Still Missing

behind me, watching a crazy woman grab at candy like it was Halloween, but I didn't give a shit.

In my car I ripped open the little bags and started stuffing my mouth full of candies. I was crying--didn't know or care why--and I ate so many that I threw up when I got home and my tongue was covered with little sores. But I ate more--a whole lot more--and fast, like I was afraid someone was going to stop me any second. I wanted to be that girl who used to like candy so bad, Doc. So bad.

I sat at my kitchen table--wrappers and empty bags all around me--and couldn't stop crying. I had a sugar headache. I was going to throw up again. But I was crying because the candies didn't taste like I remembered. Nothing tastes like I remember.

The Freak never did tell me why he'd gone back to Clayton Falls or what he did there other than spy on my so-called loved ones, but the first night after his return he sure was in a good mood. Nothing puts a skip in a freak's step like telling a girl no one gives a shit about her. While he made dinner he whistled and danced around in the kitchen like he was on a cooking show.

When I glared at him, he just smiled and took a bow.

If he'd made it to Clayton Falls and back in five days, I couldn't be that far away or that far north, unless he just parked the van and flew somewhere. Regardless, none of it seemed to matter anymore. Whether I was five or five hundred miles from my home, the distance was insurmountable. When I thought of my house I'd loved so much, friends and family, search parties that weren't searching, all I felt was a giant blanket of fatigue wrapping itself around me and pulling me down. Just sleep. Sleep it all away.

I might have felt like that indefinitely, but two weeks after The Freak came home, around the middle of February, when I was about five months along, I felt the baby move. It was the strangest sensation, like I'd swallowed a butterfly, and in that moment the baby stopped being something evil, stopped being something of his. It was mine and I didn't have to share it.

After that, I liked being pregnant. Each week, as I grew and rounded out, I was amazed that my body was creating a life. I didn't feel dead inside, I felt alive. Even The Freak's recharged obsession with my body didn't change my feelings about being pregnant. He'd make me stand in front of him while he ran his hands all over my stomach and breasts. During one of these 'examinations,' which I'd spend counting knotholes in the ceiling, he said, 'You don't know how lucky you are to have your child born away from today's society, Annie. All human beings do is destroy--they rip apart nature, love, and families, with war, with governments, with greed. But here I've created a pure world, a safe world, for us to raise our child in.'

As I listened to him, I thought about the drunk driver killing my dad and sister. I thought about the doctors loading Mom up with pills, the Realtors I knew who'd do anything to get a deal, my friends and family who were moving on, cops who must have their heads stuck up their asses or I'd have been found by now.

I hated that I was even considering the opinion of a freak. But if somebody is telling you the sky is green, even though you know it's blue, and they act like the sky is green and they keep saying it's green day in, day out, like they really believe it, eventually you could start wondering if maybe you're nuts for thinking it's blue.

I often wondered, Why me? Why, of all the girls he could have taken, did he pick a Realtor, a career woman? Not exactly mountain wife material. Not that I'd have wished this on anyone, but wouldn't he want someone he knew would be weak? Someone he knew it wouldn't take much to fuck with? But then I realized he did know. He knew all along.

I thought I'd worked past my childhood, past my family, past my pain, but when you've rolled around in manure long enough, there's no getting away from the stench. You can buy every damn type of soap out there and scrub your skin until you're raw, but then one day you're out walking around and a fly lands on you. Then another one, then another--because they know. They know that underneath that fresh-scrubbed skin you're just manure. Nothing but shit. You can clean it up all you want, but the flies always know where to land.

That winter The Freak put me on a reward system. If he was happy with me he gave me things--one extra slice of meat at dinner or one extra pee break. If I folded the laundry perfectly, I was allowed a little bit of sugar in my tea. After one of his trips into town, he said I'd been a good girl and gave me an apple.

So much had been taken away that when he gave me anything, even something as mundane as an apple, it became huge. I ate it with my eyes closed, and in my mind I was sitting under a tree in the summer--I could almost feel the sun on my legs.

He still punished me if I did something wrong, but he hadn't hit me for a long time, and sometimes I wished he would. Being hit was a physical act that made me feel defiant. But the mind shit? That really did a number on me, and as the months passed, the voices of my loved ones faded to whispers and their faces blurred. Little by little, day by day, the sky became green.

He still continued with the rapes after I started to show, but they were different somehow, more like he was now the one acting a role. Once in a while he'd even turn gentle, loving, then catch himself and blush, as though it were the niceness that was wrong.

A couple of times he simply stopped and rested beside me with his hand on my belly, then he'd ask me questions: What did it feel like to be pregnant? Could I feel the baby moving? If he wasn't in the mood for sex I'd still have to put on the dress, and we'd usually lie in bed with his head on my chest.

One night the weight of his head on my breasts triggered a nurturing sensation, and I started daydreaming about the baby. Without thinking I started singing, 'Hush little baby, don't you cry,' out loud. I stopped as soon as I realized what I was doing. He shifted his head so it rested on my shoulder, then looked me in the eye.

'My mother used to sing that to me. Did your mother ever sing to you, Annie?'

'Not that I remember.'

My mind searched for ways to keep the conversation going. I wanted to know more about him, but it wasn't like I could just come out and say, 'So how did you turn into such a freak?'

'Your mom must have been an interesting person,' I said, hoping I wasn't stepping onto a land mine, but he didn't say anything. 'Do you want me to sing you something special? I don't know many songs, but I could try. I took lessons when I was a kid.'

'Not right now. I want to hear more about your childhood.'

Shit. Could I get him to tell me revealing stuff by talking about my crap?

'Mom wasn't really the sing-you-to-sleep type,' I said.

'And these lessons, were they your idea?'

'That was all Mom.'

My whole childhood was spent trying something new, singing lessons, piano lessons, and of course figure skating. Daisy was into skating from the time she was little, but I didn't last long. I spent more time with my ass on the ice than in the air. Mom tried me in ballet, too, but that ended when I spun into another little girl and just about broke her nose.

Even the accident didn't stop my mom. If anything, her golden child's death increased her need to make me good at something. Well, what I got good at was sabotage. It's amazing how many ways you can break instruments or ruin sequined costumes.

'What kind of lessons did you want to take?'

'I was into art, painting and drawing, stuff like that, but Mom wasn't.'

'So if she wasn't, then you couldn't be?' His eyebrows rose. 'Doesn't sound like she was very fair, or much fun.'

'When we were younger, before Daisy died, she could be fun. Like every Christmas we made huge gingerbread houses, and she'd play dress-up with us all the time. Sometimes she'd build forts in the middle of the living room with Daisy and me, then we'd stay up late watching scary movies.'

'Did you like the scary movies?'

'I liked being with Daisy and her.... They just had a different sense of humor. Mom's really into pranks and stuff, like one Halloween she poured ketchup all over the floor by my bed so when I woke up and stepped in it I'd think it was blood. She and Daisy laughed about it for days.' I still hate ketchup.

'But you didn't think it was so funny, did you?'

I shrugged. The Freak began to look bored and shifted his weight like he was going to get up. Shit. I had to start showing him some real feelings if I wanted him to connect with me.