Birthdays of a Princess

by Helga Zeiner

  “How much time have I got?” Meaning how much longer before a judge slams down his hammer on my life.

  Stanley looks at me through clean glasses. “As much as I say. To a point.”

  I hadn’t noticed until now that his eyes are green like a muddy lake. Dive in if you dare.

  “Good.”

  He studies his notes.

  “You just told me your mom accused your aunt Gracie that she and ‘them’ made money. Who are ‘they’? I thought there was only one sponsor?”

  Now that’s a good question for a change. Not having any written notes in front of me, I study the fly on the wall. I take my time, and he lets me.

  “The people close to the sponsor, I guess. The ones that sold all the art pictures Gracie’s photographer friend took of me.”

  Stanley crosses his legs, very elegantly, and smiles at me to prove he’s got all the time in the world. We both wait.

  Suddenly, I start telling him a story I had long forgotten—or had never been aware of until now.

  Right after my disastrous loss at the Mcallen Holiday Inn, my sponsor comes to the studio. Gracie has just finished doing me up, and I’m sitting on a chair, trying not to move. To stop my fidgeting, Gracie gives me something to drink. She calls it dream-juice and says, it will calm me down. My hair is hardened by hairspray, my heavy eyelashes darken my vision. When I blink, I can see them moving up and down. Up and down, up and down. I try to blink the sponsor away, but she comes closer. I don’t like her. She always talks to Gracie as if I’m not there.

  “We need to do something about her,” she says in a husky voice while standing in front of me, inspecting me. “Look at her. She’s growing out of it. She doesn’t look like a slutty kid any more, she looks like a teenage slut now.” She takes my face in her hand, lifts it up, turns it left and right. “She’s still pretty.”

  Gracie stares at her. “Tony’s working with her again. She’ll win the next one, I promise.”

  The sponsor drops my face.

  “And for how long? Another year, maybe two?”

  “But the pageants are important. Now more than ever.”

  “Sure. If she wins in spectacular fashion. There’s a lot of competition out there. She needs to be a celebrity. I can’t market her as the fabulous Princess Tia if she isn’t a winner, so you better make sure she does. Her pictures won’t be worth a dime if she’s just your girl next door.”

  “That was a one-time slip.” Gracie sounds unusually apologetic. “It won’t happen again.”

  “It better not. If this becomes a habit, and quite frankly, that’s what I expect, we won’t waste any more money on grooming her.”

  Gracie and the sponsor walk away, I can’t hear what they discuss. I’ve already forgotten the sponsor’s face, but not her words. Gracie looks very worried when she comes back, but I feel amazingly good. Kind of mellow, and at the same time clever—like a cat basking in the sun. If I don’t win, they won’t market Princess Tia any longer, isn’t that what the sponsor had said? No more pageants, no more photos. No more. That’s exactly what I want.

  And that’s exactly what Princess Tia did. Things went wrong for me from that moment on. I forgot a dance step or a line to recite. Walking up the stage, I smeared my mascara or messed up my hair. There were so many ways to lose.

  When I’m telling Stanley about my silent resistance, he asks me how I felt about it. Good, of course, really good. By the end of that year, when my tenth birthday came up, Gracie informed me that my career as a beauty pageant queen had come to an end. She wouldn’t enter me into another contest. The Stick—Tony—had also lost. He was not needed any more.

  Mom was crying, telling Gracie it was all her fault. If she would only have kept Tony on while there had been no pageants, if she hadn’t been so miserly, I would have won. She was sniffling like a toddler denied her favorite toy. Gracie blew up and called her everything under the sun. By now I knew quite a few of those words, none of them were particularly flattering. Most had to do with Mom ballooning out of proportion.

  I was as happy as a button. I was doing a little jig until Gracie got mad at me too.

  “I’ll make you sorry for being so goddamn clever. From now on it’s a lot more photo sessions for you, and you better not complain about it.”

