A Girl Named Anna, page 7
Mamma’s fingers move deftly through the bushes like a harpist plucking strings, searching out the rotten flowers and dispensing with them with a precisely timed cut. Silently, I open up the refuse bag in my hand and move around her, cleaning up the deadheads. She doesn’t acknowledge me, but neither does she turn away, so I take this as a tacit agreement that I can stay.
I often help her like this, receiving a very small allowance in return, just enough to save up for occasional treats, such as the bicycle I use now the car’s busted, when I’m not required to walk. Now I hope that by performing this ritual I’ll somehow dispel the ill will from earlier.
We work in silence as the afternoon moves on. My stomach rumbles. We ate breakfast before we left for church, and normally we’d grab a light lunch at home after, soup, maybe, or a salad, but Mamma doesn’t mention it, so neither do I. The sky knits together overhead and turns a purple-gray, and I can tell it’s going to storm. I had a good idea that it would be coming: the thickness in the air needs to break, and although it’s not yet hurricane season, it’s not unusual to get one or two early reminders.
When the first thick droplets begin to fall, I look over at Mamma. “Why don’t I make us something to eat?”
She doesn’t speak. I pick up my sack, motion encouragingly toward the house. “Come on. It’s going to storm.”
“Anna, leave me be.” Her voice is as sour as the brightly colored candies William loves to keep in his car.
With a sigh I hurry inside. By the time I reach the back door, the rain is falling from the graying sky in a thick sheet.
“Mamma, you can’t stay out in this,” I call from the open doors. “Please, come inside.” I see her shoulders knit together, and then slacken as she eventually rises. She stalks past me through the kitchen, pausing only to drop her gardening things into the basket. Puddles of water mark her exit upstairs, and I zealously dry them, as if her unseeing eyes will be moved by it. I do the same to my hands, driven by layers of guilt to scrub them clean under scalding water until they are satisfactorily red and raw.
Giving in to my clenching stomach, I prepare us both something to eat—ham sandwiches cut into meticulous triangles, and a fresh green salad, and glasses of milk filled just so—and sit at my place opposite her empty chair, coiled as a grass snake, my ears trained on the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. She emerges, eventually, and takes her seat.
Grace is perfunctory, but at least she speaks. Then her blue eyes fix themselves on the midpoint between our plates, where her gaze remains for the rest of the evening. The sound of chewing is the backdrop to our silent meditation.
It’s when I rise to clear our plates that Mamma reaches out for the vase of tulips and, almost as if choreographed, hurls it across the room in one fluid movement.
The vase hits the oven door full on its side, and sprays across the floor in a mass of colorful petals and liquid that quickly pools along the stone tiles. The noise shatters through the silence. Mamma is poised, half sitting, half standing, with her hands resting on the tabletop and, surprisingly, a look of serenity on her face.
It happens so rapidly, so unexpectedly, it feels like I’ve been plunged into cold water. Fear grips at me with icy fingers, but I force myself to meet Mamma’s eye.
“Go to your room.”
As my foot touches the first tread of the stairs, I hear the whispering of incantations from the kitchen. I turn back to see Mamma, seated at the kitchen table, her eyes tightly shut and her hands clasped together so fervently that I know if I look closer the knuckles will be white. There is a gentle sway to her movement as she recites, in a voice that rasps like scratches on wood, “Pure in mind, in word, thought and deed, I ask You, Lord, to pay me heed.”
It’s a curious prayer; one I’ve heard her say many times before, but that seems to have no source in any book of psalms or hymnals I’ve ever come across. As soon as she gets to the end, she starts again, faster and more ardent. The rasp becomes a hiss. I go upstairs without daring to look back.
When I open the door into the darkness of my room, the light from the hallway casts a beam onto the cushion Mamma gave me, pride of place on my bed. I prayed for this child, and the Lord answered my prayer. The words seem to mock me now.
