When Smiles Fade

by Paige Dearth

  Driving back to Kensington, Emma’s thoughts lingered on her mother. She hadn’t changed much in the years since she’d been gone. In many ways, she was just the same. A little more pathetic, perhaps, now that her beauty was gone and in its place were the gruesome scars on her face that would remain a permanent reminder of her past mistakes. Deep down, Emma knew that she would go back and live with her mother. She and Izzy needed to start over, and she wanted to get the child out of Kensington. She decided to call her mother in a day or two and let her know they were coming home. She smiled, thinking how delighted Valerie would be at the news.

  Chapter One Hundred and Five

  Emma and Isabella moved back to Chain Street a week later. They found an excited Valerie eagerly awaiting their arrival. She had baked chocolate chip cookies for Izzy as a special treat. Emma looked on, reminding herself that her mother had never done anything special for Gracie and her. They settled in quickly, and within a week, Emma had painted the room she and Izzy shared, bought furniture, and even installed new lighting so that her niece would have no difficulty reading. Isabella spent most of her time in her “new” room, now that it was painted and decorated the way she liked it.

  It was less than two weeks after they had moved back to Chain Street that Valerie went to Friday night bingo with her friends and returned ecstatic.

  “Oh, Emma!” she exclaimed, “I met a man. He’s just wonderful! He’s asked me to go on a date with him tomorrow night. He didn’t even seem to notice what happened to my face!” she gushed.

  “Wow! That’s great, Mom,” Emma said, echoing her enthusiasm. “Did you say yes?”

  “Are you kidding?” Valerie retorted. “Of course I said yes! I haven’t been asked out on a date in years. Who in their right mind would turn a man down for a date?” she rattled on.

  Over the next two weeks, and to Emma’s delight, her mother went out with this new man almost every night. This gave Isabella and her time to spend alone in the quiet of the house. They were able to read and play games without Valerie’s incessant jabbering about herself.

  One night, after a date at the movies, Valerie boasted, “My boyfriend, Ted, has a house on the beach in Florida. He wants me to move there with him. He’s also promised to take me to his plastic surgeon so that I can have my face fixed.” Then her voice dropped to just above a whisper, as if she were letting Emma in on a divine secret only meant to be known by special people such as them. “I suspect he’s filthy rich.”

  Valerie was the happiest Emma had ever seen her. All of her mother’s dreams were coming true. A knight in shining armor had come in to save the day. Emma was beyond thrilled that her mother was willing to give her new relationship a go. With Valerie gone, the idea of having the house just to the two of them indefinitely seemed very appealing. She was well aware that her mother lived for male attention. Valerie’s beauty had been her greatest asset in attracting that attention. That was precisely the reason why Emma had mutilated her face. But now, watching her mother behave like a giddy young girl, Emma laughed quietly to herself. She was about as different from her mother as one could get. Unlike Valerie, she was independent-minded and wanted nothing more than to be self-sufficient. Besides, after Salvatore, she didn’t know if she would ever be able to love another man again, and certainly not in the way she had loved him.

  “Mom,” she suggested while Valerie was busy packing her bags, “now that you’re moving to Florida, I was thinking that Isabella and I could live here and pay the bills and mortgage for you. Does that sound okay? I really don’t want to uproot Izzy again.”

  “Of course that’s okay, darlin’!” Valerie cooed, ready to be generous now that she had something better to move on to. “My home is your home. I think it’s a wonderful idea!”

  “Good. So when are you moving?” Emma asked, flashing Valerie a smile so bright that it reminded her of the beauty she’d lost and stirred envy in the older woman. But she shook it off after remembering what Ted had promised about the plastic surgeon.

  “Next week! Can you believe it? My friends are just going to die! I’ll miss them, of course, but now they can come and visit me at my house on the beach! Everything is finally turning out the way I wanted. I have my daughter back and a new granddaughter. And to top it all off, I have a rich, handsome boyfriend! See, Emma, my sacrifice has been worth its weight in gold. Good things come to those who wait,” she declared.

