Remember Mia Page 5

  I shake my head.

  “A hairbrush? A toothbrush? You know those little plastic things you attach to your finger and brush their teeth?”

  I shake my head.

  “A diaper? There must be a dirty diaper somewhere?”

  Again I shake my head. “It all disappeared.” I say it so softly that I don’t know if he heard me.

  “It disappeared,” he repeats as if I just told him the day of the week.

  Why isn’t he alarmed?

  “Yes, everything disappeared, her clothes, her bottles. All of it, everything’s gone. Her closet was empty, her diapers were missing, her formula. Everything.”

  “We are aware of that fact. So you’re telling me that someone took her and that person also took all her things? That’s a very odd crime.” He tucks the notebook in his pocket as if the ramblings of a madwoman are no longer significant enough to be written down, and then crosses his arms in front of his chest. “If the doors were locked all night and were still locked the morning you found the empty crib, there must be another explanation. I have to be honest with you, that doesn’t make sense at all.”

  My story not making any sense is a cruel statement. “I know how it sounds, but that’s all I can tell you.”

  Daniel’s face relaxes, he leans forward. “I can only find her if I know where to look.” He pauses and then adds, “Where should I look for her?” His voice is gentle as if he is trying to convince a child to tell the truth.

  “What are you trying to say? That I know where she is and I’m not telling?”

  “You knew she was gone and you didn’t tell.”

  He’s right. I don’t know how to respond to that.

  “If you know where she is, you have to tell me,” he continues. “She’s so little, helpless, she is cold, hungry. She’s all alone out there.”

  I pinch my lips to keep the tears in check. I don’t want to cry in front of him. Whenever I cried in front of Jack it made everything worse.

  “Did you ever feel you were capable of hurting your baby?”

  Was I capable of hurting her? I shake my head for I dare not speak out loud. There they are, the images emerge as if the detective hit a button, and they splatter against the wall like photographs from a slide projector: Clenched fists, legs pulled up to the stomach, a baby’s tearless rage directed toward me. My love for her powerless, incapable of easing her pain.

  “Did she cry a lot?” he asks.

  “She was a colicky baby, you know, very fussy . . . but I would never hurt her. She was my life.”

  Something in his eyes twitches, then he nods as if I said something he expected to hear.

  He abruptly turns around and leaves the room, as if everything I just told him is meaningless. Then I realize I spoke of Mia in the past tense.

  NO NEW DETAILS RELEASED OF SEVEN-MONTH-OLD MISSING FROM CRIB

  Brooklyn, NY—After a frantic search for the infant missing from her crib in Brooklyn on early Sunday, October 1st, no new details have been released.

  According to Eric Rodriguez, spokesperson for the NYPD, police have no idea how a kidnapper may have gained entry to the home. “At this moment we have no suspect description. We have no vehicle plates to trigger an AMBER Alert. There are no eyewitnesses and the entire surrounding area has been searched by officers, including a K9 unit,” Rodriguez said. “We are following several leads but we know nothing for sure yet.”

  “Many child abductions involve one of the parents, but we have both the parents here. So that puts us on a little higher state of alert,” Detective Robert Wilczek said.

  A source told CTAB-TV that the child’s disappearance was especially concerning given the fact that the mother didn’t report the abduction immediately.

  Police are urging anyone with information to call the TIPS hotline.

  CHAPTER 7

  Mia Paradise Connor and I were released from the hospital five days after the delivery. Jack went back to work, took over the night feedings on the weekends, and I slept, ate, and showered whenever possible.

  I was in awe with what I had created. I stared at Mia, her plump cheeks, her little bird mouth twitching in her sleep. I bathed her and patted her dry, gently rubbing lavender lotion all over her. By then she was far from the puffy-eyed, bowlegged newborn; her curvy legs had straightened, her cone-shaped skull had rounded out, and her flaky skin was now pink and spongy.

  When she became more aware of her surroundings, she studied my face, trying to memorize it, as if I was all the comfort and love she needed. She’d wake up in my arms, open her eyes, frantically search for my likeness, immediately settling down when she recognized me.