I pull it to me and, denying myself the luxury of a light, crawl into the corner between the dresser and the door, rocking back and forth with my cheek pressed against its rough weave, sobs moving in waves through me. Masochistically, it feels good to cry, to give myself over to the pain and confusion that have been pursuing me like some unseen gadfly.
What are you trying to tell me? I silently demand of the pendant, hiding beneath the floorboard. Who are you? I beg of the anonymous ink of the card, of the white-suited man who disappeared too quickly for me to register him. Why am I so meek that I didn’t run after him when I had the chance? What does it mean? I picture the green edges of the Astroland ticket, as the rush of the whirling carousel looms again into view.
Emily.
The name shimmers at me like a silver thread, begging to be pulled on. Outside, the storm shrieks through the trees with a voracity that means it’s directly overhead. I imagine it taking up my anger and confusion, shaking the branches and blowing up violent winds that rattle the windows in their frames.
* * *
Later, when the gale has lessened, leaving only the methodical trickle of rain on wet leaves, I feel calmer, more rational. William is right: there must be some reason behind all this; there must be a way to find out what it is, without upsetting Mamma.
Mamma.
I think I know at least part of the source of her anger this afternoon. She fears me slipping away, leaving her, as I edge toward adulthood. The fear grows more pronounced the older I get. Sometimes she keeps me so close I feel like I’m drowning in her. In this house. In this life. But could it be there’s another, deeper reason she won’t let me go?
I crawl over to the dresser, peel up the floorboard and draw out my secrets.
I take the Astroland ticket between my fingers, smooth it with my thumb. The green turrets of the castle are etched in the background, and I imagine the carousel, whirling just out of sight.
Emily? The voice gets clearer, and I can just make out the faint impression of a woman: a mass of curly hair; something—a freckle? a mole?—on her right cheek; sunglasses; a red top. But as soon as I turn my head toward her, something or someone pulls me away.
Why that name? Why now? I pick up the pendant, squeeze it tight, as if, maybe, holding it will draw something out further. I see it in my mind’s eye, swaying again from a neck. But whose neck, and why, I can’t say. I replace the trinkets, edge open my bedroom door. I have no idea how long I have been in my room, but now the house is silent and dark. Down the hall, a ray of light under Mamma’s bedroom door. Her presence hangs in the air like the smell of her lavender perfume. I tiptoe down the stairs, careful to avoid the third step from the bottom, the one that creaks.
The kitchen light is off, but the moon throws a pool of pallid yellow light across the floor. The dinner things have been cleared away, but the vase is still there, untouched. Splinters of glass shimmer against the white tiles, and the tulips are already crisping, turning brown at the edges. A can of corn has rolled across the floor, remains wedged against the bottom of the refrigerator. I ease across the room in the thin light, cautious of the water and broken glass, and pick up the can. It’s dented but unbroken; a welt seared across its center. I place it back in the pantry, nestled in precision next to the others, their labels all meticulously facing outward.
I fetch a broom from the closet in the hallway and begin to sweep.
ROSIE
When I dare to crack open an eye I wince. A dull and constant throb makes its way across my temples. I remember that I’m at Keira’s house, and stretch for my phone to look at the time. It’s nearly eleven o’clock. I rouse myself, sitting up against the wall and pulling the blanket up to reach me. As I do, my fingers brush the side of my body, and the acrid memory of Adam’s hands on my rib cage rises within me. I draw the blanket around me tighter. I hear the grind of the doorknob, and the door is butted open with the edge of a brown wicker tray. Keira sets it down on her desk by the window and nudges aside the debris of makeup and textbooks scattered across it. A gray light takes over the room as she rolls up the blinds with a steady sweep. It’s rained in the night; the window is speckled with droplets of water, and beyond it the trees shudder miserably in the wind.
“Oh, good, you’re up. I brought you breakfast.”
The mattress wobbles underneath her as she sits cross-legged at the other end and hands me a glass of sparkling vitamin C, the tablet still fizzing at the bottom and turning the water a darkening shade of orange. Next come a couple of aspirin, tea and a plate with four slices of Marmite toast.
