“Will he really bring up the… tampons?”
“I would bet on it. It’s another way to make you uncomfortable. A subtle move that the jury won’t notice. The tampons are a fact of life for them. For you, a teen-age girl, they are intimate and embarrassing. Believe me, Dick has no boundaries even when it comes to child victims of sexual abuse.”
His eyes are laser-focused on me again.
“Why did you get suspended from two track meets last year?”
The doctor shifts positions. He wants to interfere. Mr. Vega senses it and holds up his hand in his direction, a halt signal. He keeps his eyes trained on me.
Is this the Vega who is pretending, or the real one? Either way, this question really ticks me off. Anger always starts as a little tingle in the roots of my hair, and then spreads like spilled hot water.
“A girl on another track team pushed my friend Denise off a hurdle in a regional meet so she could win in the prelims. If you were watching, and you’re not a hurdler, you wouldn’t have noticed. But there are certain moves, and I know them. So I walked over to her after the race and told her that I knew she cheated. She shoved me to the ground. When the track officials ran over, she told them I’d shoved her first. We were both suspended for two meets.”
I straighten up. Level my gaze at him, and just him. Let him know I am mad, but under control. “It was totally worth it,” I say. “Because everyone will be watching her now. She won’t try it again.”
Nobody speaks. I wonder if they believe me. Everyone else who knows me did. Lydia even wrote an indignant letter to the UIL board. She signed it Sincerely, Ms. Lydia Frances Bell.
“Perfect,” Mr. Vega says. “Narrative. Calm. Perfect.” He takes a few steps and places his hand on my shoulder.
The hand on my shoulder-it feels good. Still, it is so hard to know whether I like this man, or whether I just like what he is giving back to me. Power. The thing that my monster snatched away and threw in the gutter at Walgreens.
Mr. Vega removes his hand. Picks up his briefcase, on the floor next to Benita. “A short session, but I think we’re done for the day. Benita’s going to show you the courtroom at some point. I recommend sitting in every seat. The jury’s. The judge’s-my personal favorite. I want to wait until closer to the trial to go over your own testimony. We’ll see whether you and the doc get any further in that time.”
All of them rise, except for me. I stay planted on the couch. “Twenty-four hundred and six.”
Mr. Vega stops at the door.
“That’s my girl,” he says. “You’ll always get to the right answer if you slow down and think about it.”
Tessa, present day
Of course, it’s been banging me in the head, ever since I learned her name.
Rachel Stein, Hannah’s mother, does not have a first name that begins with S or U or N. She does not fit neatly into the mnemonic device that I’ve put aside like a crossword puzzle I always planned to finish later. S-U-N. The letters that Merry provided while we chatted in the grave, to help me remember the names of all of the mothers and hunt them down.
Ever since the discovery of a third set of bones, I’ve been thinking that maybe my conversation with Merry wasn’t a hallucination. There were the bones of three other girls in that grave, not two, just like Merry told me. That couldn’t be a coincidence, right?
And yet. The black-and-white, driver’s license, DNA certainty of Rachel Stein’s name makes me wonder whether I was nuts back then, and just as nuts now. I actually had to restrain myself from peppering Mrs. Stein with questions: Is Rachel your nickname? Your middle name? Did you change your name?
I couldn’t mess with her head anymore-trade the psychic’s crazy for my crazy. Hannah’s mother drifted out of that hollow conference room as a more haggard spirit than when she entered. Closure is a myth, Jo told me afterward. But there is value in knowing. Mrs. Stein’s son had to carefully prop up his mother as they exited. She moved like she was a hundred years old.
Hannah’s brother and I made an unspoken pact that he would drop-kick the psychic to her altered universe. She was fuming and tripping at their heels on the way out. As soon as he had heard the word liar come out of my mouth, his head popped up and he shot me the most grateful look I’d ever received. As for the psychic… well, if I’m not cursed already, I’m sure she finished the job. My scars tingled for an hour afterward.
My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.
Ever since I left that room, I can’t get this string of words out of my head. I imagine Merry punching a button on a jukebox, over and over. Each punch a little firmer, more frustrated. Remember.
My boots clunk out a rhythm as I climb the staircase. One step. My. Two steps. Very. Three steps. Energetic. Four steps. Mother. At the top, I throw open the door to my studio. Warm, stale air rushes out. I shove the picture window wide open and drink in air that is like an ice-cold tequila shot. A brave blue jay stares me down from his perch on a branch, and I blink first.
I pick up a few pages off the dusty hardwood, remnants of one of Bobby’s projects the last time he stayed for a weekend. My sweet, half-doomed little brother. Now he writes for movies that end in numerals and tries to heal himself with holotropic breath-work and a sexy production assistant with a nose ring. He left for college in California and basically never returned except for short visits and funerals, which is probably what I should have done. He even chopped his last name to Wright.
I draw hearts in the dust on my drawing table, until my finger is black. I pick a white tea from the selection in the cabinet and plug in the teakettle. Listen to its friendly hiss. Decide that the old honey in the cabinet smells a little like beer and watch two sugar cubes dissolve to sand in my mug instead. Merry gives the jukebox one last punch with her finger and disappears.
I have always loved this room. I just didn’t want to share it with the Susans. Today it seems that I don’t have to. I wipe off the drawing table with a paper towel and clip on a piece of paper with a sharp snap that scares the bird into an irritated flutter. I begin to loosely sketch the folds of fabric, a soft sound, like a rat under the floor. I’m in a hurry so I can get to the intricate, important work. A pattern had emerged in my head while I was staring at Mrs. Stein’s simple cotton blouse. At breasts that sagged with the weight of middle age.
Surprise. I am sketching flowers and it doesn’t bother me. An hour floats by. Then another. There are so many, many petals, and a leafy vine that meanders, connecting them all, like a demented family tree. I fill a Dixie cup with water and open up my watercolor box. Blue, pink, and green.
These flowers are not black-eyed Susans.
And these folds of fabric are not a curtain. They were never a curtain.
I’m drawing my mother’s apron. You can’t see me, but I am underneath, hiding my face. I can feel the cloth tickle my nose and cheeks. It is dark under here, but enough light sifts through the thin cotton that I am not scared. The warm cushion of my mother’s body is at my back.
I can’t see what is on the other side.
It reminds me of being blind.
Dr. Giles is holding my painting gingerly edge to edge because it isn’t completely dry.
It’s closing time. All the toys and books in the room are tidied up. A couple of table lamps are glowing, but the overhead lighting is flipped off. The elephant is tucked in for the night in a doll bed, the blanket pulled up to his ears.