When Through Deep Waters

by Rachelle Dekker

“Come on, Mom, don’t do this to yourself, not here,” Alicen said, trying to recover. “You weren’t a terrible mother, not at all.” But even as the words were leaving her mouth, she knew they weren’t true.

  Alicen. The whispers echoed.

  Alicen fought for control over her mind. It’s not real, she thought; you just have to remember it’s not real. A flutter of laughter rushed behind her, and she instinctively twisted her neck to look. The ends of wavy blonde curls disappeared around the corner of a long food aisle. Agony pulsed inside her heart as haunting images of Jane filled her memory. For a split second her heels itched to follow, but then reality stole her focus. It wasn’t Jane. Jane would never run through the aisle of a grocery store again.

  “Alicen?” her mother called.

  Alicen snapped her head back toward Betty. “Sorry,” she said.

  “You aren’t even listening anymore,” Betty said as she stepped away.

  “Sorry, I just—”

  “No,” Betty said, raising her hands in defense. “I’m finished with this.” She sniffed and started to scan the store behind Alicen until her eyes landed on her target. She thrust the list out toward Alicen, and Alicen hesitantly took hold of it.

  Betty gave Alicen one last scolding look before storming off past her.

  “Mom,” Alicen called as the woman walked away.

  “I’ll find Louise and finish with her,” Betty said over her shoulder, not stopping.

  Alicen watched her mother make a beeline for the bathrooms and then vanish through the wooden door marked with a little blue girl on the front. She exhaled deeply and considered going after her, but honestly, she wasn’t sure she could handle another round of Betty.

  Alicen. Do you hear us?

  She clutched the handlebar that lay across the top of the metal shopping cart and closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure she could handle any more of her own mental abuse either. She examined the cart to see what they had already gotten off the list and then set her focus on getting everything else quickly, so they could leave. She wanted to be home, she wanted to be in bed, she wanted another sleeping pill, and she wanted to go back a few hours to when she thought maybe this day would be different from the others.

  Alicen pushed her buggy down one of the food aisles, grabbing items from the list. The aisle was still, except for her. The entire store seemed to have fallen eerily quiet. She moved to exit the row and head into the next when a chirp of laughter echoed behind her. She paused and turned. Her heart dropped into her stomach as her skin went cold. Jane was there, standing in the center of the vacant row, a yard away.

  Right before her eyes, wearing a little red dress, a dress Alicen remembered buying her, the one Jane had insisted she needed because it was her favorite color. A yard away, blonde curls hanging past her chin, blue eyes blazing. Her daughter, standing inside the store, not in her dream, not a fluttering image caught on repeat in her nightmares, but Jane in her entirety.

  Alicen.

  Her knees shook. The small hole in her heart exploded into a cavern. Her sanity screamed for attention, her rationality begged her to listen, but the bottomless cavern of agony swallowed them both whole, and Alicen slipped away from reality.

  “Baby?” Alicen whispered, and stepped toward Jane.

  “I thought you were going to leave me,” Jane said. She stayed in place, her eyes glued to her mother, her voice sweet as ever.

  “No, baby girl, I would never leave you,” Alicen said. She was aware of the tears slipping down her cheeks and robotically brushed them away.

  “You did leave me, though, once,” Jane said, her tiny voice saddened.

  Alicen wondered if she might collapse from the pain pressing against her airways. A wave of guilt raked across her vision, and the world dotted.

  “Don’t you remember, Mommy?” Jane asked. Her face seemed to fill with shadows, and Alicen could hardly stand under the weight of it.

  Run, Alicen. Run.

  “Do you remember what happened?” Jane asked. But it wasn’t really Jane anymore, not the Jane that Alicen knew. Her shiny outlook on life, her joyous spirit, her constant optimism, her belief in magic and miracles—all gone. Replaced with the callousness of death, the pain of betrayal. Betrayal served to her by her own mother.

  But that didn’t stop Alicen from desperately wanting to rush forward and sweep the child into her arms. It didn’t stop her from wanting to carry her home and tuck her into bed. It only amplified her desire to do what she’d been unable to do before. To save her. Shame poured down from the store’s exposed rafters, as if the roof were collapsing upon her.

