Come Sunday: A Novel (5 page)

In my recurring nightmare, I am required to dial 911 but keep getting the numbers mixed up. Such a simple task, yet one I find impossible to complete. It is into this dream Greg and I now lurch, hoping to find our daughter in a hospital of endless corridors. The second floor is quiet, dimly lit, and abandoned except for the waiting room, which we race by without noticing.

“Pastor,” calls Jakes. He has completely filled the doorway with his broad tattooed frame, jet-black hair pulled back in a paisley bandanna. “Pastor Greg, it’s terrible,” he says, and starts to weep as they embrace. “Abbe, I am so sorry,” he says, breaking from Greg’s arms to hold me. Without waiting for the question, he begins to explain, in gushes, what happened. The girls had just finished eating their pizza when they went out to the porch. Theresa went to the sink to wash the Cinderella dress, upon which Cleo had spilled her soda. Jakes had just walked to the fridge for a drink and was returning to the living room when he saw a flash of pale skin whiz down the front steps, out from under the porch light into the dark night. The pale naked body he saw, not the yellow kite that had caused its pursuit. He had called to her, he says, and walked to the screen door in time to see her squeeze through the two parked cars and dart into the road, where the kite’s short-lived flight had come to an end.

“The guy hit his brakes . . .” Jakes says, and does not finish his sentence. “The others are in the chapel praying, got to just keep praying.” He shakes his head and moves back into the room and over to the left-hand corner by the fish tank where he kneels.
Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial
. No sooner have these familiar words run across my mind when from the ceiling come the words, “All personnel, OR2, Code Blue, Code Blue.”

“WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?” I cry, long before the two coats reach us. One of them is Cleo’s pediatrician, Dr. Demalka, her Dutch skin almost translucent in the fluorescent light. The first person to weigh Cleo, to measure her head, to count her toes and fingers. Who only two months ago gave her a fistful of stickers for being so brave at the annual checkup for putting up with four shots without crying. Her face looks zipped up, tight; she is not the doctor we know. I see her nod at the gray-haired man next to her and suddenly I am deeply afraid of her. Don’t say it. Don’t tell me. Don’t speak. God, don’t say a word.

“Reverend and Mrs. Deighton,” the other coat says.

We are two tall trees now, Greg and I, root-bound in a pot of rotting soil, bending and straining toward the other but not quite touching, waiting for the ax to find its mark.

“I am very sorry,” Dr. Demalka says. “We did everything we could. She didn’t make it.”

“Don’t say that, don’t say that, DON’T SAY THAT!” I scream. Somebody is holding my arms, I cannot tell who. The narrow tunnel of focus fixed on Dr. Demalka’s face becomes a dark, yawning cave. With my hand on the wall steadying me, I manage to ask, “Where is she?” The cavernous night from the plains of Africa rolls out in front of me, pinpricks of light filling my eyes. “Don’t touch me, let go! Get your fucking hands OFF ME!” They belong to Greg.

“God, God, God,” he keeps repeating, crying, through the sobs. He lets go. The floor is cool where my forehead bends to meet it, while a pool of tears collects in front of my knees: “No, no, no, no.”

“Where is she? Where is my daughter!” Greg demands somewhere above me.
They have taken my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him
, says the voice inside my head, and I am all the Marys aching to hold the stolen body.

Somebody lifts me and we pass the crowd of mourners standing outside the waiting room. One of the heads turns to watch us as we pass, a hand pressed against her mouth. It takes two blinks to recognize her: Theresa, held up by Jakes on one side and Jenny on the other. They all look like they have just awoken, eyes rubbed red from sleep and shame, aware that they have failed in only one simple thing: to keep watch.

It is into a room with glass walls that we are led. The tomb is dimly lit. Cleo is lying on a narrow bed, a white blanket pulled to her chin as if to ward off the chill in the air. Greg reaches under her, lifts her into his arms, and settles her into his lap on the floor. Kneeling next to him, I lean over to stroke away the blond curls and kiss her white forehead, feeling the last beams of sunlight retreat. A deep, long moan covers the air and Greg begins chanting her name.

“Give her to me,” I tell him. “She’s getting cold.”

“Don’t hold her,” he whispers, shaking his head. “Baby, don’t hold her.”

And then I know he is trying to save me from something awful, the evidence that some terrible monster in the night, the Tokoloshe from the veldt, crawled under the sheet and robbed Cleo of her body.

“Let me have her,” I insist.

THEY WERE THE SAME HANDS that held Cleo, bundled and quiet, up to my face three years ago. She was only minutes old, but already she seemed wise. “This is your mommy,” he said to her. “Mommy, this is Cleo.” Arms strapped to the operating table, body numb from the anesthetic, I looked at my child, swaddled in white, and croaked a teary “Hi.” No more than a whisper away, she peered at me through the ointment-clouded eyes, and in the haziness of the new world I knew she recognized me. Maybe it was the sound of that hushed greeting in a voice as familiar as the inside of a womb, perhaps the invisible cord that tied us together so that no words were necessary, no sight.

So light she was when I held her for the first time hours later, after the incision was stitched neatly together and the spasms and retching of the drugs had subsided, long after the emergency equipment had been packed away. So light. Yet the weight of her tiny frame made an indelible mark on me, like an embosser on rice paper. I let her sleep on my chest for hours, sending the nurses and their concerns back to their station. My anchor she was, securing me to the settled moment of the
rise and fall of my chest, to the soft purr of her snoring, to the perfectly populated world of two.

