I got out of the car. The clouds had given way to a starry sky, and the moon was bright as if someone had flicked a switch. For the first time I could clearly see my surroundings. We were parked by the side of a cornfield, a dirt road running adjacent to it. A few gnarled trees obscured the field to the right.
I was surprised by how short Lieberman was, something I had never noticed before. He motioned for me to turn around. Without hesitation I turned my back to him. I was not afraid. He was the kind of crazy that wants to look you in the eye and see you suffer.
The colorless moon covered the world in shades of gray. I could make out the silhouettes of corn stalks. The aroma of wet soil was pungent. There was a dirt road leading between the cornfields, cutting them neatly in two halves. No car had passed us since he had pulled up behind me. The dark night seemed unforgiving, leaving no room for mistakes. A few hundred yards down that dirt road and we’d all but disappear into the darkness.
‘You should’ve left when you had the chance.’
‘I’m not leaving without my child. You should know that by now.’
‘Everybody thinks you are incapable. Even the cops.’
‘You know nothing about me,’ I said and dug my feet into the gravel.
‘Get down on the ground.’
His voice was full of anticipation but I stood unwavering.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
He grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back, forcing me on my knees. ‘You go where I tell you to go, sweetheart. And you’re going down.’
‘The cops are still around making sure I leave. They’ll be here any minute.’
‘You’re just a deranged stalker, remember? No cop is looking for you, trust me.’ He took a step back and pointed a gun at me. ‘Stay on your knees,’ he added, ‘and don’t try anything stupid. Put your hands on top of your head so I can see ’em.’
I did as I was told. I faced the cornfield and when I heard footsteps walking off into the distance, I turned my head. I watched him as he leaned through the broken car window, searching my purse. He stuck his hand in, then pulled out the gun. He walked to his car and, through the open window, dropped the gun on the passenger seat. He looked left and right as if to find a perfect spot to do to me whatever his crazy mind was telling him to do.
As he peered down the dirt road he was confident, so sure of himself that he was pulling the strings. The smugger he acted, the more pronounced became a strength I didn’t know I had.
I darted towards the cornfield, Lieberman shouting obscenities in the background. The second I crossed the outer limits of the field and made it through the initial rows of cornstalks, I knew I was in trouble. The rain had soaked the soil and after a few steps the muck sucked at my shoes and made my feet heavy. I felt as if I was stuck in one of those dreams where your legs won’t obey and regardless how hard you try to get away, they just won’t cooperate.
I made my way straight down a path and after about twenty feet I turned suddenly to the left, like a rabbit making a quick sharp turn to avoid a predator. I took only a couple more steps and collided, legs first, into a solid structure. I fell to the ground. My shins throbbed and my kneecaps pulsated with pain. With the moon high above, I made out a small wooden booth with a partial roof, a swinging side door, and a wooden sign with chipped paint.
Corn Maze Entrance. Please Purchase Tickets Here.
I got up and after a few stumbles caught myself and continued down the path. There was one trail leading to the left, one to the right. Before I could make up my mind in which direction to turn, I heard sucking sounds heralding Lieberman’s approach. Whatever disadvantages the wet soil had posed on me, also applied to him.
My knees were in such bad shape that running was no longer an option and I decided to hide between the stalks. I crouched down and sat in the mud. I willed my breathing to slow and I waited. Childlike, I closed my eyes, hoping that if I didn’t see him, he wasn’t going to see me either. My heart beat like a drum in my chest and I waited in the chilled autumn air for his approach.
The sound I heard next was unnerving. Click. The cocking of the gun coincided with my sucking air into my nostrils. It was over.
He came up from behind, forced my hands to my back, almost dislocating my shoulders. He held on to my arms, pulled me to my feet, and with each step the pain in my knees intensified. When we reached the cars parked by the roadside, he gave me a shove. I fell knees first on the ground. I tried to stay still but the spiky gravel digging into me made my eyes tear up. The pain produced colorful eruptions of lights tracing back and forth behind eyelids. I moaned, which made him snicker. He slid something around my wrists. Judging by the sound of it, he was attaching plastic zip ties.
