by Zoje Stage
She thrust her arms around Hanna. A genuine embrace, tight and heartfelt.
* * *
Suzette and Alex were both anxious; the pot of coffee, shared in silence at the table, didn’t help. Hanna nibbled on her cereal, so cautious with her spoon that it made no sound against the bowl. Her exaggerated care suited the mood. Suzette couldn’t shake the sense that something was about to break. One of them would speak and the entire room—the house—would splinter into a million pieces, shattering the illusion they inhabited. Suzette and Alex kept glancing at their phones, eager to leave.
They arrived at Dr. Yamamoto’s fifteen minutes early. Hanna ran ahead to the door.
“I guess she likes her. Or the toys.” Suzette kept her arm threaded through Alex’s. The crutches weren’t the fix they’d once been, not with having to put pressure on blistered finger pads and palms. She walked slowly, careful not to step on a stone or a crack, feeling doomed and ridiculous with her gauzy hands and slippered feet. Hanna still wore her mismatched knee socks and opted for ladybug rain boots, in spite of the clear weather. Suzette had her put on a cardigan for the morning chill, but Hanna pushed up the sleeves. Because she was too warm, or eager to show off her bandaged wrist? Even Alex didn’t look as sharp as usual, though he was probably the cleanest of the three of them. He opted for gym pants, with a buttoned shirt worn open over a blue T-shirt. His beard was raggedy, the lines around his eyes more pronounced.
Hanna held her finger over the doorbell, looking to her mother for permission. When Suzette nodded, Hanna pushed the bell. She and Alex weren’t yet to the door when Beatrix opened it. Her welcoming smile melted as she took in the three of them. The limping. The bandages. The rumpled mess.
“Oh dear. Not the best weekend, I take it?” She glanced down at Hanna with a warm smile. “Good morning, Hanna. Do you want to go into the playroom?”
Hanna grinned and skipped inside.
As the adults moved down the hallway, slowly to accommodate Suzette’s hobbling, Hanna disappeared into the playroom.
“These look like new injuries. Is everyone okay?” Beatrix asked.
“We had an accident—”
Suzette cut Alex off. “Hanna’s trying to kill me.”
They hovered in the doorway to Beatrix’s office. Alex and Suzette just looked at each other, wearing matching expressions of wounded, but not angry, acceptance.
“We’ve had so little time together,” said Beatrix. “But I made note during our first session of Hanna’s Callous-Unemotional traits.”
“What does that mean?” Alex asked.
“Perhaps I should speak with her first today, and see if I can uncover a bit more.”
HANNA
BEATRIX SAID SHE’D be right back, that she needed to lower the blind in the other room so they would have privacy. Hanna found a puzzle of a real-life castle and brought it over to the table. A minute later Beatrix came in and shut the door.
“I’m glad to see you.” Beatrix had a nice voice, like honey and daisies. She got paper and a plastic box from the cart against the wall, and sat near her in one of the little chairs.
“You’ll have lots of time to work on a puzzle when I talk with your mom and dad. Do you think you and I could do something together for a few minutes?”
Hanna liked that she used the word “together.” Beatrix had a very nice way of making Hanna feel like she listened to and understood her, and without stupid questions or flash cards. She reminded Hanna of a character she’d liked in a book, who was the grandmother of the world and all its natural creatures. Sometimes the old woman in the book looked like a fairy godmother with smiling dimples, and sometimes she looked like the waves of the ocean, or a tree with beckoning limbs. She knew everything and saw the goodness in everyone. Beatrix made her feel like a chest filled with shiny treasure, so she nodded and pushed the puzzle box away.
“It looks like you hurt your wrist. Are you okay?”
Hanna nodded. She didn’t even think of it as Daddy’s fault anymore. In that moment he was a puppet, with Mommy yanking his strings.
“I’m thinking you all had a pretty dramatic weekend.”
Big nod.
“I hope it wasn’t too scary?”
Hanna tilted her head a little and let it wobble while she rolled her eyes. Beatrix smiled, and then Hanna smiled because she made Beatrix smile.
“Are you too brave to get scared?”
Big noddy nod.