“I have to find out what happened to Emily.” The words leave my mouth before I have time to process them. They’re the first I have said today, forcing themselves out through my arid mouth. Without warning, I feel my face start to crack, sobs erupting from my chest.
I ball my fists, trying to force the tears away, but through them I can see Keira looks horrified. I don’t think she’s ever seen me cry before, and now it’s twice in twelve hours. Instantly she’s crawling across the mattress and wrapping her arms around me. I breathe in the smell of butter and Marmite, and the hint of last night’s vanilla-sweet perfume mingling with the last strains of weed, and something else that is just “her”: biscuity and warm and familiar. I wipe my face with the neck of my T-shirt and I open my mouth to speak but my thoughts overwhelm me again and I choke on hiccups and tears and snot.
Keira hesitates, then asks, “Is this because of what happened with Adam?”
I inspect the corner of a nail, the white ridges of torn cuticle. “I thought it would just stop my thinking about it. But it didn’t work. It never works.” I stare down at the blanket, following its colorful swirl with the corner of my thumb. I swallow thickly. “I found an email.”
She listens, stroking a spiral of hair by her ear, as I tell her about the email, the lack of money; the timing; how impossible it all seems, even with the anniversary, that we’ll be able to keep the trust going. At last she sits back, folds her arms, sighs. “And they haven’t said anything to you?”
I shake my head.
I feel her searching my features, trying to see how carefully she should tread. “And you’re worried...because of last time?”
Last time. The time we don’t talk about. The time before, after the ten-year mark, when they all told us it was impossible. When the money in the Emily Archer Trust really did run dry, and it was only at the eleventh hour, with an anonymous cash injection from some millionaire donor, that it survived. When there were arguments and shouting and crying. And Mum became no longer my mum, but a limp rag wrung dry, not eating, not speaking, barely leaving her room, let alone the house. And Dad tried so hard but nothing he could do would fix it. And then one day when I woke up she was gone, and Auntie Sally was there in her place, all fixed smiles and why-don’t-we-have-pancakes and Mummy’s-gone-for-a-little-rest. And nobody would tell me where she’d gone, or when she’d be coming back. And I wanted so desperately to know.
That was the first time I hurt myself, the day Mum went away. Secreted a pair of nail scissors from Mum’s sink—I was just looking for something that smelled like her—and found myself locked in their bathroom, sitting on the loo and without really meaning to tracing a barely there squiggle on the top of my thigh, enjoying the burn it produced. When Auntie Sally questioned it, seeing it peeking from my pajama shorts, I told her I’d scratched it on a tree in Highbury Fields. I learned to be more careful over the years: certain things, like the broken knuckle, invite more trouble than they’re worth; the poking and the prodding inevitable with a “child who has experienced trauma.” I’m not trying to kill myself or anything, but God, sometimes it feels nice to have control over my own pain.
And Mum came back, after a month or so. Wore a smile every day, even though it didn’t quite go as far as her eyes. And I stopped doing it, for a bit. And nothing was ever said about where she’d gone.
These are the bits no one really wants to know, when they ask what it’s like. They want to hear about the TV crews, and the endless gory theories, and what it was like to meet Barack Obama. Not the bit that makes them feel truly awkward and uncomfortable. Not the bit that feels too real. Which was why I decided, after that, to stop talking about it altogether; to try to pretend it didn’t exist. Because if no one wants to know the actual truth, why should I say anything about it at all? Keira keeps her arms around me, not saying anything, giving me the space I need to collect my thoughts.
“I have to figure out what happened to her,” I say, finally. “Before the money runs out, and everyone just forgets. I have to do something, before—” I inhale slowly “—before it destroys my family more than it already has.”
Keira pulls away from me, holding me at arm’s length so she can read the smallest expressions on my face. “You really want to do this? To start looking for an answer?”
I nod.