“WAKE UP, wake up, wake up, darling,” I beg, tucking the blanket around her, frowning at what now feels like crushed eggshells where a firm hip used to be. My anchor has been wrenched loose and I am adrift.

“What have they done? Greg, what have they done to her?” I ask, but he is on his feet, anger flashing across his brow as the surgeon returns.

I peer down into her face, the usual flush on her creamy cheeks now gone. Her golden curls are mussed, except for one perfect spring across her brow. I slip one hand under her head, to cup that golden crown one more time, and touch what feels to be caked mud. As her head turns with my palm, I see it is blackened dried blood. Greg’s clipped words are running away from him and I hear a voice far away, on the moon, say, “Increased swelling in the brain . . . was stabilized . . . suddenly crashed . . . too late to operate . . . everything we could . . . ,” and I think they can leave now, all of them, and Cleo and I will stay here, like the ashy figures of Pompeii.

They drone on, Greg getting louder, the other more apologetic, until I turn around and shush them harshly.

“Tula tu tula baba tula sana, Tul’umam ’uzobuya ekuseni.”
I begin to sing the African lullaby Beauty once sang to me, rocking my girl as though through a bad dream.
“Sleep, baby, sleep, tomorrow your mommy will be with you again.”

PAST THE DOORWAY I see the others still knotted together, Theresa and Jenny. Sensing my glare, Theresa turns her head, still leaning on Jenny’s shoulder, and looks at me.
See, my betrayer is at hand
. She straightens up, lets go of her friend, and across the chasm seems to say
something. Her hands clasp together—are they begging or praying? I swing back to Cleo as her arm falls from the blanket. That soft hand that used to reach for mine is limp, and her nails are the color of a twilight sky.

“A pianist’s fingers,” Theresa had said when she and Jenny came to the hospital the day Cleo was born and unwrapped the blanket to examine their prize.

“Save your pennies then, because you’re going to help pay for piano lessons,” I said.

“She’s going to make the world cry one day with her beautiful music,” Theresa said.

“Or for writing the next
Gone With the Wind
,” I added.

“Whatever she does, she’ll make us cry!”

“CAN THEY SEE HER?” Dr. Demalka asks as she enters the room, but before Greg can answer I hiss, “Nobody sees her. Tell them to go home.”

Home. My home is gone now. This is home; let the ashes fall from the heavens and settle over us in this sterile, infinite home. Far away there is a wail of an animal caught in a snare. When Greg touches my shoulder, I realize it is me.

Cleo’s lower lip is crooked, weighted to the right as it always was when she was asleep or when she was scared. Exactly how it was when she was born.

“Cleo!” I cry, calling into the abyss, calling her back from the void; a loud clear call. “Wake up, Cleo; open your eyes, darling; it’s time to go home.”

But she has gone to the burial grounds of drowned boys and crucified Lords.

When Cleo starts to stiffen, face-first, my hold on her relaxes as if it knows that she is more resolute on being dead than on coming back to life. Concrete-cold she is. Greg places her back on the bed, helps me out of the armchair where I have cradled her, arranges for the ride back to the house. I stand for a long time beside her bed, checking still for the briefest flickering of her lashes, unwilling to say goodbye, to walk away, to leave her, as if leaving her again will exact another great price. It is only five steps to the door, and after I have made them I turn around again to watch my daughter, lying as though on an altar. Greg’s hand grips my shoulder and suddenly I lean into him, clutching his shirt, the world tilting.

The dark sky at the tip of the horizon is becoming gray, as though the day will wake up to a 1920s black-and-white talkie. A different policeman drives us home, and when he pulls into the small cul-de-sac, I can’t imagine why it is that everything looks the same. Even the shaking of Mrs. Chung’s blinds where she has stolen a glance. Our garage door is up and someone has parked our car to the left and put buckets to catch the leaks on the right. The officer sees us to the front door, mumbles, and then retreats to the sound of Solly’s fierce barking. The front door is unlocked, and a vase of ghost-colored lilies is centered on the telephone table alongside the keys and a note with my name written on it. In the kitchen Jenny is washing yesterday’s dishes. I walk into
her soapy arms, which fold around me and try to contain the shaking.

Gently, Jenny leads me upstairs and helps me into bed, then hands me Cleo’s stuffed rainbow turtle, Tow-Tow, and puts a box of tissues next to my pillow. She opens a small brown paper bag, the sound loud and annoying. I shake my head when she retrieves from it an orange prescription bottle. She puts it down on the nightstand (“If you need it”) and reflexively I think about putting it higher, out of Cleo’s reach. Instead, I sit up, twist and turn the childproof lid, pop two tiny pills in my mouth, and swallow. When I lie back Jenny picks up the discarded clothes from the chair and begins to fold them. I watch from a few light-years away as she softly pushes drawers back in the bureau, puts strewn jewelry in their boxes, picks up Greg’s socks, and tosses them in the laundry basket. Tucking everything away. It is when she bends to the abandoned pair of strappy high heels that I say suddenly, “No.” She looks at me and reaches instead for the pantyhose lying next to them. “No,” I tell her again. “Just leave them. Please.” I want to picture Cleo as she was yesterday morning, clip-clopping around in my shoes, pantyhose pulled on her head, finger pointed in command. Her last morning. I choke on the thought and wish never to awaken to one again.