Another Little Piece (4 page)

“It has to be now.”

She nods, but I need a verbal agreement to complete the circle and take away her will the same way she took his. “‘Yes, I will pay.’ I need to hear that.”

“Yes, I will pay,” Annaliese immediately repeats, no need for my fingers on her shoulder to dig into the skin, pressing the answer out of her. And with those words, I release her, knowing she’ll stay.

Rolling up the sleeves of my sweater, I block Annaliese out. There is no reason anymore to reassure her, and right now I have to focus on myself. This is always the hardest part. I flick the straight razor open. It’s from another time and place, and yet still so familiar, still full of memories of a father long dead. My hand squeezes the wooden handle tighter.

“Please,” I murmur softly. This isn’t for Annaliese, but directed toward a higher power I no longer believe in. I used to finish the phrase with “forgive me,” but I dropped that decades ago—along with any hopes for absolution.

Then I make two slices through my skin. One for each arm. Starting at the edge of my elbow and tearing straight through the soft flesh until I reach the edge of my palm. The razor falls from my fingers into the dirt at my feet. My hands hang limp at my sides, and blood streams from my fingertips, a slow drip that will quickly turn into a steady red waterfall.

Annaliese stares in horror. Her mouth moves, but no sound comes out. “Yes, I will pay” are the last words that Annaliese will ever say.

“Now pick up the razor and cut my heart out,” I tell Annaliese. And because she has no other choice, she does exactly as I say.

HEART IN HER HAND

The memory stopped abruptly. Like a plug had been pulled. The world that replaced it felt less real, and somehow not as substantial in comparison.

With a detached sense of horror I watched the mom slap Rice Sixteen across the face repeatedly. He accepted each blow, not even looking at the mom, his eyes focused on some point beyond her. Maybe he was reliving the same memory I’d just witnessed.

The dad finally pulled the mom away, wrapping her in a full bear hug to do so. After a moment she slumped in his arms and went silent, at which point I realized that the low keening noise I’d been hearing was coming from her. The whirling police lights caught her face, twisted in the despair that I’d always sensed hovering just beneath her skin.

My detachment left me. She looked too much like Annaliese. Not the one I saw in the mirror, but the one who’d slashed through skin, and then cracked apart ribs until she held my hot, wet heart in her hand.

As my eyesight blurred, I felt sick with fear that I was returning to that otherworld in the trees and dead leaves once more. It was almost a relief, as the world went black, to realize that I was merely having a good old-fashioned fainting spell. My surroundings faded away, and then quickly returned as the force of my body hitting the ground jerked me back to consciousness. Still, I kept my eyes firmly shut. I’d seen enough for one night.

Two fingers slid across my neck, seeking a pulse, at the same time a low male voice asked, “Are you okay?”

My eyes fluttered open. Spots blurred my vision, and I could feel the darkness rushing back at me. I leaned into it like it was one of the mom’s hugs. But before my last bits of consciousness fully released me, I saw two eyes staring down at me. One was dark and searching, while the other was a blinking red pinpoint of light, burning straight through me.

BEGINNINGS. AGAIN.

LOVE IS . . .

Love is flannel pj’s.

Every fall picking

the perfect print

and pattern

at Jo-Ann Fabrics.

Mom sews them

top and bottom

zigging and zagging

through the machine.

The buttons

Mom sews by hand.

They’re better that way,

she says.

Lasts forever that way,

she says.

Even though I always

outgrow them after a year.

But this year

I wanted snaps.

Bright shiny silver snaps

that tinkled softly against

my tapping fingertips.

Mom said they were cheap

that they wouldn’t last forever.

I don’t care about forever.

That’s what I said.

So Mom marched them

down the middle of the

once button-

now snap-front

top.

Bright shiny silver snaps

right where

boring sturdy buttons

would’ve been.

Love is warm flannel pj’s.

On cold nights

Mom throws them in the dryer

while I am in the shower.

When I get out

they’re warm and

soft and ready.

But the snaps are hot.

The first time they leave

little red marks.

