Hannahwhere

by John McIlveen

  Davenport closed his eyes for a few moments and his expression softened a little. “Okay.”

  Essie and Davenport ate dinner in the hospital cafeteria while Debbie, not wanting Hannah to eat alone, carried hers back to the room. She tried to prepare Hannah for Davenport’s return, explaining that the detective needed answers in order to find Anna, but assuring her that Davenport would stop if she got upset. Hannah hesitantly consented, but a gloomy veil settled over her while she finished her meal.

  Phil Davenport borrowed a chair from the nurse’s station and carried it into the room. He set it beside Essie’s seat on the further side of Hannah’s hospital bed, sat down, and forced a smile that looked reptilian and a little bit frightening to Debbie. Sometimes it was better not to smile at all.

  “Hi, Hannah. I’m Phil Davenport,” he said and offered her his hand.

  Hannah didn’t acknowledge him at all except to gently move from the bed onto Debbie’s lap.

  Essie was about to protest, but Davenport said, “No, that’s good. Let her get comfortable.” He shuffled a little closer to the bed, trying to eliminate some of the gap Hannah had created by switching to Debbie’s lap. He crossed his legs, trying to exude a sense of easiness, but didn’t do so well.

  “Hannah, I want to ask you some questions,” he said. “This is a very confusing case for us, and it looks like you might be the only person able to answer them. Will you help us figure some things out so we can find Anna?”

  Hannah replied with the slightest of nods.

  “Thank you, Hannah,” Davenport said. “A couple of days ago you were discovered behind a dumpster. Do you remember how you got there or where you were before that man found you?”

  “Isaac Rawls found me,” Hannah said. Debbie thought she saw the hint of a smile touch the corners of her lips.

  “Okay. Before Isaac Rawls found you,” Davenport amended. “Did somebody put you behind the dumpster? Why were you there?”

  “I was just there. That’s where I jumped out,” Hannah said indifferently. “I already answered that,” she added, sounding irritated. Debbie didn’t blame her, considering how the previous session of questions had ended. Hannah clearly did not trust the detective.

  Davenport said, “Maybe you did, but not for me. I need to hear the answers, too. What did you jump out of?”

  Her eyes shifted towards the ceiling. “Hannahwhere,” she said, and then added in a playground rhythm, “Annaplace, Annaday, Hannahtime, Hannahway.”

  “Hannah refers to her dissociative states as Hannahwhere and Annaplace,” Essie said, quickly filling Davenport in with details. “They are emotional havens…”

  “No, they’re places Hannah and Anna…” Debbie started to interject, but refrained from saying more. She wasn’t sure what had compelled her to correct Essie, and even less sure about why she was so certain it was true.

  Hannahwhere and Annaplace are places Hannah and Anna go to when what? she wondered.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  Davenport leaned forward and rubbed at his temples, and then massaged the bridge of his nose.

  Someone’s getting a headache.

  “Hannah, can you tell me how long you were behind the dumpster?” Davenport asked. Gan you nell me?

  Hannah shrugged again, uncertainty knitting her brow. She wrinkled her nose, and Debbie noticed that she was doing it as well. It dawned on her that it was a reaction to the detective’s speech impediment.

  “Was it daytime when you… jumped out?” he persisted.

  After a moment of thought, Hannah’s eyes brightened. She nodded and said, “Yes, three daytimes. I saw the red bird the first day when I jumped out.”

  “Are you saying that you were there three days?” Davenport asked doubtfully, sounding threatening. Another explanation from Essie followed.

  Hannah looked warily to the floor. “It was dark four times and daylight three times,” she said in a protective tone. “It was cold.”

  “Three days is unlikely,” Essie said. “Hunger alone would have made…”

  “There was food in the dumper,” Hannah interjected. “There was lots at night.”

  “Dear Jesus,” Debbie murmured. Her stomach instantly revolted at the mental image of Hannah sifting through the swill for something worthwhile and edible. The Indian restaurant surely tossed some of its nightly leftovers into the dumpster, and how many half-eaten meals made it there? It had to be dark in that alley at night, even darker in the dumpster. Debbie felt like vomiting, and from the look on both Essie and the detective’s faces, they weren’t far behind.