  Mia’s cries were distinct; one seemed to complain about a minor discomfort, like a sock too tight, a jacket too warm. There was the tired cry, fussy, drawn out, telling me she was ready to take a nap. Then there was a more relentless cry that seemed to signal hunger, nothing a bottle couldn’t fix. And then, at about three months old, another cry emerged. An abrupt cry, a cry that seemed to signal pain, as if she were stuck with a needle. She suddenly shunned containment, something that had calmed her before, and protested every time I swaddled her. It seemed as if her bones became rigid and every time I wrapped her in a blanket she clenched her fists, arched her back, and her muscles tensed.

  Need to make a fussy baby feel safe? How about the age-old tradition of mimicking the condition in the mother’s womb? All you need is a blanket and a clever folding technique.

  Her abrupt cry was not a mere request, but an urgent demand to fix whatever bothered her. And from then on she put more energy in her demands, cried more loudly, fed more voraciously, and protested more forcefully. If I didn’t respond to her needs immediately, she’d fall apart, come undone. I wondered if she felt deeply and therefore reacted with such fierce power when her needs were being ignored. I went into overdrive to respond immediately, became obsessive in trying to prevent her from getting upset, and in return she extracted every bit of energy from me. I willingly complied, but still, she wanted more.

  I gave her all I had, yet something had gone amiss, had gone awry. I was somehow removed from the person who had adored the moments with a baby in her arms, as if I had left that person behind and another one had emerged, a person neither one of us recognized. I woke up just as tired as I had gone to sleep and blamed it on not getting enough rest. But then I did the math, and with Jack doing the weekend feedings, staying up late caring for Mia, I was able to get six hours of sleep a night, at least four times a week. I went on with my life, took care of Mia, breast-fed, sang to her, gave her baths, but something felt horribly wrong. What had happened to the euphoric love I initially felt? Why wasn’t I happy anymore? Where had the magic gone?

  Every morning I woke up and reality closed in on me. I was granted a peaceful second or two, but then a dank layer of sadness wrapped itself around me. I felt as if I was playing a role and never was that more apparent than when I met other moms at the park. They seemed more cheerful, happy, and content to be mothers than I ever was or ever could be. I wanted to adopt their stories as mine, to pretend to be one of them, all the while accepting my lack of enthusiasm as a personal character flaw. I decided to make up for it in other ways.

  I snapped. My Leica X2, small enough to operate with one hand, was my new obsession. I snapped Mia from every possible angle. Perspectives of feet, toes tucked under, spread apart, soft tiny nails, bending easily. Her elfin hands grasping small objects. Ears folded like rose petals, moving up and down as she drank from my breast, pink lips curling around the nipple.

  One day during breast-feeding, Mia dozed off and unlatched. She had long unlocked her lips, but her tongue still made clicking sounds. As she was asleep, she was malleable, her legs soft, as if there were no bones inside of her. Wobbly Jell-O met my lips as I kissed her, they seemed to sink into her. I reached for my Leica, snapped images of blue
veins running across her eyelids, too small for even a thread to fit inside of them. There was a larger vein by her temple, like a widening channel of a river nearing the sea, its currents waiting to be met by the tides. I snapped close-ups of breast milk running down her cheek, toward her ear, cataloging every tiny amount of milk that had just fallen short of reaching its intended destination. I took shots of my engorged and leaking breasts, drops of nourishment trailing from my cracked and sore nipples.

  And then, out of the blue, the camera flash irritated her, sent her into a frenzy. She started crying and wouldn’t stop, as if my attempts to capture her likeness had suddenly repulsed her. I rocked her, allowed her head to rest on my chest. Nothing consoled her, not my songs, my gentle voice, not my nipple, nothing. And from then on she cried every time I fed her.

  I sang to her, Sleep, baby, sleep, your father tends the sheep, your mother shakes the dreamland tree, and from it fall sweet dreams for thee. Sleep, baby, sleep.

