What Lies Between Us (26 page)

In her bedroom, Bodhi is huddled into a ball, her Winnie the Pooh blanket tight in her fist, a corner of it stuck between her lips, sucked clean. Her eyes are huge, tracking me as I approach. I push my hair behind my ears, smooth down my shirt, and say, “Mama had an accident. I'm going to clean it up and then we'll go shopping. You can help me get new glasses. Okay?” I am bright again. She stares, no babble issues from her mouth. The child must be dumb, stupid even. I clench my fists to stop them from grabbing. An image of a child thrown into the ice cave in the kitchen. Bare skin touching a thousand icicles and turning frozen. No, no, I cannot. I turn away.

A few minutes later the kitchen is swept clean, a sense of relief, newness. The knowledge that everything ugly and shattered can be swept away so there is no hint of disorder left.

 

Twenty-one

I had longed for normalcy. I had wanted only these things—a marriage, a shared place, the serenity of a long-lived love. But normalcy is a miracle, not granted to all who ask.

I call him at the studio and he picks up and says, “Yes, what is it?” I can hear the rasp of annoyance in his voice. He pretends to listen, but I know that his eyes are snagged on the latest canvas, that assessments about color and form are being made. I shake my head as if he can see. I say, “Nothing. I just …
I miss you
.” The words leave my mouth in the tone of a petulant child. I cringe. When did I become this other person? He sighs. “I'll be home soon. I told you.”

“You promise?”

He says, “Yes.
I promise
.”

Midnight comes and goes. I lie awake, watching the night pass through the room. Framed in the window, a high sickle moon watches, waiting with me. In the other room Bodhi twists and murmurs as if she can sense my rage.

Then sleep, and with it, Samson slipping quiet from behind the door. I have been running from him for so long. But I'm tired and now he's here. He has found me even in this far place. His hair is plastered to his dripping temples; my father's cast-off trousers are wrapped soaking around his legs. He smiles like something amphibious, comes closer, stands over the bed, teeth glinting.

My heart thuds against the walls of its cage. My mouth will not open, but the words come anyway.

“Samson. You disappeared. You died. You cannot be here.”

His lips don't move, but I can hear his voice in my head. “No, Baby Madame, not dead. Samson has looked so long and everywhere for you and now has found you.” He leans over me, river water falling on my face like tears. His face comes closer. My heart will leap out of my throat. I will asphyxiate. I cannot tell if he will kiss me or bite me. He says my name, and again, louder and louder like a shouting, and I am being shaken and it is Daniel yelling my name into my face, shaking me by the shoulders, and I am awake and he is holding me tight to him and I am sobbing and he is kissing my face and wiping away tears and holding me to him.

He holds me for a long time. And then he says, “Will you tell me what it is?” I am stiff suddenly. Ice cold. He pulls away, looks into my eyes, says, “Tell me. Whatever happened, we can figure it out together. You have to trust me.” I cannot move; I cannot speak.

He sighs, settles both of us into bed, body to body beneath the blankets. His lips against my hair, moving. “If you won't tell me, I can't help.” I stay as still as I can, daring only to breathe. If I am quiet, the danger will pass. He hugs me close and kisses me on the forehead. It is the closest we've been in months. I inhale him. I cling to him, ready to love him more, ready to try harder, to be good. We fall asleep and it is the dreamless rest of paradise.

*   *   *

I wake to bright sun the next day. The sky is a perfectly uniform cobalt bowl, with every cloud banished. The cherry trees on our lane are bursting into pink fluffy blossom. I take Bodhi to the park and she toddles around searching for dandelions and buttercups, her fingers reaching down and pulling at them until the plant releases them. She brings them to me one by one, drops them into my lap until a small pile has formed. I know this is a coronation; she is claiming me as her queen. I show her how the exuberance of the dandelion is different from the concise precision of the buttercup despite their common color. She is intent on these lessons, these moments when she has all my attention. I put the flowers in the fall of my hair, where they glimmer like gems. She sits on my lap and holds her little fist out for me while I lace the minuscule stems together to make her a bracelet. She is in love with me and with these tiny bright flowers, these almost metallic drops of life.