  “Yes,” Alicen managed to breathe out.

  “Me, too,” Jane said, the light draining from her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” Alicen said.

  “Too late for sorry, Mommy,” Jane replied, her voice now carrying a haunted echo. “Too, too late.”

  “Jane, please, sweetheart—” Alicen stammered.

  “Too, too late,” Jane said, all her sweetness dissolving into anger. She turned then and started to walk away.

  Alicen’s heart felt like it was reaching out through her chest cavity. “Jane.” Alicen found her feet and started to follow. “Jane, baby, stop.”

  No, Alicen. Alicen, run.

  Somewhere buried beneath her pain, her brain was joining the whispered warnings, but Alicen was too far gone to yank herself back. Jane vanished around a corner, and desperation filled Alicen’s legs with fuel. Determination to yank her child back from the fate Alicen had unwittingly forced her into became all-consuming.

  “Jane,” Alicen hollered. She abandoned her cart. Abandoned her reason. Jane was all that mattered.

  She stepped around the corner after the child and caught sight of her sweet head, laced with a golden bounce, turning down the final aisle, back toward the produce. Alicen followed, doubling the small girl’s stride.

  She stepped into the aisle and reached Jane within a couple of steps. Alicen grabbed the girl’s shoulder, turning her around and seeing that the light in her once-blue eyes was completely gone. Just black marbles filled her skull now. The sight caused Alicen’s heart to break, but she remained steadfast. She had done this to Jane; she had caused this transformation. She was responsible, and now she had to save her. She was her mother; only a mother could save her child.

  “Jane, baby, come with me, okay?” Alicen said.

  The little girl yanked away from Alicen’s hold and shook her head no, her small brow gathering with concern.

  “Jane,” Alicen said, reaching out and grabbing hold of her daughter’s arm, “you need to come home with me. I can help you.”

  “No, let go of me,” the child cried.

  Run, Alicen. Run!

  She ignored the ever-present words of the others. She ignored her wailing sanity. Saving Jane was all that mattered. “Stop it, Jane.”

  “No! You can’t help me.” The little girl wiggled under Alicen’s grip, but Alicen wouldn’t release her hold.

  “That’s enough, Jane!”

  “Stop, stop! You can’t help me. You killed me!”

  Alicen eased her grip slightly as Jane’s words smacked against her being. A small part of her wondered if Jane was right. Maybe she couldn’t help her; maybe she could only harm her further?

  No, she thought, a daughter needs her mother. She would do more for Jane than her own mother had ever done for her. She would not abandon her twice. With one sweeping motion, she lifted Jane off the ground and into her arms.

  “No!” Jane cried, but Alicen ignored her.

  “We are going home, baby,” Alicen said. She started down the aisle, the sliding exit doors in view. Voices from somewhere else tried to break through, but Alicen was consumed with only one thought. Get Jane out, get her home. Save her.

  “Put me down. Stop! Mom, mom!”

  “It’s okay, honey. I’ve got you. I’m going to help you.” Alicen kept her eyes on the door. The child in her arms thrashed violently, and A
licen struggled to hold on.

  “Alicen!” another familiar voice cried out. “Alicen, stop!”

  But Alicen was too far down the rabbit hole to register the concern. She saw motion out of the corner of her eye, and she picked up her pace. They were going to try and take her baby from her. Because they knew she was a bad mother. But she wouldn’t let them. She wouldn’t let any of them.

  “Mom!” the child cried, tears now streaming down her cheeks.

  “Stop, stop!” an unfamiliar voice called. “Someone help!”

  “Alicen, what are you—?”

  “Alicen, stop!”

  “Miss, miss, you can’t—”

  So many voices tried to shake her resolve, but Alicen was steadfast. The sliding doors opened, and the cold morning air rushed across her face. “We’re going home, honey; we’re almost there.”

  The child cried and shook. “I don’t want to go home with you. I want my mommy.”

  “Jane, stop; I am your mommy.”

  “No,” the child wailed. “No! I want my real mommy.”