  “I climbed in by the sliding doors on the sides after the restaurant people would go away,” Hannah said. “It was warmer inside, too, especially when it rained.”

  “Hannah, this is very important,” Davenport insisted. “We need to know where you were before you ended up at the dumpster.”

  “Hannahwhere, I said,” Hannah said, showing a hint of frustration.

  Davenport’s expression dropped. He repositioned, trying to use body language to accentuate his words.

  “Was Anna with you before you jumped out of Hannahwhere?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  “A little? Great! That’s just excellent! A little!” Davenport barked a laugh and said, “Okay, Hannah, can you tell us where Hannahwhere is? Is it a house or a building?”

  Hannah faded into thought for a while. She couldn’t formulate an answer, so she said only, “No.”

  “Who else is or was with you in Hannahland?” the detective pressed.

  “Hannahwhere,” Debbie and Essie said simultaneously. Davenport huffed.

  Hannah shifted in Debbie’s lap, brightened, and said, “Debbie comes now! My mom wanted to come, but she couldn’t.”

  Both Essie and Davenport looked at Debbie as if expecting some kind of explanation for which Debbie had none. She knew what Hannah was talking about, but how could she explain something that she didn’t understand at all?

  Best to act clueless, she figured, and said, “We’ve never left the hospital.”

  “This is going nowhere fast,” Davenport complained.

  “She’s been beyond cooperative. She’s answering your questions in the best way that she knows how,” said Essie. “Your frustration won’t improve things, but it will distance her from you.”

  Debbie wanted to high-five Essie, but a thought came to her. The detective had been focusing on Hannah’s arrival at the dumpster. Why not try searching in the other direction. Davenport was trying to break the front door down and the back door might be standing open.

  “I have an idea, if I may try,” said Debbie.

  Davenport presented Hannah like a concierge showing the way into a hotel. “Be my guest.”

  “Sweetie, can you tell us the name of the town you live in?” Debbie asked.

  “Elm Creek, Nebraska, six-eight-eight-three-six,” Hannah replied with studied concentration.

  “Excellent!” said Debbie. “Before the police drove you here to this hospital, do you remember when the last time you drove in a car was? Do you remember who you were with?”

  Again she thought. “A long time ago, Mom drove me and Anna home from Linda’s house.”

  “Is that the same Linda who watched you and Anna?” asked Davenport.

  “Yup,” Hannah agreed.

  “What’s your mother’s name, Hannah?” Davenport asked.

  “Elizabeth Doreen Amiel,” Hannah said with childlike precision, giving extra attention to pronunciation, as she had with her town and zip code. “Some people call her Liz. She was born in Lucerne, Switzerland.”

  Someone—in all likelihood probably Elizabeth Amiel—had made the effort to ensure that Hannah, and most likely Anna, knew their address and their mother’s full name. Debbie had the impression that Elizabeth Amiel was not a bad mother, but maybe a good person in a horrendously bad situation. She was from Switzerland, perhaps spoke limited English, and was in all probability clueless about life i
n America. A stranger in a strange land. By the sound of it, she was in dire straits—a single mother of twins with no family or support system. She had had the ill fortune of falling in love with a man who ended up dead shortly after she had abandoned her country to be with him, leaving her in the middle of nowhere with two bambinos in the bread basket.

  “When was the last time you saw your mother?” asked Davenport.

  Hannah stiffened, put her hands to her mouth, and focused her eyes on her lap.

  “Really?” Debbie asked. She shook her head and gave the detective a warning glare.

  Davenport released a pent-up breath, his frustration tearing into him. “Why didn’t Anna come with you from your home?” he asked.

  “Anna’s in Annaplace,” Hannah said.

  “But you said she was with you in Hannahwhere.”

  “Yup.”

  Davenport contemplated her over his folded hands for a while. He said, “Then she was in Hannahwhere.”

  “No,” stressed Hannah, as if he was a thickheaded child.

  Debbie could see the veins in his temple pulsing. He took a deep breath and released a sigh. He maneuvered his chair again, trying to garner her complete focus.

  “Okay, Hannah, why didn’t Anna come with you from Annaplace?”

  “She wants to, but she can’t,” Hannah said.

