by Rea Frey
We continue to drive, the radio on low so I can hear the directions. My hands stutter on the wheel as I grasp the reality of my actions. I could be arrested. I could go to jail for the rest of my life. What the fuck am I doing? What have I actually done? I shake away the worry, instead focusing on the task in front of me: Get home. Get her safe.
The hour lengthens as we bump into traffic at the edge of the city. I live in north Portland. It is a short commute downtown on most days, and right now, I wish I lived in a bungalow tucked behind a towering privacy fence and a bank of endless trees.
I wait for Emma to say something, but she stays silent, her eyes absorbing the sights as they pass by, her fingers gathered in her lap, working over her dress like it’s a dishrag. We pull up to my midrise, and I park on the street. I unbuckle my seatbelt and look at her.
“Do you live here?”
I clear my throat. “I do live here. I thought we could eat some food and rest for a bit. Is that okay?”
“Do you have toys?”
“You know what? Yes, actually. I have something even better than toys. Want to see?” I silently thank the gods above for the extra inventory of boxes I keep in my utility closet. She unbuckles her belt and opens the door, almost spilling onto the pavement.
I offer my hand and she grabs it, her fingers tacky and warm. We walk toward the door. I fumble with the keys and locate the key fob to swipe us both in. We ride the elevator up to the fifth floor. I unlock my door as quickly as I can, suddenly wishing for a dog or cat so Emma would be entertained. I drop my bag, release her hand, and bolt the door behind me. “There.”
She turns. “There what?”
“No, nothing. Just there. Here. We’re here.” I sound ridiculous, but I have to keep calm, keep her calm. I look at her face. The outline of her mother’s handprint runs across her jaw and looks like it has a pulse. “Does your cheek hurt?”
Emma lifts her hand and touches the forming bruise. “Uh-huh.”
I rummage in the freezer and grab a bag of peas. “Are you hungry?”
Emma shifts in the front hall. “Do you have mac and cheese?”
I offer her the bag.
“I don’t want peas.”
“No, sweetie, not to eat. For your face. Here, like this.” I press the peas to her cheek, and she bucks. “I know it’s cold, but it will get better after a few minutes. Here, let me grab something to make it less cold.” I tear a few paper towels from the roll, rewrap the peas, and hand it back to her. She moves it on and off her face, the crunch of frozen veggies competing with the frenzy of my heart.
“I think…” I scour the cabinets and find an old box of brown rice noodles. I scan my fridge and spot a half-eaten block of Fontina cheese and a small carton of whole milk. “I think I can whip up some mac and cheese. Would you like to play or watch TV?”
“Watch TV.” She looks around. “Do you have kids?”
“I don’t.”
“I have a baby brother.”
“You do? I bet that’s fun.”
“Where’s the TV?”
I lead her to the living room and pull the shades. She hands me the remote from the coffee table. I don’t even know what channels are the kid channels, or if I have them. What if a picture of Emma flashes on the nightly news? What if my phone squeals with an AMBER Alert? What if the police are already looking for her? I scroll through the channels until I find Disney Junior. “Is this okay?”
She nods and sits on the couch.
“Do you need to go to the bathroom?”
“No.” She pulls her legs underneath her and fixates on the television. The bag of peas moves on and off her face.
“Okay. I’ll make dinner.”
I move to the kitchen and squeeze the edge of the countertop. Just breathe. I want to call Lisa, but I can’t fathom what she would say. I don’t want to drag anyone into this as an unwilling accomplice, especially my best friend. I just want to give Emma a break, even a small one.
I busy myself with the task at hand—dinner—hoping she will eat this slightly altered version of a comforting childhood staple. I slop her noodles into a bowl, realizing I have nothing kid-friendly: no plastic cups, no bottles, no miniature silverware. No premeditation.
I offer Emma her food, and she takes it, her eyes still on the TV. She lifts the spoon to her lips and immediately drops it, the hot metal clanging against the porcelain edge of the bowl.
“Sorry, honey. It’s hot. Just blow on it.”
She does as she is told, tenderly taking another bite and then another. She makes a face as she tucks in, but hunger overcomes the strange taste, and she devours the entire bowl, licking her spoon, never breaking eye contact from the cartoon or the commercials. She emits a fat sigh when done, the bowl resting against the stained, wilted fabric of her red dress.
“Do you want anything else?”
“Do you got juice?”
“I actually don’t have juice. Is water okay?”
She nods. I grab a small glass and sit beside her on the couch while she drinks, looking around my condo. My eyes rest on my phone. I walk to it and key in the password. Should I take a video? Explain what happened? Why I did what I did? Maybe I could capture Emma confessing to how horrible her mother is.
I find my voice memos and hit record. I grab the remote and turn the television off, positioning my body to face hers.
Her glassy eyes blink and then focus. “Where’d the show go?”
“It’s still there. I just wanted to talk to you about a few things, if that’s okay? Then we can watch more cartoons.”
She stares into her water glass. I have no idea who this little person is. I know she is wondering where her mommy is. And growing up with my own complicated mother-daughter relationship, I understand exactly why.