“Well, here’s what I was thinking.” Beatrix laid out some pieces of construction paper in different colors and popped open the plastic box, which was filled with crayons and pencils. “I was hoping you could draw me some pictures. Like, can you draw me a picture of Mommy?”
Hanna scrumbled up her face, confused. She pointed to the other room.
“I know, she’s right in there—and you’re probably thinking I already know what she looks like, right?”
Hanna nodded. Beatrix was super smart.
“But you know what: sometimes people see different things. And I want to see how you see your mommy.”
Oh yes, so so smart. Beatrix understood that Mommy always wore a mask; she wanted to know what was beneath it. Hanna grabbed a piece of red paper and a black crayon. She couldn’t draw people very well—in spite of Mommy’s helpful lesson—so she just drew her face. Fat blobby head. Mean little eyes. A snarl. Some teeth sticking out. Then, so Beatrix couldn’t mistake it, she drew a big triangle hat with a wide brim and viciously colored it in. She pushed the paper around so it faced Beatrix.
“Is that a witch’s hat?” she asked.
Yup yup yup.
“Is Mommy a witch?”
Bingo!
“Now, she told me about Marie-Anne—I thought Marie-Anne was the witch.”
Nod.
“And she was helping you?”
Yes. But. She tap tap tapped on Mommy’s hat with her black crayon.
“But Mommy is a witch also?”
Hanna made her eyes go big and round and she nodded slowly so Beatrix would understand the gravity of the situation.
“Is Mommy a scary witch?”
Oh yes. Hanna took up a pencil and used it like a wand, trying to show Beatrix how Mommy cast spells. She made her face pinched and mean and jabbed with the pencil-wand.
“Is that a wand? Does Mommy cast spells?”
Instead of answering, Hanna grabbed up another piece of paper—a light-blue one—and used a darker blue crayon to try to draw Daddy. She made him with long legs so Beatrix would recognize him, and scribbled a beard around his chin.
“Is that Daddy?”
Nod. She pointed to the picture of Mommy, then thrust out the pencil-wand, banging it on Daddy’s picture.
“Did Mommy cast a spell on Daddy?”
Yes!
“Oh my goodness, that sounds very serious. Why did Mommy do that?”
With a red crayon, she drew a wobbly heart in the middle of Daddy’s chest. Then she put her hands, one on top of the other, over her own chest. She pointed from Daddy’s crayoned heart to her own real one, back and forth.
“Daddy loves you. He loves you very much.”
Hanna pointed from her heart to his.
“And you love him.”
Big nod.
“Hanna, I just want to say, you are doing such an excellent job of expressing yourself.”
Grin.
Explaining the next part was a bit harder. She pantomimed the love she and Daddy had, making her hand move back and forth between their two hearts. Then, frustrated and angry, she picked up Mommy’s wand and slashed with it like a sword, cutting the love she shared with Daddy.
Beatrix frowned. Hanna made the slashing gesture again, waiting for her to understand.
“Do you think your mom wants to stop your dad from loving you?”
Hanna’s body flopped with relief. She hopped up and gave Beatrix a kiss on the cheek.
“It feels good for someone to understand, doesn’t it?”
“I know you’re not quite ready, but someday, after you get over some hard things, some other things might become easier. Like, it might be hard to become someone who talks and interacts, but when you do, you might be rewarded by how other people respond, and how good it feels for other people to understand.”
Hanna shrugged, not quite able to imagine herself blah-blahing back and forth like everyone else. And still a little afraid that her most important words might yet come out as dead bugs, frightening nonsense that would earn her nothing but strange looks. She folded her foot under her and sat back down.
“So let’s get back to your drawings. Can you tell me why you think Mommy doesn’t want Daddy to love you anymore?”
Hanna picked up Mommy’s drawing in one hand and Daddy’s in the other. She had them face each other, then pressed them together.
Beatrix looked confused.
Hanna grabbed up a piece of yellow paper and a purple crayon and drew a little stick figure with two ponytails. She pointed to herself, then the picture.
“That’s you.”
