by Gaby Triana
When the rain stops swishing against the windshield, I turn off the ignition and get out of the car. Taking a deep breath, I insert the key and twist it. The deadbolt clanks open. I roll up the big orange door.
My life, the one I left behind, flashes before my eyes. My childhood. My memories—the dark wood furniture my grandfather gave my mom when she got married—Mami’s bed and dresser. In the back is my white wicker bedroom set, the one that used to sit in my yellow room with the holographic stickers. The dining room set with scratch marks all over one side from where I used to bang it with a fork when I was a toddler. Boxes of toys, yearbooks, and games.
It’ll take me days to go through it all.
For hours, I rifle through kitchen items, bakeware, sewing equipment, scissors, fabrics, buttons, thread, newspapers, microfiche slides, books on various historical events, even the colonial dresses I used to wear at Sunnyside. At one point I stop and gasp—a hatbox filled with old snapshots, some stuck together from humidity, of Bram and me as kids, eating ice cream in his kitchen; of Bram riding Apple, his grandfather’s horse when he was about ten; in Halloween costumes through the years; in my room doing homework.
Wow, he’s really changed. Not the same skinny little runt as before. And my hair! So long and braided. Ha! Reminders sprout everywhere, like flowers from the cold, hard ground after a harsh winter. Yet, at my dad’s house in Miami, I have not one reminder of my childhood.
Then I find the dolls.
Big and clumsy, too big for any little girl’s arms to really wrap around. Blond dolls, brunette dolls, red-haired dolls, white skin, dark skin, caramel skin. Amber dresses, purple dresses, gold dresses, zigzag trim, beaded trim, lace, lace, and more lace.
Too many things to go through in one day. I’ll have to come back.
I pull out the boxes with the most research papers, books, and work-related items and carry them out to the car, taking as much as I can. I pack the dolls into the trunk. Betty Anne will have a field day with them.
But four hours and twenty-two minutes later, I’ve still found no journal. Nothing to show for my search efforts but a nice stash of junk to dump at Betty Anne’s house, a pounding headache from not eating, and the dawning awareness that it’s probably lost forever.
...
I’m in the apartment again, the old one in some dark city, probably London, but I don’t see Mary’s spirit anywhere. It’s night, and rain sprinkles against the window. Under it is a small desk with a lit candle that flickers erratically, creating shadows that dance and leap against the glass panes. On the desk are many books, a dried-out ink well, and some blank pages, as if someone has just been writing here.
The rocking chair is back again. A baby cries.
Mary? I call out. Are you here? I haven’t found it yet, but I’m trying. The crying continues. I remember how Mary led me out of this apartment in the last dream, how we soared over the countryside in search of something—her baby, I think. Was that train headed for Spain? With Cristóbal? My great-great-great-grandfather?
People will know, Mary. You can rest now if you want, I tell her, but I have a feeling that Mary doesn’t live here anymore. As if everything that was once good for her—hopes, dreams for the future, a chance for a better life—was ripped out from under her, sending her tumbling underground where nobody would ever know the truth about how much she loved Irving, wanted to share a life with him, but was left behind.
If Mary’s baby is gone, then who is crying?
I look around.
Double creation, someone whispers—a deep, solid voice. Suddenly, I feel as though someone is in the room with me. Not the spirit I’m used to. Someone else. I know him. I turn around, expecting to see a man standing behind me. An important man. A man who spent long nights with Mary here and complicated his life.
But of course, there’s no one there. Only a cradle softly rocking and creaking in the corner of the room. Cristóbal isn’t the only one they created together. There’s another. The dark voice says, I was in way over my head, lured by her weakness, her need for me, entirely past what was acceptable, sensible. It never should have happened.
I can’t see whoever is speaking, but I know him, and I’ve loved him for a long time. So did my mother. And even though I’ve never met him, I can sense that the rest of the family wouldn’t have approved of the match, so he dealt with it the best way he knew how.
Inside the cradle.
