Birthdays of a Princess

by Helga Zeiner

  “I had to do something.” Melissa poured two cups of tea. “Tiara doesn’t understand that people will judge me on what they see on TV, and if I don’t speak up now, they’ll just make something up.”

  “But there’s nothing you can tell them. You don’t know anything. Nobody does.”

  Melissa rubbed her forehead with three fingers, keeping them there with bunched up eyes, as if that would help her focus.

  “Melissa, you don’t know why she did it, do you?”

  Melissa lowered her hand and opened her eyes again. “Are you questioning me?”

  Louise drank her tea.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she finally said. “I haven’t seen you for so long and I’ve only known Tiara for, what, barely three years.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “Melissa, please, don’t start again! What’s done is done. We need to look forward.”

  “That was exactly what I did when I gave Andy that interview. And by the way, it won’t be the last. He’ll be over later today again.”

  “Oh dear, don’t do that.”

  “And why not?”

  Melissa had no intentions to give another interview. She bit into a Danish.

  “Are you worried they’ll ask me where my mother was when I was all alone in a foreign country, with a new baby and no husband? Are you worried I might tell them the truth?”

  The Danish was gone, leaving drops of berry-blood on Melissa's chin. Louise picked up a paper napkin and handed it to her.

  “Don’t be silly. I came when you called me, didn’t I?”

  “You dragged us back here before I had a chance to think.”

  “You begged me to come. Have you forgotten that?” Louise frowned. “Besides, Tiara may have done something radical anyway. Don’t forget, her father was a soldier. It’s not in our family to be violent. His sister was a piece of work too—”

  “Don’t you dare mention Gracie!” Melissa bristled. “I told you, I never want to talk about her again.”

  Louise placed another Danish on Melissa’s plate. “I’m only saying this because your judgment isn’t always perfect. Look how you were leaning on that woman, how much you relied on her and trusted her. I’m sure what happened never would have happened if you hadn’t let her run your life.”

  “That’s not true! I stood my ground.”

  Melissa could see disbelief in Louise’s eyes.

  “I’m not the push-over you think,” she said. “I can tell you that.”

  And then she did tell Louise what she had done.

  It had been a sunny day in February with a mild 15 degrees—Celsius, she couldn’t bring herself to think in Fahrenheit, it still didn’t make sense to her—with a gentle breeze carrying blooming scent through the open windows.

  Little Tiara was practicing with Tony, and Gracie was out somewhere, meeting people she didn’t know and didn’t care for. Her sister-in-law was running with a strange crowd. They were polite in a haughty way, expensively dressed but with cheap tastes—white shirts with purple jackets, two-tone shoes, gold watches with sparkling rings around the dials. She had asked Gracie what her business with those people was, and Gracie had simply said: “None of yours!”

  On that particular day, while Gracie was having a meeting with her flimsy friends, Melissa was doing a real Canadian job of spring cleaning, the way her mother had taught her when she grew up. You move every obstacle and clean behind and under it! You turn the mattress from winter-side to summer-side.

  Melissa flipped the mattress in Gracie’s room and saw a green plastic bag on the coils. She balanced the mattress against the wall so she could turn it easily, took the bag and opened it. Curiosity, nothing else. If Gracie had private stuff in there, she shouldn’t make it so accessible.

  The bag held a tight, fat bunch of bills, rolled up and secured by a rubber band. She slipped the rubber band off and counted them. Forty-six-thousand dollars! Melissa gasped. So much money! They had plenty to eat, could travel to all the pageants, could pay their rent and all expenses, and she usually had a few hundred dollars left over every month (which she tucked away under her mattress for a rainy day), but they had no bank account, paid everything in cash—Gracie felt more comfortable that way. Melissa had never seen that much money in one heap.

  She was still shaking when Gracie came home. Deep inside, she knew the money belonged to Tiara. It couldn’t be from the pageants, but all the pictures must be bringing in a lot more than Gracie said.