Right. She turned over the pictures of Mommy and Daddy so they were face up. Picked up a pencil while pointing at Mommy. And cast a spell by tapping it onto Daddy. She picked up both pictures again and smooshed them into each other, twisting them a little like they were smoochy smoochy. She puckered up her lips to make it clear. Snatching up the picture of herself, she tore it into big messy chunks and swept them onto the floor. She made Mommy and Daddy’s pictures move like they were walking—walking away from the pieces of her scattered on the floor.
“So you think … Mommy cast a spell on Daddy. You don’t think she loves you?”
Big no.
“And the spell makes Daddy not love you anymore. And the two of them go off together, and leave you behind. They don’t want you?”
Sad no.
“That must feel very bad. I can imagine how sad I would feel.”
Sighing yes.
“So if I’m understanding everything right … Then you’re trying to hurt Mommy so Daddy will always love you?”
A nod. A shake. Not hurt. She drew a big X over Mommy the Witch’s face. Then slowly tore the paper down the middle.
“You want Mommy gone? Dead?”
It was necessary.
“You spend a lot of time with her—do you think you would miss her if she wasn’t around?”
Nope. She pointed at Daddy’s picture.
“You’d have Daddy then, all to yourself.”
Exactly.
“I want to thank you for sharing all of this with me. I’m glad you trust me.”
Beatrix was her second most favoritest person. And she understood everything. Without words. Hanna thought of Mommy—the way she liked to draw, and buy her coloring stuff for presents. Had Mommy known all along that pictures could be substitutes for words? Hanna tapped a finger on one of her half-grown-in teeth, considering the possibility of creating her own language out of colorful splotches. She could teach it to Daddy, and they could communicate that way.
“It’s important to me that you know that I care about you, and I only want to help you, and I’ll try to do what’s best for you. Okay?”
Hanna felt all singing and ringing inside. Because Beatrix knew what was best for her, and maybe with the help of a big person like her, they could finally make Mommy go away.
SUZETTE
SUZETTE SAT WITH her legs stretched across the couch, Alex perched at the other end, waiting in a miasma of private thoughts. The cloudy blind covered the playroom window like a cataract. Somewhere her vision had failed. Once Hanna had been a balloon calmly suspended at the end of a string. When had the balloon twisted away in a rill of turbulent air? Why hadn’t she noticed?
After a passage of swampy time, Beatrix came in. She raised the blind, and there was Hanna on the other side, unboxing a puzzle. Beatrix sat, monitoring her three clients from the chair between the mirrored window and the sofa.
“Was she…?” Suzette didn’t finish the question.
“Quite eager to communicate,” Beatrix said. “Surprisingly adept at it, even without words.”
“Did she tell you…?” Alex cringed. “It wouldn’t have happened—it was my fault, I shouldn’t have gone through with the Walpurgis celebration.”
Beatrix’s brow furrowed, her lips parted, but before she could speak, Suzette jumped in and caught her up. About how they celebrated the Swedish holiday. Their attempt to help Hanna let go of her dangerous other self. The fire. Urgent Care.
“I should never have planned an activity for my family around fire. It was stupid, I don’t know what I was thinking.” His hair flopped over his hands as he held his head.
Suzette wished she could comfort him, but he was out of reach.
“It was a creative idea,” said Beatrix. “And all things considered—”
“I could’ve gotten Suzette killed…” Alex said, cutting her off.
“I’m fine.” Suzette couldn’t explain it, but she felt calmer, less conflicted than she had in months. Even the twinges in her stomach were gone. Though she fought the urge to keep one hand protectively against her bandaged cheek.
“And Hanna … I don’t know, maybe she really is possessed…”
“No, she’s not.” Beatrix spoke the words with a contemplative drawl. “We have a lot to talk about. If the weekend had gone differently, I might have had a different course of action for you—the evaluations I talked about. But I don’t think we can take the time for that.”
“What are you suggesting?” Suzette asked.
“Remember on Friday? I said I wanted to look into something? A few years ago I had a family with a violent child. The child needed to be removed from the household. I did a lot of research at the time, and I called the facility on Friday. Just to see, in case we needed that as an option. I think we do.”
