by Zoje Stage
Now that she knew the name of the game—Scare Mommy—she should be able to defend herself. But goose bumps rose on her skin, even under the heat of the water, when she thought about her creepy daughter. The whites of her eyes. Her ability to sneak up on her as she slept.
HANNA
FUN. THAT’S WHAT they’d promised her in preschool, and then kindergarten. She’d lasted longest at Green Hill Academy. Five whole weeks during which every day was a challenge. A challenge to not throw herself against the walls in protest (they peeled her off the one time she tried it and sent her to a roly-poly nurse, who held an ice cube to her forehead before calling in Mommy). A challenge to turn the dumply and squiggly children into things to play with: living, breathing toys. Pushing them into place only got her in trouble. Nobody approved of the ways she had fun.
It had been no fun sitting on an orange square of carpet, watching one day as three children built a tower of interlocking plastic bricks—like Legos for a giant. They squabbled about who got to add the next one, and which color it should be. Hanna couldn’t understand why they were even trying to work together. Curly Hair only liked the blue blocks. Hot Pink Glasses kept trying to boss the other two around. Nose Picker was contaminating everything he touched with his green boogers. He kept a finger in his nose even when he wasn’t picking it, like that’s where it lived.
Hanna finally had enough and got up from her spot. She stood in front of the plastic tower, eyeing its construction. What a bunch of doodoo heads. They could have used the blocks to make a nice pattern, red yellow blue, red yellow blue. Or two blue, two red, two yellow.
“You can play with us,” said Hot Pink Glasses.
Like Hanna needed her permission. The three little pigs waited for her. Did they think she was going to add a brick to their tower? Or pay them some sort of sappy compliment?
The thing they made hurt her eyes. She kicked it in the center block, sending the tower crumpling to the ground. Not the most fun she’d ever had, but it was better than sitting around.
“Hey!” said Hot Pink Glasses.
Curly Hair burst into tears.
Hanna walked away and maybe someone, an adult, called after her, but she didn’t care.
Playing outside wasn’t much better. Everyone ran around the playground shrieking in a way that pained her ears. A pair of do-goody best friends in matching floppy braids played with striped jump ropes. Hopping. Skipping. Getting their feet tangled up. Laughing. Hanna thought it would be a much better game if she could tie the rope around one of their necks. And then maybe she—would any other children help?—could drag her along like a pull toy and watch her wriggle and scream. That would be fun.
One day she approached a circle of kids, who squealed and giggled as they compared the special things they could do. A girl stuck out her tongue, stretching it so it kissed the tip of her nose. A boy made his eyes splay in, so he looked like a defective doll.
“I can wiggle my ear!” a girl shrieked, holding back her hair as the other children leaned in to see.
As they took turns seeing who could curl up the sides of their tongue, Hanna jumped up and down until they all looked at her. Grinning, she rolled her eyes back into her head, a trick she’d practiced in the mirror for years while washing her hands after a pee. She’d expected the others to offer up impressed ooohs and aaahs like they did for everyone else. But while still blinded, her eyes snuggled in her skull, she heard the receding screams as everyone ran away.
After that, on most days Hanna just stood there in her uniform, dark blue jumper and white shirt, watching. She looked like one of the kids, even if she didn’t feel like them. Daddy loved her little uniform, and it was the initial reason she thought kindergarten might be better than preschool. But it wasn’t. Just like in preschool, she could never run fast enough to get to the swings first. The other kids buzzed and swarmed over everything, and she wasn’t sure if, once out of doors, they grew stingers like bumblebees, so she kept her distance.
Since the beginning of the school year, she’d kept her eye on a particular girl whose hair fell like golden beams of light. Hanna didn’t think it was fair that Sunshine had such perfect hair—the color of Daddy’s. Sometimes she gazed at it, longing to take a knife to Sunshine’s scalp and remove her fine locks. Hanna imagined herself proudly wearing the wig she’d make, unbothered by the stray trickle of blood that might dribble down her forehead.