I stand and swing her up on my hip to walk home. I point out a plant with small, downturned white blossoms. Bees are humming, disappearing into the hanging flowers, making them bounce up and down in giant arcs as if the insects are joyriding. When they emerge they are fat with pollen and fly homeward, fuzzy with their golden treasure. “Look, baby,” I say, “the bees are buzzing in the trees. To make some honey just for us.” She laughs and claps her hands in delight. I hold her small, hot, alive body against mine.

*   *   *

We go home and I peel and mash a banana for her. She sits on her booster chair, swings her feet in a wide arc, makes her various words at me.

Then everything is alive in my body, like a sparking of electricity. The sense of being watched, of being sighted by someone and held there like a pinned insect, rises. As if my body is a target and secret eyes are homing in. I lift my head to listen, my hackles rising. I push a hand against my mouth. I will not scream. I will not frighten the child. I go to the window, tug the curtain open a sliver. Across the street a man is waiting. He is dripping wet, a pool forming beneath his feet, shiny as knives. He raises his eyes to me; he smiles with jagged teeth. I swirl around, grab my child, run with her to my bedroom. We have to hide. He has come again. He has come. He has truly found me this time. I am sobbing in terror.

In a corner of the dark bedroom, the terrified child held tight against me, I fumble in my pocket for my phone. Daniel's voice. I gasp, “He's found me. Please help. Please. Come.”

My hands are shaking so hard I drop the phone, must sweep fingers along the ground for it, saying to the child all along, “Shh … baby, shh … we have to be quiet. Or he will hear us.” In the dark, her terror-stricken eyes gleam, but she does not cry. When I find the phone, he is saying, “What? What's happened?”

“He's come. He's here. Help me. Please.”

“Slow down. Who? Who's come?”

I can't believe he doesn't know. “Samson,” I whisper. “He's here outside.”

“Who?”

I drop the phone into my lap. Remember that I have never told him. He doesn't know. I have kept the secrets locked up inside me. No one knows. I raise the phone to my ear. He is saying, “Are you okay? Is Bodhi okay? What happened? Who is Samson?”

“It's okay. It's okay. He's nobody. Nothing. I imagined things. I thought I saw someone outside, but it's fine. We're fine.” I force a settled tone into my voice. I make myself sure and steady. If he comes, he will ask questions. He will want to know who Samson is. More than I want to see him, I do not want to open the locked chest of my body.

“Pull yourself together. You're going to freak out the kid. Give her the phone. I want to make sure you haven't scared her to death.”

I put my little girl on the floor, leave her babbling with her father. I crawl to the window, stick up just the tip of my head. I flick the curtain. The street below me is empty.

In the corner Bodhi puts the phone on the ground, comes over to me, and falls into my lap. She reaches her hands up to my face. I nuzzle her cheek.

*   *   *

When he comes home a half hour later, Bodhi is in her room, I am in bed. This time he shakes me awake but doesn't hold me. His eyes are ice hard. He runs fingers through his hair and says, “What the hell happened? What was that? You said someone was here.”

“I'm sorry, Daniel. I'm sorry. It was nothing. No one was here.”

He stands up and paces the room. “No, it's not enough. This isn't working. I'm worried about Bodhi. I can't have you around her like this. You need some time. Just to figure things out. Whatever's bothering you.”

Panic clutches my throat. “Daniel. What are you doing?”

“We're going to go and live somewhere else. Bodhi and I. Just for part of the time. You can see her, but she'll stay with me. Until you feel better.”

“What? Are you leaving me?”

“No, no. It's just for a while. Just to give you some time. I've found a nice place for us. My parents are coming. They've always wanted to spend some time with Bodhi, and now they have it. They'll look after her in the daytime and I'll be home more now that this show is over.” He passes a hand over his face. “And then you can relax for a while. Just a few weeks. Okay? It'll be good for us. You'll have a break and then we can be together. Yes?”

They are leaving me. Of course they are leaving me. A lesson I learned young: Everyone leaves.

“Why are you doing this?”

