Still Missing

by Chevy Stevens

  The river was on the right side of the cabin—where the raised garden beds were—and down a bit of a hill. It was a beautiful jade color, and judging by some areas where the current calmed down and the water turned such a dark green it was almost black, it had some deep swimming holes.

  From the outside, the cabin looked cute with its shutters and window planter boxes. Two rocking chairs rested side by side on the covered front porch. Maybe a husband and wife had built the cabin together years ago. I wondered about this woman who liked window planter boxes and brought soil in for a garden. I wondered how she’d feel about who was living in the cabin now.

  I went into labor while I was gardening. He’d been letting me out—supervised, of course—to water and weed around the vegetables, which were looking great, and I could have spent all day working in the garden. I didn’t even care when he decided I hadn’t done something right and made me do it all over again, since that just meant I could stay out longer. The sensation of digging into cool dirt—which I could still feel through the gloves he made me wear to protect my perfect nails—and the scent of freshly turned earth sure beat being locked in the cabin with him.

  I was intrigued by the idea that the tiny seeds I’d planted were growing into carrots, tomatoes, beans, while I was growing my own seed in my belly. Technically it was partly his seed, but I didn’t let myself think about that. I was getting good at not thinking about stuff.

  The one thing I could never seem to shut out was my ache for simple, affectionate touch. I never knew how essential it was to my well-being until I didn’t have Emma to snuggle, Luke to cuddle, or even one of my mom’s rare hugs. Affection from Mom always seemed an afterthought on her part, unless it was given as a reward, which always left me feeling manipulated and angry at myself for wanting her warmth so much.

  The only time my mom’s touches were given freely was when I was sick and she dragged me everywhere, talking to doctors and pharmacists about each symptom in embarrassing detail, her arm around my shoulder and her small hands pressing against my forehead. I never said anything, I liked it too much. She even slept with me when I was ill, and to this day the scent of Vicks VapoRub reminds me of the warm weight of her small body next to me, which felt reassuring and solid.

  Whenever The Freak walked by he’d grab me for a hug, pat my stomach, or run his hand along my back, and he still cuddled me every night. In the beginning his touch disgusted me, but as the months passed I became disconnected enough that sometimes I was able to hug back and feel nothing. Other times, the ache for touch was so strong I’d find myself leaning into his embrace with my eyes shut tight, pretending it was someone I loved, and hating myself for it.

  I wondered why his skin didn’t reek of the rot in his soul. Sometimes I’d catch the clean fragrance of the laundry detergent we used—a natural biodegradable brand—on his clothes, and for a few minutes after the shower I could smell the faint scent of soap on his hands and skin, but it would fade quickly. Even when he’d been working, I couldn’t smell the outside world on him—fresh air, grass, pitch, fir needles, anything—let alone sweat. Even scent particles didn’t want to touch him.

  Water had to be brought up from the river in a bucket for the garden every day, but I didn’t mind because it was a chance to run my hands through its cool currents and splash my face. It was almost the middle of June, and I figured I had to be close to nine months, but I was so huge I sometimes wondered if I was past due—I didn’t know exactly when I got pregnant, so it was hard to calculate. On this particular day I dragged a big bucket of water up the hill and began to lift it up to pour over the plants, but it was warm out and I’d been working pretty hard, so sweat dripped into my eyes. I set the bucket down to catch my breath.

  As I massaged my back with one hand, a cramp crawled across my belly. I ignored it at first and tried to lift the bucket back up. The pain hit again, worse this time. Knowing he’d be pissed if I didn’t finish my chores, I took a deep breath and watered the rest of the garden bed.

  When I was done I found him on the porch fixing a board and said, “It’s time.” We went back inside, but not before he checked to make sure the watering was finished. Soon as we walked into the cabin, I felt a whooshing inside me, a weird sensation of something letting go, and then warm fluid poured down my legs, onto the floor.