  Over the next week, Valerie quit her job at the grocery store, said her good-byes to her friends, and packed her belongings. It was Friday night and Ted was coming to pick her up early the next morning. Emma had cooked a farewell meal for her mother that the three of them shared.

  After Emma put Izzy to bed, she went back down to the kitchen to help her mother clean the dishes. She chatted easily with Valerie about her new adventure as they worked together to tidy up after dinner. Valerie yapped nonstop about her new life with Ted, while Emma talked about enrolling Izzy in school the following Monday. Drying the last frying pan, Emma looked at her mother with pity. She was the dumbest person on earth, she thought, lifting her arm and whacking Valerie on the side of the face with the heavy metal pan. As her mother slipped out of consciousness, the last thing she saw was Emma standing over her, her green eyes blazing.

  Chapter One Hundred and Six

  On Saturday morning, Sydney arrived at the house on Chain Street to watch Izzy for the day. Once they were playing a game in Izzy’s room, Emma went into the bathroom to change. She put on one of her mother’s “going-out” dresses that was two sizes too big and a pair of old sneakers. She tucked her hair under a brimmed hat and put large sunglasses on. One would never imagine how beautiful Emma really was under the unattractive camouflage she was wearing. It was exactly what she’d intended. As she descended the stairs she yelled, “See you this afternoon, girls. Have fun.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Emma walked into Dunkin’ Donuts in West Philadelphia. She looked for a man wearing a green baseball cap and walked up to him, “Ted! Right?” she asked joyfully.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he replied. “I was instructed to come here and pick up my five hundred bucks. I assume everything went as planned with that Valerie woman. Man, she gave me the willies with that face of hers! She is one fucked-up broad. Ewww!” He flailed his arms, as if he were trying to shake a bug off himself. “She’s one foul chick,” he went on, “but hey, five hundred bucks to tell some homely woman I love her and we’re going to live in Florida and I’m gonna pay to fix that fucked-up face of hers—that’s the easiest money I’ve ever earned!”

  Emma pulled the envelope from her pocket. “Here’s the money,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”

  “Sure thing!” he responded, accepting the envelope and leaving right away, an expression of satisfaction plastered on his face.

  Emma waited for him to drive away before getting into her own car. She quickly pulled out her cell phone and made a call. “Thanks, Salvatore,” she said. “Everything worked exactly as planned.”

  “Good. I’m happy to hear it went smoothly. I am very happy you called me. I’ll talk to you soon?” he asked hopefully.

  “Yes, I’ll call you. And Salvatore…thanks again,” she said with deep affection in her voice.

  In the End…

  When Valerie woke up in the middle of the night, her excitement over moving to Florida flooded her with a sense of immense pleasure. What time is it? She wondered drowsily, puzzled as to why she had woken up so early. She came fully awake when she tried rolling over to look at the alarm clock next to her bed and couldn’t. She realized then that something was preventing her from moving. She couldn’t see a thing through the shroud of darkness, and as her senses jolted alive, she smelled dirt. She put her hand out in front of her and felt plywood. Terror surged through her body as she began to push at the object on top of her but it would not budge.

  She felt the dirt, cold against her arms and the back of her neck. In a panic now, she scratched and clawe
d at the plywood with her fingernails. Then she began screaming at the top of lungs, until her air started to grow thin and her breathing became labored. She knew then exactly where she was and how she’d gotten there, as her fate wrapped itself around her in that suffocating space. She realized how she had been fooled and that Emma would never come for her. The realization made her lose all self-control. Sobbing and shaking uncontrollably, she contemplated the reality of what lay ahead. The grimness of what was to come engulfed her in horror as she felt the bugs crawling on her lower legs and feet. Valerie tried to swat them off, but the tight space in which she was confined would not allow her to. All she could do was lie there and wait for death to come.

  In the late afternoon, after Sydney had left, Emma sat watching television with Isabella. She felt blissfully content as her mind wandered momentarily to her mother, now lying in her shallow grave in the basement. The same grave Valerie had left Gracie to die in. The dimwit hadn’t even bothered to fill in the hole after they’d left home. Emma’s demons were finally laid to rest.