  My way of making up for my shortcomings as a less-than-mediocre mother was going from doctor to doctor, and the same diagnosis was thrown at me as if I ought to know what to do with it: Colic. Otherwise healthy. Cause unknown. No obvious reason.

  While her constant state of crying seemed acceptable to Jack, he became increasingly worried about the bills, specialist co-pays, and out-of-network doctors. “Colic,” he said. “They all tell you the same thing. A lot of babies are colicky. It’ll be gone before we know it.”

  “I want to take her to another hospital. Maybe there are some more tests they can do? If I can’t get a referral, we’ll just pay out of pocket.”

  At the mention of money, the pity in Jack’s eyes faded. He stiffened, ever so slightly, but I saw how his spine straightened, his eyes narrowed. I was afraid to mention that my credit cards were maxed out.

  “Give it another month or two,” he added on his way out the door. “She’ll be fine.”

  I nodded, even more exhausted than I had been minutes earlier, as if that were even possible. Two months, that’s sixty days and sixty nights.

  “You know you’re nuts, don’t you?” Jack said and slammed the door shut.

  —

  One morning, a Saturday, too early to get up and too late to fall back asleep, I reached beside me and found Jack’s side of the bed abandoned.

  I heard a voice that almost made me panic, a high-pitched babble voice unknown to me. I got up and went to Mia’s room. There was Jack, holding Mia under her armpits, a five-month-old grouchy bundle of anxieties with fingers moving around like an orchestra conductor.

  “Why won’t you sleep?” Jack said.

  Then he switched over to that whiny, high-pitched voice. I don’t want to. I want to be awake so I can look around.

  “How come you can talk?” Jack pretended to be confused.

  I can do anything, Daddy. Jack, mimicking a conversation, impersonating Mia, switching from his regular tone to a squeaky voice.

  “Why won’t you settle down, little girl? Something on your mind?” Jack’s facial expression was sheer concern.

  Mia’s arms were flailing, her legs kicking.

  Nothing wrong with me, Daddy.

  “I knew there’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve been fed, you’ve been changed, you’ve been burped. No need to be fussy.” Jack then rocked her gently in the cradle of his arm, the crook of his elbow a perfect fit.

  “There you go, princess. That’s better, isn’t it?”

  Much better, Daddy.

  “Just relax, go back to sleep. Mommy doesn’t like it when you cry so much.”

  But I’m just a baby.

  “I keep telling her that but she’s just not listening.”

  —

  Life turned into a blur of bottles, diapers, and crying. I’d go one, sometimes two days without closing my eyes. When I did manage to sleep, I crashed. And then I woke up with a start, from comatose to alert, as if someone had grabbed my shoulder and shaken me awake.

  Zombielike I shopped for baby clothes, loaded the cart, walked the aisles, and bought multiples of everything: booties, outfits, socks. I purchased everything that promised relief from her crying: rosemary-scented sachets, calming lotion, and alarm clocks with waterfall recordings, white noise boxes, and a bear with taped womb sounds. Regardless of how much I bought, I never felt as if I could give her what she needed. I could buy entire stores and yet my attempts didn’t amount to anything. Because deep down inside I was a fake.

  One day, with another collection of bags in hand, I went home. Jack was in his office, talking on the phone, holding Mia in his arms. She looked peaceful and calm, her face relaxed, her lips loose. The moment I reached for her, her face tensed, her lips curled downward as if to say How dare you approach me. I immediately let go of her as if my fingers had touched hot stone.

  “Every time I pick her up, she cries. She hates me. What am I doing wrong?”

  “How do you come up with that kind of stuff?”

  “But she cries when I hold her. I must be doing something wrong.”

  “You’re not doing anything wrong. Relax, she’s just a baby,” Jack said.

  I told Jack that I constantly worried about someone hurting her, her suffocating on a pillow or blanket, choking on something. Jack told me to stop imagining the worst.

  “Don’t overthink everything,” he said, “and don’t be so tense all the time.” As if taking it in stride was going to make it better. In his world, everything was fine. In his world, children didn’t die of SIDS, didn’t choke on marbles, didn’t succumb to high fevers, didn’t suffocate on their vomit. Didn’t have mysterious illnesses that went undiagnosed until it was too late.