  The Freak had read all those books with me, so he knew what was going to happen, but he looked horrified and froze at the entrance to the cabin. I stood in a puddle with stuff dripping down my legs and waited for him to snap out of it. But as the blood drained from his face, I realized I might be waiting awhile. Even though I was scared to death, I had to calm him down. I needed his help.

  “It’s totally normal—my body’s supposed to do that—everything will be okay.” He started pacing, partway into the cabin, then out, then in again. I had to get him to focus.

  “May I have a bath?” Baths help with menstrual cramps, and I figured I had time—the contractions didn’t seem that close together. He just stopped and stared at me wild-eyed.

  “Is it okay? I think it would help.” Still mute, he raced to the bathroom and ran a bath for me. I was getting the feeling he would have agreed to anything at that point.

  “Don’t make it too hot, I don’t know if heat would be good for the baby.” Once the tub was full, I eased my huge body into the warm water.

  The Freak leaned against the counter in the bathroom, his eyes darting all over the place, looking at everything but me. His hands clenched and unclenched as if they were grasping at the air. This control freak stood trembling, tongue-tied, like a teenager on his first date.

  In a gentle, even tone of voice I said, “I need you to move the bedding off the bed and put some towels down, okay?”

  He raced out of the room, then I heard him moving around by the bed. To calm myself down, I tried to remember everything I’d read in the books and concentrated on my breathing instead of the fact that I was about to give birth in a cabin with no one but a freaked-out Freak to help me. The beads of water on the side of the bathtub became my focal point, and I counted the seconds it took them to drip down. When the water was lukewarm, almost cool, and the contractions were closer together, I called him—he’d been hiding out in the other room.

  With his help I got out of the tub and dried off. The contractions were hitting hard and fast by this point and I had to lean on him so I didn’t fall. When we walked back into the room, I stumbled and gripped his arm while white-hot pain wrenched my belly. The cabin was cold, and goose bumps broke out on my skin.

  “Why don’t you get a fire going while I get myself onto the bed?”

  After I settled myself down and put a pillow behind my shoulders, I don’t remember too much other than a lot of pain—most women get the option of drugs, and trust me, I’d have gone with that option. The Freak was like a sitcom husband, pacing around and wringing his hands and putting them over his ears every time I screamed—which was often. While I writhed around on the bed, chewing on the fucking pillow, he was in the corner at one point with his whole head tucked between his knees. He even left the cabin for a while, but I started screaming “HELP ME!” so loud he came back.

  All the books said to start bearing down when I could feel I was close, but hell, everything in my body was telling me to push. I propped my back against the wall and pressed into it so hard I must have had welts from the logs on my back. With my hands on my knees, I spread my legs, gritted my teeth, and pushed. When I could breathe, I ordered him around. The more in control I was, the more he seemed to calm down—control being a loose term, considering I was covered in sweat and screaming out every order in between pushes.

  A lot of the actual birth is hazy, but I think I was in labor for a few hours—a lucky first-timer, and one of the few things on the mountain I had to be thankful for. I do remember that when I made him stay between my legs and help the baby out, his face was pale and covered with sweat, and I wondered what the hell he was sweating about
since I was doing all the work. I didn’t give a flying fuck about his feelings or mine—I just wanted this thing out of me.

  When the baby finally came through, it hurt like a son of a bitch but it felt so good at the same time. Through eyes blurry from sweat dripping into them, I glimpsed The Freak holding the baby away from him in the air like he did with my rags. Shit, he didn’t know what to do next. And the baby hadn’t cried yet.

  “You have to clean the face off and lay the baby on my stomach.”

  I closed my eyes and let my head loll to the side.

  The tiniest of whimpers turned into really loud wails, and my eyes flew open. God, it was such an incredible sound. It was the first live creature I’d heard other than him in ten months, and I started crying. When I lifted my arms up, he handed the baby to me quickly, as though relieved to be free of the responsibility.

  A girl. I hadn’t even thought to ask. A slimy, bloody, wet, wrinkly girl. I’d never seen anything more beautiful.

