What Was Mine

by Helen Klein Ross

“She’s walking!” Lucy says, throwing down her big bag and running to Mia. She picks her up and I smile and look surprised like I have never seen this before. Lucy looks at me and tears come to her eyes and I wonder if she knows that these are not Mia’s first steps, but is glad for my silence.

  25

  lucy

  I was always holding my breath, steeling myself for retribution. When would it come? I had no idea. But I suspected that some kind of payback from fate was in store.

  When Mia was three, I got her into the Florence School across town. Florence was—still is—all girls. I wanted an all-girls school for her. I’d gone to one and liked learning in the company of those of my sex. When I did school tours, I noticed boys got the attention, making noise on their mats.

  I needed a birth certificate and adoption papers to enroll her, of course. Faking them was easier than I thought it would be. I’d read in the paper about a town hall that had burned down in Kansas. All the records in it had been lost. A paste-up man in the bullpen created a birth certificate for me. I told him it was a joke for a client. I chose April 26 for her birthday, a safe few weeks after her real one, which I knew, of course, from the news.

  I bought a Polaroid camera because for the first few years, I was afraid to take real pictures of her. I worried that an attentive film developer might see something to arouse his suspicion. This was before digital. Film had to be developed in photo shops, long strands of film had to be uncurled from tin canisters and developed in baths, then printed, requiring attentive eyes on each frame. Until Mia was in kindergarten, I took only pictures that could develop themselves. I have two of them with me. I keep them safe inside one of her gloves in the drawer of a table, in the dark so the images won’t fade. One is of Mia getting her first haircut. Here she is, aged two, shrouded in a smart, silky black robe embroidered with the name of a Madison Avenue salon, head bent under the hands of a stylist, her eyes wide, gazing warily at the scissors poised at a curly strand on her forehead. Here’s another of her a couple of years later, dressed as Alice in Wonderland for Halloween. She wears a white smocked apron over a pale blue dress and patent-leather Mary Janes bought from a fancy shoe store near Florence. You couldn’t button the strap of the Mary Janes with your fingers, you had to use an old-fashioned buttonhook that came with the shoes. Later I learned from Mia that Wendy hated those shoes, that the laborious process of using that buttonhook was the only thing that caused her to lose her patience. Wendy never complained to me about it, though.

  I’d get Mia ready for school after I got ready for work. I’d roll down the tops of her regulation anklets as I dressed her, smoothing the lace, trying to block thoughts of what would come to be, what would happen to Mia, if the world was just. I’d shut my mind’s eye against horrifying images such as Mia’s lace-covered ankles being severed from her legs, occasioned by some brutal accident in which she fell under a bus that proceeded to run over her—this had happened, years before, to a girl at the school whose name was engraved on a plaque in the school library. The girl’s parents had another daughter, in Mia’s class. They were good people, not deserving of such a thing, far less deserving of it than I was, I knew.

  I worried that something might break in the FBI case, that police would come to our building and take her away. For years I braced myself as I came home to the lobby, gauging the doorman’s face for a look that told me the police had been there.

  I didn’t stop worrying until Mia was five, after something that happened on a class trip.

  I’d volunteered to be a chaperone on her kindergarten’s visit to a downtown pie factory. This was when Chelsea still had lots of factories, before the factories became glassed-in showcases for art. Many mothers of girls in the class were stay-at-home moms and I was glad for opportunities to prove to them and to Mia that although I had a job that took me many hours of the day away from her, I was as attentive to my daughter as they were to theirs.

  We were a group of about twenty: fifteen five-year-olds, two teachers, and a few mothers besides me. Mia was glad I had volunteered, being young enough to still want me around. I’d been assigned responsibility for a group of three: Mia and two of her little friends. I remember how happy she was that day, which made me happy, too. Watching her cavort at the bus stop with others in their pleated gray uniforms and red-checked aprons that made them look like miniature milkmaids.

