Chapter 30
30.
After Pete left for work, I went to Stella’s room and told her I was planning a special surprise. “I have to leave you on your own while I run errands,” I explained. It was the first day of the two-week Christmas break. Normally, I wouldn’t leave her home alone, but we both knew that she was only an eight-year-old on the outside.
“I can’t take you, because I don’t want you to guess the surprise,” I explained.
She nodded. “Stick Thing will keep me company.” She picked up the twig doll she’d made with Irina.
I went to Muswell Hill Broadway to shop for gomgush ingredients. I’d found a recipe online. I bought potatoes and beer and queued at the expensive butcher, a shop I had never entered before, for three pounds of cubed lamb.
When I got home, I told Stella she had to crochet in her room. “I’m working on the surprise. When it’s ready, I’ll come and get you.”
The stew was supposed to be made in an unwashed tandir, the clay oven that was also used for bread. I wished I still had Irina’s black pot, but all I had was my pale “dune”-colored Le Creuset. I simmered the stew for hours. For the final touch, I poured some Armenian wine, just a splash; I hadn’t lost sight of the fact that this spirit—Blanka—inhabited Stella’s body.
I set the table for one: folded napkin, spoon, fork, and cup. I heated the lavash bread I had bought. This meal for one was the opposite of the family meals I longed for. People should eat together. But I set the table with care. I wanted to show her that I respected her. Gomgush was for feasts. Fine. Blanka-in-Stella would feast. For the first and—I hoped—the last time, she would eat at our table. She would eat out of a handmade ceramic bowl, not a yogurt pot.
Finally, I knocked on her door. “It’s ready.” She had changed for the occasion into her favorite dark dress. When we got downstairs, she didn’t question that our long table was laid for only one. I wondered if I could read a flicker of something in her impassive face—hope, excitement—but I wasn’t sure.
“Before you eat,” I said, “I want to say thank you. I want to thank you for everything you’ve done. I never said that, but I’m saying it now. Thank you for all your hard work. Thank you for everything.”
Stella sat down and squinted at me with her newly dark eyes. I realized she wanted to be alone. “I’ll—I’ll leave you to it,” I said.
I sat on the sofa and waited, listening to the spoon clinking in the bowl, her slurp and smack. Was she licking her fingers? But in some cultures, slurping was actually polite, a sign of enjoyment. I hoped she was enjoying it, because this was her—Blanka’s—last meal with us.
When I came back, her bowl was scraped clean. “More?” I asked, and I grimly dolloped gomgush into her bowl. She ate three helpings in total, alone at one end of our long table, hunched over. One arm cradled the bowl as if she feared I’d take it away. I thought of an etiquette question I’d once answered: “Dear Charlotte, I’m a woman with a big appetite, and friends sometimes say to me, ‘Wow, you eat a lot.’ Is it rude to comment on how much a woman eats?”
For my answer, I’d interviewed a feminist academic who had said people feared voraciousness in women. “They should not take up too much space, have too many desires.” At the time, I’d thought this absurd: when people see a woman tucking into a hearty meal, they hardly fear she’s destabilizing the patriarchy.
But now I saw how there was something frightening about seeing someone eat so much, too much, more than could possibly fit in any eight-year-old’s stomach. Then she rose, heavily. “What now?” she said, and even her voice seemed deeper.
“Now we’re going to one of your favorite places,” I said. She didn’t ask why we were going out in the dark, and she let me stuff her into her parka. I led her to the playground. We walked in silence. She didn’t ask where we were going either: I think she knew. I chose our destination out of respect for her, to show that I’d considered her desires, for once. But also, this was between us, and so we needed a place where nobody would interrupt, or watch. As she shuffled along by my side, I felt a kinship with Blanka that I’d never felt before. We were working together towards a common end.
The air smelled of burning leaves, and streetlights made greasy pools of light on the wet pavement. I looked into people’s windows and felt jealous of their happy, normal lives in desirable Muswell Hill. They had no idea what terrible rite was taking place outside.
