Still Missing

'I was going to give it back!'

He picked it up and leaned toward me. I gripped the baby and tried to wriggle up the bed. He paused. I paused. Maintaining eye contact, he slowly wiped the knife off on the corner of a towel. He held the knife up to the light, nodded, then headed into the kitchen.

He helped me roll over and put fresh bedding under me. While he cleaned away the medical supplies, I tried to put my nipple to her mouth, but she wouldn't take it. I tried again, same result. Tears prickled in my eyes, and I swallowed hard. Remembering that the books said it took them a while sometimes, I tried again. This time when I pressed my nipple into her mouth a bit of watery-looking yellow liquid came out. Her little rosebud mouth opened and she finally latched on.

With a sigh of relief, I looked up just as The Freak came back to the bed carrying a cup of water and a baby blanket. Focused on the task, he didn't look at me until he'd set the cup on the side table. When he did glance over, his eyes went straight to the baby nursing from my exposed breast. His face flushed and he quickly averted his gaze. Staring at the wall, he tossed the blanket to me and said, 'Cover yourself.'

I draped the blanket over my shoulder and baby just as she made a loud slurping sound.

He took a couple of steps back, then spun around and headed into the bathroom. Soon I heard the shower running. It ran for a very long time.

He was quiet when he came back. He stood at the bottom of the bed and stared at me for a few minutes. I'd learned not to make eye contact with him when he was in one of his moods, so I pretended to be dozing, but I could still make him out through my eyelashes. I had seen his pissed-off look, his I'm-going-to-hurt-you look, and I'd seen him tune out completely, but this was different. It was thoughtful.

My arms tightened around my daughter.

SESSION TWELVE

I'm in a weird-ass mood today, Doc. Wired up, mind all over the place, looking for answers, reasons, something solid to cling to, something real, but just when I think I've got it figured out and neatly filed under fixed instead of fucked, turns out I'm still shattered, scattered, and battered. But you probably already knew that, didn't you?

At least your office feels real. Real wood shelves, real wood desk, real native masks on the wall. And in here I can be real because I know you can't tell people about me, but I wonder if when you sit around with your shrink friends, talking about whatever it is you guys talk about, you want to just blurt it out.... No, forget I said that, you look like the type that went into the profession because you genuinely want to help people.

You might not be able to help me. That makes me sad, but not for me. It makes me sad for you. It must be frustrating for a shrink to have a patient who's beyond fixing. That first shrink I saw when I got back to Clayton Falls told me no one is a lost cause, but I think that's bullshit. I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that they'll never be anything more than a fragment of a whole person.

I wonder when it happened to The Freak. What the defining moment was--the moment when someone stepped down with the heel of their shoe and crushed both of our lives. Was it when his real mother left him? Would he still have been repairable if he'd had a nice foster family? Would he never have killed anyone or abducted me if his adoptive mom hadn't been such a freak herself? Did it happen in the womb? Did he ever even have a chance? Did I?

There was The Freak side of him, the guy who abducted me, beat me, raped me, played sadistic games with me, terrified me. But sometimes when he was thoughtful or happy or excited, when his face lit up, I saw the guy he could have been. Maybe that guy would have had a family and taught his child to ride bikes and made balloon animals for her, you know? Hell, maybe he'd have been a doctor and saved people's lives.

After I had my daughter, I even felt maternal toward him sometimes, and in those fleeting moments when I did see his other side, I wanted to coax it out. I wanted to help him. I wanted to fix him. But then I'd remember. He was a little boy standing in front of a hayfield holding a match, and he didn't need an excuse to drop it.

Right after the baby was born The Freak tossed me some cloth diapers, a couple of sleepers, a few blankets, and for a week barely spoke to me unless he was telling me to do something--he only let me rest in bed for one day. My first day up I got dizzy doing the dishes and he let me sit down for a few minutes, but then he made me wash them all over again because the water had grown cold. The next time I just leaned on the counter and closed my eyes until the feeling passed.

He never touched the baby, but when I changed or bathed her, he hovered and picked that moment to ask me to do something for him. If I was folding her laundry, he'd make me finish his first. Once, when I was about to nurse her while our dinner was simmering, he made me put her down and serve him. The only time he left us alone was when I nursed her. Not knowing exactly what was pissing him off, I picked her up and soothed her if she made so much as a peep, but his eyes only turned darker and his jaw clenched. He reminded me of a viper waiting to strike, and as I comforted my child, my insides hummed with anxiety.

When she was a couple of days old, he still hadn't mentioned anything about naming her, so I asked him if I could.

He glanced at her in my arms and said, 'No,' but later I whispered a secret name into her tiny ear. It was the only thing I could give her.

I couldn't stop thinking about the way he'd handled his jealousy and resentment of his adopted father. So when he was in the cabin I made sure I looked indifferent to the baby and only met her basic needs--luckily, she was a content and happy baby who never fussed much. But as soon as he went outside for his chores, I'd take her out of the blanket and look at every inch of her, amazed she came out of my body.

Considering the circumstances of her conception, I was surprised how much I was capable of loving my daughter. With my fingertips I traced her veins, marveling that my blood flowed through her, and she never squirmed. Her little ear was perfect for singing lullabies into, and sometimes I just buried my nose in her neck and inhaled the scent of her, fresh and sweet--the purest thing I'd ever smelled. Behind her pudgy left knee she had a tiny birthmark, a coffee-colored half-moon that I loved to kiss. Every delicate inch of her made my heart shiver with the overwhelming urge to protect her. The intensity of my feelings terrified me, and my anxiety grew with my love.

We still had bath time every night, but she wasn't allowed in the water with me and The Freak never touched my breasts. After the bath, I nursed her on the bed while he cleaned the bathroom. When she was finished I laid her down in a little bed he'd put at the foot of ours--it was just a wicker basket with some blankets in it, like a dog bed, but it didn't seem to bother her.

I remembered a couple of my friends who had kids complaining about how they never got any sleep in the beginning, and I didn't either. Not because of the baby--she only woke up once a night--but because I was so terrified of what he'd do if she woke him up that I lay there listening to every faint sigh or the tiniest hitch in her breathing. I became adept at slithering to the bottom of the bed at the first signs of her waking so he wouldn't feel my weight leave the mattress, and like a dog nursing a puppy I'd hang my breast over the side, lift her up slightly, and feed her. If he moved or made any sound, I lay perfectly still with my heart pounding and wondered if she could feel it pulse through my breast. As soon as his breath evened out, I'd slither back up.

At bedtime, after she was down, he examined me and tenderly put cream on my privates, pausing to make soothing sounds if I flinched, his face sympathetic. He said we had to wait six weeks before we could 'make love' again. When he'd raped me it was a hell of a lot more painful but somehow less disturbing. Sometimes I actually forced myself not to react if it hurt when he spread the cream, so he'd keep going. Pain was normal.

When she was a little over a week old I was cooking and needed two hands, so I was about to go put her down in her basket, but he stood in front of me and said, 'I'll take her.' My eyes moved back and forth between him and the safety of her bed--I'd been so close--but I didn't dare refuse him. After I gently placed her in his arms, he strolled away with her, and my heart climbed into my throat. He sat on the end of the bed.

She began to whimper, and I dropped what I was doing to stand in front of him.

'I'm sorry she disturbed you--I'll put her in her bed.'