  There was this animal inside of me, created while she was in my womb, born on the same day Mia was born. At first, it had quivered ever so slightly, then it stirred, agitated at times, but I was able to pacify it by keeping watch. Then it started to thrash and I felt powerless. I went there. I went there all the time and then I stayed there. The thought of impending doom loomed over me, tethered like a wild creature with a rope, making it impossible for me to get away. And nothing could convince me otherwise. I didn’t want to hold her, because as long as she was in Jack’s arms, she was his responsibility, as if I could pass my duty like a baton to him. On his watch, she’d be fine.

  That day in his office, Jack handed Mia to me, one hand under her head, the other supporting her legs, her body wrapped tightly in the blanket.

  “I have to go to work. I’ll be back in a few hours.” He presented the bundle as if she were an offering.

  Suddenly images of a sacrificial goat slaughtered on a mossy stone altar flashed across my mind. I could almost feel the sticky blood between my fingers. I saw a radiant light the size of a baby’s pupil glowing beneath the soft spot on her head. There was a demon trapped beneath that spot, a demon that made her reject me, made her cry and wail every time I touched her. If I could get to that spot, create a tiny hole, the demon could escape, and we could both find peace.

  I remained still, didn’t dare reach out for Mia. Jack looked at me, bewildered, his lips curled into a half smile as he tried to gain control.

  I grabbed the scissors from the pencil holder and left his office. In the hallway powder room, as the scissors rested on the edge of the sink, I pumped antibacterial foam into my palms. I studied my reflection in the mirror and tried to come up with some sort of courage to tell him about the darkness and the shadows that had become my life. A life reduced to a small pinhole, depicting the entire world misshapen and distorted. Through this tiny hole, I saw blood, I saw the cold stone of an altar, covered with sharp instruments, jagged and spiky and able to drill their way through soft fontanel tissue. A sharp instrument, like a pair of scissors, resting on the edge of the sink.

  The nursery was fecund with smells: powder, oil, lotion, chamomile and rosemary, and dirty diapers.
Jack had scolded me many times not to let them pile up.

  The mobile above her crib—a colorful array of butterflies, june bugs, blossoms, and Tinker Bell in its center—moved gently in the breeze of the ceiling fan. The blinds were drawn, the curtains closed. The rocker sat silently next to her crib, covered in white linen, its footstool soiled with black shoe polish streaks from Jack’s shoes.

  I emptied the shopping bags, one by one, placed every item in baskets on the white shelf, convinced that as long as I kept her room in order, I could also keep the chaos at bay. I took out the clothes and reached for the scissors to cut off the tags.

  The cold metal rested in my hand. Before I even cut off a single tag, Jack walked in, Mia in his arms. She was quiet and her eyes scanned aimlessly about. Then she focused on the ceiling fan. Jack placed Mia’s body against my chest, and kissed me on the forehead.

  “I have to go to work, I’m already running late.”

  I needed him to stay home, but I didn’t know how to ask for it. Jack gently brushed Mia’s cheek with the back of his index finger. Her lips opened and the pacifier popped out of her mouth as if giving way to the pressure inside of her. Her lips searched for their comfort and came up empty. Her face contorted.

  The front door slammed shut. Jack was gone and so was Mia’s composure.

  I held her inches away from my body, as if distance between us could soothe her, take the edge off her discontent with my presence. She broke out in a wail, its volume increasing with every passing second. I turned to place her on the changing table when my eyes caught a glimpse of a shiny silver object. The light and the turning blades of the fan created ghostly shadows that prompted me to pick up the scissors and cradle them in my palm. Her body seemed to be vibrating, her crimson face determined to ignore the need to fill her lungs with air.

  I willed myself to ignore the scissors, but they seemed to pulsate as if they had a life of their own. I pinched my eyes shut, yet the scissors floated up and toward me, first only inches, and then farther up, turning their sharp points toward Mia’s skull, determined to release the glowing demon underneath its connective tissue.