Alex finally looked up. Suzette struggled to read his expression. She knew a part of him would always be loyal to Hanna. He fed on her adoration and sweetness. But where did he stand now? Hanna’s behavior pained him in such a personal way. He’d been lied to, betrayed. They couldn’t continue without intervention and help. Suzette shut her eyes, relieved that her fantasy might come true—that Hanna could be sent away, at least for a short time—but she didn’t want Alex to see her relief, or the glee bubbling beneath the surface.
“Removed from the household?” he asked.
“Yes, an inpatient facility.”
“Like a mental hospital?”
“Not like what you’re thinking.”
“Is Hanna … Is she a psychopath?” His voice broke. He brought a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat, fighting to get himself under control. Was that what he’d been pondering the previous night? That their child might be the worst of the worst, a violent monster?
“I want to explain everything to you about my preliminary diagnosis. And Marshes—the facility.” Beatrix stood. “I’m going to run into the kitchen for a minute. To cancel my ten o’clock. And send a quick email off to Marshes. Okay? I’ll be right back.”
Beatrix left the door open, and they watched her head down the hallway—delicate like a dancer, even with the angular swing of her arms—and retreat into the main part of her house. Suzette slid her feet off the couch and scooted over, taking Alex’s hand.
“What are you thinking? About an inpatient facility?” she asked.
“I don’t know. We don’t really know anything yet. I mean … Is that where we are? I guess it is. I just … She’s seven. How can she not live with us?”
“She can’t, Alex.” She softened her tone, aware he was still several paces behind her. “I don’t think she can. Look what she did to me. We don’t know how to handle her—”
“That’s why it all just seems so hopeless. This is hopeless.” Tension coursed through his body. Suzette loosened his tight grip on her fingers.
“It isn’t. If Hanna’s sick … We’d help her if
she had asthma, or leukemia. We’d be in it for the long haul. We’d do everything to help her get healthy. Right?” She owed her daughter that.
Alex rubbed his eye and looked at her. “What if she can’t get better?”
There it was, the wound he’d been nursing. The fear of a monster that couldn’t be vanquished.
“What if she can?” Suzette had to believe it was possible. She knew for herself how even incurable conditions could be managed. They didn’t have to spend their lives being terrorized by their child. And Hanna didn’t have to be condemned to an inner nightmare of turmoil and confusion. It was hard for Suzette to forgive herself for not recognizing the symptoms sooner, but being good parents meant getting Hanna the care she needed. Even if that meant sending her away. It wouldn’t be forever.
They sat in silence, watching their daughter in the other room, content and unaware as she put her puzzle together.
* * *
Beatrix returned a short time later carrying a tray of tea with the balmy aroma of chamomile. “I brought herbal tea and bagels. You aren’t gluten-free, are you?” They shook their heads. She set the tray on the coffee table. “You look like you could use something warm and hearty. Has Hanna eaten?”
“She had some cereal,” Suzette said.
“Well, help yourself.”
“Thank you.” Suzette sipped from one of the mugs. “Oh, nice.”
“I’ll just take her in a snack and tell her we’ll be talking for a while.” She spread strawberry-jam cream cheese on a half bagel, and slipped out.
Again, they watched the therapist interact with their child. Hanna looked so darling, so polite, as she took her bagel and gnawed on it with her half-grown-in teeth. Beatrix came back in and closed the door.
“Right, so. First let me say that mental illness is as real as any other illness. But it can be scarier, because of how it manifests.” She folded one leg over the other, a Moleskine notebook on her lap and a pen in her hand. Alex and Suzette each prepared a bagel, and nibbled and drank with their eyes fixed on Beatrix.
“So, after speaking with her … Had it just been her drawings, I might have concluded there’s something going on that’s making her jealous, or some sort of more typical mother-daughter, caregiver-child issues … masked in a kind of fantasy play. And maybe there is a bit of a struggle, with reality. But this is more than even severe Oppositional Defiant Disorder. The drawings she made really clarify the intent behind the actions you’ve described—the thumbtacks, the fire. Your injuries.” Your ruined face. “And I think we need to take those intentions very seriously, especially seeing how quickly things have escalated.