  Angry voices were still hollering at her from behind, and Alicen glanced down at the small child in her arms. Fear flooded her body, her face going numb. Dark-brown hair, brown eyes, a wail of terror distorting what should have been a crooked smile. This wasn’t the way Jane should look.

  Because it wasn’t Jane at all. As if reality itself had materialized and grown a fist, it clocked her across the chin and rocked her back to consciousness. She gasped, terror filling her core and spreading out into every limb. Fear pulsed in the little girl’s face. A face that wasn’t Jane’s.

  As if the physical evidence weren’t enough, as if her brain were lagging behind what was happening, Alicen sputtered, “Jane?”

  The little girl shook her head, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh no,” Alicen whispered, the final blow of reality smashing against her skull.

  “Let go of my daughter!” a woman cried.

  Alicen turned and saw a handful of people rushing out of the grocery store after her. Frozen in confusion, she just stood there. Before she could react, a heavyset woman with a growl on her face reached out and yanked the little girl from Alicen’s clutches. The woman clenched the girl close to her breast, consoling the frightened child and stroking her hair softly. “What is wrong with you?” she snapped at Alicen.

  Still too dumbstruck to formulate words, Alicen just shook her head in disbelief.

  “Alicen?” Louise asked, stepping up behind the woman and the strange child she was holding.

  Alicen looked at Louise, terror and concern consuming her friend’s face, and then caught sight of her mother, who was pale and nearly trembling at Louise’s side. Several others were there too, people with faces she didn’t know, a couple of them in store uniforms. A man in a white button-down shirt, tie, and store badge who was outraged himself was trying to reassure the furious mother that this sort of thing never happened at his store. The woman was hollering back, but Alicen wasn’t listening anymore.

  Alicen stumbled back a few steps, her mind a mushy mess between what she’d thought she was doing and the reality of what she had almost done. She stared at the little brown-haired girl in shock. She had been Jane. She had been Jane!

  “Get your eyes off my daughter!” the mother yelled, and Alicen dropped her gaze.

  Louise started to interject then. Stepping between the mother and Alicen, she tried to help the store owner calm her down and explain that there must have been a mistake. Alicen shut it all out then. She succumbed to the numbness that was spreading through her body. The defense she’d built up to protect herself. The world faded, except for Betty, who stepped around the others and closer to Alicen.

  The two held one another’s eyes for a long moment before tears broke through Alicen’s wall and escaped down her face. Then Betty placed a comforting hand on her daughter’s shoulder, and Alicen’s face caved to the sorrow she felt.

  “She was Jane,” Alicen whispered. “I was trying to save her.”

  Betty didn’t respond with words. She just pulled her daughter into her arms as the numbness that had collected across Alicen’s senses evaporated, and she fell apart in her mother’s embrace.

  14

  The clock on Alicen’s nightstand ticked loudly against the quiet of her bedroom. She had been lying on her bed for hours, maybe days—time was hard to track when you were losing your sense of what was real. Louise and Betty checked on her periodically, probably to make sure she was still locked in her room, where she couldn’t accidentally try to steal another person’s child.

  Alicen had tried to recall what had happened in the moments between breaking down in the grocery parking lot against her mother’s shoulder and ending up in her bedroom, but it was all a haze with only small snippets filtering through. Getting in the car, driving home, walking up the stairs, Louise’s voice assuring Betty she was certain that with the right explanation the store owner and the child’s mother could be convinced not to press charges.

  The right explanation. Alicen had let her own daughter drown four months ago, and in the wake had tried to kill herself, failed, decided instead to lose her mind, begun hallucinating little children everywhere, then believed a complete stranger’s child was her own, and finally tried to steal said child. Surely anyone with a sound sense of reality could relate and would take pity on her.

  If Alicen were that mother, she’d sue the pants off the crazy human who gave an explanation like that. She’d insist that person be checked into a psychiatric facility immediately. Well, the joke was on them if they pursued that route. Alicen was, technically, already a patient at a psychiatric facility. Maybe they’d try to get her moved onto the campus? Maybe she needed to be?