  “You’re stealing from us,” she accused her. “From me, and from Tiara.”

  “Leave me alone,” Gracie said. “You don’t understand a goddamn thing. You really think all this is paid for by a few pictures? One day maybe, when she is famous, then it’ll be rolling in, but right now we’d be starving if I didn’t supplement our income.”

  “Supplement it doing what?”

  “See what I mean? God, you’re such an ignorant bitch. I’m doing business with my friends—this money is investment money! But if you think I’m short-changing you, just say the word!”

  She’d pushed too far, she saw that now.

  “I’m sorry,” Melissa said. “You know I don’t understand all that stuff. Cleaning up, that’s all I’m good for around here.”

  Gracie broke into a big forgiving tease-grin. “You’re a pretty good cook too. Even if your Chili tastes like Canadian socks.”

  They laughed together, but from that day on a tinge of suspicion had crept between them.

  “…and I never trusted her after that fight. I knew she cheated.”

  “Whatever,” Louise said. “But you’re walking on very thin ice if you give interviews. One tiny crack and you land in cold water, believe me. It’s best if we both keep our mouths shut about what happened down there. No need to dwell on stolen money or drugs or stuff like that. That’ll help Tiara more than anything. She’s underage; they’ll be lenient with her. But if the press or the police dig into her past and into your past, it’ll only make matters worse.”

  “A past that could’ve been avoided.” Melissa was not aware that she had eaten the second Danish pastry. “If for once you’d have acted like a mother.”

  Louise sighed. “You shouldn’t eat so many sweet things.”

  Melissa picked up a third Danish and smiled at her. Small victories.

  Chapter 27

  Josh had finally replied. Harding forwarded the email right away to Macintosh.

  “I believe I found your Tiara Rodriguez,” the email read. “She was registered for a Child Beauty Pageant in 2003. She won the Miss Texas Princess title, that’s how I found her. I ran her name through the Google search engine, and Tia Rodriguez came up as the winner of this contest. Registered under this name, but crowned as Princess Tia. She was five then, so the age should be about right. I have attached the winner’s picture. Have a look, she might be your alleged suspect—if she still looks remotely like that, which I doubt, lol.”

  Macintosh shook his head. A Google search? Why hadn’t he thought of that? The future was overtaking him, that’s why. Well, he only needed to get through the next few months, then Harding could shine. He was still young enough to enjoy the learning process.

  Macintosh looked at the attachment banner of Josh’s email titled Princess Tia, relishing the moment when he would open it and see what Josh had gifted them.

  One click, and there she was. A little girl, head proportionally larger than her body, reminding Macintosh of the famous Disney directive on how to draw proportions: Comparatively larger heads appeal to our inborn desire to protect the weaker members of our species. That way the characters become instantly more lovable.

  He had to admit, it worked.

  The girl was pretty. Big round face with a mass of curly dark hair, wide eyes, dark and shiny, with long lashes. The smile was a bit timid, which increased her loveliness. But there was something disturbing about it. She wore a midnight blue velvet dress with sparkling rhinestones along a low neck li
ne. An evening dress, made for a grown woman with cleavage. Her eyes were heavy with matching blue eye shadow, her lips were bright red, and she wore dangling earrings. She looked like a very beautiful miniature adult.

  Harding walked over to his partner’s desk. “Pete, I just sent you a picture. Did you get it?”

  Macintosh’s eyes were still glued to the screen. “I’ll be damned.”

  “I know. It’s a little freaky.”

  “And that’s an official…what?”

  “Child beauty pageant winner!”

  “I’ll be damned again!”

  “Well, at least we know she was a child model of sorts, just like her mother said.”

  “Like hell!” Macintosh fumed. “Call the mother and tell her to get her fat ass over here, pronto. She withheld important information, and I don’t like that one little bit.”

  Harding nodded.