The name Muswell came from Mossy Well, a natural spring believed to have miraculous healing properties. If only I could take Stella there, dip her in it, and wash Blanka away. I took her to the duck pond instead, and we walked around it, our breath clouding before us.
Stella was bulky in her parka with the hood up, her long skirts trailing in puddles, her trainers getting soaked. Her face was stony, resigned.
There was a place where you could leave the concrete path and walk right down to the edge of the water. My heart squeezed as I remembered how we came here when she was little. We scattered oats and millet for the ducks and wondered if SkyPo had a base on the overgrown island in the middle of the lake. Stella had chattered on and on about their dastardly plans, and we hid in the bushes for a while, feeling deliciously afraid.
But I now had to focus all my energy on the task before me. I took her cold hands, and in the dark, they felt too large for a child. I began to speak. “I didn’t notice you or think about you. I used your cheap labor. I didn’t pay you enough, and I didn’t offer you more because you didn’t ask and also because honestly, I thought you weren’t doing a very good job.
“But I valued the wrong things. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t clean the bath toys or unpack her lunchbox. You were patient with Stella. You loved her. You didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to her. I let you go without finding out why you weren’t happy.”
In a deep apology, you laid your heart bare. You probed into the insecurity, the pettiness, the self-absorption—whatever shameful or embarrassing feelings had driven you to hurt the other person. You took your time and you parsed the darkness within. Only then could they know that you’d done the work to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
I spoke for some time, I said everything I could think of. The feeling left my fingertips. Inside the hood of her parka, Stella’s face was drawn, goosefleshed.
“I didn’t pay attention to you,” I whispered. “But you’ve got my attention now. I’m sorry.”
She gave a meaty sigh, and shifted from foot to foot. “Can we go home?”
“That’s not all.” I thought she might react like this. “Words,” Irina had said when I tried to apologize to her. I had to show that I was sorry with my actions too.
I took her hand and drew her further around the lake until we reached the café, closed right now, but all I needed was the brick wall. I pulled a piece of pavement chalk from my pocket and drew a cross there about the height of my nose.
“I’m sorry, and now I’m accepting my punishment. See?” I shone my phone flashlight on the wall so I could bring my nose right onto the cross, and then I turned off the flashlight. The brick wall felt rough under my nose. Even in the dark, I felt Stella’s gaze on me. With my back to the world, I felt vulnerable, like a child waiting for a smack.
But as I stood there, the fear and shame faded. I felt the satisfaction of accepting a just punishment. Was this how Blanka felt? Maybe there was something safe, comforting even, about standing with your nose on the cross. You knew what you were supposed to be doing. It was not like the rest of life, in a vast grey city where the language was difficult and the food strange. All these people lived in such luxury and privilege, ignorant of a place where people had dragged your father from bed in the night and burned him because he was ethnic Armenian. Irina had such a fierce drive to live that she’d succeeded in bringing Blanka over the mountains, taking her to Armenia and eventually to London, but here, maybe that fierce drive to live was too much, and had left Blanka with none.
“I understand you now,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.” I leaned my forehead on the wall for a moment, exhausted, and then I turned around.
There was nobody there. Nothing except rain beginning to hiss into the puddles. “Stella!” I called. I turned the corner of the café and walked around to the back. Nobody. “Stella?” I couldn’t even see anyone walking around the lake. I slipped on a patch of slimy dead leaves and fell heavily on all fours. My knees and palms burned, my breath came fast, my belly tightened so I couldn’t breathe.
Then the pain around my midriff receded. “Stella!” I screamed. “Stella! Stella!”
A dark shape prowled by the railing—no, it was the fallen tree she played on. “Stella!” I ran twice around the pond, screaming her name. She had to be close by. She wouldn’t just wander off.
I called Pete. My face was so numb from the cold I could barely form words.
“Jesus Christ, Charlotte! How could you lose her? What were you doing in the park in the dark—wait, never mind. I’m on my way.”
The band around my midriff pulled so tight I hunched over, panting. The house lights receded, and I wasn’t in a London park anymore. I was in a black wilderness with one or two dots of light on the far horizon, other people who had firewood and shelter, but I didn’t. I was so cold. I was cold at my very core.
