hear the blank spaces and pauses between my words. Her skin changed like a chameleon to her environment. She was a lizard, just like me.

  “You called 911 from her house. They'll be here soon.”

  “I was on a private line.”

  “They can unmask that.”

  “How long does that take?”

  “Doesn’t matter, you said a cop was there. They know about your visit.”

  Becca eyed Joshua standing there in silence, trying to decide if the boy was really up for this. He smiled back at her in a way I’d not yet seen—a reassuring curl of his lips, a brightness to his eyes, a sadness of needs unfulfilled. It was a weapon of warmth for times like these. He was a survivor with an arsenal of tools buried in his heart, I'd certainly not yet seen them all.

  If Becca had told me I was crazy, that I needed to get a lawyer and turn myself in, that the foster system would be okay for this child, I would have obeyed her command. Instead, she commanded otherwise.

  “Clean up. Take a shower. You’re bloody,” she said. “We’ll need to hit ATMs. We need to pack. I’ll get the suitcases from the basement. Joshua, we’re taking you with us.”

  CHAPTER TEN:

  Becca in the Basement. One Last time

  The luggage had been gathered, ready to fill, and Becca sat alone in the basement trying to let the truth take root.

  Lizard killed someone.

  Killed someone.

  Everything had changed. An officer of the court, a probation officer, her partner, the woman who worked with the dirge of the city and had always come home clean, now had her hands stained with blood.

  Becca had listened to Lizard tripping over her tongue, trying to rationalize the act of murder. Lizard made excuses, she placed blame, all to make her actions easier to digest. Becca knew the taste of excuses, she’d tasted them in her own words for years, crimes committed that nobody would ever know. Money stolen from those who thought they misplaced it, thousands of dollars of retail fraud, but she’d never caused physical harm the way her partner had. Lizabeth had just torn a body apart.

  Lizard was still the person she wanted to be with, to run away with, maybe more so now than ever. There’s a beast in everyone—sometimes it’s an addict, sometimes it’s a killer.

  Becca sat in the basement, not far from a dirty pile of laundry that would never get clean and the exercise bike that gathered dust. The dust seemed thicker now, chunkier, and the weight of above was ready to crash down. She was alone in the depths, below it all, holding on to a lost love.

  In one hand, she held a pack of heroin, in the other hand, works to get high. Before their flight to safety in Canada, she was going to shoot up some dope. One last time. It was perfect.

  Lizard let her beast out, and now it’s my turn.

  She’d been rejected so many times before, the adoption denial was the final excuse to let the dam break free.

  You never forget how to get high. You never stop loving it. Soon as Lizard had left for her home visit, Becca got in her car and drove the familiar route to buy heroin. She then rushed home to use it, her stomach bubbling in anticipation, expecting to find an empty house, but instead found Lizard with bloody hands and an orphan child.

  The face Lizard showed her when she walked in the door was a mix of panic and desperation, spinning in a blender. You finally look like me, Becca had thought. You finally need my help like never before. But first, a snakebite into my veins and the golden rush of heroin.

  How many times had she dreamt of this moment? This magic elixir that gave her love like nothing else could. Becca had felt defective from the moment she was born, and heroin was the only fix, the only cure, the one thing that took away her affliction. Somehow she’d learn to love the defects, to live with them instead of cure them. For seven years she’d been stuck in a cage—trapped in a cage of not using— but she’d learned to live inside that cage. There was freedom in that cage. There was love from Lizard inside that cage. Now she was busting out.

  She waited until she heard the pipes rattle from Lizard’s shower before going through the routine of cooking up. Her vein was easy to hit and seemed to pulsate with pleasure in response to the needle point. She drew some blood, mixed the red cells with the brown nectar of the gods, then plunged the needle in. The syringe was a second heart that pumped life, and a beautiful opioid orgasm followed. Her spirit was awakening after being
asleep for so long, bathing in the heavens that had descended into this basement.

  One last time, oh God, I can feel your welcoming hand, the warmth of a mother’s womb. A lifetime of wonder.

  Then she heard the footsteps. A devil was descending, and each hoof clanked upon the metal strips on the basement stairs. The devil was coming back to Hell to remind Becca what happens when she gets high.

  The monster was upon Becca in an instant, stood tall over her, knife raised over its head. Foam gathered on her mouth and dripped from her lips. Becca shrunk in the chair.

  The monster was Lizard. Or almost Lizard. She had a face full of scars and her hair was scalded off her body as if she’d just walked through a fire. Her breath was foul. Her eyes determined. The tiny slit of a scar just above her ear, the first part of Lizard’s body that Becca had ever touched, had grown like wild weeds over her entire face. Becca always thought the scar was just poorly-sewn stitches on a teddy bear that would one day rip open and the stuffing inside would come spilling out.

  Today was that day.

  Lizard’s eyes bulged out of her face and burned with rage from the ultimate hurt. The killer had found a new victim.

  Becca felt a howl build in her lungs, ready to release, but nobody would hear. She felt an apology in her heart, but nobody would care. She was stuck waiting for one last slice into her body—one last time.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  Lizabeth in the shower

  “Clean up. Take a shower. You’re bloody,” she had said. “We’ll need to hit ATMs. We need to pack. I’ll get the suitcases from the basement. Joshua, we’re taking you with us.”

  Becca was on board. Her voice revealed her trepidation, but she had accepted me, despite my confession, and was with me—with us—for the run to Canada.

  I stood in the shower washing off the blood and baptizing myself for our new life together as parents. I wanted the water scalding hot, to beat down on my flesh and hurt upon contact, for my sins would not be washed away by anything mild. If there were steel wool to clean off the blood, I’d have used it. The red water swirled at my feet. Amy and her heroin-infused blood went in circles, down the pipes, draining into the city.