During art class, Hanna would stand at her easel and wear her plasticky smock, but she wouldn’t paint. At first Mrs. Smiley tried guiding her hand as Hanna clutched the brush. She dipped it in the tempera paint and made swooping strokes on the paper. But whenever Mrs. Smiley let go, Hanna let go, too, and the brush splattered to the floor. Mrs. Smiley gave up trying soon after that and let her just stand there. But one day, Hanna thought of a way to have fun while the other kids were busy with their messy, drippy masterpieces.
Everybody knew Sunshine was particularly fond of fruit punch. She refused to drink water and shrank away from milk like she’d been offered a glass of poop. At first she was the only one who got fruit punch at snack time, but then the other kids grumbled and pleaded, and Mrs. Smiley blew out her cheeks and filled everyone’s cups with Sunshine’s red elixir. But then the parents caught on and didn’t want their children drinking Red Dye Number Forty Sugar Water—that’s what Mommy called it—so Sunshine had to have her snack alone.
While Mrs. Smiley was busy with the other children, Hanna found a cup of red paint. She carried it against her body so no one would see. And while no one was looking, she stole an extra Dixie Cup and slipped into the bathroom with the miniature sink and toilet. The bathroom with its tiny fixtures was her favorite thing about kindergarten, and she almost wished Daddy would redo the bathroom she used at home. She poured a wee bit of the red paint into the cup, then filled up the rest with water.
Diluted, it looked convincingly like Kool-Aid.
Mrs. Smiley was helping Nose Picker, whose painting was the same murky green as his boogers. Sunshine painted flowers. At least Hanna assumed they were flowers. They also could have been tall people with very punk hairdos. She stood beside Sunshine and smiled. People could be easily won over with a smile; she learned that as a baby.
“Don’t push me,” Sunshine said, pouting, taking a step back. Maybe Hanna had given her a little shove or accidental bump once or twice in the past, but that wasn’t what she had in mind.
She shook her head, so Sunshine would know she was safe. The girl still looked wary. Hanna held out the cup full of red. You’ll like this. Sunshine’s eyes went hungry.
“Fruit punch?”
Hanna nodded.
“Oh. Thank you.” Sunshine was such a polite girl. Mommy would like her. Mommy made sure Hanna knew about please and thank you, even if she wouldn’t say the words out loud.
Sunshine took big gulps from the cup and swallowed it down. Hanna couldn’t stop herself: she reached out and stroked the girl’s fine golden hair.
But before Sunshine got all of it down, she gagged, choking on the liquid still in her mouth. It dribbled down her chin like blood.
Hanna smiled, thinking of a better trick with crushed pieces of glass.
“Uckkkhh! That’s gross—Mrs. McNally…” Mrs. Smiley came over. “She made me drink this.”
“What is it?” The teacher took the cup and sniffed it. Once. Twice. “Paint? Did you give Aria paint?”
Hanna shrugged. If they had any imagination they could pretend it was fruit punch.
The teacher tsked as she thumbed the red dribbles from Sunshine’s chin. “I’ll take you to the nurse, just in case, it’s not toxic, but … And you…”
Hanna went to Green Hill Academy’s principal’s office.
She couldn’t remember how many times in total she was sent to the office. But she remembered the last time. Hanna had had no way to explain that she was helping. She found ants on the floor around the cafeteria garbage can. Performing a public service, she stepped on
all of them. The next day they were back, so she stepped on them again. She finally decided they must have a nest inside the garbage can, where new ants were born every day. Daddy kept some matchbooks in his study, pretty ones from different places. They were easy to steal, so she took the pack with the bright blue heads because she liked them best. She only meant to help the school with their stubborn ant problem, and no one actually saw her drop the match into the bin. But they saw her standing near it, delighted by the whoosh of flames. They didn’t even let her go back to class after that. She sat in the office until Mommy and Daddy flapped in, indignant on her behalf.