The pain came again, a squeezing that intensified until I clutched the railings and then sank to the ground. Someone hurried past, and I wanted to stop him, ask him for help, but it hurt too much to speak. Seeing that I was in distress, he politely left me to my private torment.
I staggered around the lake one more time, tears and snot streaming. I couldn’t feel my fingers. It felt like a giant pair of scissors had snipped off the tips. And I deserved it. I’d give my fingertips to have her back. I’d give my unborn child.
Then my phone pinged: She’s here.
···
Pete opened the door as I was fumbling with my key. “She came home by herself. Luckily, I hadn’t left to come find you yet. What the hell happened? How could you let her out of your sight?”
“Oh my god. Is she OK?”
“She’s a little chilled, but she’s fine. She’s upstairs.” But his face was grim. I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror, face pinched with cold and smeared with mud, leaves in my hair.
“I need to see her,” I said. But Pete was pointing at the empty bowl and wineglass I’d left on the dining table. “Hold on. Did you give her wine to drink?”
I folded my arms. “That’s mine.” There was no excuse for giving alcohol to an eight-year-old apart from the one thing he wouldn’t believe.
“And how did you get separated? What were you even doing in the playground after dark?”
“Blank—I mean, Stella wanted to go.” I thought quickly. “We were playing a game, and then she disappeared. We lost each other.”
“Well, thank god she was smart enough to find her way home on her own.”
“Is she in her room?”
“In the bath, trying to warm up. I offered to sit with her, but she wanted to be alone. Maybe she’s getting to the age where she feels more self-conscious about her body.”
“I’m going up there.” I had to find out if Blanka was satisfied with my punishment. I rushed into Stella’s bathroom. She was stretched full-length in the bath, her face underwater. The surface of the water was a smooth sheet, so she had to have been down there for some time. It was like she lay inside a glass coffin.
I screamed and lunged for her, and she sat up and blinked, water streaming from her hair. I dragged her out of the bath, my clothes getting soaked.
I pressed her to me while I tried to stop myself from shaking. I pulled back to look at her face. “Why did you do that? I thought you’d drowned! Are you trying to scare me?”
Pete burst in. “What’s going on in here?”
“I was upset,” I said carefully. “Stella was completely underwater. That’s not safe, sweetheart.”
“She was practicing holding her breath,” Pete said. “Like her swim teacher told her to. Jesus.” He handed her a towel.
My teeth chattered. Blanka was sending me a message: her patience was running out. She wasn’t going to drown Stella—not yet—but she wanted to show me that she could. She wasn’t here to listen to my apology and watch me hold my nose to a cross. She wanted something else, and I’d better figure it out fast. It was just so hard when she wouldn’t speak. But there was one place where she expressed herself in words. I’d been wrong to let it go before.
“If you won’t talk to me, let me read your diary,” I murmured to her. Her dark gaze held mine.
···
Pete brought me a tray in the bedroom: a cup of tea, a small pitcher of heated milk with a cinnamon stick, and a curl of lemon peel: té de California , we called this. Long ago, on our honeymoon in Spain, a café had served me tea this way, and I’d loved it so much that Pete insisted that I have it that way in every café that we went to after that, always leaving a generous tip.
But despite the gesture, I felt that something was different—perhaps the way his beard hid his face. “I’m not angry,” he said. “I’m just worried about you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, although my teeth still chattered. I leaned a little closer to him and realized what was different. Gone was the scent of citrus and freshly sharpened pencils. He smelled damp and earthy, the secretive smell of mycelium.
Pete went downstairs to make some calls, and I changed out of my jumper and muddy jeans. As I was getting into bed, another contraction came. It was Braxton-Hicks because it was far too early for the baby to come. Probably it was stress, and if I rested, they would pass. Still, the prelude to labor made me think of what life would be like when I had the baby. It took all my time and energy to find out what Blanka wanted. I didn’t know how I could do it if I was breastfeeding and changing nappies. I had to make her leave before the baby came.