“So, Emma. Do you remember seeing me at the airport a few months ago? I told you how much I liked your pretty red bow?”
She tilts her head to the side.
“That’s okay if you don’t. But I saw you. At the airport several months back. And I saw your mom being tough on you. With her words. And her hands.”
Emma shrugs. “That’s just Mama.”
“What’s just Mama?”
She scratches her nose and looks around the condo, as if just realizing where she is. “Do you have those toys?”
I’m losing her. “Yes. I do. But it’s really important that I just … understand a little bit about your mommy and daddy first, okay? And then we can play.”
“What?”
“What do I want to understand?”
She nods.
“Oh. Well, I guess I just want to know if you feel safe at home.”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, how about this? I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to be completely honest with me. And you won’t get into trouble, I promise. No one is getting mad about anything here. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Does your mommy hurt you?”
She squirms and looks at the blank TV. “When I’m bad.”
The statement hangs in the air, loaded. I wait for her to say more but she doesn’t. I click off the voice memos. “All right. Playtime?”
She smiles—a flicker—and I lead her to the closet and remove a kit for kindergarteners. “How old are you?”
She holds up all the fingers of her right hand.
“Five? What a big girl! That’s how old I thought you were. These are for kids just your age. Want to see?”
I spread out the contents on the floor, watching as she takes the time to play with each one. She is meticulous in her movements and examines each individual object before moving on to the next.
“Mama does hurt me.”
The confession comes out of nowhere, and my chest heaves with the new information. “How does that make you feel?”
“Bad. She says I’m bad all the time.”
“Do you think you’re bad all the time?”
“I don’t know. I do
n’t think so.”
“Are you afraid of her?”
“Sometimes.”
“Does your daddy hurt you too?”
“No. He doesn’t know Mama hurts me.”
I swallow. “What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “She never does it when he’s around.”
“Have you told your daddy this?”
“Mama said not to tell.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d get in trouble.”
I calculate all the ways to tell her it’s okay; that it’s not her fault. That her mother’s actions are not about her. That she has the right to be loved. “Emma, you know when mommies and daddies get super-tired or frustrated, they shouldn’t hurt you, right?”
“She doesn’t always hurt me. But she always yells.” Emma fits a puzzle piece into a cube and moves on. “Like every day.”
Well, that decides it.
“I’m so sorry, Emma. That must be very hard.” I stand and head to the bedroom, grabbing my duffel from the top shelf. My suitcase is still in the back of the car. I start throwing in more items: underwear, hiking boots, scarves, tampons. My hands shake so violently, I can barely grip my toiletries, my clothes, or my five extra pairs of folded socks.
I sit on the edge of the bed. I could drop her off at a police station and report what she just told me. But the protectiveness I feel over her already … I’m not willing to let her go.
I have a choice to make, and it is an irreparable one. I’m either all in or all out. I step back into the hall and listen to the babble of play in the next room. I stare at her red, swollen cheek. I filter through everything I’ve seen between her and her mother. What am I willing to live with?
And then I know. I know exactly where I’m going to take her, and the exact store I can purchase everything we need. I know where we will sleep and wake up, and that no one will be looking for her where we are going. It’s a long shot, a stupid shot, but it’s my only one.
I call Madison and tell her my father and I have the flu. They think I have been visiting my father the last few days. My little knot of employees are germaphobes, steering clear if someone so much as sneezes. It will buy me time—not a lot, but enough to come up with something better—some long-term excuse that will not leave my company in ruins and my employees suspicious. But there’s too much to do now.
I must get Emma to come with me somewhere else, to a place that is not her home, with a person who is not her mother.
I just hope I don’t run out of time.
before
The day before my mother walked out, she made me pancakes.
I always helped her make the batter, eagerly scraping a chair to the Formica countertops and waiting for her instructions to pour flour, sugar, and cinnamon into the eggs and milk. She’d let me handle the wooden spoon and spin the dough until it was sticky and wet. It happened so rarely that I immediately dropped whatever I was doing when she offered. I’d learned long ago to stop asking for pancakes—if I wanted them, she would offer—so I was surprised and delighted when she suggested it.
She dusted the flour from my nose, kissed the top of my head, and pulled me close. In those startling, rare moments, I was filled with something like love. We ate our pancakes while my father slept—a redundant Saturday habit—as it was the one day my dad could sleep in. My mother let me have extra maple syrup that morning and had even warmed it on the stove and sprinkled blueberries and a few chocolate chips on top of my stack.
I should have known something was wrong; she was being too nice. There’d been no arguments, raised voices, or muttering about how hard her life was, how disastrous the house was, how unorganized the closets, how it all wasn’t fair that this was her life. How she needed to be alone, to be her own person; how she needed to shake her family loose to live the life she was actually meant for.
Her love came in waves. When she was happy, everyone felt it. When she was sad, I would often hide in my room with a book, because everything was wrong and nothing my father or I did could change it.
I ate my pancakes, sure to chew with my mouth closed, while she sipped her coffee and stared at our brown patch of backyard.
“Do you ever feel that you’re living someone else’s life?”