  “Hi, sweetie, welcome to the world,” I said. “I love you,” I whispered against her little forehead, then softly kissed it.

  I glanced up and he was staring down at us. He didn’t look scared anymore, he looked pissed off. Then he turned and left the cabin.

  As soon as he left I passed the afterbirth. I tried to wriggle farther up the bed to get away from the wetness, but I was already near the wall, and when I tried to inch sideways, every movement hurt. So I lay there in an exhausted sticky mess with the baby on my belly. The cord needed to be cut. If he didn’t come back soon, I was going to have to try to bite it off.

  While I waited, I checked her over and counted all her toes and fingers. She was so small and delicate, and although her hair was ridiculously soft and silky, it was as dark as mine. Once in a while she whimpered, but when I rubbed my thumb on her cheek, she quieted.

  He came back after about five minutes, and as he came toward me I was glad to see he didn’t look pissed off anymore, just disinterested. Then I looked away from his face and realized he was holding his hunting knife.

  Disinterest turned to horror when he saw the mess the afterbirth had made between my legs.

  “I have to cut the cord,” I said. But he stood frozen.

  I slowly reached out with my free hand, and just as slowly, he handed me the knife.

  I shifted the baby, then tore a strip off the sheet and tied it around the cord before cutting it. As soon as I did, she mewled, and the sound snapped The Freak out of his trance. His hand lashed out and bent my wrist back until the knife dropped on the bed.

  “I was going to give it back!”

  He picked it up and leaned toward me. I gripped the baby and tried to wriggle up the bed. He paused. I paused. Maintaining eye contact, he slowly wiped the knife off on the corner of a towel. He held the knife up to the light, nodded, then headed into the kitchen.

  He helped me roll over and put fresh bedding under me. While he cleaned away the medical supplies, I tried to put my nipple to her mouth, but she wouldn’t take it. I tried again, same result. Tears prickled in my eyes, and I swallowed hard. Remembering that the books said it took them a while sometimes, I tried again. This time when I pressed my nipple into her mouth a bit of watery-looking yellow liquid came out. Her little rosebud mouth opened and she finally latched on.

  With a sigh of relief, I looked up just as The Freak came back to the bed carrying a cup of water and a baby blanket. Focused on the task, he didn’t look at me until he’d set the cup on the side table. When he did glance over, his eyes went straight to the baby nursing from my exposed breast. His face flushed and he quickly averted his gaze. Staring at the wall, he tossed the blanket to me and said, “Cover yourself.”

  I draped the blanket over my shoulder and baby just as she made a loud slurping sound.

  He took a couple of steps back, then spun around and headed into the bathroom. Soon I heard the shower running. It ran for a very long time.

  He was quiet when he came back. He stood at the bottom of the bed and stared at me for a few minutes. I’d learned not to make eye contact with him when he was in one of his moods, so I pretended to be dozing, but I could still make him out through my eyelashes. I had seen his pissed-off look, his I’m-going-to-hurt-you look, and I’d seen him tune out completely, but this was different. It was thoughtful.

  My arms tightened around my daughter.

  SESSION TWELVE

  I’m in a weird-ass mood today, Doc. Wired up, mind all over the place, looking for answers, reasons, something solid to cling to, something real, but just when I think I’ve got it figured out and neatly filed under fixed instead of fucked, turns out I’m still shattered, scattered, and battered. But you probably already knew that, didn’t you?

  At least your office feels real. Real wood shelves, real wood desk, real native masks on the wall. And in here I can be real because I know you can’t tell people about me, but I wonder if when you sit around with your shrink friends, talking about whatever it is you guys talk about, you want to just blurt it out…. No, forget I said that, you look like the type that went into the profession because you genuinely want to help people.

  You might not be able to help me. That makes me sad, but not for me. It makes me sad for you. It must be frustrating for a shrink to have a patient who’s beyond fixing. That first shrink I saw when I got back to Clayton Falls told me no one is a lost cause, but I think that’s bullshit. I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that they’ll never be anything more than a fragment of a whole person.

