Julia's Daughters

by Colleen Faulkner

  She must have put the time on her note. She’s such a geek.

  “She just left,” I confirm.

  Mom looks at me, frowning. “To go running?”

  “If that’s what the note says.” I bounce the ball. Catch it. “I guess that’s what she was doing. She didn’t say anything to me.” Bounce. Catch. “Of course, she never says anything to me.”

  Mom sighs and turns to the coffeepot Dad turned on before he left this morning. He leaves coffee for Mom every morning, even though she rarely drinks it anymore. “You have to give her some time.”

  “Time.” Bounce. Catch. “Right,” I intone. Another word for our list.

  Mom turns around suddenly, leaving the mug on the counter. There are little lines across her forehead; I don’t remember Mom having wrinkles before. She’s always been so beautiful. Maybe even more beautiful than Caitlin.

  “Haley . . . where did that ball come from?”

  I bounce it.

  “It was Caitlin’s, wasn’t it?” She closes her eyes for a second. Then opens them. “I remember her bouncing that pink ball.” She points at me, clearly trying to bring up a memory. “Not that day. A couple days earlier. We’d gone out for pizza. I asked her to put the ball and her cell phone away.”

  I don’t say anything. Mostly because I’m afraid I’ll cry. And I’m not willing to do that. That next morning Caitlin had looked everywhere for her pink ball. I head out of the kitchen, bouncing the ball.

  “Clean up the table, please,” Mom says just before I make my escape. “And put the milk away.”

  I take my time going back to the breakfast table, bouncing . . . bouncing. Mom pours her coffee. I tuck my ball back into my pocket and carry the milk to the refrigerator. I put the bowl and spoon in the sink.

  Mom heads out of the kitchen. “Rinse it off and put it in the dishwasher,” she calls as she goes.

  I flip on the kitchen faucet, annoyed and I don’t even know why. I mean logically, I get that I shouldn’t leave my bowl with milk and cereal on the table or in the sink to get all scuzzy, but I . . . I guess I hate being told what to do. As I reach for the bowl, I get my sleeve wet. I’m such an idiot. I yank up both sleeves, wondering why I got the stupid genes. Caitlin was so smart and Izzy . . . Izzy, she’s scary smart. So why—

  “I meant to ask you,” Mom says, stepping back into the kitchen. “Are you going—”

  She stops midsentence, just like they do in movies. And I kind of feel like I’m in a movie, all of a sudden. It’s as if the world has slowed down. I’m thinking fast, really fast, but I’m moving too slowly. It’s as if my body isn’t getting the signal from my brain quick enough. That brain signal that’s yelling “Sleeve! Sleeve! You moron.” I reach with my right hand to pull down the sleeve on my left arm, but it seems like it takes forever.

  Mom stands there in the doorway to the kitchen, her coffee mug in her hand, staring. She’s wearing one of Caitlin’s cheer shirts and no bra and I realize in a split second that she’s gotten really skinny. When did Mom get skinny? I mean, she was never fat, but I’ve never seen her collarbone like that before.

  “Haley.” She says it in a half whisper, a half cry and I feel so bad. So bad because the look in her eyes, it just . . . it hurts so much that I feel dizzy. Like I’m going to faint. I know what it feels like because I fainted the night Caitlin died. Right there in the middle of the road. When I woke up, I was on a stretcher and the paramedics were talking to me slowly, like I was a two-year-old or had brain damage.

  “Haley, what have you done?” She comes toward me, putting her mug down on the edge of the counter. I still feel like everything is in slow motion. Except for the running water. It just keeps pouring out of the faucet. Gushing.

  Mom catches my left hand. I try to pull away, but she’s strong. Way stronger than I would have thought. She holds my hand and pushes up my sleeve.

  Both of us look down at my arm and I have the weirdest reaction, as if ... as if it’s not my arm. Like it’s someone else’s. Because this forearm, it doesn’t look like mine. It’s got ugly, raised welts. Scars. And red marks that are oozing. And white gauze taped on with packing tape because I couldn’t find any of the white stuff under the bathroom sink where it’s supposed to be. It’s so weird because I remember pulling off pieces of packing tape, but I don’t remember my arm looking like this.