After that I know

to hold them away

to let them cool.

Love is flannel pj’s

handmade

and warmed.

But love is also snaps

bright with silver shine

that burns.

—ARG

BEDROOM

Morning came too soon. I woke at eight a.m. Outside my window birds chirped. Farther off in the distance I could detect the low roar of an airplane. It was like every other morning since I’d been returned to this place, except for one thing. The chair where the mom usually slept was empty. The pillows that she always arranged so that they sat slightly overlapping one another in the crook of the chair’s arm lay stranded on the bedroom floor, two tiny oases of disorder in an otherwise perfectly tidy room. No doubt they were in the exact spot they had fallen last night when she’d awoken and realized I wasn’t asleep in my bed.

Funny. She thought she’d found her daughter, but Annaliese was more lost to her than ever.

Was that why she hadn’t returned to the room last night, realizing the futility of safeguarding the very person who had caused her daughter to disappear?

I shook my head, forcing the order of events back into place. No one else knew what I had seen. No one knew what had happened to Annaliese. It was the one thing that had been repeated during all those TV interviews we’d done. Her disappearance was still a mystery. There were suspects—
persons of interest
are what they called them—but no arrests had been made. And there had definitely never been any mention of finding another

body or even blood. But then again the mom had been quick to close off any line of questioning that went near that subject.

“The police are still looking into it, and we continue to pray that the person who did this will be found and brought to justice. Right now we are focusing on the future.”

Those had been her exact words every time. They had been a warning. The details of my own disappearance were not for me to know. And if it was the gruesome scene that I can now imagine all too well, then it makes sense that the mom would want to protect her daughter from that knowledge.

Protect Annaliese. That is always her mission. An unending one. And that’s what she had been doing last night. Attacking Rice Sixteen for taking her daughter’s virginity. For leaving her alone to be attacked and taken . . . and for blurting it all out for everyone to hear. I’m sure it was a combination of the three.

And that look on her face as the dad pulled her away.

Jumping out of the bed, I decided to find the mom, make sure she was okay. I now knew—if I could believe the terrible thing I’d seen last night—that she wasn’t my mom, and that whoever—or whatever—I was, she had every reason to hate me for taking away her daughter and bringing an impostor back. And yet, I already knew the mom well enough to guess she’d prefer an impostor to having no daughter at all. And without knowing myself at all, I, too, preferred to have the mom, not just because my only other option was to be alone in the world, but because the stranglehold style of love she practiced was the only real and consistent thing I’d experienced since waking up.

Quickly, I threw on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved thermal T-shirt. I tucked my hospital gown into the farthest corner of the closet beneath a pile of shoes, where the mom was least likely to discover it. The brand-new clothes the mom had purchased after seeing how Annaliese’s old clothes hung on my emaciated frame were stiff and scratchy against my skin. I’d been mixing in pieces of Annaliese’s wardrobe, shirts worn soft from years of usage—my favorite a faded T-shirt reading
YOUTH POETRY FEST
—but now it felt like I had taken too much of hers.

Before leaving the room, I grabbed a fresh pack of Listerine breath strips and placed two of them on my tongue. After the chocolate incident in the car, the dad had gone to the nearest gas station and he must have bought every variety of mint-flavored anything they carried—including a car air freshener. The breath strips were the only thing that had been able to make the gagging stop and let me think about the possibility of chewing and swallowing food again.

Although not chocolate. Never again chocolate.

Since then I’d developed a bit of a habit. I was up to three packs a day. Without them, that horrible flavor of chocolate mixed with death kept coming back, coating my tongue and closing my throat.

It was always at its worst first thing in the morning, but this morning was a new high—or low. Popping another breath strip into my mouth, I pocketed the rest of the packet and tiptoed down the hall to the parents’ room. They always left their door wide open, I think as a way of saying that there was no room I wasn’t welcome in. Still I’d never done more than glance in from the doorway of my own room farther down the hall. It had never been necessary to go looking for the mom before.