  I wonder when it happened to The Freak. What the defining moment was—the moment when someone stepped down with the heel of their shoe and crushed both of our lives. Was it when his real mother left him? Would he still have been repairable if he’d had a nice foster family? Would he never have killed anyone or abducted me if his adoptive mom hadn’t been such a freak herself? Did it happen in the womb? Did he ever even have a chance? Did I?

  There was The Freak side of him, the guy who abducted me, beat me, raped me, played sadistic games with me, terrified me. But sometimes when he was thoughtful or happy or excited, when his face lit up, I saw the guy he could have been. Maybe that guy would have had a family and taught his child to ride bikes and made balloon animals for her, you know? Hell, maybe he’d have been a doctor and saved people’s lives.

  After I had my daughter, I even felt maternal toward him sometimes, and in those fleeting moments when I did see his other side, I wanted to coax it out. I wanted to help him. I wanted to fix him. But then I’d remember. He was a little boy standing in front of a hayfield holding a match, and he didn’t need an excuse to drop it.

  Right after the baby was born The Freak tossed me some cloth diapers, a couple of sleepers, a few blankets, and for a week barely spoke to me unless he was telling me to do something—he only let me rest in bed for one day. My first day up I got dizzy doing the dishes and he let me sit down for a few minutes, but then he made me wash them all over again because the water had grown cold. The next time I just leaned on the counter and closed my eyes until the feeling passed.

  He never touched the baby, but when I changed or bathed her, he hovered and picked that moment to ask me to do something for him. If I was folding her laundry, he’d make me finish his first. Once, when I was about to nurse her while our dinner was simmering, he made me put her down and serve him. The only time he left us alone was when I nursed her. Not knowing exactly what was pissing him off, I picked her up and soothed her if she made so much as a peep, but his eyes only turned darker and his jaw clenched. He reminded me of a viper waiting to strike, and as I comforted my child, my insides hummed with anxiety.

  When she was a couple of days old, he still hadn’t mentioned anything about naming her, so I asked him if I could.

  He glanced at her in my arms and said, “No,” but later I whispered a secret name into her tiny ear. It was the only thing I could give her.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d handled his je
alousy and resentment of his adopted father. So when he was in the cabin I made sure I looked indifferent to the baby and only met her basic needs—luckily, she was a content and happy baby who never fussed much. But as soon as he went outside for his chores, I’d take her out of the blanket and look at every inch of her, amazed she came out of my body.

  Considering the circumstances of her conception, I was surprised how much I was capable of loving my daughter. With my fingertips I traced her veins, marveling that my blood flowed through her, and she never squirmed. Her little ear was perfect for singing lullabies into, and sometimes I just buried my nose in her neck and inhaled the scent of her, fresh and sweet—the purest thing I’d ever smelled. Behind her pudgy left knee she had a tiny birthmark, a coffee-colored half-moon that I loved to kiss. Every delicate inch of her made my heart shiver with the overwhelming urge to protect her. The intensity of my feelings terrified me, and my anxiety grew with my love.

  We still had bath time every night, but she wasn’t allowed in the water with me and The Freak never touched my breasts. After the bath, I nursed her on the bed while he cleaned the bathroom. When she was finished I laid her down in a little bed he’d put at the foot of ours—it was just a wicker basket with some blankets in it, like a dog bed, but it didn’t seem to bother her.

  I remembered a couple of my friends who had kids complaining about how they never got any sleep in the beginning, and I didn’t either. Not because of the baby—she only woke up once a night—but because I was so terrified of what he’d do if she woke him up that I lay there listening to every faint sigh or the tiniest hitch in her breathing. I became adept at slithering to the bottom of the bed at the first signs of her waking so he wouldn’t feel my weight leave the mattress, and like a dog nursing a puppy I’d hang my breast over the side, lift her up slightly, and feed her. If he moved or made any sound, I lay perfectly still with my heart pounding and wondered if she could feel it pulse through my breast. As soon as his breath evened out, I’d slither back up.