She pulls her laptop from her desk, places it on her lap as she scoots next to me and tucks her legs under the blanket. The base is warm; it heats our legs beneath the covers as she flips open the lid. The screen whirs to life.
She moves the cursor to the URL bar, types TheHive with the fingers of her right hand and taps the enter button with a short, sharp click.
“Then this is the place to start.”
I know this site, although I’ve never had much reason to visit it before. It’s a gossip search engine: a place where internet sleuths and people who’ve watched too much true crime pore over unsolved mysteries and share rumors they think’ll help solve them. I heard Dad once refer to them as “scum of the earth,” and I know he tried to ban them from mentioning Emily’s case when the site first launched a few years ago. He couldn’t do anything about it though. Freedom of speech and all that. But he doesn’t want us trawling the internet, seeing the crazy theories. It’s not that it’s forbidden—it’s more of an unwritten rule.
I’ve seen it all, of course. Read what people have written about us in the comments section of articles. On the sidebar of shame. I can easily imagine the sort of thing that could be written. That Rob and I are overprivileged. That we’re wasting taxpayers’ money (even though, if they bothered to actually look into it, they’d know that any public funding dried up a year after she went missing). That Mum and Dad ought to just give up and get over themselves.
The site’s acid-yellow home page loads, bearing TheHive’s childish logo—a cartoon bumblebee holding a megaphone, with the words What’s the buzz? looping out of it in black cursive.
“Have you been on here before?” I ask Keira.
She stares down at the keys and I see a pink blush darkening her caramel cheeks.
“How often?”
“I just like to...keep an eye on things.”
The home page lists the most popular stories, voted for by the Hivemind—the site’s readers—by clicking the little bee icon at the corner of each post. Tapping on a header topic brings up a new page, under which readers can comment. Under the logo is a search bar, with the most searched for topics listed underneath.
On the right-hand side, Keira deftly flicks down the list of topics, delving further into the subtopics until she reaches a page bearing Emily’s frozen-in-time grin, next to a bold yellow heading, “Astroland of Horror.” I look up at Keira, who quickly scrolls past it. “Ignore that. That moderator’s a dick. And likes being sensationalist.”
The screen loops through a series of subtopics, each with its own dramatic heading:
“Was Emily Archer the Victim of a Prank Gone Wrong?”
“Archer Still Buried in the Park.”
“Prey of the Florida State Killer.”
I look on in silent amazement at the endless theories and conspiracies, some of them with hundreds of comments attached. Keira mutters about this one or that, praising one commenter, snorting at another.
I stop her. The cursor is blinking next to Archer Parents Did It.
I force myself to look away from that one. There was a period, I know, in the beginning, when they were treated as suspects. You can hear the disgust in Mum’s voice, even now, if she ever mentions it.
“How well do you know all this, Keira?”
She avoids making eye contact. Her finger hovers over the trackpad as she tries to find a way to answer.
“I don’t mind—I just want to know.” But I do mind. I know that other friends will read things and have their own opinions about what happened, but I’ve always thought Keira would ask.
I feel a tweak of shame in my rib cage. I’m not always the easiest person to ask. I suppose it must have been difficult, all these years, to be so close to it all and not feel she could talk about it.
“I guess...pretty well?” she finally ventures. Her index finger loops around on the pad, moving the cursor in a figure eight on the screen. “I first went on it about four years ago. But it’s been going more like ten. I heard from someone at school that there was stuff about you guys on there. I just wanted to have a look, and make sure no one said anything bad about you, and since then I’ve just been...checking in. Seeing the theories, what people are saying.”
“And—” I swallow, knowing what the answer will be “—have they been saying anything about me?”
She looks up at me from beneath a tangle of hair, taking my complicity to mean I’ve forgiven her snooping. “Not bad stuff. There’s a few pictures, now and then, of you growing up. Some commenters like discussing whether you guys look alike. There’s a thread run by someone called KittyMum09 that sketched out which parts of each of you are like each parent. It was interesting, actually. I never noticed before that you have your dad’s nose.”