  “I was already pissed off with her, but this here takes the cake. How can anybody in their right mind dress up a child like this?” Finally Macintosh pressed a key and made the picture disappear.

  “And get hold of the shrink—what’s his name, Dr. Eaton? Ask him if we can have a word with him. We need some help here if we’re supposed to deal with this kind of shit.”

  He downloaded the picture on to his case file and renamed it the Princess file.

  Chapter 28

  It seems my journal is becoming my lifeline. While I’m awake, half awake and not awake, I think what I will write down. On the bike, my mind races with the turn of the pedals. When I’m studying the jail house curriculum, it lingers between sentences I read or equations I calculate. When I’m in the shower, eating breakfast, cleaning my cell, it sits on my shoulder and whispers in my ear. When I’m falling asleep, it threatens to turn into nightmares to keep me awake.

  My whole life is devoted to trying to remember my whole life. Honestly, that’s one hell of a job. Just now, I’m going over my notes and realize I haven’t even mentioned my seventh birthday. Here I am already in the year leading to my eighth. Well, it couldn’t have been very memorable, my

  No-Birthday-Year.

  What happened that year? I could think and talk, so I should remember at least parts of the domestic life Gracie, Mom and I had settled into.

  Gracie was the center of our world—everything revolved around her. Mom was supposed to look after my physical needs and homeschool me. She had to make sure I wouldn’t adapt the more colloquial expressions Gracie or The Stick used, the only Texans I was close to.

  Mom made me recite long passages from some of her library reading material, in preparation for my future beauty queen career. It would be an advantage, she said, when the movie moguls wanted to make an actress out of me. I would be able to memorize scripts much faster, and they would like that.

  Gracie did whatever was necessary to make me into a big star, that’s how much she loved me. I was her girl. She kept telling me how proud she was of me.

  I never complained, although I didn’t like a lot of the things Gracie made me do. Like the endless make-up sessions! When I was seven, she began to paste false eyelashes on my lids. Or experiment with hair-pieces, she pinned them in my hair nearly every day before my dancing lessons. She parted my real hair, pulled a section tight over my skull and used long clips to fasten the piece. Sometimes I cried because it hurt too much, then she loosened the clips a bit. Most times I endured it and finished the dance lesson with a headache. Yes, this definitely started with seven, and, just like the lashes, it became a procedure I had to endure.

  One of the first things I did when I came here was chop off my hair. I wear it really short now, no more than an inch, and I don’t wear make-up these days, none whatsoever. Can’t stand the feel of cream or paint on my skin.

  What did Mom do when she didn’t homeschool me? No idea. She was in charge of taking my soiled bed-sheets away, so I guess she handled all the cleaning.

  Gracie was noisy and opinionated and was everywhere at the same time, while Mom acted like a servant to both of us. Gracie told me countless times how beautiful and special I was. I was her whole world, her reason for being, Gracie said often. And if I ever stopped being good, horrible things would happen to us. The angels would turn into devils and punish us all. I never questioned that possibility when I was seven. Every word Gracie directed towards me, be it praise or reproach, counsel or condemnation, was axiomatic. My childhood baggage was the knowledge that I held the power to destroy my two grown-ups. Gracie had handed me that power, together with its imbedded guilt.

  That made me worried and angry all at the same time, just like I am now. I must ask dove-doc if it’s possible to love someone and want to hurt them at the same time.

  I do, today. I don’t want to wait until he reads about it.

  “Listen, doc, I’ve got a question.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “When I was young I remember being worried that something bad would happen to my mother and my aunt.”

  I almost don’t tell him the next part, but so far he’s never been judgmental.

  “I had fantasies of Mom slipping and falling down the stairs,” I say, “and Gracie being run over by a car. It felt good. Yet at the same time I was terrified it would really happen and I’d be all alone.”

  Psycho-doc is evasive, which is peculiar. Normally he is straightforward to a fault.