  “Oh, Haley, sweetie,” Mom whispers, looking up at me, looking into my eyes. Her eyes are full of tears. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “I don’t know,” I hear myself say, in the same soft voice.

  Because, honestly . . . I don’t know.

  Chapter 15

  Julia

  50 days

  I stand there for a second, holding Haley by the wrist, staring at her forearm that’s scarred with bright red horizontal welts. I feel like I’m slogging through mud, trying to get my brain to register what it is I’m seeing. I think I know what I’m seeing. My mothering instinct, born the moment that Haley took her first breath, tells me what I’m seeing. But I don’t want to believe it. I want to believe that it’s a mistake. A misunderstanding.

  My bright, obstinate, stronger-than-I’ll-ever-be daughter could not be self-mutilating.

  I fight my tears. Choke them back. Haley is trying to get away from me, but I won’t let her go. I won’t ever let her go again. “Did you do this to yourself?” I ask. Why am I even saying this? I already know the answer. “Haley, why have you done this?”

  Her eyes are full of tears. There’s black eye makeup running down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mom,” she keeps repeating, almost like a mantra.

  I touch my finger very lightly to a smear of dried blood on her arm. I have no idea why. To be sure it’s real?

  It’s real.

  A part of me wants to tear off the wad of white gauze—taped down with what looks like the packing tape. Packing tape?—but I’m afraid to do it. “Haley,” I whisper again.

  “Let me go.” She fights me, trying to break free. The way she did when she was a toddler. Haley was always a disobedient little girl. Spirited, I used to say. I remember, as a young mother, laughing about her defiance. I used to make jokes about how it would come in handy someday, a rebellious woman in what is still a man’s world.

  What I would give now for a little submission.

  I grasp her wrist with one hand and her arm at the elbow with the other. “Stop, Haley. You’re going to hurt yourself or me. Stop!” I say it so loudly that my voice echoes inside my head.

  But she stops.

  “You’re cutting yourself?” I search her black-tear-stained face. I can barely breathe. But I have to breathe, for Haley. For the beloved, insolent child of my body, of my heart. Because at this moment, I realize that no matter what she’s done, she’s still my child of my body and my heart. Worth no less than my Caitlin. Loved no less than my Caitlin, who I’ll never hold in my arms again, the way I’m holding Haley now.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I press. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  She turns her face away as if she can’t stand to look at mine. “And say what?” She presses her lips together, lips devoid of any color.

  She’s so thin. So pale. When did this happen. How?

  “You wouldn’t have heard me anyway. No one hears me anymore.” She whispers the last words.

  I let go of her arm just long enough to throw my arms around her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, hugging her skinny body to my own. Bare bones to bare bones. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Let go of me!”

  She pushes against me, thrashing to get away again. She fights me so hard that I lose my balance. I go down sideways on one knee to keep from falling, but I pull her down with me. I won’t let her go.

  I guess the sensation of hitting the tile floor startles her badly because she stops fighting me. Sitting down hard on my butt, I shift so I can lean my back against the island, my daughter still in my arms. “It’s okay,” I murmur, smo
othing her hair with my free hand, still holding on to her with the other. “How long has this been going on? How long have you been doing this, Haley?” My voice is shaky, but I’m not falling apart. I won’t fall apart.

  I won’t fall apart because I know deep inside that to fall apart would mean losing my child. A second child. And I’m not going to do it. I’m not, damn it. I’m going to pick up the pieces. I’m going to gather the broken shards of who I was and . . . and put them back together. I know I won’t be the same person I was before Caitlin died; I can’t possibly be. That Julia is gone and turned to ashes with my daughter’s body. But something deep inside me tells me I can be someone again. I don’t know who . . . but definitely a mother. Haley’s mother. Izzy’s mother.

  I rock side to side and Haley lowers her head to my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” I murmur.

  A sob escapes from her quivering mouth. “It’s not. It never will be. She’s dead, Mom. Caitlin’s dead.”