When I looked up, he was standing in front of me, his outline framed by the moon. The moonlight caught something shiny in his right hand. A knife. The blade flashed some clandestine Morse code spelling deep gashes and blood soaking the already saturated soil. We locked eyes – three, maybe five seconds or more – and I found it impossible to tear away from him. He was slick with sweat.
‘Who’s after who now, huh? You aren’t cut out for this, you should’ve never come after us.’
In his left hand he held his gun, the right hand kept taunting me with the knife in short deliberate surges towards my face.
‘Where’s my daughter?’ My voice was small, puny, not at all how I intended it to be.
‘Where’s my daughter?’ he mocked me, then lunged again, the high sheen of the blade a promise of things to come. ‘It’s not like you took care of her. All that crying, day and night. Was it so hard for you to take care of such a little thing? Why’d she cry all the time? You probably didn’t feed her, didn’t change her. Why’d you have her?’
‘Mia, where is she? Where is my daughter?’ I insisted.
He kept lunging towards me, taunting me with his knife. He was so close that I could smell his sweat and his anxiety. He wasn’t going to shoot me, he was going to take pleasure in holding the handle of the knife while twisting it into my flesh, the warm blood feeding his frenzy. Then he’d get off twisting fabric and tightening it around my neck while watching my eyes protrude and my face turn blue. The way he was going to kill me was not important; watching me die would make his day.
‘How’d you figure it all out? You didn’t strike me as the quick-witted kind,’ he said.
‘You thought you had the perfect plan but you made mistakes.’
He was inches away from me. When he lifted his right hand, I closed my eyes. He got so close that I could smell his breath.
‘All I had to do was get you out of the house. I hid your wallet, I made baby formula, I left a gallon of water for you. With sleeping pills in it. That night, I came in through the dumbwaiter. While you were asleep in your bed I stood over you with your crying baby in my arms, and you didn’t even wake up. I just walked out the front door with your kid and came back later through the shaft and locked the door. And the only mistake I ever made was that I didn’t shut you up sooner.’
‘You left her blanket in the attic. That was your first mistake.’
His eyes darted about. ‘I must have dropped it when I left the building through the attic. A tiny detail I overlooked, not really important.’
‘Your second mistake was that you kept the Tinker Bell charm. Like any other sick fuck, you kept something so you’d get off on what you did every time you looked at it. And you call me crazy?’
He laughed and made stabbing motions towards my face. ‘You wanna know where the baby is? In good hands. Better hands than yours, that’s for sure. Anna and I, we’ll find a nice family for her.’
‘She has a family.’ I felt the blade pressing against my ear. His face was just an inch from mine, his lips were parted as if he was trying to kiss me. I closed my eyes. I felt his lips on my cheek, barely touching my skin. I thought rape. I thought he’s going to rape me. I remained still, forced myself not to jerk away from him. Then his lips were on min
e, his tongue forcing mine apart. I turned my head and spit on the ground, wiping my lips on my shoulder.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I screamed at him.
He didn’t answer, just looked at me with his feverish eyes, pleased to have me on my knees.
‘What did you think I was going to do? You kidnapped my child!’ The last words came out in a howl.
His brow furrowed and he lightly tilted his head to the right. ‘You’re one sick, clueless bitch. Kidnapped is what you call it? I’m a knight who came along to save the day. I tried to tell you in so many words she was crying too much, that you didn’t hold her enough. I was waiting for you to tell me how she was too much for you, how you were overwhelmed, tired, couldn’t cope. But all you did was shut the door in my face.’
‘I saw the book on your shelf about torturing and killing children. You want to tell me you’re some savior when all you are is a lunatic stealing children. And you call me sick?’