I paused, just as I was lifting a forkful of fluffy pancakes to my mouth. My lips were blue, I was pretty sure, and I had just been on the verge of asking my mother if I looked like a Smurf. Instead, I chewed, swallowed, and pretended to give it some thought, though I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
If I said yes, I understood, she’d tell me I was a kid and couldn’t possibly understand. If I said no, I didn’t, she’d tell me to grow up and face reality. So I said nothing and waited for the ramifications to pour down, but they didn’t. After a few moments, she smiled at me, asked me if I wanted another pancake, and then actually stood and got me one.
I held my breath, wondering what was coming next, but she returned with a huge pancake poised on the spatula and deposited it on my plate with a soft plop. “A treat for my treat,” she said. Her eyes were far too glassy. Her fingers were twitching around the utensil. I could hear the frenzy in her voice—my dad had taught me that word, had tried to sugarcoat it for what it was, but it meant a shift was coming—into anger, annoyance, abuse, or absence—so I hurriedly thanked her, ate it, and asked if I could go outside and play.
She told me yes—she didn’t make a negative comment about our pathetic excuse of a backyard, the noisy neighbors, or how the Midwest was the most uncreative, regular, normal area in all of America. She just said yes.
Before I eased out the back door, I ran to her, slid my arms around her slim waist, and squeezed. She did not hug me back, but she let me stay there for a full thirty seconds, laughed, and then told me to go play.
As I bounded out the back door and crunched over the hot, stale grass, I made a wish right then and there that if there was a God, to please let things stay just like this. For just a little bit longer. For just one more day, at least.
* * *
My mother went out with friends that night, as she usually did on Saturdays. Her group consisted of random strangers and neighbors, though tonight were a few of my favorites: Peggy with the big boobs, Arthur with the comb-over, and Suzanne with the limp. My dad was never invited on these outings, and I was glad. There wasn’t much of a budget for babysitting, as my mom constantly reminded him, so he stayed home with me.
We fried fish and potatoes and watched a movie together, curled up like parentheses on the couch. My mother often called us sloths when she’d come back, smelling of cigarettes and booze, but she was always so beautiful that I would will myself awake, hoping she would hug me, or tell me she liked my pajamas. But instead, she often just excused herself to the bedroom, where she’d take two sleeping pills and pass out until midday Sunday.
My father and I waited for her to come home. The hours dragged by, and I was tired, but I wanted to see her before bed. I hadn’t told him about the pancakes that morning, hoarding that delicious secret for myself. At midnight, my dad lifted me off the couch, letting me forgo brushing my teeth, and deposited me in bed.
“Where’s Elaine?” My mother had given me strict instructions at age six to call her Elaine. She did not want to be called Mom, Mama, Mommy, or the more formal Mother, and eager to please, I retrained my brain to call her by her first name. I slipped up often in those early months, but I was eight now, and it was practically ingrained.
“I don’t know, pumpkin. She’s not home yet. I’m sure she’s just having fun with her friends.” He looked sad when he said it, and looking back, I wondered if he knew, or suspected, but he just kissed the top of my head and let me go to sleep.
* * *
The next morning, I pinched the dark green crust from the corners of my eyes and smacked them off my comforter. I yawned—my breath sour—and went to pee and brush my teeth. The house was quiet, and I wondered if I had woken up too early. Or too late
. I peeked in my parents’ room. My dad’s side was rumpled. My mother’s was not.
Panic wound itself around my skin, but I told myself to relax, that maybe she’d slept on the couch or just stayed out all night. But the truth was this: my father and I had spent my entire young life waiting for something bad to happen. Elaine had never wanted children, a well-known fact she discussed every chance she got. I was an accident. I ruined her acting career. I changed everything.
My father had worked the last eight years trying to pick up the slack so she wouldn’t have to do much of anything. He’d convinced her to keep the baby—I’ll never know how—but being raised knowing you weren’t wanted was something I wouldn’t wish on any kid.
I was suddenly breathless as I ran to the kitchen. I shrieked as I saw my father sitting at the kitchen table, his hands folded in his lap, staring blankly out the window. I stood next to him to see what he was seeing. Maybe it was a deer or a rabbit, or maybe it was snowing in August?—but there was nothing of interest. I placed my hand on my father’s shoulder, since he hadn’t budged when I’d screamed, and shook him.
“Dad … Daddy?” I was scared, and I didn’t know why. But I knew something was different in this house.
He turned, as if his entire body were made of drying cement, and looked at me with eyes that were broken, glazed, and defeated.
“Where’s Elaine?” It was the same thing I’d asked last night, but this morning, it seemed it would have an entirely different meaning.
“She’s gone.” It came out hoarse, and I waited for him to continue.
“Gone where? Like, still out with her friends?”
My father began to wail then—crying so hard, he gripped my shoulders, pulled me into him, and squeezed me until I thought I would break. But I didn’t dare pull back. “Oh God, Oh God, Sarah. Oh God. What am I going to do now? What am I going to do without her?”
He said I, not we, as though I wasn’t even a factor, as though I had been written off as the reason for my mother’s departure. He didn’t say that, would never say that, but from that day on, I felt it. I was the problem. I’d always been the problem. He would have made a trade for her, and we both knew it.