  Chapter 36

  It had been another awful night. As soon as Melissa went to bed, it seemed her problems became larger and more pressing. So many hours spent trying to get them into perspective turned every “could be” into a “would be”. She hated those nights. Tossing and turning and worrying about things she could not change or influence. Like what the police would think once they found out that Tiara had disappeared for days and weeks at a time, doing god-knows-what on the streets of Vancouver.

  Before she left the house in the morning she called her mother.

  Louise came up with her usual quick patch-up solutions.

  “Tell them that Tiara stayed with me,” she said.

  “But what if they ask Tiara?”

  “Who cares, nobody will listen to her.”

  Melissa didn’t buy into it. “What about your neighbors? Won’t they say they’ve never seen her?”

  “Don’t be silly, the police won’t bother them.”

  “They’ll want to know about my home schooling her.”

  “Why on earth did you bring that up in the first place?”

  “I had to say something.”

  “A lie by an overprotective mother,” Louise said. “Just stick with that.”

  Now she was back at work—a relief after the past few weeks—standing idly at the cash register, wondering where had her daughter been the past three years when she hadn’t been in the flat? Fact was, Tiara had come and gone as she pleased.

  Melissa hadn’t had the strength to stand up to her. My God, all those dramas back then. Her heart broken, the upheaval of leaving her home, the embarrassment of having to crawl back under mother’s apron, even the change from the hot and dry Texas weather to the rain and coldness of Vancouver. It robbed her of the last bit of energy. How could she be expected to put this aside and supervise the movements of a head-strong teenager? That’s why so many parents are desperate. There’s no mechanism to control kids at that age, once they decide to do their own thing. Nothing in the world will stop them, short of tying them up.

  When exactly had this whole mess started? When did Tiara change and slip away?

  Melissa hadn’t caught on for quite some time and when she noticed, it was too late. Tiara didn’t listen, didn’t tidy her room, didn’t do her chores, in fact, she hardly ever spoke. Always sulking. And the way she’d scratch at her skin. Gracie was furious when she noticed it the first time.

  Tiara must have been about eleven, sitting on the porch swing Melissa didn’t dare use anymore for fear of breaking the chains. She’d been scratching her arm with a broken branch, blood dripping onto the wooden planks. When Gracie came home she went into a God-almighty rage.

  “How can you let her do that?” she yelled on top of her voice. At her, as if it was her doing. She even raised her arm and Melissa took a step back. When Gracie noticed, she lowered her arm again but raved on. “What kind of mother are you? Don’t you have a speck of feeling for your daughter? Letting the poor girl suffer like that!”

  With that she folded Tiara into her arms and walked into the house with her, comforting her with the usual. “My poor little mija” shooing sounds that Melissa had heard a million times. She probably bad-mouthed her once they were out of earshot. Gracie put the blame on her for everything that had to do with Tiara. In fact, with everything, period.

  It wasn’t right for Gracie to treat her like this. But it also wasn’t right for Tony to do what he’d done. It wasn’t right for Mike to die and leave her in Gracie’s care. Nothing was right in the world, then or now.

  Melissa decided not to care anymore. Nobody had ever cared for her. Mike had left her, Louise had abandoned her. As much as she wanted to be accep
ted as a good mother, she was sure her daughter didn’t give a damn. Tiara still refused to see her. She had abandoned her mother three years ago, not the other way around.

  A customer was approaching the register, loading her selection on the conveyor belt. Melissa fake-smiled at her and picked up the first item to scan. She would carry on living and working and not caring any more.

  Chapter 37

  “I’m going to see Tiara,” Macintosh said to Harding, while stuffing a file into his briefcase. “On my way home.”

  His partner came toward him with open arms, grinning sheepishly. “You’re my man!”

  “Don’t even think about it.” Macintosh took a step back in mock horror. “What will the others think?”

  Some of the detectives still on duty laughed.

  “Hey Mac,” one of them yelled from a corner of the room, “soon you two won’t have to pretend anymore.”

  “Piss off,” Macintosh said. “You’re just jealous.”