‘If you had only bothered to look closer you would have discovered the man you call a lunatic was a hero. He was destroyed by false testimony, he was not what everyone made him out to be.’
‘I don’t care about your books and heroes. This is the real world and in that world you climbed through a dumbwaiter in the middle of the night, stole my child and took her to your sister or whoever she is.’
‘I didn’t have a single moment of peace after you moved in. The baby cried all day and all night. She cried for hours, and you didn’t do anything about it. You left her screaming her head off. What kind of mother are you?’ I saw revulsion in his eyes and felt droplets of projective saliva on my face. ‘I did you a favor by taking her.’
‘If you thought I was a bad mother you should’ve called CPS!’ My voice had gotten louder and louder, the last words made my voice crack. I decided to plead. If he had any feelings left behind those eyes, he might listen to me. ‘Please, just give her back and I won’t tell anybody. Please, I’m begging, give her back.’
He smiled and for a second I wanted to believe that some sanity had returned to him. His features relaxed and he looked almost normal. I felt hope, but then he retreated back into his feverish state. His eyes widened and they were dark, as dark as the endless sky above us.
‘This is a big misunderstanding. Please give me my daughter back. Please …’ I was sobbing now, trying to free my hands. The plastic cuffs cut into my wrists.
‘What did Anna tell you? No offense, Anna’s my girl and all, but she’s never told it straight in her life. What did she tell you?’
When I didn’t answer right away he started screaming.
‘WHAT DID SHE TELL YOU?’
‘Nothing. She told me nothing.’
He sucked in one deep breath as if he had just emerged from minutes under water. ‘When I was a kid I had just one wish. That someone would come and take me from my parents.’
‘You’re getting it all wrong.’
‘Shut up and listen!’
‘You got it all wrong, I’m—’
‘I’m the one getting it wrong? No, you’re the one who got it all wrong. You left her in the car. I saw you leaving her in the car. I know parents like you.’
‘You hear a baby cry and you make up this entire story.’
‘I know what mothers like you are capable of.’
‘Mothers like me? You know nothing about me.’
‘I know the likes of you.’
The likes of me. To him I’m one of those mothers. An abuser. A mother who neglected her child. The demons that must be inside of him to draw that conclusion.
Lieberman started pacing back and forth, the blade gleaming in the moonlight. I watched him, hypnotized by his movements.
‘Why did you take her? I don’t understand—’
‘I took her because you didn’t want her.’ He paused for a second, then smiled. ‘Some mothers are like that.’ And then he told his story, the story of the boy he used to be. Between moments of unintelligible ramblings and pacing in circles, he spoke of his parents, Esther and Abe Lieberman. ‘My mother was just like you,’ he said.
I wanted to ask questions but then I thought otherwise. I decided to allow him to peel back the layers of his madness. I listened as he painted a picture of his childhood, and his story took shape in my mind, a story of a strange part of the American land inhabited by peculiar people, a part of Appalachia far removed from romantic notions of wooded hiking trails.
He was a little boy, about eight years old, Anna, covered in freckles, about five. He spoke of how they trudged around the only neighborhood they knew; dirt paths, and dead-end roads. His childhood was spent around a cluster of houses without electricity and running water, just a collection of trailers and shanties, surrounded by lots of garbage and not a glimmer of hope.
At times Lieberman turned and listened into the blackness, his eyes scanning the darkness as if he was making sure no one else was listening to his story of living in squalor and misery in an old farmhouse without a foreseeable exit out of a shabby hillbilly hell of a life.
Other times his voice would soften unexpectedly, especially when he spoke of his ‘rescue,’ his ‘new family,’ so full of joy that his eyes lit up like a kid telling you about a new bike. The state intervened, ‘mercifully’ he called it, after he showed up one too many times with bruises on his face and filthy clothes. A large lady with drawstring pants and a clipboard took him and Anna to live with a foster family.