  I keep rocking her, the way I did when she was a little girl. Haley was always falling, bumping herself. I must have bought a box of Band-Aids a week for her when she was a toddler. She was the one who broke her arm when she was six, trying to fly off the bunk beds she and Caitlin shared in our old house. She was the one who had to get three stitches under her chin when she fell off the slide at the park.

  I look down at her and I can see the faint line of the scar from that tumble when she was eight. I kiss her dark head. I rock her. I make the little sounds a mother makes that only a child can understand.

  I don’t know how long we sit there on the kitchen floor, me rocking my seventeen-year-old daughter in my arms as if she’s a baby. Long enough to begin to feel stiff. Long enough for Izzy to come home from her run.

  My youngest walks into the house, slamming the door behind her. She slams it so hard that I want to holler, “Don’t slam the damned door!” How many times have I asked Izzy not to slam the door?

  But I know it couldn’t possibly be as loud as it sounds. I’ve heard that door slam thousands of times, millions of times, in the eleven years we’ve lived in this house. For some reason, my senses seem more acute. Sounds seem louder: my breath, Haley’s, the trickle of water filling the icemaker in the refrigerator. My sense of touch is heightened; I’m more aware of the weight of Haley’s thin frame in my arms and the sensation of her hair against my cheek. I can smell the scent of her shampoo, the Downy freshness of her clothes, and even the lemon fragrance of the polish I’ve always used on the kitchen cabinets.

  “Mom? What’s going on?”

  I look up to see Izzy standing over us. Her face is flushed and beaded with perspiration. She’s breathing hard. She’s wearing a pair of shiny green running shorts hiked up way too high. “Mom?” Her pre-puberty-pitched voice is one beat shy of panic. “What’s wrong with her?”

  Instinctively, I push Haley’s sleeve down. “Go to your room. Please, Izzy.”

  She stares down at us. I still have Haley wrapped in my arms. Haley’s eyes are shut.

  “Izzy,” I repeat, sharper this time. “I need you to go to your room.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Izzy sounds angry. “What did she do now?”

  “Isobel Mae. Go to your room and stay in there until I come for you.” I don’t give her a chance to talk back. “Now.”

  Izzy gives a huff, but thankfully, stomps off.

  I take a moment to catch my breath. Haley’s loose in my arms. So relaxed that I wonder if she’s asleep. Or dead and broken. A sob rises in my throat and I choke it back. I brush a wisp of blue-black hair off her cheek and kiss the top of her head. I can hear her breathing. She’s not dead. Not dead. I kiss her temple. It’s damp from the effort of fighting me.

  At least she didn’t cut her face.

  I wonder where such a thought could have come from.

  I have images in my head from somewhere. The Internet, most likely. Photos I stumbled on accidentally while googling self-motivation or something like that. Photos of cuts very similar in appearance to the ones on Haley’s arm, across a teenage girl’s forehead. On another girl’s cheek. Permanent scars. Scars they’ll carry for a lifetime, even if the girls manage to heal inside.

  “Haley,” I breathe. “You need to tell me why you’re doing this, so I can help you.” “Haley,” I repeat when she doesn’t answer.

  “No one can help me,” she says, her eyes still closed.

  “We can call Dr. Pullman. We can—”

  “No doctor! No doctor!” She shudders in my arms. “They make me think of that night in the ER. About lying there in that bed, knowing Caitlin was still lying in the road.”

  Tears well in my eyes. I want to tell her that no one left Caitlin’s body in the street. That by the time she reached the hospital, Caitlin was there, too. Her body, at least. But my instinct warns me that telling her that won’t help. Not right now, at least.

  “Haley, we have to find someone to help you. This . . . what you’re doing to yourself... You could get an infection. You could—” Kill yourself, I want to say, only I can’t say it because what if that’s what she’s trying to do?

  “I’ll be all right.” She stiffens and then pulls away from me.

  I let go of her. I hate to do it. But I do. Because the moment, whatever it was, has passed. And when I look into my daughter’s eyes again, I see the sulky teenager I know, not the broken child that was in my arms a minute ago.