  “I would need to evaluate this more in depth, to figure out where the feeling originated.” What he knows so far, he says, is not enough to fully understand me. It’s a trap of course, he is trying to make me talk or hand over more journal pages.

  “There isn’t much more to understand,” I say. “I had a fairly normal childhood and it isn’t their fault I burnt a fuse.”

  “What about the other people in your life?” he asks, harmless as a ton of bricks.

  “What other people?”

  “No friends?”

  I shake my head.

  He rubs his eyes underneath his glasses. “Hmm.”

  “I didn’t need friends.”

  He stops rubbing. “What about the other kids at those pageants?”

  “What about them?” I can’t figure out where he’s going with this, which makes me edgy.

  “Didn’t they have playgroups where the kids could play together while they were waiting until it was time for their performance?”

  I laugh. “Jeez, you’re funny. I would never have played with any of them. And they not with me.”

  “Why not?”

  He can’t be that stupid. He’s trying to make me lose my cool. I collect myself again, put on my best Gracie imitation.

  “You can never trust any of those children. They want the Grand Supreme crown real bad and they’ll do anything to get it. They, and their mothers, the lot of them. They’re your enemies. Do you understand, Doctor Psycho, those kids were my enemies, they’d have stopped at nothing to hurt me.”

  He smiles. “Do you realize you never call me by my name? You know it is Dr. Stanley Eaton, and by the way, you have my permission to call me Stanley if it makes it easier for you, but you don’t seem to be able to address me by my name. Same with all the others who are not your direct family. It’s ‘the photographer friend’ or ‘the Sponsor’ or ‘The Stick’, none of those people seem to have names.”

  And then he leaves again. I’m stew in a slow cooker. The anger doesn’t go away, and now I have to deal with a troubling question on top of it: Why don’t they have names?

  For three days I have not moved from my cot. My anger rotates in a room full of balloons. When I try to grasp one with a firm grip, it bursts. Every eff-ing time. When I don’t touch them, they circumfluent, bounce off my existing anger, disturbing and distracting me. I don’t want that. I want to concentrate on one feeling only.

  The Anger.

  It started when I was seven. The anger I developed at that age was nothing like the childish tantrums I had thrown until then. It was nothing outward. All the anger went inward and set
tled like mold, greenish-black speckles on the mortar that held the bricks of my seven year old wall together. My wall was still shaky. Every now and then my fearless self peeped over it and demanded to change the world. But what can a seven year old do?

  Once I rebelled openly—oh, look at this, I just got hold of one of those elusive balloons, a bright orange one. It’s there, in front of me, and it didn’t burst. I must be careful now, let the air out ever so gently—there it is, I can see myself, in the photo studio. There is Gracie, always Gracie. Then there is her photographer friend and another, one that takes over when Gracie leaves me. Who is it? The Stick? No … it’s not The Stick … is it? It’s somebody clouded in a haze … I can’t make it out … it’s nothing but a purple shadow, faceless and voiceless.

  The photographer friend says Gracie should go now. I don’t want her to, but she always does. It always feels wrong, with Gracie not being there, fussing over me and explaining why I have to do what I have to do.

  I hold the nozzle of the balloon between my fingers and make sure the air escapes very slowly. I need to go with the flow, don’t disturb me now.

  The Purple Shadow tries to take my panties off. It has happened before, but this time, I really don’t want to. I wriggle and pout. When that doesn’t help, I rebel openly.

  “No! No! Leave me alone! I won’t! I don’t want to!” I want Gracie back.

  Gracie. GracieGracieGracie.

  The photographer friend rolls his eyes and goes on about me being a silly little girl, and then he tells the Purple Shadow to go and get Gracie. Gracie comes back and says I must do it there is nothing to it and it’ll be over quickly and I mustn’t be a silly little girl, all in one breathless sentence.

  I go on my toes and peek over the wall surrounding me. I start yelling I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to…