  Someone knocked lightly at the door to her room, and when Alicen didn’t respond, she let herself in. It was Betty. “Can I come in?” she asked.

  Betty never really asked for anything; the words were just par for the course, a formality of being part of the human race. So without waiting for Alicen to reply, she walked in and shut the door behind her. Alicen didn’t care, though. Eventually she was going to have to talk about this with her mother, now that her secret was out. It might as well be sooner rather than later.

  Alicen pushed herself up from where she was curled against her comforter and sat cross-legged facing the sofa chair in the corner. She waited for Betty to cross the room and sit on the plush furniture, but she didn’t. She waited for her to demand answers, to start popping off questions, but she didn’t do that, either. Instead, she slowly walked to Alicen’s bed and sat beside her.

  Betty reached over and cradled Alicen’s hand in her own. Alicen dropped her eyes to where her mother’s aged hand sat in her lap. Her touch was warmer than Alicen would have expected it to be. And comforting. Tears from exhaustion, from desperation, from a sense of overwhelming helplessness settled into her bottom lids, and Alicen didn’t even try to keep them hidden. She was too far gone to care anymore.

  The two women sat there on Alicen’s bed, encased in silence for a while. Betty stroking the top of her daughter’s hand with her free thumb, and Alicen occasionally wiping away a fallen tear.

  Finally Betty spoke. “I know why you didn’t tell me this was happening to you.” Her voice low and kind, an inflection Alicen didn’t often hear. “I know why you kept this to yourself. I know, because I taught you how to be this way. It’s my fault.”

  Alicen looked at Betty and shook her head. “No, Mom, this isn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it is. Yes . . .” Her mother’s emotions interrupted her confession, and she took a hard swallow to manage herself. “Hiding flaws is a Betty Reese specialty. Something I learned in response to the way the world treated . . .” Betty’s voice died off.

  Grandma Joe, Alicen thought. She’d known it wouldn’t be long before their conversation ended up there.

  “Of all people, I should have seen this because I’ve seen it before,” Betty started. T
ears now rested in the pockets of Betty’s eyes. She captured her daughter’s gaze and placed her palm against Alicen’s cheek. “You’re sick, honey, like Grandma Joe was sick.”

  There it was, said out in the open. A thought that Alicen had been drowning out. An idea that had all too often crossed her mind but that she’d shoved into the darkness. Alicen moved her eyes away from her mother’s and exhaled as reality revealed itself from the shadows of her mind. It had always been there; Alicen had just been ignoring it.

  “I made a mistake with your grandma. I didn’t push hard enough for her to get help. I failed her, but you are my daughter,” Betty said. “I won’t make the same mistakes with you. You need help, baby.” Betty’s cheeks were moistened with tears, and Alicen felt her own dripping off her chin.

  “I thought I could control this,” Alicen whispered through her emotion.

  “I know,” Betty said, using her thumbs to gently wipe Alicen’s cheeks. “It’s okay to admit you can’t. It’s okay.”

  It’s okay. The words echoed inside Alicen’s head like a warming calm in the midst of a raging, freezing rainstorm. A sense of release she never thought she’d receive from her mother. Permission to be broken, to be weak. Alicen lost any resolve she’d been maintaining and let her sorrow consume her. She collapsed into her mother’s embrace for the second time that day. Betty pulled her close, whispering into her ear that everything was going to be all right. Mothers’ words to ease troubled children’s fears. Comfort Alicen longed for. Permission she hadn’t even realized she needed.

  Again the two women were caught up in a rare moment of oneness. Where just being together, playing the role of mother and daughter, was enough to make the world seem like it might not be such a terrible place. That maybe there was hope beyond the madness that had taken rule of their lives.

  Again silence captured the room as Betty held her daughter and Alicen let the painful emotions that had built up inside of her drain from her chest. For several long, quiet minutes, they were still, until the moment started to become uncomfortable for Alicen. She wasn’t used to being held, comforted, vulnerable. She could feel the uneasy twitch of needing separation tickle at the insides of her brain, and she softly pushed away from her mother’s arms. Her mind repeated that she wasn’t a child anymore, so she shouldn’t act like one.