  He left the room, but Harding was by his side before he reached the elevator.

  “Are you gonna ask about the aunt?”

  “Don’t know yet. It’s tricky. We know too little and I don’t want to put words into her mouth. I’ll improvise.”

  “Do you want me to come along?”

  The lift arrived. Macintosh stepped in and pressed a button. “No need. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  “You better,” Harding said when the doors closed.

  Tiara looked pale and exhausted. Her cheeks were abnormally sunken for a girl her age. Young people didn’t usually show the same signs of stress as adults did. He couldn’t help but immediately worry.

  “Are you getting enough to eat in here?” he asked.

  There it was again, the giggle coming from within.

  “Don’t you know, they fatten me up for the big slaughter.”

  When he didn’t reply, she said: “My trial.”

  “It doesn’t have to be one. I wish you’d give me something to work with.” When she got ready to object, he stopped her. “I know, I know. You don’t remember. But you’re talking to the shrink, so there must be something. About you’re background, your upbringing. Anything you two talk about might give me a lead.”

  Now her drawn face brightened. “Can I tell my psycho-doc that you’re fishing? Shouldn’t he be here if you do?”

  “Don’t get smart on me. You can ask for a lawyer to be present, but my understanding is you don’t want one.”

  “No, I don’t. And I didn’t want to talk to you either, but they forced me to come her.”

  “I’m not forcing you to say anything. But you are smart. You know I’m here because I want to help you.”

  She considered this for a while, then she nodded.

  “You’re smart too. So you’ll understand that although I might try to figure things out while talking to the doc, there is no way I can put it in perspective yet. Which means, whatever I say won’t give you the facts you need. I’m doing talk-therapy with him. Loads of confusing stuff that’s messing with my brain. What are you gonna do with that? Trust me, it’s all in shambles up there.” With this she knocked on her left temple. “One gigantic mess.”

  “That’s too bad,” Macintosh said. “I’ve been talking to your mother—“

  As soon as he mentioned her mother, Tiara’s face drained again and he thought she might faint. He moved forward to steady her.

  “Please don’t touch me.”

  “Sorry.”

  They sat quietly for a while.

  “Can we just talk?” Tiara finally asked.

  “Sure. What do you want to talk about?”

  “You.”

  That surprised him so much that he had to laugh now.

  “About an old man like me? Why’s that?”

  She grimaced, eyes wide, eye-brows up, looking like a miniature clown.

  “It gets so boring talking about me all the time. And when Stanley and I aren’t talking, I’m thinking about me. I could do with a little break from this ego-routine.”

  “There isn’t much to tell about me. I was married and my wife is dead, I was a father and my daughter is dead, I was a policeman all my life but soon I won’t be any more. That’s about it.”

  “Shit,” she said. “And I thought it sucks to focus on me.”

  Now they both laughed.

  “My daughter,” Macintosh said, “she had a laugh just like you.” He got serious again. “Wish I’d spent more time at home. But the office always came first.”

  Tiara seemed to understand. “What will you do when you’re not a policeman anymore?”

  “I got a place up north. It’s nice there, quiet. My wife and I … well, I guess it’s just me now, so I’ll make the best of it.”

  She nodded. “I guess it’s nice to have a place where nobody bothers you.”

  “Tell you what,” he said on the spur of the moment. “When you get out of here, you come visit. I can take you on a hunt.”

  She lowered her eyes.

  “I mean, you don’t have to hunt,” he said. “A lot of people don’t like that.”

  “No, I’d like that,” she said slowly. “Really, I would. But you might be dead by the time I get out.”

  For the first time in seven years a belly laugh burst out of him. It shattered the hard crust of residue pain inside him into a million pieces. They were all still there, would never leave, but now that they were broken up, they could let other emotions in. And out.

  “I’ll make sure I live a long and healthy life,” he said, once he got his breath again.

  “You should.” A shadow crossed her face. “Not just for me. You’re a nice man. You deserve better.”