Slowly, I float up to it. The cries grow louder. Shh, baby. Shh, it’s all right.
The window shutters open, and the wind blows the remaining papers off the desk, sending them fluttering all around the room. My heartbeat sounds loudly in my head. I close my eyes. When I’m inches away from the cradle, I hold my breath and open them again. At once, the crying and rocking motions stop.
I peer over the edge. My heart pounds inside my rib cage. Inside the crib is a shovel. Rusted. Old. And black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction…”
I wake up drenched in cold sweat. The man in my dream was Washington Irving. I know it was. He showed me a shovel. But he doesn’t want me to dig up a baby’s remains straight out of the ground, does he? Sounds like something Mary Shelley would ask me to do.
And there is absolutely no way. I’m not Victor Frankenstein, and I will not be exhuming any dead bodies anytime soon, thank you very much. Not in this lifetime. The glare from my phone’s light burns my vision when I check the time: 4:45 a.m.
He's coming, Lela.
I sit up straight in bed, blinking in the darkness. “Who is?” I strain my brain to listen, shutting off as much external stimuli as I can to focus, but Mami doesn’t respond.
Listening to the creaks of Betty Anne’s walls and floors contracting and expanding in the cool night, I finally settle back down under the covers. I wait, no longer afraid of falling asleep to face my ghost. Let her come.
As the sunlight edges its way into my room, I fall into a conscious slumber, not waking for any good reason, not for Betty Anne stirring in the kitchen or for her gasps of delight upon seeing the mountain of dolls I left her on the sofa, not for Bram’s ringtone going off under the blankets, not even for my mother’s voice somewhere in the recesses of my mind…
...hide it, hide everything.
...
Days later, I finish sifting through the piles of my mother’s research. I’m a lot closer now to understanding adoption procedures in Spain during the nineteenth century, Mary Shelley’s loss of three children with husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the fact that Mary had an older half sister, Fanny Imlay, who was her mother’s illegitimate child, a woman unable to cope with her biological misfortune and thus committed suicide.
It makes sense now, how Mary could give up her last child to Irving. She didn’t want her baby, or babies, to suffer the same fate as her. Society was ruthless then. No one would’ve accepted the child unless their parents legitimized the union through marriage. And even then, Mary had little to gain, already hated as she was. Irving, big celebrity and hero he was, had everything to lose. Tragedy any way you looked at it. The right thing to do was to give Cristóbal to a good family.
Dane was right. Washington Irving was a hero. In ways no one could ever imagine.
If Dr. Tanner is the new proud owner of our journal, he had plenty of time to turn it in, and word of its return should’ve been on the news by now. Bram would’ve called me. So would’ve Dane. I hope. But I’m starting to believe Dr. Tanner didn’t take it. Maybe it was the tone of his voice at our meeting, the way he spoke affectionately of Mami, the genuine referral to her as a good friend, but my instincts believe it wasn’t him.
On the floor, surrounded by papers, I realize tomorrow is opening night of HollowEve. Bram is probably neck-high in last-minute responsibilities. Since the incident at Kingsland Point Park, we haven’t spoken. Only his single voicemail. “Some bomb yo
u dropped on me the other day, Mica. If you were told to stay away from me, that’s fine, but know that my intentions for you were never anything but pure.”
I reach for the hatbox and open it. Eight-year-old, eleven-year-old, and nine-year-old Brams and Micas stare back at me, innocent, unburdened. I reach deep into the pile of photos and pull one out. There it is—eating apple crisp at Bram’s house, tongues out to touch the ice cream on our spoons. I never noticed Bram’s mom in the photo before, leaning against the kitchen counter far behind us and to the left, eyeing the camera in the most annoyed way. Pesky Micaela was sitting at her kitchen table.
I’ve invested so much in you, he said the other night.
I don’t know that I owe him my life, but maybe an explanation, at the very least. I grab my phone and text him.
I understand you’re angry with me. I’m sorry for not explaining more.