‘We had breakfast that first morning at the foster home and when they told us it was time for lunch later on, I didn’t understand. Didn’t we just eat? I asked. Damn, we got to eat more than once a day?
‘There was running hot water and I had my own room and, what d’ya know, not all families yell at each other all day long, and not all dads slap their kids around. I didn’t know there was a life without beatings, shooting stray dogs with pellet guns, and disemboweling hogs.
‘That foster family, the mom worked in a travel agency. She brought home these catalogs. You could just pick a country, a hotel, and go there. Like it wasn’t a big deal and getting away was just a matter of picking a place. You know what our vacation was? Three months in a foster home. That’s all we got. It just wasn’t enough. All Anna and I ever talked about was getting away.
‘But then it was all over. The worst day of my life,’ Lieberman said, ‘was the day they made us go back. Old Abe complied, that’s what they called it. He was in compliance with the state, he fixed the place up a bit, ran some cables, scrubbed the tub and washed the sheets and before we knew it, we were back. They called it parent-child-reunification. What a crock of shit, it was fucking hell.’
He spat the word ‘hell’ into the night like some stale chewing tobacco. As he was continuing his story, I wiggled my hands back and forth, trying to loosen the plastic cuffs. I shifted my legs into a more comfortable position but the move caused him to swipe the knife at me.
‘I prayed for them to fall asleep with a cigarette between their fingers, burning down the house. So Anna and I could live our lives.’ His eyes widened and he was far away for a long time. Then his face stiffened. ‘I love Anna. We started messing around in the backyard shed when she was twelve years old. And she’s not my sister. Don’t ever call her that again.’
He stepped closer and I turned my head, afraid of what he was going to do, his madness right on the surface. His eyes focused on me again, he started to wave the gun back and forth. ‘Anna and I, we made plans. All I wanted was to make some money but where did I end up? Living in the same house with one of those spoiled rich bitches. House, husband, car, money. Ever wanted for anything? Tell me, you ever wanted for anything?’
He backed up, started to pace in circles. Then he walked towards me, gravel crunching under his boots. ‘Your baby never stopped crying. Some women should not be mothers. Like you.’ He screamed, his voice carrying into the cornfield, lost among the husks and stalks.
I lowered myself on the ground, sideways, with my le
gs half tucked under.
As if someone had snapped a leash, his eyes stilled and his words started to slur. ‘You should thank me, is what y … y … you shoul … d d.… Anna told me to do something, but I can’t remember. I can’t remember. She’s gonna be so mad at me.’ And then insanity owned him like the tide, wavelike washed over him, and carried him further away from reason. ‘What was it, what was it, … damn …’ He hit his forehead with his fist, ‘I can’t remember what she told me to do. So much to remember, so much … it’s so hard to do everything right …’ He kept checking his watch and wiping his forehead with his forearm while holding on to the gun.
Then his face shifted and again he focused on me. ‘I’m just gonna kill you.’
I felt hope leaving my body, my bones turning to dust. His voice was still there, in the background, yet no longer playing a major role.
‘You have no reason to be on this earth. Just taking up space and that’s why you have to go.’ His chest rose with primal power.
I will make him look into my eyes, I thought, and I won’t whimper or cry or leave him with an image of me curled up in a fetal position in the dirt. I will not allow him to triumph over me. ‘Who are you to decide who’s worthy and who isn’t?’ I asked him. ‘I’m not your mother.’ I spat those words at him. ‘There was nothing I could’ve done about her crying. She was a fussy baby. She would cry in my arms, she would cry in her crib. There was nothing, nothing, I could have done.’
‘Nothing but fucking excuses. You sorry excuse of a mother.’ He was spraying saliva, and then he paused, replacing his angry expression with a diabolic smile. ‘Are you afraid? You think it’s gonna hurt? You look afraid.’
I could barely sit upright.
‘I can’t hear you.’
‘I’m not …’
‘I can’t hear you. Quiet as a mouse, huh?’
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