  “Aunt Em, is Grandma ever coming home?” Izzy asked suddenly.

  “No, baby. She moved to Florida, remember?” she reminded her niece.

  “Oh yeah, that’s right. But it’s okay. She was weird. I didn’t like her that much anyway,” Isabella confessed.

  “Me neither, sweetie, me neither,” Emma stated with heartfelt honesty.

  Believe In A Child Sample

  Find out what happened to Emma’s friend, Alessa…

  Read Paige Dearth’s debut novel, Believe Like A Child. A victim of child rape herself, Paige wrote this work of fiction based on her darkest idea of who she might have become had fate not intervened in the nick of time. Here is a sample of Believe Like A Child…

  How It All Began

  Alessa awoke in the middle of the night to find her nightgown bunched up around her chest and her uncle’s fingers between her legs. Just seven years old, she was scared and confused by what her so-called protector was doing to her and pretended to still be asleep, hoping it would make him stop. Alessa didn’t know if what he was doing was right or wrong; all she knew was that it filled her with dread. Ten minutes later, she felt as if she were going to explode right there in her uncle’s bed from the terror welling up inside her. She pretended to be just waking up, and gathered the courage to look up at him with wide, terrified eyes.

  “Just lie back and be quiet,” he rasped. “I’ll make you feel really good.”

  Then he placed his thick, wet mouth, still stinking of cigars, over hers and continued to explore her undeveloped body until he had finally entered her. Alessa was young, but knew instinctively that no one would believe her, if she reported what her uncle had just done to her.

  Alessa was the youngest of four children and the only introvert in the group. While her family was loud and opinionated, she was quiet and timid. And because she was so different from the rest of them, she often found herself watching the chaos that ensued during family gatherings from the periphery, like an outsider who didn’t belong. She wondered why God had placed her with them. She couldn’t relate to her parents; nor did she share any of the qualities that characterized her siblings. In the constant arguing and heated debates that they had with each other, the seven-year-old found herself lost and forgotten.

  Alessa lacked all of the right characteristics for becoming anything important in life. Shy and unexceptional, with rarely a smile to light up her solemn expression, she led people to believe she was a miserable little child. Her lank hair and large, serious brown eyes made her look homely. Her small frame was always draped in threadbare hand-me-downs that were always too big for her and never seemed to sit on her the way they did on her two older sisters. The youngest in the family, she stood in stark contrast to her siblings—Anna, the firstborn, and Rosabella—and Anthony, the brother who came between the two. All three flaunted thick black hair, beautiful brown eyes and radiant olive complexions. From the time she was very young, Alessa had known she was not like the rest of them. The sheer force of their outgoing personalities appealed to all and overshadowed her meek demeanor. Simply put, Alessa was forgettable.

  Their maternal grandmother, who they called Grammy, lived with the family and since their mother, Caterina, was the youngest of fourteen siblings, they always had people visiting. Being an insignificant part of such a large family was unbearable for the solitary seven-year-old. She would listen to them argue with each other over the most trivial matters, as they spent hours sitting around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and passing judgment on people they knew, bitterly criticizing the way they lived their lives or raised their children. As each of these evenings drew to a close, someone would invariably stomp out of the house either in a fit of silent rage or screaming at another family member. The constant friction was traumatic for the little girl, a fact that no one else in her family sensed or understood. Turmoil was what her family thrived on, whereas all she wanted was to be in the company of people who would make her feel she belonged.

  Alessa found an ally in Grammy who, given the limited number of bedrooms in their house, shared one with her. The child loved sleeping with Grammy whose very presence instilled in her a sense of security amid the ominous darkness teeming with imaginary monsters that settled around her bed at night. Every evening, when it was time for bed, Alessa would snuggle up close, her small arm linked as tightly as a vice through her grandmother’s. As Alessa lay beside her, Grammy would go through her rosary beads and murmur her evening prayers, assuring her granddaughter that monsters didn’t exist.