Not thirty seconds later, he replies:
Make it up to me by joining me
at holloweve tom nite. Ily.
Sadly, I don’t think I can do that.
I stand, collect the papers, photos, books, and copies and stack it all in my closet. I remember my mother in one of her most bizarre moments right before a weekend trip to Lake George. She spent the better part of the day hiding things—money, jewelry, passports, valuables under mattresses, behind the linings of her jewelry boxes, even inside some fake cleaning products. So burglars can’t find anything, she’d said.
I remember thinking holy crap, my mom is crazy, but now that I think about it, it was brilliant. Damn good way of hiding things. I take out her safe deposit box envelope, the keys to the box, and the storage unit key. Trust no one. I slide manila folders under the mattress, behind the framed certificates on the wall, and the keys into the hollow base of Betty Anne’s daughter’s ballet trophies. My mother seemed so insane that day, hiding things, but I get it now.
Hide it, hide everything…
In the mirror’s reflection, I see myself. The younger, prettier version of Maria Burgos. I stare at the person I’ve desperately tried not to become the last six years. Not to be like Mami. More rational. More sensible. Yet here I am, hiding things from burglars just like her.
Obsessively.
The only way she knew how.
I stare so hard, my eyes dry out. No…way…
Frantically, I pop off the felt base of the trophy, grab the storage unit keys and my backpack, and dart to the kitchen. I swipe Betty Anne’s car keys, bolting to the front door.
“Going out?”
I rip my sweater off the coat rack. “Be back in a sec.” I won’t be back in a second, of course. I’ll stay at the storage unit all night if I have to, tearing into mattresses and sofa cushions, twisting open cans of bug spray, starch, and bathroom cleaner. I yank the front door closed, catching it right at the end.
In a matter of minutes, I’m back at Hudson Storage, making a sharp left past the empty guard house and careening into the parking lot. I had only looked for the journal, not searched. I bound out of the car over to the unit roll-up door, unlocking and throwing it up with superhuman force.
Everything is where I left it. I enter the center row and plow into my mother’s mattresses, pulling off fitted sheets, smoothing fingers along the edges for any open slits, sewn slits, or holes in the borders. It must be here somewhere. A soft and bulky black garbage bag sits atop a nightstand. I rip it open, squeezing pillows, feeling for a notebook, hard or soft—I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly, anything out of the ordinary. I let those fall and try another set of pillows from the linen closet boxes. Nothing.
Next, I try the dresser drawers, both my mother’s set and my own wicker one. Maybe it’s not hidden, maybe it’s in plain sight or simply stuck behind drawers or underneath them. One by one, I pull them out, flipping them over, checking the undersides. I do the same with the china cabinet drawers, nightstand drawers, every drawer in sight.
Where else?
Bookcases. I looked through the books the other day, but not inside them. Maybe the journal is tucked inside a larger volume so its spine doesn’t show. One by one, I pull out every book and shake it, catching little slips of paper as they fall out. I flip through the scraps. They’re jotted dreams in shaky handwriting, written in the dark. All of them about me. She wondered what I was doing, how my school work was going, whether or not I heard her messages when she tried sending them with her heart, and the worst scribbling of all, about a dream—that she’d come home, wrapped her arms around me, but only awakened to an empty house and the reality that she’d lost her daughter for good.
“Mami.” I fight the tears, but they come. With them comes something else. A painful kind of peace. No, my mother is no longer here in the flesh, but I’m more connected with her now than ever before. It took separation, it took death…it took empathy.
I look around the storage unit, opening myself up to messages from beyond, anything Mami might suddenly point out to me. After a minute of silence, I start rubbing my eyes. Where is it? Where is that goddamned journal! Only Sofia was in the safe deposit box with the other items, not a jour—
Crack.
A match illuminates the darkened tomb that is my brain. It was always clear. But I was crippling myself. “Oh my God.” No one would ever think to look inside her. Not in a million years.