  After a tour of the factory, during which the girls frequently giggled at the sight of themselves in obligatory hairnets, we emerged into the street, where there was a retail outlet for pies. The line was long, and as I stood at the end of it, holding Mia’s hand, a police car drew up to the curb outside the pie-store window. My throat closed and my heart started up like a punching fist, and as the officers took their place in line behind me, I worried that it was beating so hard it would set into telltale motion the gold pin on my silk blouse.

  There was no reason to assume that the appearance of the police in the store was in any way connected to me. Yet my mind raged with the possibility that this was so, that their presence meant that authorities were still in pursuit of a long-grown-cold trail of an abduction. I could almost feel their breath on the back of my neck.

  I let Mia’s hand slip out of my own and turned to the officers. With a bright smile, I offered to let them go ahead of us in line. The officers were young, in their midtwenties. One was a woman and I wondered if she was a mother, with a mother’s sixth sense. She smiled at me, then down at the little brood of my charges. I was glad that her gaze did not linger on Mia.

  “No’m,” said her partner, touching the beak of his cap. “We can wait.” Was this meant ironically? By “wait,” did he mean he could wait me out, to make the mistake that would connect me with the crime I’d committed, to which I’d not yet been linked?

  There was no logical reason for this kind of thinking, but it sprang from a fear that grabbed my innards and squeezed, coiling around them like snakes.

  I turned back to face the counter. We were far back in line, the last of our group, having been waylaid by a trip to the restroom.

  I felt the officers’ gaze bore into the back of my head. They were standing close behind me, close enough, it seemed, for thoughts to jump from my brain into theirs, thoughts I concentrated on keeping contained within the bones of my skull, a ridiculous exercise, I realized, even as I was doing it, but I felt compelled to focus on doing it anyway.

  What if they—the woman—was reading my mind? What if she intuited the connection between Mia and me? Mia’s baby face had once been on a milk carton, before the practice of picturing missing kids on milk cartons had been discontinued. That photo had borne little resemblance to how Mia looked then, even less to how she looked now, but what if the policewoman had poured from that carton, had remembered the face, was trained in tactics of police artists who age faces, elongating the cheeks, adding hair, giving the nose structure, the lips, the eyes?

  The sweet fragrance wafting from pies made me suddenly sick, and without a word, I grabbed the hands of the two girls who weren’t mine, thinking that my action would prove to the cops behind me that one of these was my child. I’ll never forget the look of betrayal on Mia’s face as she realized I was leaving the store with other children, not her. She followed us out, as I knew she would. “For air,” I explained to my charges, sitting us all on a bench outside the store, until after the police left, passing us on the sidewalk without a glance, their attention focused on forkfuls of pie.

  It was then I knew—I’d get away with it.

  26

  marilyn

  In the days after the kidnapping, I felt so shot through with guilt, sometimes I could barely pull myself out of bed.

  How could I have walked away from my baby? Tom never asked me that in so many words, but I knew he wondered it. I wondered it, too. The weight of what I had done sometimes pressed on my chest, making me feel pinned in place, unable to move.

  Other times, I couldn’t stop moving. I was manic. My
grief felt like terror. I cleaned and cleaned. I cleaned everything in that house: walls of the nursery, baths, kitchen, scrubbing until I’d used up every bottle of cleaning product we had in the cabinet. All day long, I’d scour surfaces until falling into bed chapped-handed, bone-tired. I rubbed and rubbed at the wine I’d spilled by the side of the bed, but that spot never came out. I washed Natalie’s floor on my hands and knees. I ripped down her white curtains and bleached them, not wearing gloves. I meant to punish the hands that had lost her. I washed her walls, her crib sheets, her changing table, anything that was hers and I hoped would be hers again. As I was scrubbing, making things perfect for when she came back, I’d torture myself, replaying that day again and again, making it come out every way but the way that it had: I don’t take the baby shopping, I stay home and work. I don’t answer the phone in the store, I never hear it, buried deep in my bag. I answer the phone, but the call is dropped and I hurry to finish shopping and take Natalie home, where I return the call, oblivious to the tragedy I am averting by doing this.

  I resented the way Tom began to avoid the situation, his attempts to seal off pain, to deny the horror that was undeniable.

