Stand Alone

by P. D. Workman

  “You remember what?” he scoffed. “Being kidnapped? As a baby?”

  “I remember  … I had a different mother,” Justine lied frantically, “and a sister. And a dog. I didn’t live here, I lived somewhere else. And Em wasn’t my mother, I had a different mother. Please!” she begged.

  “You just remembered this all now?” Mr. Brooks questioned, shaking his head. “You’re just trying to get attention. If you really do remember something, it’s probably somebody that babysat you, or a cousin’s house, or something like that. But I think you’re just making the whole thing up. Now take your pictures,” he shoved them at her again, “and go.”

  Justine picked the pictures up carefully, as if they were fragile and might crumble to dust at her feet. She couldn’t understand why no one would believe her. She was Katie. Or Monica. Or at least, somebody other than Justine. She hadn’t been born Justine. It was a name she’d had thrust upon her when she was taken. Ripped from her family. Stolen from everything that she knew up until then.

  “Don’t do this to me,” she pleaded. “Please help me. Believe me.”

  “Sorry. If you want to report a kidnapping, you go to the police. But I don’t think that they’ll believe you any more than I do.”

  Justine nodded, knowing that it was true. She had tried it before. They would just laugh at her. Em had all the proper documentation. She’d constructed too good of a blind. No one could see past it. No one but Justine herself.

  “Good bye, Miss Bywater.”

  She stood up slowly, and walked out.

  That night, Justine thoughtfully scraped the dishes and loaded the dishwasher, while Em worked on some papers she had brought home from the office.

  “Do you remember when I was a baby?” Justine questioned, careful not to show too much interest.

  “When you were a baby?” Em’s face glowed. “Of course I remember when you were a baby.” She smiled at the memory, “You were such a good baby.”

  There was one clue that Em was lying. Justine doubted that she had ever been a good anything. She would have been more reassured if Em had rolled her eyes and complained about what a demanding baby Justine was.

  “Really?” she questioned. “I wasn’t colicky or anything?”

  “No. You were one of those babies who is so sweet  … you worry that they’re not meant to be on earth for long.”

  “What do you mean?” Justine questioned, pausing in her chores and looking at Em with a frown.

  “You were so perfect  … I always worried that you would die as a baby. That you were too perfect to stay long, and you would go back to heaven.”

  Justine shuddered.

  “So I did everything right? I slept through the night, and ate good and all?”

  “Well, there were rough times, of course. Like with any baby. I mean, they’re not machines, are they? But you were sleeping through the night within a few weeks. You didn’t have any allergies or anything, and nursed well. Even before you slept through the night, I just had to roll over, and nurse you, and put you back to bed. You didn’t stay up, I didn’t have to walk you or anything. Sure, you were crabby teething  … but even then you slept well, so I knew that I would have a break at the end of the day, and that made it more bearable. You were very intelligent, inquisitive.”

  “What were my first words?”

  “Mom, and please.”

  “Please?” Justine repeated.

  “Please, when you wanted something. You would point and say please. Or when I was getting your dinner ready, you would clap your hands and chant ‘please, please, please’!”

  Justine shook her head at this. The baby Em remembered couldn’t have sounded much more different than Justine felt she must have been as a baby. Slept well, ate well, loved her mommy and was polite? Not her. How could she go from ‘mom’ and ‘please’ to rebelling against Em so totally?

  “When did I get sick?” she questioned.

  “Oh  …” Em’s face darkened at the memory. She rubbed at the deep crease that appeared between her eyebrows. “You were about two, I guess. You were tired, pale  … you started throwing up, and I couldn’t stop it  … After a couple of days, you were so thin, and your eyes sunken. I was scared to death. I took you to the hospital, and they said it was a good thing that I got you in when I did. You were so dehydrated that you could have died.”

  “Wow,” Justine said. “So what did I have? It was just the flu?”

  “They went through a lot of different things  … They thought it might have been something you had eaten, or a virus, food poisoning… After a while they thought that maybe it was some unknown genetic thing, or a metabolic disorder or something. You were in and out of the hospital a lot, they couldn’t figure it out.”

  “And then?” Justine questioned.

  Em just looked at her blankly.

  “And then what?”

  “And then I just got better? Or a doctor figured it out? Or what?”

  Em shrugged.

  “You outgrew it, I guess,” she said simply. “You got better.”

  “Just like that.”

  Em nodded.

  “They never figured out what it was?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Well, what if it comes back or something? You don’t know what caused it?” Justine questioned.

  “Kids go through stuff sometimes. It must have just been a bug.”

  Justine pondered this, closing the dishwasher and turning it on.

  “And what happened after that? Was I still a good, happy baby?”

  Em pretended to be focused on her papers. Justine waited for her to answer.

  “Was I a good baby after that?” she demanded again, more loudly.

  Em looked at her.

  “Oh. I didn’t hear you the first time. Yes, I guess.”

  “I was still good after that. Still a happy, perfect baby?”