  “Then how come you can come here, but Anna can’t?”

  “We don’t know,” whispered Hannah. Her feet started moving nervously on Debbie’s lap, burrowing between the chair and her leg. “She’s stuck.”

  “Stuck in Annaplace? How is she stuck?” asked the detective.

  Hannah shrugged. “She’s just stuck.”

  “Can she move?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she tied up, or trapped under something?”

  “No.”

  “Did your mother ever go to Hannahwhere, Annaplace, or Whereverwhere with you and Anna?”

  “We don’t go to Whereverwhere. Is that your place?” Hannah asked.

  “I don’t have a place,” said the indignant detective. “Wherever it is that you and Anna go. Did your mom go?”

  “No. She never knew how.”

  “So you and Anna go alone?”

  “Sometimes,” Hannah said. “Sometimes we go together.”

  Davenport’s head dropped as if it had just become too heavy to support. “Why do you and Anna go?” he asked, aggravation shaping his words. Hannah shrank back.

  “She’s getting antsy. We’re going to lose her, again,” Debbie warned Davenport, thinking maybe more than you realize.

  “I don’t know,” breathed Hannah, a barely audible whisper. “It’s pretty and no one hurts anyone there. It’s where we go when it gets ugly.”

  “When what gets ugly?” asked Davenport.

  “When he gets ugly,” said Hannah, her anxiety and squirming heightening. Debbie started getting tense, as well.

  What if it happens again? What if Hannah starts… dissolving again? What if she disappears completely?

  Could she?

  All hell would break loose. As ludicrous as it sounded, it was now a terrifying notion.

  “Must we go there? You clearly know the answer to that. Why put her through this?” Debbie asked, irritated.

  “To get the answers we need,” Davenport shot back. “I don’t see where she’s overly distressed.” He redirected his focus back to Hannah. “How do you get there?”

  “I don’t know. We just close our eyes and sing loud so we don’t hear anything else. We make ourselves tiny. We make ourselves feel nothing and think of nothing but being there, and then we melt and disappear, and we go where we want to go. We just go away. I go and Anna meets me there,” Hannah explained, and then added, “Used to.”

  “In Hannahwhere?” asked the detective.

  Hannah nodded. “Hannahwhere is mine… Anna’s is Annaplace.”

  “Of course it is!” Davenport threw his hands in the air, but he continued. “So, you would go to these different places together in your minds, but they are not the same place, yet you can be there together except that now Anna is only partially there and your mother can’t go there at all… only you can come and go?” Davenport nearly shouted.

  Hannah stared at the detective while mulling over the question. “Yeah, I think so,” she meekly agreed and pressed tighter against Debbie. Davenport jumped up from the chair, startling everyone.

  “Detective,” Essie warned him. “Maybe you should take a coffee break or go for a walk?”

  “I’m fine,” he said in almost a growl. He sat back down, trying to compose himself, but he was clearly tense. “I just wish she’d tell me something useful.” Subsing nooseful.

  “Maybe she did. Maybe you’ll see it once you calm down and take some time to consider it,” Debbie suggested.

  “This is either one of the most severe cases of dissociation I’ve ever seen, or our little girl here is far too cunning for her years, which is very unlikely,” Essie said. She hesitated, and then continued. “We have to understand that in Hannah’s reality this all makes sense, even if it’s not clear to us. We have to respect her reality, detective, not force it into a shape that you can understand, because then it wouldn’t be her reality any longer.”

  Davenport shot her a derisive glance. “You’re making about as much sense as she is,” he said. Then he turned his attention back to Hannah. “When you say Travis got ugly, did he get ugly with you, Anna, your mother, or all of you?”

  Hannah curled even tighter inward, trying to burrow underneath Debbie’s arm.

  “Travis got ugly! He got ugly to Mom, ugly to me, ugly to Anna, but always ugly to Mom!” The tension built within Hannah, exuding from her coiled body. Debbie’s own breathing increased in response.

  “You should stop,” Debbie warned Davenport. “What does this have to do with finding Anna?”

  “Possibly everything,” snapped the detective. “I’ll tell you once she starts making sense.”

  Essie said nothing, but watched Hannah more intently, as if something intrigued her.