  Soon we began to inhabit opposite ends of a day: he claimed early mornings, I claimed the nights. Our orbits rarely intersected. But one night, finally climbing into bed, I saw that the other half of the bed was empty. I went to find him, maybe he was sick. I passed Natalie’s room and saw him there, in the moonlight, on his knees on the carpet. He gripped the crib slats, his forehead resting against the bars. I couldn’t hear anything, but could tell by the shaking of his back, he was sobbing. I never saw Tom cry before. I had done this: brought my husband to his knees. I went to bed and never mentioned it to him.

  Days seemed to go by in slow motion and hyperspeed at the same time. Mostly, I felt like nothing connected me to the ground. I spent hours each day trying to imagine where Natalie was. I wondered why something so terrible had happened to Tom and me. But really, it was my fault. Tom never came out and said this. But I know he thought it. I thought it, too. His parents certainly did. They came that first weekend. Neither of them ever met my eyes, not once.

  Every time I saw Tom, I saw Natalie’s face. Her forehead. The shape of her eyes, her chin. I stopped wanting to look at him. He wasn’t her. He couldn’t bring her back. Nobody could.

  One day, I heard the song from Natalie’s swing. I was in the laundry room. I assumed Tom had started it going, for some reason. Anger surged in me as I hurried down the hall to her bedroom, but when I saw the swing, it was perfectly still. I didn’t know how its music had come, but later I realized that it had been Natalie, reassuring me she was still in the world.

  As Tom and I became more and more isolated from each other, we became isolated from others, too. Neighbors had flooded into the house to help initially, but after a few months, they preferred to avoid us. Once, at the grocery store, a friend from book club turned her cart around when she saw me, hurrying off in the other direction. I didn’t blame her. No one knew what to say. I’d stopped going to book club. I’d stopped going anywhere, stopped even going out of the house unless I had to. I began to resent people whose children hadn’t vanished.

  Who were we now that our baby was gone? Were we still even parents? Tom wanted to know. I assured him we were parents and would always be. We were parents of a little girl who is out there somewhere. But Tom stopped believing that. He stopped hoping. We separated, thinking we were cutting the problem in half and now we would have to deal with only our half of it. But separation just made things harder, for me.

  27

  tom

  There we were in 1990, stumbling along as new parents, learning how to take care of a baby, learning what our daughter wanted, what she liked, getting a sense of who she was, her personality. We talked about her constantly, Marilyn and I, planning her future, dreaming about what she would do, who we would help her turn out to be. Maybe she’d be a rock star. Maybe she’d be the first rock-star president.

  Then, one day, without warning or explanation, that person, that part of our life, was gone. My wife went shopping with our daughter, and then, she wasn’t shopping with her anymore. A baby was ours, and then, suddenly, she wasn’t. There were no notes or phone calls, so we knew it wasn’t for ransom.

  I worked with detectives searching for her. We led search parties at night, using flashlights. Sometimes I’d go into the office on no sleep at all, stumble out of the elevator not knowing where I was.

  For the first few months, my imagination went wild with all kinds of scenarios, like Russian mobsters grabbing our daughter, selling her to rich Germans.

  Then one night, I thought I heard Natalie cry. I woke up knowing what I heard was impossible, but there it was, impossibly, her little cry. I got out of bed and went into her room, thinking I might see our baby back in her crib. How could this be? I was still half dreaming, but it didn’t feel like a dream. I looked down at her crib, and could see in the moonlight, of course she wasn’t there. The mattress was empty. And then, I knew she wasn’t coming back to us. It had been months since we lost her. I was a man in mourning for a daughter who would never return. I had to face facts.

  Tragedy happens to lots of people. You can decide to let it destroy you, or you can decide to move on.

  I made myself stop thinking about what had become of our baby. I couldn’t imagine what had happened to her, and didn’t want to. What good would it do?

  I wanted my wife to stop imagining, too. I thought it would be healthier for her to live in the present. I thought it would be better for us to move on, to stop living for the baby we didn’t have anymore, start living for us. But I didn’t have the words to say this to her, at least not words she was able to hear.

