Authors: P.D. Workman
Dr. Morton stroked his chin.
“That must have been very upsetting,” he observed.
“No duh!” Justine snapped back.
“How did you feel about it?”
“I wanted to hurt her.”
“How did you feel about what she did? Not what did you want to do, but how did you feel inside?”
Justine chewed on the inside of her cheek. What was the difference? And how was she to know how she felt? It was a long time ago. Feelings had never come easy to her, and it was so long ago to label those feelings that she had when Em tried to kill Katie.
“Sad,” she said baldly. “Horrified. Devastated. Eviscerated.”
“You felt like that doll was a part of yourself? A part that she took away from you?”
“I still have it,” Justine whispered.
Dr. Morton looked puzzled.
“How do you still have it, if she cut it up and threw it in the garbage? Do you mean that you still have her in your heart? That she’s part of you?”
“No,” Justine shook her head. Of course all of that was true, but that wasn’t what she had meant. “One eye
…
when Em wasn’t watching, I went out to the lane, to the garbage can, and I dug through the garbage, and I got one of Katie’s button eyes. Black button eyes. And I kept it. And Em never knew.”
When she went back to school again, Ms. Taupe eyed Justine on arrival, as if wondering if she might explode or something. Justine just gave her a knowing smile, and sat down. Ms. Taupe looked around at the chattering students, and clapped her hands.
“All right, everybody, before you get settled, you remember that we were working on group projects
…” There were some groans, and some excited titters. “Please put your desks together in your groups, and sit down. Then we’ll go over the assignment progress, and catch up anyone who missed.”
Justine stood up by her desk, and watched as everyone moved around her, getting into their groups. Ms. Taupe raised her voice over the grinding of desks and babble of voices.
“Justine, Megan, why don’t you pair up? You were both away yesterday. You can be a group.”
Justine looked across the chaos and saw Megan. Megan nodded, and Justine picked up her books and went over to her. They grabbed two desks and put them together. Justine flopped down into the desk. Ms. Taupe started to review what the group project was all about. Justine only half-listened to them. She watched Megan, and glanced around the room at the groups eager to get going. Group projects were just a chance to socialize during class time. One person would do all of the work on their own time, or if the team was made up of people who didn’t care, then they would pull together some stupid presentation in the last ten minutes available and everyone would giggle about how lame it was. Justine turned her eyes back to Megan, listening raptly to the assignment. Megan was a good student, she’d be the one who wanted to complete the assignment. Ms. Taupe finished talking and turned the class over to their projects. Megan smiled at Justine.
“Okay, who wants to start?” she questioned.
Justine shrugged.
“What are we supposed to do?” Justine returned.
Megan looked surprised. Justine waited.
“We’re supposed to interview each other about our earliest childhood memories, and find similarities in our experience,” Megan summarized.
Justine raised her eyebrows.
“Earliest childhood memories?” she repeated. Megan nodded, waiting. Justine squinted her eyes, thinking. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” she told Megan.
Megan’s eyes widened slightly.
“What
…
?” she questioned, already drawn in.
“I could get in big trouble. I mean
…
big trouble,” she said dramatically.
“From who?” Megan whispered.
Justine shook her head.
“Maybe you’d better go first,” she suggested.
Megan was hesitant. Then she nodded, perhaps deciding that if she shared first, Justine would trust her more to report her own story.
“Well, let’s see
…
my first memory
…
I can remember my mom cuddling me in a blanket
…
a fuzzy pink one, I still have it
…
she was rocking me in the rocking chair, back and forth
…
I had my cheek on her shoulder. I don’t know if I had been sick, or if she was just cuddling me to go to sleep or because I just woke up. It’s not a long memory, but the feelings are really clear. The texture and color of the blanket
…
feeling so warm and safe
…”
Justine’s stomach roiled. She felt unaccountable anger rising in her chest, a tight, hot marble of steel. Her breathing quickened.
“I don’t feel good,” she told Megan, and bolted from the room. She made it to the washroom and hung over the toilet retching, but bringing nothing up. Her face broke out in sweat, and a cold trickle of sweat ran down the center of her back. She tried to get her breathing under control, to stop the jumping sobs that accompanied the sick feeling. She heard the restroom door open, and footsteps approaching.
“Are you okay?” Megan questioned worriedly, peeking around the stall door.
Justine wiped her sweat-slick face.
“Are you sick?” Megan asked anxiously. She tentatively touched Justine’s back, and Justine jerked sharply away from her gentle fingers.
“It’s just
…” Justine leaned against the wall, steadying herself and taking deep breaths. “My mom
…
do you know what my first memory of her is?” Justine questioned.
Megan shook her head wordlessly, eyes wide and entranced. Justine cleared her throat, swallowing the acidic bile stuck in her chest.
“I was kidnapped,” Justine told her. “I was
…
I was at a park with my real mom. You know, just playing in the sand, I wasn’t really old enough to do very much.”
“Uh-huh?” Megan leaned closer, breathless.
“Then this person grabbed me. I didn’t know who she was, and she grabbed me really roughly. I was scared, and I started to cry. I heard my real mom start to scream. The woman who grabbed me ran and got into a car. There was a man driving. The woman sat in the front seat, with me on her lap. She forced me to sit still, holding me really tight. I could still hear my real mom screaming and crying, and the car pulled out, leaving her behind. That was the last time I ever saw her.”
Megan’s mouth was open as she listened, wide-eyed.
“What happened?” she urged breathlessly.
“She held me really tight. I was crying, and she slapped me and held her hand over my mouth. Sometimes she covered my mouth and my nose together, so I couldn’t even breathe. I kept fighting her
…
but she took me away. That was Em, the mom I’ve got now.”