  “Well, no baby is perfect. You were a very sweet little girl. You liked to help me out and play games, and you started talking more.” Em shrugged. “It was nice.”

  Justine sat down at the dining room table where Em’s papers were spread out.

  “So when did I change?” she questioned, staring in Em’s eyes aggressively. “When did I start acting up? Giving you grief?”

  “Justine  …”

  “What? You tell me how much you hate the way that I act all the time. So tell me. When did I start? When did I quit being a good girl, and start acting like I do?”

  “I don’t know,” Em said, shutting Justine out and looking down at the work again. She scribbled something down, whispering to herself as if she was trying to work through a difficult problem. All signs that Justine was supposed to quit hovering over her asking her questions she didn’t want to answer, and go upstairs or do something else. Eventually, after a long period of silence, Em looked up again. “I don’t know when you started acting differently. Around then, I guess. Dr. Morton says that you must have un-bonded with me during that time. Before that, you were very attached. We did everything together. But then when you were sick  … when you had to spend so much time in the hospital, that must have traumatized you. Made you withdraw. And we never got that bond back again.”

  Em gazed at her. Justine shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t like the focus being turned back to her. But if she wanted to get answers, she had to be persistent, to find out the truth about what had really happened to her. Who she really was.

  “Maybe I got switched at the hospital,” she suggested. “Maybe you didn’t go home with the same baby that you took to the hospital.”

  “Well, it certainly felt that way,” Em exclaimed, and laughed. “But that’s not the way it works. It isn’t like you were a newborn baby that I had never seen before, or that looked like all of the other newborn babies. You were older, and I’d been taking care of you for two years. I knew what you looked like. You knew me. No one could just switch you without me knowing the
difference.” Em laughed again. “What a funny idea.”

  “Maybe I got brain damage,” Justine suggested. “That can happen when you have a high fever, right? Did I have a high fever? Is that what you think happened?”

  “I don’t know what happened, Just. It must be like Dr. Morton says. Because you weren’t born that way, and the changes came soon after you came back from the hospital.” Em sighed deeply. “We tried everything to get you to bond with me again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Holding therapy, play therapy, regression  … everything that we could think of. Dr. Morton was up on all of the latest methods, but they didn’t really seem to help you. You just got mad. Especially with the holding therapy. The child is supposed to become more compliant, to grow to like the holding  … but not you. You were furious. You would rage the whole time I was holding you. Until I either let you go, or you fell asleep, exhausted. But you never learned to like cuddling, like they said you would. It was pretty tough. I hated doing it.”

  “What’s regression?” Justine asked, fascinated. She didn’t know if she could really remember the holding therapy or not, but she could picture it vividly. How it felt to have someone else’s will imposed on you. The discomfort of being squeezed in Em’s arms. The fury at not being able to get away, of being held for hours on end, unable to escape. Her throat closed just thinking about it.

  “Regression  … I guess it’s sort of like pretending that you were a baby again, to try to re-create that bond. I would put you in a diaper or pajamas. Feed you from a bottle. Play baby games with you.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  Em nodded.

  “Much better than the holding therapy, anyway. It was sort of fun, acting it all out again. But you wouldn’t cooperate.”

  Em frowned at the memory. Justine couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t have taken part in a make-believe game. It sounded okay to her.

  “Why not?” she questioned. “What did I do?”

  “You would never be baby Justine. You always said that you were somebody else.”

  A wave of heat went over Justine, making her gasp with the intensity of it. Em looked up at her curiously, then back down at her work.

  “Somebody else?” Justine repeated. “Who was I?”

  “I don’t remember. There were other names that you used. You would never be baby Justine. You were so willful. Dr. Morton thought it was quite curious that you would happily play at being a baby, but refuse to be my baby. Like you somehow found the ‘loophole’ in the exercise. You’ve always loved to act things out, and I thought that regression would be the ticket. The way to get you back.” She looked at Justine. “But, no.”

  It all just verified to Justine that she was not who Em said she was. Em was lying. All of the stories about Justine were lies. Somehow Em had a forged birth certificate, with Justine’s name on it, to prove to everyone that Justine was just being a big, lying, dramatic fraud when she claimed that she was kidnapped. She had her ‘proof’ that Justine was just making things up. Something that was enough to convince the authorities that there was nothing further to look at. But Justine knew, and she wasn’t going to be fooled. Somehow she would find out the whole truth, and prove it to everyone, and they would all see how wrong they had been about her.

  She’d heard the kids laughing about her at lunch. Whispering and making fun of her behind her back, about how she pretended that she was someone else. About how sad and sick and what a freak she was. Wouldn’t they be surprised when they knew the truth? They would all have to admit that she was who she said she was. That she had known all along and they hadn’t believed her. That they had gone around thinking that she was schizophrenic or had multiple personalities or something, and she was really just as sane as any of them, if not more. If any of them had gone through what Justine had gone through  … Justine shook her head grimly. They would not have survived. They would have lost themselves. Justine was stronger than any of them. She had always retained who she was, no matter what tortures Em and the good doctor dreamed up. She was kind of like a prisoner of war, struggling to preserve the truth and a sense of herself through long years of captivity.

