Remember Mia

by Alexandra Burt

“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 am trying 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 put my hand on top of his coat where his heart is. Do I feel a slight tremor underneath? I grab his other hand with mine.

  “I read it in a book.” I hold his cold hand 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 off, but his steps are no longer defiant.

  I’ve won.

  —

  After I leave work that day I clean my apartment. I obsessively wipe down every surface, vacuum every corner, spray Lysol in every nook and cranny. When 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’s Path in Brooklyn is part of the Greater New York Family Services Shelter Care System and has taken in the elementary school–age children from the Plainview compound for the time being. It 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 seesaw, 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 almost twenty-four hours. 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 hardly slept last night and it’s catching up with me. I close my eyes and imagine a scene I created.

  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 and a small 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 puffy jacket, jeans, and black boots running toward 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 backward, 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 smile at me, like perfect Chiclets in a row.

  “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. I feel chipped paint flakes between our skin and I gently wipe the paint chips off her palm.

  “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 toward 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 as we walk to the lake. In the sunshine, the lake’s surface is a perfect looking glass.

  As we stand at the lakeshore and throw in the bread, the ducks zoom in on the cubes. 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.

  “I know. Mia is a beautiful name.”

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

  —

  The sound of a car door jerks me 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.

  “Hello to you, too,” I say to make this moment seem more mundane. “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, “How long do you think until Anna finds out where Mia is?”

  “She won’t find out at all unless someone, theoretically, tells her aunt, I guess.”

  Theoretically. I think about the implications of his statement. I study his profile and fight the urge to hug him. I get it, he’s a cop, he wants to solve this case. 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—yet I also want 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 rain-soaked cap sits abandoned on a red bench by the back door of the building.

  I stand by the fence next to an oak tree. The roots have warped the concrete and I step farther toward the property. The trunk’s girth hides me perfectly, and while I stare at the back door, 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 toward me. When I turn, I see Wilczek staring at me. The back door opens and children spill into the playground. Wilczek gets in the car and slams the door shut.

  Seconds later my cell vibrates in my jacket pocket. I ignore the phone and watch child after child make their way down the steps, toward the playground. The children have taken over the playground equipment. Girls’ legs swing like pendulums in unison to gain momentum on the swings while the rest of the kids climb up a ladder to go down the slide. A young woman in a bright red wool coat sits on the bench, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hands. There’s so much movement, so much running and chasing, that I can’t make out any of the children’s faces.

  A blue Pontiac stops on the opposite side of the road, facing north. The driver’s door opens and a woman in jeans and a black parka emerges, pushing a mass of red hair under her parka hood. As the woman crosses the street she scans the sidewalk, then the playground.

  My heart no longer reacts to fateful moments. Maybe I have become accustomed to being tested, maybe I’m so shocked my brain can’t conceive the relevance of this moment. Anna and I make eye contact. Before I can move, Anna runs across the street, disappears into the Pontiac. She takes off northbound.

  As I stand paralyzed under the oak, I watch my black Jeep trailing the blue Pontiac. Wilczek stares straight ahead while his hands are glued to the steering wheel. He lifts one finger and ever so slightly points toward the Pontiac when I appear in his field of vision. I nod at him.

  When both cars have disappeared around the corner, I step out of the shadow of the oak tree and toward the front door of the shelter.

  “Excuse me.” A woman’s voice. The same woman who minutes earlier sat on the bench supervising the children in the playground. Her hands awkwardly clasp her coat in the front as if she didn’t find the time to zip it. She smells of coffee.

  “I saw you with the detective earlier, outside, in the car. He told us to be on the lookout for a woman but other than a description he didn’t tell us anything.”

  I nod in agreement and pull up my shoulders. “There was an emergency and he had to take off. Would you . . . you mind if I wait inside?”

  She hesitates, then points toward the gate.

  “I’m Dr. Wallace, staff child psychologist. Please come in.”

  She unlatches the playground gate and I enter. I just now realize that the children have left the playground. It lies deserted, devoid of laughter and scuffling boots. A couple of mittens are covered in wood chips on the walkway. The gate closes by itself behind me with a clang. When we get to the back door, her fingers run over an electronic lock display.

  “I see you’re prepared,” I say and hide my hands in my coat pockets.

  “We take in battered women with children sometimes,” Dr. Wallace explains, and after the electronic motor sounds she turns the door handle.

  We stand in a long narrow hallway with shiny linoleum floors. There’s a faint odor of Murphy’s soap and something else, sharp and lemony. A cube shelving unit holds coats, bags, and gloves. To the left of us is a large tiled room with miniature sinks and shiny faucets with oversized knobs. A large poster says Hush, Rush, Flush.

  As we pass by the bathroom, Dr. Wallace turns around. “I didn’t get your name,” she says and hangs her coat on a hook next to the shelf.

  I tell her my name and thank her for allowing me to wait inside.