  Is she fading again? Debbie wondered. Is that what she’s seeing?

  “What do you mean when you say ugly? Did he yell a lot, did he hit you?” asked the detective.

  “Yells a lot, and hits. Not me. He hurt Anna. Hit Mom… he hurt Mom bad! Really bad!” Hannah squealed. She snaked an arm behind Debbie’s back, pulling away from the turmoil, and pressed her face into the crook of Debbie’s arm.

  “How did he hurt Anna?” Davenport asked.

  “That’s enough!” Debbie snapped.

  “Yes, that’s enough,” agreed Essie.

  “Hannah, you went from your mom driving you and Anna home from your babysitter’s to Travis being ugly to your mom, to Hannahwhere, and then to the dumpster? Did you go anywhere else in two years?” Davenport persisted, his voice rising. “You had to be somewhere, Hannah. Nothing else for two years?”

  Aggravated, Davenport rubbed his face with open palms.

  “Why does she remember everything, everything, but where she’s been between then and now?” he asked.

  “Trauma, most likely,” Essie said. “I’m sure she’s blocking it.”

  “Fine,” he said. “But where has she been, and why the hell does it seem like she hasn’t grown at all?”

  “We’ve been through that. Trauma can do that, too, and there is no need causing her more,” Essie insisted, her voice punitive and rigid.

  “Trauma can erase two years?”

  “Trauma can erase a life!” Essie said, trapping Davenport with a glare.

  The detective paused and closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he reopened them, he focused on Hannah, tried softening his voice and asked almost beseechingly, “Hannah, can’t you remember anything about where you’ve been or where Anna is?”

  Hannah turned her head and the tears, utter grief, and rage that contorted her face hit Debbie like a punch to the heart.

  “Travis got ug
ly and he hit Mom! He stinks when he’s ugly! In the house, Anna yelled at Travis to stop hitting Mom.”

  “You were outside?” Davenport asked.

  “I come in and he’s hitting Mom, and Mom is bleeding bad and crying. We have to go to our secret place…and I tell Anna… and I sang, but I didn’t sing loud enough, because… because I still can hear him hitting Mom,” Hannah sobbed. ”Mom is hurt and crying loud. Yelling. Yell-crying! I was scared. Even when I was in the secret place, I still couldn’t sing. I couldn’t go to Hannahwhere!”

  “What is the secret place,” Davenport asked.

  “Mom says… Mom says… go to our secret spot under the house, no matter what,” Hannah said, hitching and hiccupping badly. Debbie encased her in her arms and rocked, trying to hush her, to comfort her, but Hannah was beyond comfort and the words kept tumbling out.

  “Me and Anna tried to go in there—in the secret place—but Travis came in because Anna couldn’t hold onto the door. He says he’s going to kill Anna and me ’cause we’re no good and we don’t ever shut up, and we didn’t know where Mom’s money is so we couldn’t tell him.” She hiccupped and paused to catch her breath. Tears and mucus soaked her face. “His face was red and he was mad and mean. He dragged Anna outside. He hurt her! He’s a mean man! I went to Hannahwhere without singing, but Mom didn’t come get me in the secret place, and Anna didn’t come to Annaplace! I waited and she didn’t come! She didn’t come because I didn’t sing!”

  Hannah was nearly in convulsions. She forced out a sob that was more a shriek than a cry and tried to burrow behind Debbie.

  Debbie rubbed Hannah’s shoulder, trying unsuccessfully to reassure and console her. She kissed her head, and it started happening again. Hannah’s weight lessened on Debbie’s lap as her shoulders began dwindling. Debbie shifted Hannah and hugged her urgently, cradling her head to her neck, but Hannah’s body became lighter and more insubstantial.

  “You stay with us, Hannah,” Debbie whispered into her hair. Her heart slammed like it would bust out of her chest. “Don’t leave us.”

  “Well…” Davenport started.

  Debbie glared at him and her anger swelled dangerously.

  “It’s done…no more questions. I mean it. She’s been through enough!” Debbie said. She quelled a sudden urge to strike out at Davenport if he didn’t leave. “Why don’t you go and talk to Travis, he’s clearly lying about not touching Anna. Interrogate him, not Hannah!”