Because she’s horrible. Uglier than sin. More beautiful than truth. I slam down the storage unit door, lock it, and rush back to Betty Anne’s as quickly as humanly possible.
...
My feet pound up the steps, key barely able to slide through the keyhole from how much my hands are shaking. I’m right. I’m so right. I know I am. It’s just past eleven. I shouldn’t make any noise, but I don’t need to worry. She’s awake. The familiar sound of slippers shuffles toward the door, which pops open just as I manage to get the key in.
I stumble into the house.
“Are you all right?” Betty Anne’s face takes in what must be flashes of madness in my eyes, because she holds me by the arm and delicately leads me through the foyer.
Yes, better than ever, I want to say, but the words are stuck in my throat. All I can do is stride right up to Sofia on the shelf, flanked by Diana the Dutch doll and now the array of others having multiplied overnight. I pull her right off the shelf. And there, before Betty Anne’s horrified eyes, I grab her crafting scissors from her needlepoint basket and proceed to slide the shears underneath the back of Sofia’s dress.
“Oh, honey, no!” Betty Anne cries.
Laying her flat on the counter, I cut straight up the doll’s white dress. Her body feels crunchy underneath the soft sculpture exterior. Once I cut straight through the dress, I notice the closure in the back. A thick scar, carefully sewn shut, runs from the base of the neck to where the legs begin. I snip away at the stitches.
All at once, Sofia’s spine opens. Fiberglass filling blooms out. I yank it out and see, not a book or booklet like I imagined would be inside, but a rolled-up sheet protector containing old, yellowish paper. I gasp, blood pounding against my eardrums.
I think of Mami in the basement at night, cranking these ugly dolls out as if anyone cared for them. As if anyone wanted those horrible little sisters, anyone besides Betty Anne, that is. Mami spent late hours underneath the lightbulb’s glare in the basement, arguing with herself for hours. She wasn’t maniacal after all.
She was methodical.
“Ha!” I jump into the air. I pluck the plastic sheath out and unroll it. Another one of Mami’s notes, bigger with more writing, stuck to the plastic:
Lela,
The flesh and blood he spoke of is you.
Use the family tree to prove it. More pages inside the girls. Did you dream of what lies beneath the lavender? I think the rest is there. Stay protected. I love you.
-Mami
I close my eyes. “I love you, Mami. I’m sorry I left without telling you that.” Then carefully, I slide out the slightly thinner, aged papers and
read the familiar typeset:
26 March, 1826—These pages must never see the light of day, as long as we traverse this earth, until the flesh and blood which follow us should one day learn of them—she has endured enough torment for one lifetime; I cannot contribute to her misery—whereupon, our decision is the correct one; I am mostly certain, however—as I take pause to reflect on her whereabouts with Percy at her heels, I am disheartened by the prospect that I may have failed her and will live to regret it.
You did what you could, Great-Great-Great-Grand-father. They were different times.
“What is it, Mica?” Betty Anne jolts me back to the present.
“My great-great-great-grandfather’s diary. One page of it.” I lay the sheet down on the counter and lift my mother’s note back up again. More pages inside the girls.
“Why was it inside Sofia?”
She dissected it. She dissected it and separated the pieces to make it harder to find. I stare at Betty Anne, as if I’ve never seen her before in my life. “Huh?”
“Never mind. I heard you.”
In tune again, together in one room, both worried about the fate of my mother’s creations. Of course she could hear me. “Because it’s rare. Because he’s famous.”
“Irving.”
I take her hands and give them a gentle squeeze. “Yes.”
Sprinting over to the shelf, scissors in hand, I quickly grab Diana the Dutch doll, turn her around, and slice into her as well, blue and white dress slitting down the middle. More fiberglass fluff aside, and I find more protected sheets of the journal, also dated 1826. I lay them carefully on the sofa and proceed to pluck the rest of the dolls, one by one, off the shelf and line them up for mass surgery.
“Can you please bring the rest of them?” I ask Betty Anne, who’s gone white and horrified. “I think I gave you more than what’s here.”