The room was empty, the bed neatly made. No clothes on the floor, or flung over the backs of chairs. Yes, the mom was a bit of a neat freak, but this room looked, if not unlived in, then definitely unslept in. And not just from last night. Of course, I’d known the mom had been spending her nights in my room, but it had never occurred to me to wonder where the dad was sleeping.

I don’t know why this upset me. There was certainly nothing sinister about a tidy and empty room. It looked lonely, I guess, and made me panic again, certain that the mom and the dad had figured out I wasn’t actually their daughter. Maybe they were out right now looking for the real Annaliese.

How ironic. The replacement, the forgery, afraid of being replaced by the real thing.

My thoughts chased me down the stairs, through the empty kitchen, and into the family room. I stopped there, frozen by the sight of the mom, curled up on the couch, asleep.

A few months before I was found, the mom had taken up knitting. It hadn’t been her idea, but a solution suggested by one of her doctors to deal with a condition she’d developed after Annaliese had first gone missing. Trichotillomania, they called it. She pulled out her own hair. I guess it started with pulling at the hair on her head, but then she became numb to that pain, so she began to pluck out her eyelashes. Soon she had almost none left. The knitting kept her hands busy.

She’d explained this to me matter-of-factly, while she’d frowned down at the needles in her hands. Watching her, I could see there was no enjoyment in the task, only frustration. Still, she was faithful to the project. The lumpy woolen blanket, just a series of knots in some places, stretched wide enough to cover everyone sitting on the couch. But she wasn’t done with it yet. Maybe the mom thought that if she kept knitting away, she might yet shape it into something beautiful, redeemable.

It covered her now. The needles and a ball of yarn were stuck into a corner near her feet. I was about to turn away, leave her to sleep, when I noticed something clutched in the fist she had curled up over her head. Leave it, I told myself, even as my feet crept closer and I leaned over, holding my breath so that a blast of Listerine wouldn’t shake her awake. If I had been looking for reassurance, something to say that she was still holding me tight even if she hadn’t slept by my bed, then perhaps I found it.

There were two plastic-covered strips in her hand. One aged, yellow, and almost comically tiny. The other much newer. I recognized it instantly. They were the identifying bracelets the hospital puts on patients. The first must have come from a newborn Annaliese. I could almost see the mom’s careful concentration as she slipped a sharp pair of scissors between the plastic and the tender skin of her newborn’s leg.

Holding them together like that, she would be reminding herself of the happiness she’d felt both times, bringing her precious daughter home. This was what I wanted to believe. And it fit. The mom was the type to keep hospital ID bracelets as keepsakes.

But then another thought intervened. What if instead she was comparing and contrasting? What if she was wondering what exactly she had brought home this time?

FENCE

I slipped out using the sliding glass door that led into the backyard. It whined softly as I pushed it closed behind me, but the mom still didn’t stir. Deliberately I forced myself to turn away and contemplate the view instead. It was your typical suburban backyard, I suppose. A cement slab for a patio, with a grill and glass-topped table. Flower beds ran alongside the house on either side. The rest was grass.

Another row of houses lined up behind ours. Backyards flowed into one another, and grass stretched in all directions, like a gigantic communal backyard. Except for the one fence. Not a box, closing in a single backyard, but instead a straight wooden line, shielding our house from the one directly to the left. It was so strange, the one-sided fence, and there was no doubting its meaning. Clearly, there was some kind of bad blood, a neighborly feud even. It didn’t seem like the type of thing the mom and the dad would get caught up in.

I walked beside the wooden divide, lightly trailing my fingers along. My feet were once again bare, and the grass felt cold and stiff against my soles, but I kept placing one foot in front of the other.

At the edge of the yard, the fence stopped, and I with it. Only a few small steps around would take me to the other side. Into enemy territory. My fingers moved ahead of me, finding the rough edge—and getting a splinter for my trouble. Jerking my hand back, I felt irrationally as if I’d been attacked.

A scream of anguish came drifting across the empty lawns. Although distant and muffled, it pierced me. I knew that scream.