  28

  marilyn

  I could no longer trust myself. I couldn’t rely on my own judgment. I’d made a terrible choice in stepping away from the baby. How could I trust myself not to make such mistakes in the future?

  I stopped cooking and often forgot to eat. My hair started coming out in clumps in the shower—I didn’t care. Sometimes, instead of cleaning, I spent the day in bed with a book. All I read were books on kidnapping, children who had disappeared—Charles Lindbergh’s baby, Etan Patz, Adam Walsh. I thought stories of other kidnappings might hold some clue, might lead to the whereabouts of my own child who’d been taken.

  There was a list of psychics the FBI worked with, and some days, I’d find myself calling them all, barraging them with questions, trying to tease out any information they could glean from the universe. After I hung up the phone, I’d clean something. Or I’d walk. I’d walk and walk. I’d walk for hours, to keep from being in an empty house. I lost thirty pounds. At first, I was glad. I wanted to shrink, to disappear. I’d lost all my pregnancy weight, and more.

  I began to imagine ways I could kill myself. Pills would be painless. But that would mean my daughter would lose me twice. I had to stay alive for her sake.

  I began seeing a therapist. I was desperate for someone to talk to, someone who’d listen, who’d know how to help put me back together again. Tom had left by this time.

  The therapist did help. She explained that losing a child was like having a nerve severed. When a child dies, eventually the skin grows over the nerve, so the pain is reduced, though it never goes away. But because I didn’t know where my child was, my nerve would stay raw, constantly exposed. Until she was found, I couldn’t expect myself to heal. Because I’d have to keep imagining what had happened to her. All I could do was think of ways to distract myself from the pain.

  Memories of Natalie would hijack my thoughts while driving to the grocery or reading a magazine in a waiting room—suddenly I’d hear her squealing happily as she splashed bathwater or see her tiny hands opening and closing as she slept—and then I couldn’t breathe, my stomach twisted, contractions intensifying until I had to grit my teeth to keep from screaming.

  Changing surroundings might help, said
the therapist. She suggested I consider a move. At first, I resisted this suggestion, worried that Natalie would somehow come back to the house and I wouldn’t be there for her. But when a former colleague called, offering me a job at Clorox in San Francisco, my friends—the few still talking to me—encouraged me to start fresh. They helped me see that staying in the house wouldn’t bring Natalie back. She’d been taken at four months. It’s not like she’d ever come walking back there.

  I didn’t think I could pack up that house. I didn’t think I had the emotional muscle to do it. But packing up the house turned out to be a great salve. First, it kept my mind and hands busy, it kept me in the present moment, not the past. I couldn’t let my mind wander down bleak paths when I had to concentrate, had to make decisions, had to do the work of going through all my belongings, deciding what to take, what to leave behind. It forced me to come to terms with loss. So many things I’d held on to because of who they’d belonged to once: my grandmother’s wedding dress, my grandfather’s stamp collection. Now I saw they were just things. The dress wasn’t my grandmother; the stamps weren’t my grandfather. And Natalie’s things—her tiny shoes, her little coats, her crib and swing and playpen—they weren’t Natalie. Giving up her things wasn’t giving up on her. I could still have hope that she’d come back to me.

  And yet, when my plane took off for California, I felt like I was abandoning her.

  Yoga saved me. It really did. I put my toe in the water slowly at first. Clorox offered Vinyasa sessions in the employee lounge at lunchtime. It was good exercise. It made me feel strong and in control in a way I hadn’t felt since it happened.

  Then I saw a flyer for yoga designed to reduce anxiety and increase happiness levels in the brain. I was willing to try anything that would do that. From the first day, I was hooked. Just walking barefoot into the spare, white space made me feel hopeful, as though the serenity all around me could be put inside me, too. I also liked the teacher. Sonya was someone who I could tell had been in the practice a long time. Her manner was gentle; her eyes were wise and full of compassion. She taught me to breathe. I realized I hadn’t known how to do that before.