  She gets to her feet, tugging down both her sleeves, but not before I see that her right arm is, thank goodness, unmarked.

  “Where are you going?” I ask, getting up off the floor. One knee hurts, as does my butt. From where I went down so hard on the tile, I suppose.

  “My room.” Haley wipes at her eyes with her sleeve, smearing the black eye makeup even further. “I’m just going to my room,” she flings.

  I don’t know why she’s so angry with me. Because I saw that vulnerable part of her that she’s kept so well hidden? Or is she not angry with me at all? Just with herself?

  I don’t stop her. I watch her walk out of the kitchen and I reach for my cup of coffee. I take a sip. It’s cooled. I leave it on the counter and go to my room. I stand in the doorway of the bedroom, looking down the hall as I dial Ben’s cell. Izzy’s door is closed. Haley’s door is closed. Caitlin’s, too. I need to go into Caitlin’s room and start cleaning it out, I think absently.

  Ben’s cell rings four times and is about to go to voice mail when he finally picks up.

  “I need you to come home,” I say without preamble.

  “Why? I’m right in the middle of something. What’s wrong, Jules?”

  “We’ll talk about it when you get here.” I’m surprised by the strength in my voice. I don’t feel strong. “I need you to come home. Now. I don’t care what you’re doing. It has to be now.”

  He’s quiet on the other end of the phone. Quiet just long enough for me to wonder if he doesn’t come, what will I do? Will I go get him? Or will I just say screw it and tackle this on my own?

  For a moment, I’m not sure if I want him to come home now or not.

  “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  I exhale with relief and hang up.

  Now what? I wonder. What do I do now? Do I go to Haley? Do I leave her alone for a little while? And what am I going to do long-term? How am I going to fix this?

  I walk down the hall and listen at Haley’s closed door. I hear her talking. On her cell. That’s good. She’s talking to a friend. I put my hand on the doorknob, then let go. If I were Haley, I wouldn’t want me in my room right now. Too much.

  I walk to Izzy’s room, tap on the door, and walk in.

  Chapter 16

  Julia

  50 days

  “And you’re sure she’s doing it on purpose?” Ben’s standing in the front of the door I made him close so the girls can’t hear us. I wouldn’t put it past Izzy to try to listen in. When I went into her room, I didn’t tell her what Haley had done, only t
hat her sister was having a particularly hard time dealing with Caitlin’s death. Izzy hadn’t seemed all that sympathetic.

  I resist the temptation to say something inappropriate to my husband like, Are you an idiot? Of course she’s doing it on purpose. That’s the definition of self-mutilation. Saying something like that isn’t going to help . . . and it’s just plain mean. I don’t want to be mean to Ben. Well . . . maybe a tiny part of me, a part I’m ashamed of, wants to be mean, but that’s not something I can deal with right now. I just say, “She’s doing it on purpose.”

  “Why?” He gestures with one hand.

  It’s clear he doesn’t want to be here, in this house, in the middle of this mess that has become our lives, but like Izzy, I’m not feeling all that sympathetic right now.

  “How is she doing it?”

  “We didn’t talk about that.” I sit down on the edge of my unmade bed. “When I saw it, she was . . . it was pretty overwhelming.”

  “Well, I guess so.” He’s louder than he needs to be. But then he meets my gaze and takes it down a notch. “Do you think she tried to kill herself?”

  I shake my head no. “If she wanted to do that, Ben, she’s a bright girl.” I glance away, trying to come to terms with even the possibility that she would attempt suicide. But I know my girl. I’m beginning to realize I may even know some of her demons because they were once mine. “If she’d wanted to kill herself, she’d have succeeded.”

  “I don’t understand, then.” He begins to pace. “Why would she be . . . hurting herself? It had to hurt like hell.” He’s thinking out loud. “To scar like that. It had to hurt when she was doing it, didn’t it?”

  I wrap my arms around myself. “I did a little research on the Internet while I was waiting for you. Cutting is a coping mechanism. More common than you would think, particularly with teenagers.”

  “Coping mechanism?” he repeats.