Little Girl Gone

by Alexandra Burt

  Anna directed me to the first booth by the door.

  ‘Diane’s famous for her pecan pies.’

  I put my hands on the table and realized that my fingernails were still rimmed with mud. Then the jukebox came on, a guitar, then a voice. Raspy, shaky. Johnny Cash.

  The beast in me

  Is caged by frail and fragile bars.

  ‘Coffee and pecan pie?’ Anna asked as if it was the most normal thing in the world. She didn’t wait for my answer and called the order to the waitress behind the counter who in turn nodded and took two cups off a large stack.

  ‘I promise,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell anyone, I promise. Never will I—’

  She looked at me puzzled, then she laughed out loud. ‘I can promise you that your baby will be okay. Is a promise like that something you want?’

  I nodded, feeling hot tears working their way to the surface.

  ‘Just imagine her, in a few years, she’ll have nice clothes, a room with a pink canopy bed, more toys than she’ll know what to do with. A mom, a dad, maybe a brother or a sister. Someone who cares for her, loves her. All of that. Is that something you want?’

  I swallowed hard.

  ‘That’s one side of the coin. Would you like to hear the other side?’

  ‘I’ll do anything.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said and reached behind her into her waistband, retrieving the gun. She stuck it into the front pocket of her hoodie.

  ‘Now let me paint the other picture for you. A little girl living with her daddy. And I use the word daddy loosely here. He loves her, he cares for her. He buys her pretty things. Jewelry, lipstick, dresses, whatever she wants. But she has to do something for it. Every time she wants something she has to give him something in return. The little girl loves him and she wants her daddy happy. And she does what he asks her to do. Anything.’

  For a few seconds my brain refused to make the connection, but then hope ruptured. My heartbeat echoed in my ear. The pain that made my knees throb and the pain I felt on the side of my head was nothing compared to her words coming into focus.

  A middle-aged waitress with wrinkled skin that seemed too large for her elfin frame put coffee and pie in front of us.

  ‘Let’s eat and then I’ll explain how this is going to work.’

  I crushed the pecans with my fork, stirring the pieces into the filling. I was parched. The first sip of coffee was tepid and unpleasant, some sort of bitterness lingered in the back of my throat. I downed the lukewarm coffee in three gulps, its aftertaste making me shudder.

  ‘You’re a smart girl, I think you understood what I just told you,’ Anna said and mashed a piece of piecrust with her fork. She put another piece of pie in her mouth and swallowed. ‘Needless to say that the plan David and I had didn’t work out.’

  I sat still, unable to move. ‘What plan?’ I wrapped my hands around the empty cup. Did the walls just shift or did I imagine that? My body felt weighed down as if my blood had been replaced by lead.

  ‘Everything was okay until you showed up. David is,’ she paused and smiled, ‘was, a bit on the unstable side.’

  My grip tightened around the cup. I pushed the plate with the pie away from me.

  ‘Where was I? Oh, yeah, my brother. David and I find unwanted babies and sell them to people who want them. Unwanted basically means we take babies that are no longer wanted or who are neglected. Babies from moms who can’t take care of another baby, drug users, even had one from a homeless girl, believe it or not. No agencies, no lawyers, no fees, no court papers. Nothing, just a transfer of responsibilities. Basically we match families, if you will. People pay outrageous sums for a baby. The right gender, the right age.

  ‘Until everything went out of control. David never had sound judgment, if you ask me. All he ever talked about is this island and that beach, this hotel, and that trip. Kept bringing me those catalogs with glossy pictures, Paris here and Barbados there. Always talking about where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do. What a fool.

  ‘David told me about you and from what I heard you weren’t the mommy type. Letting her cry all the time. I told him a woman like you would never go for this, you got money, a house, a husband, but he didn’t want to listen. I knew it was a bad idea, but he was dead set on going through with it. Said your husband was some broke douchebag trying to flip houses.’

  ‘How much money do you want?’

  ‘Money? Who’s talking about money?’ Anna laughed and then turned to the waitress behind the counter.