  Alessa’s grandmother was a happy woman. Her cheerful face was framed by short, curly gray hair and her skin felt as soft and smooth as silk. The matriarch of the family, she was a gentle soul, loved and respected because of her kindness to others. She often invited neighbors and relatives to their home so she could provide them with a hot meal. Even though she wasn’t a wealthy woman, she believed in sharing what God had provided her. She would knit for hours on end so she could gift afghans in the winter to people she knew. Alessa would squeeze in beside her grandmother, as she sat knitting on her rocking chair, and often find herself dozing off, lulled by the sound of her infinitely soothing voice. In her company, Alessa always felt tranquil and completely at peace.

  The family was poor and enjoyed few luxuries. One of Alessa’s most memorable ones was the weeklong vacation she had taken with her grandmother in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as a five-year-old. At the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel where they stayed, the child had felt as though she were in heaven. Wearing the new bathing suit her grandmother had bought her, she had played on the beach, building sand castles and jumping the waves. She had loved eating in the elegant dining room where she could choose whatever delicacies she wanted from the dessert table. The waiters were nice to her and attentive to their every need. Grammy had let her order Shirley Temples that were served in tall glasses with crushed ice and topped with a cherry. The vacation in Atlantic City was Alessa’s only good childhood memory. She would relive that week a million times in her mind, as she grew older and found less and less to look forward to.

  When Alessa was six years old her grandmother died. Unable to imagine life without her, the child was devastated by her loss and felt there was no longer a place in her home that she could call safe. She felt bereft and abandoned without her ally, but soon found solace in a new one. It was her Uncle Danny who held and comforted her through her bereavement. She felt special and deeply loved because of the kindness he showered upon her during those dark days following Grammy’s death.

  Everyone loved her Uncle Danny. He was extremely popular, a family icon, the man with all the money, and everyone sought his company. He often told stories about the mafia and most people secretly believed he worked for them. But eventually, Alessa realized, they were just stories concocted to make everyone live in awe of him. Uncle Danny’s tales were so persuasive that most people who knew him ended up giving him far more respect tha
n he deserved. He wielded a lot of clout and everyone around him automatically bowed to his demands.

  Six long months after her grandmother had passed away and shortly after her Uncle Danny’s live-in girlfriend died tragically in a car accident, he moved in with Alessa’s family.

  “After all,” Caterina told her husband, “we need the money. We can’t keep this house going and raise the kids, if we don’t get some help.”

  It was she, in fact, who had invited her brother to move in with them. Danny promptly accepted the offer and before they knew it, he had taken over one of the four bedrooms in their house and, along with it, Alessa’s life.

  When her uncle first moved in, the little girl was excited at the prospect of having him there. Uncle Danny loved her more than anyone else in the family did and was almost a substitute for her grandmother. He had an air of confidence about him that made Alessa feel utterly safe when she was by his side. He was generous and loving with her and made her feel special, like she was the only person on earth.

  Grief-stricken and vulnerable and still fearful of the monsters that lurked in her imagination, she turned to Uncle Danny who found the perfect reason to console her. Shortly after he moved into her house, Alessa’s uncle invited her to sleep in his bed. Just as she had done with her grandmother, the child would link her arm through his as she lay waiting to fall asleep. For the next several months, Alessa slept peacefully next to her protector, unafraid that the monsters of the night would attack her—until the night he raped her.

  Alessa’s parents knew that their youngest child had been sleeping in Danny’s bed, but any concern they might have had over the situation was silenced when the income from their new tenant promptly alleviated their anxieties about how they would pay their bills. Caterina chose to believe her brother was in the mafia, a fact she took great pride in. She had a twisted view of reality and of the world in general. As far as she was concerned, the world revolved around this overgrown beast, her older brother. After all, he was paying her 750 dollars a month just to live in their house, a sum Alessa’s whole family lived off. Her parents didn’t go to work. Her father couldn’t, because he had been disabled in combat during the war; and her mother just wouldn’t, claiming she “needed” to stay home with the kids.