  After that, they kept each other company, comfortable in the silent admission of their mutual misery.

  Chapter 38

  No more birthdays

  God, this is painful. All this mysoul-searching, this ridiculous scraping and scratching at the bottom of my being-bowl, trying to loosen the occasional burnt memory-bit enough to wash it out. What comes to the surface is practically useless.

  I have gone over the first ten years of my life again and again, trying to sneak into my eleventh year. I know Stanley is coming today, and with all that wonderful progress we have made, he will expect more than what I have to give.

  Since I’ve been opening up to Stanley, I have developed a writer’s block. The moment I take the pen in hand, words elude me. It’s as if they are punishing me for spilling my guts verbally—even if it’s useless rambling that comes out of my mouth. But try as I may, that’s all there is.

  I simply don’t remember much beyond the beginning of that elusive eleventh year. My tenth birthday, yes, some of it is there. No big party, there never had been one, but a cake in the afternoon and quite a few presents. Mom had made me a new dress because I was growing fast now, a yellow one with ridiculous bows in front. I hated it on sight. Gracie gave me a thin gold chain with a sparkling, flower-shaped pendant dangling from it. I hated that one too, didn’t wear it a single day.

  Mom launched into an argument with her as soon as I unwrapped the jewelry box. She said pointedly, “I thought we have to save?” to which Gracie replied, “nothing is too good for my favorite girl.”

  Both didn’t bother to ask me if I liked what I got. While they bickered on about how difficult times were (Mom) and how much I deserved a little treat (Gracie) and how she denied herself any small treat (Mom) and how much harder it would be without me earning the money (Gracie), I said thank you, ate a slice of the cake and went to my room. I was fed up with those arguments. Gracie always said how grateful she was for me doing all the work, but Mom mustn’t know about it, so all the arguments sounded lopsided. They never talked about the same thing.

  I was beginning to understand that the only two important people in my life were engaged in a non-stop tug-of-war, with me securely fastened by the rope they were holding on different ends. Sometimes I felt so torn apart, I could have
screamed.

  I’m slumped on my bunk bed, unable to move. Stanley comes to see me after I refused to go to the office where we usually meet. He knows right away that something is wrong. Obviously all this psycho-training was worth the shit load of money it must have cost his parents.

  “I feel like kicking and screaming, but haven’t got the strength to even sit up,” I answer truthfully to his honest-sounding concern over my deteriorating state.

  “I keep thinking about Texas, and a lot of stuff pops up. All the stuff I’ve told you about. I come as far as my birthday, and then I remember that horrible storm a few weeks later, and then my thinking comes to a screeching halt. It’s like a train entering a tunnel, somebody hit the emergency brakes and it derails in total darkness.”

  I can’t help it, tears of frustration well up in my eyes. Stanley is swimming in a milky fog.

  “Which storm? You are talking about your tenth birthday, right? So you can’t mean Katrina?”

  “No, Katrina was long gone. I mean Ike. I think by the time it made landfall it was downgraded to a cat two, so in reality it wasn’t a hurricane anymore.”

  “Why don’t you start at your birthday and take it from there. Tell me all you remember about those weeks leading up to the storm.”

  So I tell him. About the birthday presents (the ugly dress, the golden flower), the arguments (money, me, money), and then, the weeks after.

  About two weeks after my birthday, I had to do a photo session again. By now, those sessions are physically painful to me. By this I don’t mean the sitting down for hours or the rough application of my make-up and hair style Gracie got into—she is forever pulling my hair too tight, or stinging my eyes with lash glue, or rubbing too hard with the remover—it’s more a dread I have before it starts. My stomach contracts into a hard ball the moment she bundles me in her car. The photo studio is in Texas City, a suburb by the ocean, and in the fifteen minutes it takes to get there I feel this hard lump forming inside me. Gracie has forbidden me to eat or drink anything a few hours before each session because I had thrown up on several occasions when she got me ready to go to the studio, but she always gave me a few sips of juice to drink just before we arrived.