  ‘May I have a refill and the check, please?’ She turned back towards me. ‘I’m not asking you for any money. I’m willing to offer you something, though. And if you’re as good a mother as you claim to be, you’ll give it willingly.’

  The waitress appeared, filled up Anna’s coffee cup. I watched her fill my cup, then she put the check on the table.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ the waitress said and scooped up the pie plates.

  ‘We’re ready,’ Anna said and dropped a few bills on the table.

  A general drowsiness spread through my body, and I began to feel numb. Was she drugging me? I remembered the white residue in the coffee cup but the moment of alarm passed quickly. If she wanted to kill me, she could have done so more than once, there was no reason to panic. My vision jerked as if I had caught myself falling asleep.

  ‘I’ll pay you whatever you want, Anna. I promise. My husband owns property, how much? 200,000? Whatever you ask for, I …’ I thought I heard my words slur, but I couldn’t be sure. The world around me had turned fuzzy.

  ‘I’m sorry, she’s spoken for.’

  Spoken for.

  It was getting harder and harder to keep it together, my eyelids were twitching and out of the corner of my eye I saw the waitress pass by our table when I had just seen her behind the counter a second earlier.

  ‘You want to see her?’ Anna said casually as she sipped the coffee.

  ‘Yes.’ My vocal cords created a sound like sandpaper. ‘Please.’

  I watched the waitress follow the man who had dropped a coin in the jukebox earlier to the door. Anna got up and motioned me to follow them. Zombie-like, I did as I was told, keeping my eyes focused on the back of the waitress. When the door closed behind us the lights in the diner went out.

  Life unfolded in slow motion. I felt as if up was down and left was right and the world around me was becoming hazier by the second. I realized the parking lot was deserted.

  I turned around and watched the waitress lock the front door. She flipped the Open sign to Closed.

  There was a baby seat sitting on the table in a booth by the window. Anna motioned through the closed door and the waitress turned the seat around.

  There was Mia in her red coat and boots, clothes that had disappeared out of her closet. She held a bottle in hand, feeding in short, intense bursts, pausing every once in a while, allowing the collapsed nipple to fill with air.

  Electric sparks travelled through me. I stared at her through the window until our faces melted into one. I looked at my reflection, I hoped to see the face of a Joan of Arc given the gift of courage, yet my reflection in the window was that of a wild-eyed woman with matted hair and a tear-stained face.

  Was hell some sort of place of endless torture and pain, of fire and brimstone? My idea of hell was far simpler, it was here, in front of this diner with my daughter behind glass. Hell was my drugged and frozen brain in panic, a mental fog of conflicting instructions. It was also heaven, electrifying. She was alive and she looked well.

  ‘Don’t leave her in there,’ I cried out and made towards the door. My leg muscles felt loose, my gait was wobbly and sloppy.

  ‘Don’t touch that door,’ Anna said and pointed the gun through the window at Mia.

  The diner lights faded in and out. I wondered what kind of drug she had put in my coffee and if it was lethal. And that I was going to shatter the glass with my bare hands if I had to.

  As if she’d read m
y mind she said, ‘Don’t get any ideas. I’ll shoot her before you even know the gun went off. Your baby will be fine, but you look a bit green in the face. Better get in the car before you pass out.’

  ‘Can I touch her?’ I was close to passing out and all I wanted was one touch to take with me.

  ‘Don’t be silly. All you gonna do is make her cry.’

  ‘What do you want if you don’t want any money?’ I asked.

  ‘I need you to make good on a promise,’ she said.

  I didn’t allow myself to feel anything but detachment, for I knew if I pushed my mind any farther, I’d never find my way back.

  ‘What promise?’ I asked as my eyelids started to droop.

  Anna didn’t answer and the last sound I remembered was that of spitting gravel when Anna sent the car bolting into the darkness.

  Chapter 24

  I felt foggy. It was like I was there, but not quite. Then the scene outside the diner popped back into my head. Anna had one hand on the steering wheel, the other in her front pocket. I could think of only one reason why I shouldn’t reach over and turn the wheel towards a pole, and that was the slight possibility that Anna was going to come to her senses.