  “We were just about to do our afternoon group activities,” she says and points at the reception seating area. “You can wait here if you want.”

  I nod and take my seat on the couch. Dr. Wallace enters a room across from me, a large round table in the middle surrounded by colorful chairs with a hook for an apron. There’s a stack of paper in the middle of the table and a lazy Susan–style revolving tray with an array of paint tubs filled with bright primary colors.

  Dr. Wallace claps her hands and from the far side of the room a group of children storm the table and squabble over the chairs.

  I count twelve children, seven boys and five girls. I wonder how far I can go, how far I’ll be able to intrude without causing suspicion.

  Three of the girls have long blond hair and wear identical clothes. They favor one another yet differ in height. Their demeanor is guarded, focused on one another instead of the world around them. They sit close together and seem to wait for a clue from the middle girl, the tallest of the three. When she ties the apron around her waist and reaches for the paper, the other two follow suit.

  The two other girls, one with a brown ponytail and bangs covering her eyes, are more subdued, almost aloof. The girl with the ponytail keeps swiping her bangs to one side. The other girl’s hair looks like she’s had an unfortunate encounter with a pair of scissors. Those two have chosen to sit between the boys.

  I walk down the hallway, look at a set of photographs hanging by the door. The photos of people shaking hands at a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a plaque with donor names hardly register.

  I watch the children finger painting, and when Dr. Wallace looks up, I check my wristwatch. The children dip their fingers in the paint tubs and I wonder if one of the girls is Mia. I feel no connection, no pull, no recognition. I imagine her baby face elongating, straightening the dip between her nose and her brows. There weren’t any birthmarks on her, no scraped knee scar that would help me identify her.

  I discount the three blond girls with their cornflower eyes. Mia’s eyes were brown, like Jack’s. Her hair used to be blond but children’s hair darkens over the years.

  Two high-pitched voices erupt and two of the boys argue over a tub of paint. One of the boys, his apron has become loose, guides the other boy back to his chair by firmly placing a hand on his back. The boy starts crying and the girl with the ponytail says something to him. I wonder if I’d get away with taking a seat in the far corner of the room when I hear Dr. Wallace tell the children that I’m a police officer. I never told her I was—she must have inferred it when she saw me with Detective Wilczek earlier. I’m with Detective Wilczek, I told her.

  The children turn and stare at me. The crying boy is inconsolable, and when he realizes that everybody’s attention has drifted away from him, he dips his entire hand in the tub with the red finger paint. He is immediately annoyed by his sticky hands and tries to get the paint off by violently shaking his fingers. Then he turns to his left and wipes his hands on the shirt of the boy sitting next to him.

  The three blond girls start screaming and attempt to save their pictures from paint spatters by snatching them off the table.

  Dr. Wallace’s “Everybody listen up” goes unnoticed. Now the other boys also dip their hands into the paint tubs. The doctor’s face is visibly tense and she pulls the entire turntable toward her in
order to claim the paint. The children are now amused and smear paint over each other’s shirts. Someone is laughing uncontrollably, then numerous loud bursts erupt, then turn into giggles.

  Dr. Wallace is frantically screwing the lids back on the tubs. “Everybody listen. We are going to wipe our hands and settle down.” She looks at me and gestures me into the room. “Give me a hand, will you?” she says and stuffs a handful of wet wipes into my hands. “I’ll handle the boys,” she adds and directs them to individual chairs along the wall.

  I distribute the wipes and the girls are busy wiping and chatting. I hand the girl with the ponytail and the bangs a wet wipe last. She looks at me, puzzled, and doesn’t move. I lean down and gently start wiping the paint globs off her fingertips. She wiggles her hands out of mine and checks for stickiness by rubbing her hands together.

  Suddenly her eyes fill with tears. Her painting is covered in paint splashes, torn at the edges. The picture is of a stick figure in a yellow dress with large green dots for the eyes. I stare at the crown of red hair.

  “That’s my picture.” She points at the scribbles. “But now it’s all ruined,” she adds, her lips pouting. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, swiping her bangs to the side.

  “Maybe we can fix it,” I say. I want to save this picture for her, want to make everything all right. I want to tell her that we can cut out Mommy and glue her to a clean sheet of paper. That sometimes you can start all over and nothing is ruined after all.

  When she makes eye contact with me, her eyes swallow my words. Those are Jack’s eyes, one raised eyebrow, scrutinizing the world. I fold a wet wipe and encase her hand. Her thumb emerges, clean and shiny. The very tip is covered in round white bumps as if ice is trapped under her skin.

  My stomach drops and my hands start shaking. I gently take both of her wrists in my hands. I flip over her hands and wipe one finger at a time with a broad sweep. Countless white lines emerge, covering her fingertips like icicles, remnants of a night a long time ago, a turtle lamp, and a mother who was fallible. I hold on to her hands, want to erase everything that’s not right, and I hope her trust won’t evaporate.