“Did she seriously kidnap you?” Megan demanded, her eyes popping. “You’re not just messing with me?”
Justine nodded.
“You can’t tell anyone, though,” she whispered. “If the school contacts her or something, she’ll know that I talked, and she’ll beat me and lock me in the basement. You can’t say anything to anyone.”
Megan shook her head.
“But
…
you have to tell the police! You have to get away!”
“I’ve tried,” Justine told her, gripping her arm. “I’ve talked to teachers, police, social workers, everybody. They don’t believe me. They think I’m just trying to get attention, or to get Em in trouble for something she didn’t do. She has a birth certificate, she has baby pictures. Everything looks legitimate. Nobody believes me.”
“How did she get a birth certificate and everything if she kidnapped you?”
“How do I know?” Justine left the toilet stall and went over to the sinks, where she wet a paper towel and dabbed her hot forehead and neck. “There must be someone who can forge these things. Any time I try to get help, I get in trouble. So you can’t tell.”
Megan still wasn’t sure of this. Justine could see that she still intended to tell someone. She felt compelled to do something to help Justine.
“If you get me in trouble, she’ll hurt me,” Justine warned. She pushed up her sleeve and showed Megan the shiny, half-healed friction burn on her forearm. “Look, that’s where she burned me. Don’t say a word to anyone!”
“If she’s hurting you, then even if you can’t prove that she kidnapped you, they can still take you away from there; put you in foster care or something. If you show them you’re being abused, they’ll take you away, so she can’t hurt you any more.”
“No,” Justine insisted. “You don’t know how many times I’ve tried to tell people, tried to escape. She can talk them out of anything. She’ll tell them I’m hurting myself. Get me put in psychiatric lock-up. I’ve got a history already.”
Megan was nodding, and Justine could see by her expression that she had heard stories. She knew about Justine’s previous hospitalizations and psych assessments. Or had heard enough about them to make her believe Justine.
“I want to help,” Megan told Justine earnestly. “How can I help you?”
“Just stay quiet about it,” Justine said. “I shouldn’t have said anything to you. It’s just that
…
I get flashbacks sometimes
…
and when you were talking about your mom
…”
There were tears in Megan’s eyes. She was a tender-hearted one.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
…
to trigger anything.”
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault. You never know what it will be. The stupidest things sometimes. Sights, smells. Things that don’t even make any sense to me. At least I can understand why talking about your mom holding you would trigger something about Em holding me. But sometimes
…
it will be a TV show
…
a smell at the grocery store
…
I dunno.”
“What are you going to do?” Megan questioned.
“Nothing. I’m not going to do anything. Just keep my head down until I’m old enough to be on my own. Get away from her.”
“Three more years?” Megan said doubtfully.
“It’s been thirteen,” Justine pointed out. “Three years seems like forever
…
but it’s a lot shorter than thirteen. Maybe I won’t make it that long. Maybe I’ll run away or something. But if I’m gonna do that, I gotta keep my head down, and not raise any suspicions or attract any attention.”
“Okay,” Megan conceded finally. “I won’t say anything. But
…”
“But what?” Justine questioned aggressively.
“But
…
what are we going to say for our project?” Megan queried tentatively.
Justine laughed.
“We’ll say
…
we both have early memories of being held by our mothers.”
Megan nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “I can start with that.” She sighed, looking at Justine. “Do you want to go back to class, or are you going to go home?”
“Let’s go back to class,” Justine said. “I don’t want to go home.”
“You’ll be okay?”
Justine nodded. They walked together back to class. Ms. Taupe looked sharply at the two of them.
“This was not a free period,” she remonstrated.
“Justine wasn’t feeling well, Ms. Taupe,” Megan explained, “and I went to make sure she was okay. We both still discussed our memories.”
Ms. Taupe looked at Justine sharply. Justine was pretty sure that she was still flushed, and her cheeks damp from the sweat and paper towel compress. She nodded slowly.
“Are you feeling better now, Justine?”
“Yeah, it’s okay. It just hit me really sudden
…
but I think I’ll be okay now.”
“Make sure you help with the assignment. Don’t just leave it to Megan.”
Justine nodded. The bell rang, and she grabbed her books to leave. Megan tried to walk beside her, but Justine hurried on to her next class without a word to her.
C
HAPTER
12
J
USTINE
WANDERED
AROUND
THE
house restlessly. She had done her homework, making up the work that she had missed during her mental-health day-off. Em wasn’t home from work yet. Justine was feeling out of sorts, bouncing around the house by herself. On days like this, she felt as if something was missing from her life. There was a hole in her. She didn’t know how to put it into words, even for herself. It was an undefinable sadness and sense of loss. She would never be complete. No matter what she did to fill her life, she would always have that emptiness.
Em had vowed even when ending the health food diet not to buy any more junk food, but she had broken down once or twice, and Justine had bought her own treats with money that she found conveniently lying around the house. Bored and anxious, Justine turned to her stash for comfort. The sweet and salty snacks were soothing, but didn’t fill the void. It wasn’t actually in her stomach.
Eventually, Justine grabbed her board and headed out the door. She was just too restless to stay indoors. As her wheels hit the road, and she felt the familiar hum of the pavement beneath her feet, she started to relax. It was sort of like zen or yoga or something. Her body, doing all of the work, was able to relax, and her brain was able to find a more peaceful place, to turn off the chaotic hamster-wheel of thought for a while.
Justine slipped into the house, pulling the door shut behind her. She had come to this house before. It wasn’t entirely empty, it had been staged by a Realtor with some unused decorator furniture. Obviously, not a real person’s living furniture, but an artificial environment, like the fake trees in the monkey enclosure at the zoo. It wasn’t ideal, but if Justine pushed some of the furniture back and lay on the floor with her eyes closed, it felt right.