It was the mom.

Turning, I ran toward the house, my own small hurt forgotten. Another cry. Picking up speed, I reached the door too quickly, and my bare feet skidded against the cement slab, stopping me from slamming into the glass door. My hot breath came too fast, fogging the glass, but even through the haze I could see the mom.

She was still in the exact same position on the couch. Asleep . . . perhaps even peacefully.

As I backed away from the door, the splinter in my finger throbbed and my battered feet ached. I retraced my steps along the fence line, trying to understand what I’d heard. Or had it been imagined? It would almost be a relief to know my mind was playing tricks on me; perhaps then I could discount the memory from last night too.

But only a few steps from the fence edge, I heard it once more. It still sliced into me, but I breathed through that and focused on moving toward the sound. The screams led me away from the mom sleeping inside, and over to the other side of the fence.

What had I expected to see? Something threatening, I suppose. Or, at the very least, something obviously odd and out of place. But there was the same cement slab. The requisite grill was missing and the outdoor table was orange with rust, and chairless. A tangle of weeds and rotting leaves filled the flower beds, but the grass was the same, if maybe a little longer.

The place was completely inoffensive, except for one small detail. The storm doors leading into the basement, instead of being sealed tightly closed, overlapped slightly, just enough for the sounds of the mom’s wail to escape into the sunlit morning.

It was a recording. From this distance the hiss of background noise become obvious, giving it away.

And now I understood the enmity. What kind of sicko taped that and then replayed it for their own amusement? And now I also remembered the red blinking light that I’d seen before finally passing out. Not just a sound recording then, but video too. And the cameraman himself had been pretending to check on me, when really he’d been moving in for a close-up.

Anger surged inside me. I banged a fist against the metal door, and then lifted it up. The recorded cry cut off abruptly. It only increased my rage.

I shouted down into the sudden silence, “I know what you are!”

Of course, I had no idea who was down there, or anything about them except the evidence of the recording and a very hazy memory of a face. The one eye that hadn’t been red had stared at me in a way that had seemed kind, compassionate even. But maybe I was remembering wrong.

“Monster,” I added, spitting the word down toward the darkness. A hot potato of a word, I tossed it and then ran away—before whoever was there could pass it back to me.

BASEMENT

Before opening the sliding glass door, I popped another three breath strips to wipe away the sour taste that had risen once more.

Inside everything was the same. I couldn’t stop myself from being disappointed that the mom hadn’t already woken up, and hadn’t been anxiously scanning the room for my presence. Uncertain where to go or what to do next, I was about to wake her . . . when the basement door swung open and the dad stepped into view.

He gave a little jump of surprise, obviously not expecting to see me standing there in the middle of the room. Even though I had yet to make a peep, the dad put his fingers to his lips, signaling that I was to remain quiet. I nodded my understanding. The dad frowned back at me, so I repeated the same gesture, letting him know I was on board. He didn’t notice because now he was frowning at the mom. His gaze swung to me again and the grimace was gone. Resignation had taken its place as he beckoned me to follow him, and then disappeared down the basement stairs.

As I tiptoed past the mom, I got it. With her out of commission, it fell to the dad to look after me, and this was clearly a task he’d rather avoid. The feeling was mutual.

After closing the door so softly it was no louder than a sigh, I turned to check out the basement. Every wall was lined with floor-to-ceiling storage shelves. And every shelf was stacked full. Mostly canned goods, but as I slowly came down the stairs I could make out three units with nothing but jugs of water, another one full of jarred spaghetti sauce, one dedicated to all types of boxed macaroni and cheese, and finally one that was devoted to all things Little Debbie. All together, there was enough to feed an army.

The organization would have worked for the military too. Except for the spaghetti sauce. On the third shelf down, exactly three jars were missing. No, not missing. They’d been relocated—with some haste—to the cement floor. The dad must have been in the middle of cleaning it up. A broom and the shattered glass sat in a pile pushed to the edge of the room. A bucket of pinkish-colored water waited in the middle of the splatters and streaks of sauce.