22 Teenagers & Toddlers #2
“You wouldn’t have hurt me,” Zara says. She flinches again at the booming thunder and flickering light. It crawls around corners, unnaturally far reaching. Insidiously seeking us out with an intelligence that feels too much like Adele herself. At least this round is weaker, fainter.
“The thunder and lightning are scaring Meredith. She won’t stop crying.”
“Where’s her nanny?” I ask. The sounds of Meredith’s shrieks echo from a distance in between the booms of thunder.
“Sitting. The thunder and lightning scares me too,” Zara admits quietly.
“It’s not even an actual storm. She’s doing some weather experiment,” I say.
Zara shrugs. I can tell from the look on her face that the fact this storm is our mother’s doing might make it more frightening rather than less.
I’m so tired, but Zara is staring expectantly at me, and the hold I have on Adele’s magic is tugging at my own soul.
Why can’t they all leave me alone? Groaning, I collapse back onto my pillow.
I bypass gratitude and dive straight into guilt when I sense Zara tethering me, as if her little hand reaches out and clasps my own, lending me her own energy.
Hesitantly, I borrow a little of Zara’s strength and funnel it toward Adele.
“Why do you help her?” Zara asks.
When I meet her eyes, I realize she knows, knows I’m holding on to Adele. A dismissive retort dies on my lips. What can I say when I don’t know the answer to that myself?
“Why not . . . let go?”
The words from her, from Zara, who’s good and kind and pure, make me feel sick. Lightning flashes; a crack of thunder reverberates. Zara yelps as Meredith screams loud enough to reach us over the racket.
“Stay here,” I sigh as I pull on my mask, and Zara slides into the warm space I leave in the bed.
I don’t bother sheathing the dagger as I stalk down the hall through the living quarters, on the floor allotted to the three of us, past Zara’s and Meredith’s doors, and head straight for the room that serves triple duty as living room, school, and playroom.
The night nanny responsible for my sisters sits in an armchair angled away from me. Earplugs in and an open book in her lap, she doesn’t even hear me approach. She freezes at the cool touch of metal as I press the flat of the blade against her cheek.
“Why aren’t you doing your job?” I whisper in her ear.
She moves hesitantly to pull out the earplugs. I don’t move the dagger, but I don’t stop her either.
“What?” she says, voice quavering.
“I said, ‘Why aren’t you doing your job?’ Why is my sister crying?” I say in that deadly sweet tone that sounds so much like Adele that goose bumps rise along the back of my neck and I have to stop myself from spinning around to look for her.
“Your mother—Ms. Kingsley—she said not to pick her up; she wants the baby sleeping through the night,” the nanny says.
Meredith’s cries are reaching a frenzied pitch. The thunder still rumbles throughout the room, competing with the drumbeat of my heart in my ears, an offbeat orchestra.
For a moment, I consider what Adele would say if I dragged this dagger across the nanny’s neck. She’d probably make me clean up the mess. Meredith lets out her loudest wail yet. I’m so very tired. It might be worth it.
But I hear a minuscule voice from the doorway. “Reggie?”
I turn, witness Zara standing there with a guarded look that I’ve only ever seen her direct at Adele.
“Shit,” I mutter. “Go back to bed,” I say to Zara, lowering the dagger. Zara doesn’t turn, just stands and watches, wide eyed. To the nanny I say, “Get out. You’re fired.”
“What?” she says, staring at me blankly.
“You heard me. I said you’re fired.” I shoo her away with a wave of the dagger. “Go. Leave.”
Zara trails me as I angrily sheathe the blade and stride down the hallway, following Meredith’s cries.
She’s so upset, it takes a bottle and the better part of an hour of bouncing and swaying to calm her. I sing her the only lullaby I can remember.
“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home.”
Back in my room, I tell them stories when Meredith finally quiets but stays wide eyed and attentive.
The little mermaid slicing out her own tongue, Cinderella’s stepsisters and their bloody feet, the hungry wolf gobbling up grandmothers.
Zara sprawls across my bed, snoring. The unnatural storm has long died down when Meredith finally falls asleep against my chest. That tiny part of my mind that was tethering Adele sheepishly crawls back to me, finally ready to rest.
It’s the first night we spend that way, the three of us. But nowhere near the last.
I tell Adele in the morning that I fired Meredith’s nanny. She either doesn’t care or already knows; she shows no hint of surprise.
“I hope caring for your sisters won’t interfere with your work,” she says mildly. “I want the results of your research in a week, regardless. Don’t fire the tutor unless you have time for interviews.”
That’s how I find myself an unwilling expert in the world of baby wearing.
Strapping Meredith’s tiny little body to mine for hours at a time, peering over the peach fuzz of her head and typing while standing up.
Swaying endlessly. Rinsing beakers and baby bottles in a never-ending rotation.
Sticking baby diapers in the biohazard disposal bins.
I finish my research project in six days.
I loved Zara from the moment I saw her. Meredith is a different experience altogether.
It’s harder to do it a second time when I know what it feels like, when I know how hard it is.
Not that Zara doesn’t love me back. Rather, it’s the opposite.
Zara loves me more than a sister; she loves me like she should love a mother.
“I love you, Reggie,” she whispers every night into my ear when Adele isn’t around to hear.
Of course, I love her back. But she loves me so much, it’s smothering.
The crushing parts of this pseudo-motherhood that rip away at my soul are in the disappointment Zara can’t hide.
Every time I hurt her feelings. Every time I’m not enough.
Every time I snap because I’m tired or angry.
For her own good, I rationalize. Survival is more important than feelings.
I’m tired; I never asked for this. But neither did Zara, I suppose.
Meredith I hold at a distance. It’s too late to keep from caring about Zara but not too late to save Meredith.
But I find myself failing. It should be hard to love someone who asks everything of me but gives so little in return.
It’s easy to resent someone who depends on me for their every need.
It’s harder to resent someone who offers me their first gummy smile.
Someone who stops crying only for me, for my arms and my warmth.
It is as easy as breathing to love someone who looks at me like I’m their entire world.
For a month, I pretend my plans aren’t ruined.
That I’m not too terrified to jump now that I have others’ hands to hold and none left to catch myself.
I add diapers and formula to my go bag. Two months after that, I realize Meredith’s long outgrown the newborn clothes I packed in the bag, but I don’t switch them out.
As I pass my eighteenth birthday, Meredith turns one.
I unpack the bag, toss the expired formula, and count out the years until Meredith will be big enough.
Four years. I can last four more years, I decide.
Zara will be a newly minted teenager, old enough to be less conspicuous.
With any luck, and the right clothes, I can pass her off as an adult if no one looks too closely.
Meredith will be five then, old enough to understand to keep her mouth shut and pretend I’m her mom.
I’ll dye her hair brown like mine. Just a little longer here and we’ll get away.
But then Meredith gets molars, and I spend a week straight running on coffee and catnaps. Before Meredith is eighteen months old, I stop planning our escape. I’m tired.
I hate Adele for what she does to me, but I’m like an addict the way I cling to the smallest hint of her approval.
And there’re those moments, when she pushes too far, when I’m the only one clinging to her soul to bring her back from the edge.
The wickeder parts of my nature urge me to let go, shove her right off the edge.
Yet I hold on. I’m not sure why. Guilt, responsibility, cowardice.
My rationalizations and justifications don’t always make sense.
It sometimes boils down to simple inertia.
It’s still easier to drift along with the current rather than jump into the unknown.
I resign myself to staying. I’m exhausted.