“She doesn’t even know how to light a match!” said Daddy.
It turned out well because she never had to go back to Green Hill Academy. But after her parents talked with the principal and a couple of teachers, everything got touchy-shifty at home because Daddy was in a bad mood.
After Green Hill, she lasted two weeks at Frick before Mommy withdrew her. Hanna had pretended to pass out during story time because she hated how her teacher read aloud, adopting squeaky voices that made Hanna want to stop up her mouth with flaming rags. They rushed her to the nurse’s office—more a cubicle, compared with Green Hill’s—and asked her lots of yes and no questions so she could nod and shake. When Mommy came to pick her up, the nurse sounded very stern and said Mommy shouldn’t withhold food as a punishment because young children need calories and nutrients for growing bones and brains and blah-blah-blah.
It was hard not to laugh when Mommy froze like a startled bird, her head at an angle as her beak opened and closed.
“What? I’ve never … Did she tell you that? Hanna?”
Hanna really was hungry; it wasn’t a complete lie. And she’d seen tons of kids get sent home for sniffles and puking and all varieties of “I feel sick.” Not the most fun she ever had, but an effective strategy.
“It was just … At suppertime we have a rule, to eat what’s on the table—it was my mother’s rule too—eat what’s there, or don’t eat supper. It’s not … So she ate a little, and I always try to have things that I know she likes, but she didn’t want any more … There’s no snacking later, if you skip supper—we can’t reward her for that. So … She had breakfast, her regular breakfast…”
Mommy got red in the face and the nurse said, “I understand, we just need all the parents to take responsibility for their children’s nutrition—”
“We do—I do.”
“We don’t want the children to fall over dead.”
That’s not exactly what the nurse said, but Hanna—and Mommy, too—knew that’s what she meant.
After that, the squeaky-voiced teacher spoke to Mommy for a few minutes.
“The writing’s on the wall,” Mommy said as they left. And that was the end of the Frick School, though Hanna was innocent of scribbling on anyone’s wall.
Hanna thought that would be the end of school forever. Mommy started teaching her at home and Hanna “soaked up everything like a sponge.” Mommy sounded impressed when she said that, and Hanna accepted it as a compliment because she knew how much Mommy loved to clean. Being at home was mostly better, less running around and more time to do what she wanted. It tried Mommy’s patience sometimes, but Hanna considered that a good thing because you can’t get better at something without practice, and she wanted Mommy to become more patient.
But here they were. In the car. Heading for some new place that they’d promised would be fun—more fun than the other places, but what was that supposed to mean?
At least she had some time to think on the way. And she was bigger and smarter than the last time they’d tried to send her to school. With a little effort, she wouldn’t have to wait long for the fun to begin.
SUZETTE
IT WAS A fairly long drive to Sunnybridge, through downtown traffic and out to the South Hills. She listened to WYEP on the radio, the independent alternative station. Sometimes she glanced at Hanna, buckled in the back in her car seat, and was surprised to see her head bobbing along with the music. She’d never shown much interest in music, in spite of Alex’s valiant efforts. Whereas Suzette bought her art supplies, Alex bought her CDs, and then an MP3 player, a child-size pair of conga drums, a ukulele. She never so much as tapped a drumhead or plunked one of the ukulele’s strings, though she watched with apparent interest as Alex demonstrated. After she took Hanna to an audiologist and ruled out any hearing problems, they started worrying that some of her delays were a result of confusion. As a baby and toddler, Alex spoke to her in Swedish and she in English. They knew many people had successfully raised bilingual children that way, but still blamed themselves initially when Hanna didn’t speak. When her interaction skills receded a bit, they feared she’d descended into autism, but she remained attuned to her daddy’s voice even though he couldn’t coax her into responding, either vocally or through music.
An ad came on, a request for listeners to support independent radio. Suzette turned it down until it was barely audible. Alex, under his company’s name, made donations every year to support 91.3 and the local PBS television station. She considered Hanna in the rearview mirror, safely strapped in, and out of reach, her eyelids heavy with sleep. It was her best moment to try to draw her out.