  “Are you done your homework?” Em questioned without looking up.

  Justine scratched her nose.

  “I don’t have any homework today.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe you should do some studying anyway.”

  “I didn’t bring anything home with me.”

  “Why not? You know you’re supposed to study for an hour even if you don’t have any homework.”

  Justine shrugged.

  “I had other things on my mind.”

  “Your priority should be school,” Em chided. Then she shook her head, changing her mind and sighing. “No, why don’t we do something together? We haven’t really had any fun together for a long time. You want to play a game?”

  “No,” Justine protested immediately, getting up from the table and retreating. “I don’t want to play any stupid game. I’m going up to my room.” Fraternizing with the enemy. Not a good thing. It was just another ploy to subvert who she really was. To smother her.

  “Don’t run away! Come on. What do you want to do together? Go shopping?” Em suggested.

  “I don’t shop with you,” Justine snapped. “You buy stupid old-peoples clothes.”

  “You seemed to think it was good enough earlier. Did you just not have any clean laundry?”

  “I just wanted to show you how stupid it really looked. Didn’t work, I guess.”

  “I actually thought you looked pretty cute in it. Didn’t you? We don’t have to look at old peoples clothes, though. You can choose where we go.”

  “No,” Justine reiterated. “I don’t want to do anything with you. I’ll go study.”

  She had barely been settled for ten minutes when there was a knock on the door, and Justine took out one of her ear buds, scowling in irritation.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  “It’s just me,” Em said, opening the door tentatively. As if there was somebody else it could have been.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Em displayed a tray of fruit.

  “I thought  … you might like a snack  …”

  “We just had supper,” Justine pointed out.

  Em put it on the vanity for her.

  “I’ll just leave it here. You might feel peckish later.”

  “What I want is real food. You know, pizza, burgers, KD. Not just fruits and vegetables.”

  “You like fruit,” Em protested, putting her hands out in a helpless shrug.

  Justine snorted.

  “Just leave it there, then,” she snapped.

  Em didn’t leave. Justine glared at her.

  “I’m busy,” she pointed out.

  “Can’t we spend some time together? I could take you out to a movie or something.”

  “It’s a school night. I can’t be up late,” Justine used Em’s own rules against her.

  “Honey,” Em came over to Justine’s side and put her arm tentatively around her. “I just wanted to let you know  … how much I love you. I know we don’t always see eye to eye, and it hasn’t been easy getting here, but I still love you. You’re my daughter, and you’re growing into a lovely young woman. I’m very proud—”

  “Oh, shut off the melodrama, will you?” Justine interrupted, rolling her eyes, “Leave me alone.”

  “Sweetheart  …”

  Em stroked her hair. Justine pulled back, slapping her hand away.

  “Don’t bug me! Just get out of my room and leave me alone!”

  “I want you to know that even though we have been through a rough time  …”

  “Yeah, yeah. Most of the time you can’t stand having me around, but tonight you’re feeling all touchy-feely. Why don’t you go get your work done? I thought you brought a bunch of stuff home from the office that had to be done?”

 
Em sighed, nodding.

  “All right,” she agreed finally, “I’ll go work on it. If you change your mind and want to do something together  … even just watching a TV show together or something, just come and get me.”

  Justine put her ear bud back in and turned her music up loud.

  Justine had fallen asleep on her bed, listening to her music. She woke up with a start hours later. She looked around, disoriented and in a panic. Something was wrong. She was scared, but she didn’t know why. The room was pitch black. The blinds blocked out all of the light from the street. Justine realized suddenly that her night light was out.

  “Em!” she yelled. “Em, come here!”

  There was no reply. After a few moments of silence, she screamed louder.

  “Em! Em, wake up! Come here!”

  There was a noise in response, and Justine waited impatiently. Her heart pounded in her ears.

  “Em!”

  “I’m coming, Justine.” Em hovered in the doorway. “What is it? Are you sick?”

  “My night light is off.”

  Em sighed tiredly.

  “Justine, you’re a big girl. Go back to sleep.”

  “I can’t go back to sleep with the light off. You have to fix it!”

  Justine was shaking, shivering. Em shuffled over to the night light and flipped the switch back and forth.

  “It’s burned out,” she said.

  “Put a new bulb in,” Justine told her.

  “I’m tired, Justine. It can wait until tomorrow. You just go back to sleep. You’re not two years old.”

  “No, I can’t sleep without it,” Justine pleaded. “If you won’t fix it, I’m just going to get up now.”

  “Just go back to sleep,” Em insisted, her voice ringing with anger. “I don’t need this tonight, Justine. Go to sleep.”

  Justine swallowed. She needed the light. She couldn’t sleep without it. She threw back her covers, sitting up and swinging her feet over the edge.

  “No, stay put,” Em told her quickly. “Don’t get up. Stay in bed.”