  ‘Why’d you leave her with that woman? Please explain to me what’s going on.’ It was dark and I didn’t recognize my surroundings. My speech was slow, but clear. ‘You brought me here just so I’d look at her through glass while she’s with some waitress in a diner?’

  ‘Tell me about it. Nothing went according to plan. But you have every reason to be thankful.’

  ‘Thankful? For what? For drugging me? For allowing me to look at my child through a window?’

  ‘You weren’t supposed to be at that diner at all, but think about it,’ she paused for a second, then, ‘you saw her one more time, didn’t you?’

  One more time. The words echoed inside my aching head, bouncing around like a rubber ball in slow motion.

  ‘Diane will take care of the baby until her new mommy picks her up. I told you she was spoken for. And that brings me to the last part of this deal between us. Your promise.’

  I didn’t know what any of this meant. My thoughts were slow, like sap running down the bark of a tree. I took long and deep breaths, realizing that the drugs were wearing off quickly. What do you say when you stare crazy straight in the face? You go along with it and wait for your moment.

  The car pulled sharply to the left. I recognized the silhouette of the ticket booth, we were back by the side of the cornfield. Anna stopped the car and killed the engine.

  ‘You’re going to help me bury him.’ She laughed and pulled a lever under the steering wheel.

  The trunk popped open with a loud thud.

  ‘Let’s get to it,’ she said, and tossed a pair of stiff working gloves at me. ‘Six feet long and as deep as we can dig in about an hour,’ she added and thrust a shovel into the wet ground.

  We started digging in unison.

  After we dug a couple of feet deep and six feet long, we were exhausted. The soil was soft, yet heavy. As we rested and wiggled our fingers, I felt nothing but a strange sense of excitement. I had buried the man who took my daughter from me. Lieberman could have been a time capsule for all I cared. And Mia was still alive.

  ‘There was only one reason why I sent him after you,’ Anna said after she caught her breath, ‘but he got zealous and started waving that gun before it was time. Plus he wasn’t made for this business. He dropped the blanket in the attic, he almost messed up when the cops came to my house. If they’d checked the car, they’d have found clothes and formula. He always forgot to take his meds and when he did, he would lose it by the minute. You can’t reason and you can’t do business with someone like that.’

  ‘But he was your brother.’

  ‘Half-brother at best. We grew up in the same house, is all.’ Anna pointed at the ground, a shallow hole long enough for a body.

  She lit the way with a flashlight and I did everything she told me to do. I dragged the tarp with Lieberman’s body to the hole. I rolled him in, filled it with dirt, compacted the soil by stomping on it. It took me about thirty minutes to get the ground even. When I was finished, my hands were burning and the webbing between my thumb and index finger was blistered and bloody.

  ‘Now I need you to write something for me.’ She paused for a second and pursed her lips. ‘Damn him, the paper is probably in his pocket.’

  ‘I don’t think I can write anything,’ I said and held my hands palms up. ‘I can’t even bend my fingers.’

  She stuck her hand in her purse and pulled out the receipt from the diner. ‘You’ll manage.’ Anna pointed to the trunk of her car and shone the light on it. ‘Word for word. Write: Everyone, I can’t go on like this. I’m sorry for what …’ She paused when she realized I wasn’t moving. ‘… I have done. I killed my baby. I’m a monster.’

  I shook my head. The pen dropped to the ground. ‘I’m not going to write that. You’re even crazier than your brother.’ My mind was moving at warp speed. All I had to figure out was her currency, something that made her tick more than selling Mia to a stranger. Everybody has their price. ‘Anna, I’m begging you. I will pay you twice as much. My money is as good as anyone else’s.’

  ‘I don’t need your money, I need the baby. You can’t run a business without the merchandise, right?’

  ‘I will pay you more than anyone else, I promise you. I will pay whatever you ask for.’