He turns and looks at me as if taking me in, as if seeing past me to everything I hide. “I can't be around you right now. The way you are.”

“What way? What way am I?”

“Like your mother. Everything you told me about her. The locking herself up when you were little and leaving you outside, falling asleep for hours. It's exactly the same. I can't have that around Bodhi right now. Get yourself together and we'll be together, I promise. But not now, not for a while.”

The words hit me between the eyes. I sink back into the bed, lie there curled up as he walks away. Evening sun pours down through the window and over me like water. It feels like when Samson used to bathe me at the well. I remember the liquid spilling over my head, the chill and shock of it.

*   *   *

He leaves two weeks later, taking her with him. I've begged and begged, but nothing will change his mind. I lie in bed and listen as he packs, taking his clothes from the closet, from the drawers, dumping them into a big duffel bag. In other rooms, he makes decisions about essentials—her stroller, her toys, her jars of food. He is packing them up, taking them to the car. He is pulling these things out of our marriage like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. How does a jigsaw make sense with half its pieces gone? It is only jumbled chaos, bits of colored nonsense.

He has gutted me like a fish. He has slid a large knife along my skin's seam and slit me from throat to groin. He is removing the organs from my body. My kidneys, my gallbladder, my heart—things hugely important to the workings of my whole. He is wrenching each one out of its place in my chest and abdomen, snipping the blood cords that bind it in place, fitting them all into one of his cardboard packing boxes, the bottom slowly splotching red.

His feet walk back to me; he holds a box of my organs in one arm, my baby in the other. He says from miles above me, “We're going now. Mama doesn't feel well, so we're going to let her rest. Bodhi, do you wanna say bye-bye?” He puts her down and her arms wrap hard around my neck, her small face against mine. She kisses my nose, my cheek. A flurry of small, fierce kisses before he reaches down and grabs her again. She is crying when he walks out.

I whisper, “Please. Don't. You don't love her like I do.
I'm her mother
.”

The front door opens and slams shut. They are gone. They have taken every part of me. Only an empty husk is left, the sort of thing an insect climbs out of and leaves behind on a windowsill.

 

Twenty-two

Now I am that desolate thing, an abandoned woman left by her man, without her child. I remember my mother and her friends talking about a woman left like this. They spoke of her in whispers; they dropped pity like acid. She had lost her looks overnight, she had stopped eating, she had had to move back into her parents' house. They had gone to visit and she had seen them and tried to pretend everything was all right. But how could everything be all right? Even back then in girlhood, I knew this was the worst fate, to be left by a man.

*   *   *

Daniel calls often. To make sure that I am okay, he says. I realize that his leaving is more constructed than I had thought. This is no last-minute decision, this is a plan with well-thought-out architecture. He has rented a house a few miles from this one. His parents are there. He says, “It's just for a little while. Just till you get yourself up and about. How are you?”

I say, “I'm good, Daniel. I'm good.” I exhale and ask the only question on my mind. “When are you coming home?” We both ignore the jagged edge in my voice.

“Soon, baby, soon. Just give it a little time, okay?” His voice is so tender, I tear up. I can see him, worrying his eyebrow as he does when the wheels are turning deeply. He says, “Just take a little time to feel better. Maybe see someone…”

“See who?”

“A professional. Those nightmares of yours, they're so fierce. I think you need to talk them out. Maybe something happened when you were little. When you were Bodhi's age. Sometimes having a kid can bring up buried memories, you know.”

A dark door inches open.

“Daniel! I don't need someone professional.
Nothing
happened to me. What I need is you and my little girl back.”

His voice is different, sadder than I've ever heard it before. “Okay. We'll talk soon. I love you.”

I want to reach through the phone to his body, his presence and scent. These things would save me.

A quiet click in my ear.

*   *   *

This is what I know will happen: she will disappear into his world; she will be brought up by people who never speak of me. The fairness of her skin, the light in her hair will ensure it. She will fit in in a way I never had. She will go to school with girls who look like her, who speak like her. There will be no memory of me. I will be erased. Our marriage would mean nothing. My motherhood would mean nothing. The way I loved them both would mean nothing.