“So Hanna. I looked up Marie-Anne Dufosset.”
The child’s head twitched at the name and she lifted her eyes, but only to gaze out the window.
“She must have been a very interesting girl. And what a tragic end. Burned at the stake with her mother. And they weren’t even witches.”
Hanna turned to meet her eyes in the mirror. Hoping to dispel some of her unease about her daughter’s newly acquired persona, Suzette attempted to dismantle the threat.
“That was the thing about the whole witch craze, which you probably didn’t know. People were very superstitious back then. Sometimes, to save yourself from an accusation, your only choice was to name other people—the real witches. Only they weren’t really witches either. So that’s what happened in the case of Marie-Anne Dufosset. Someone else was accused first, and she ended up naming lots of other people—including Marie-Anne—in an attempt to save herself. But it’s true I guess, that Marie-Anne was the last person burned at the stake. Just as innocent as all the girls and women who came before her.”
Hanna shook her head. “You’re so stupid.”
She pronounced it stu-peed, and Suzette was struck by the girl’s consistent French accent. But Suzette made her face a mask, not wanting to reveal the victory of having made Hanna speak. “How so?”
But Hanna turned back to the window.
“If I’m wrong, you could explain it to me. Hanna? Marie-Anne?”
That got her attention. She had to give it to the girl: she played her game well. Suzette had to focus on where she was going; they were almost to the school and she didn’t want to miss the turn. But she was aware of Hanna studying her profile, calculating her next move.
Suzette parked the car and Hanna unbuckled herself. The building’s exterior and the surrounding grounds weren’t as well maintained as the other—more expensive—schools they’d visited. The playground equipment was just a few years from turning to rust. A muddy field lay scattered with fluorescent orange traffic cones and underinflated balls of various sizes and colors. It looked as if it had been a public school once, possibly abandoned for lack of modernity. There was a big sign by the front doors with an overly large, dangerously spiked yellow sun.
To her shock, she felt a little hand slip into hers. Maybe Hanna really did harbor fears about the prospect of school.
As they made their way up the walk, Hanna spoke again, in her soft new voice. “Do you trust me?”
Suzette considered how to respond. It seemed wrong to lie when asked so directly—and it being their first real conversation.
“No,” she said.
“Good. They were right to burn me.”
Zey. Like a French movie star.
The little hand squeezed hers more
tightly. A flicker of fear coursed through her; so much for dissuading her daughter from her chosen idol. For a second, Suzette considered turning around—jumping in the car and racing to Jensen & Goldstein. Alex might not even care about the specifics of her words, just that she was saying more things. And what if Hanna, silent for so long, chose her school interview to affirm her new identity? It was surprisingly easy to imagine her describing her life as Marie-Anne Dufosset—who’s initials, not lost on her, were MAD—a misunderstood but, in this case, not quite innocent young witch.
They walked down the hallway with its slightly dingy lighting and pockmarked cinder block walls. The half-size lockers, with their chipped yellow and orange paint, were dented and dinged. The ammonia-laced disinfectant tickled her nostrils, but at least the school was clean, even if it reminded Suzette more of a war zone than a place for nurturing young minds.
A classroom of children trailed past them, single file, with the middle-aged teacher bringing up the rear. She wore a shapeless peasant top with a faint coffee stain down the front. Suzette experienced a rare but vibrant flashback of her father: he always had a coffee cup in his hand and stains down his shirt. She remembered him laughing, unaware of the brown liquid spilling over the cup in his hand. Suzette smiled at the memory and the teacher smiled at her. A moment later she released her class through the front doors, and upon passing the threshold the kids transformed from quiet to squealing.
“See? You’ll get to play outside,” Suzette said to Hanna, intent on selling her child on the school and the school on her child. Though doubt weighed her down as she saw more of the school.