  ‘I don’t need your money. I need a solid reputation for delivering.’ Anna looked at her watch, then continued. ‘When they find you, which could be days or even weeks from now, they will find a woman and a confession that she has killed her baby. Having the confession means they won’t be looking for the baby or me or David, for that matter. They’ll assume the baby is somewhere in a shallow grave in the woods. Or a Dumpster somewhere.’

  Anna put the receipt on the hood of the car. ‘You said you’d do anything for her, remember?’ Anna cocked her head, her smile would’ve seemed warm to someone who didn’t know the extent of her madness. ‘If you do this for me, I’ll do something for you,’ she said with a tempting voice as if she was a child proposing a marble exchange.

  ‘There’s nothing I want you to do for me but give me back my child.’

  ‘You don’t understand anything, do you?’ Anna cocked her head. ‘When they find you, you’ll be dead.’

  I stepped back which only caused her to raise the gun again.

  ‘I’ll be long gone and no one will come looking for us. In return I’m willing to guarantee your daughter …’ Anna paused and then straightened her arm with the gun, pointing it between my eyes. ‘… a good family. A backyard to play in and private school, the whole nine yards.’

  If Lieberman was the Prince of Darkness, Anna was the Prince’s Darkness. ‘I’m begging you. I will pay you whatever—’

  ‘I promise you no one will break her. Children can be broken easily, you know. And what kind of mother can bear the thought of that, right? What’s it gonna be? Heaven or hell, both are available. It’s your choice, mommy.’

  Even if I overpowered her and took the gun, would it really matter? Mia could be, for all I knew, across state lines by now, Canada even, or on her way to Mexico. Even if I got away I’d still spend the rest of my life looking for her.

  ‘Your choice. Do we have a deal?’

  I shook my head and whispered, ‘Please don’t do this.’

  ‘You’ll die one way or another. Do something good for her for a change.’ Shaking her head, Anna continued, ‘A nice home or she’ll spend her childhood sitting on some sicko’s lap? What’s it gonna be?’

  I kept myself perfectly still. My life for hers. My mind and my body detached from one another. I broke away from myself, floated away. Some sicko’s lap. What one does out of love is untouchable. It looks to mend, to make things right.

  I bent over and forced my swollen fingers to pick up the pen.

  Anna stepped closer,
she was mere inches away from me. ‘A decent life for your child or a childhood in a basement.’

  I willed my fingers around the pen, slid them down to the ink tip.

  ‘White baby girls are in high demand, you know. Saudis go crazy over their skin and blond hair. Or I find her nice parents and she’ll take ballet lessons and go to summer camp.’

  Everyone, I wrote.

  I can’t go on like this, I wrote.

  I am sorry for what I have done, I wrote and that part wasn’t even a lie.

  I killed my baby, I wrote.

  I’m a monster.

  The ravine was about one hundred yards ahead of me. Mia was with a woman who had served me drugged coffee and pecan pie. Tomorrow morning, people would crowd the diner for breakfast, eggs and bacon would sizzle on the grill, coffee brewing, biscuits rising. And tomorrow morning they’d find me dead in a ravine with a handwritten confession saying I had killed my daughter. A devilish yet plausible plan, I had to give it to Anna.

  ‘There’s something I want you to give to her.’ I reached in my purse. Tinker Bell’s eyes big and blue, as resigned as I was.

  Anna put Tinker Bell in her pocket. ‘This is what I want you to do,’ she said. ‘You step on the gas while you hold the gun. Right before you reach the ravine, you pull the trigger. Either in your mouth or your temple, I don’t care. I’ll keep my promise if you keep yours.’

  Anna wiped the gun thoroughly with a cloth, then threw it on the passenger seat. She reached over me, and put the car in Drive, her own gun still pointed at me.

  ‘Step on it,’ I heard Anna’s voice but it seemed like it took me minutes until I processed her words. A pyrotechnic onslaught of possibilities accumulated in one clear thought; kill her. Shoot her. Get help. My hand twitched for a second. Then stillness came over me. I may never be believed. I may never find Mia. The pain of the guilt I felt would never cease. All was lost anyway and Anna was right; this is the selfless act that will redeem me. And I did as I was told. It was that easy and that difficult.