The girl knows too much.
The girl is only six, but to her mother her eyes appear old. It’s as if the girl stole her eyes from someplace before she was born, the mother thinks. This cannot be good. It is dangerous for a child to be so preternaturally knowing, and especially for a girl.
What does the girl know?
She feels things moving in the world, underneath the world’s surface. Dark secrets.
Sometimes, she will witness a thing which seems to contain in itself the aspect of something quite else. The quality of the rain, for example, the way it splashes just so can seem to remind her of something, some other storm she thinks struck the earth long ago. The ice in her cup makes her cry. The white of the walls is the white of a tomb; she feels the dying in her. It’s as if she accesses a history that is not her own.
The mother must take the girl away.
She must take the girl away someplace in order to keep her safe.
They have gone away.
To a house in the woods. They are here now, already, in fact. Sometimes the mother forgets there can be no safe place. He will come for them. He is coming. Yes, the mother thinks, even after all of these years, he is surely on his way right now.
The girl often sees the mother standing at the doorway, so quiet, looking out for an hour or more. Fingers tap-tapping on the wooden frame. The mother pauses in the middle of folding laundry, a pain creasing her face. They have had to leave places before. They are good at leaving. The girl hopes they stay in this place, but she is already forgetting what the last place was like, what exactly it was they left.
The girl calls each of the places Away. As in, they have gone Away again.
Away
This Away is a rundown house in the woods. Broken window in the kitchen. Spiders snaring the ceiling fans. The girl presses a switch and the spiders spin round. See their bodies dancing, delicate little devils.
“Stop that,” the mother says, brushing at her face. She imagines spiders shaken into her hair, onto the plate of cheese and crackers she has prepared.
Away––as understood by the girl, as explained to her by the mother:
Away is a house you must stay inside. You cannot go out. You are the princess in her locked chamber. You are guarded. Your house is buried in trees. All of the houses here are buried. You’d get lost, easy. The people who live here disappear into the thick. You have never seen them. Who? They are old people, decrepits, people who live on margins, malcontents. They are wild children. Drowned children. There is a lake nearby, black water. Children who didn’t listen, who wandered from their homes have fallen in, they lie at the bottom, cold as stones. Don’t be one of them . . .
What does the girl know?
Stories. Tales. What her mother tells her.
For example, the stories of other girls.
The mother instructs the girl to be a Good Girl.
“Sweetie, Mommy has to go out now,” the mother says. “Mommy has to find work so she can take care of us. You’ll be good while I’m gone, won’t you? You won’t let anyone in? Keep the door locked, and if you get scared hide in the cupboard under the sink.”
“Who will play with me? Are there other children who can play with me?” the girl asks.
“Let Mommy go see. Mommy will make it safe for us.”
What work can the mother find?
She can clean houses like she has done before or cook meals for people who can’t. She can work in a store selling birdseed and yard supplies. But who here has money for it? The people are few, and what they have is very little.
But the mother must work. When she works, she has no daughter. Her name is a different name.
Because of the man.
The mother can’t be too careful. He might let off looking for them for a while, but eventually he will resume his search. The man is like that. Steady. Not hasty, but unswerving. Whenever he decides something is his.
The man knows people.
At the last place, someone found them out. Some people who were connected with the man. These people got ahold of the current phone number, called the mother, asking: Didn’t she know the man? Wasn’t she his woman?
They claimed it was the man who they were trying to find, said he owed them something––money. But she knew who they were really looking for. And who had sent them.
She refused to speak. Pretended she was no one. That no one lived in the house.
Eventually, the people stopped calling. She thought it was over, that she and the girl were safe.
Weeks later, a young man in filthy ripped jeans showed up at the door. She could tell simply by the way he carried himself, taut like a hound on scent––he too was no doubt working for the man.
She didn’t answer. She hid herself and the girl in the bedroom closet until she could be sure this person had left. Then, she packed their bags. She and the girl were gone before anyone else could come for them.
Good Girls can be bribed.
“Tell you what,” the mother says, “I’ll bring you back a treat. You’d like that.”
Instructions for a Good Girl:
Let your mommy go into the village. Wait for her. Play with your dolls, the one with hair and the one that wets and the pretty one with hinged eyelids. What have the dolls done? Why, they have been swimming. The rug is the lake, mottled blue-gray, and the dolls have had their fun. No––the fun has been taken out of them. Here lie the drowned girls, three. The redhead and the baby and the beauty whose eyelids clack. The girl prepares a funeral. What arrangements? They shall be buried, of course. And she knows that sometimes there is a song sung, and church bells, and flowers. The girl knows a few songs. She sings one about water, about a boat, about rowing. She sings, and she draws the rug up over the bodies of the dolls, she covers their faces, “merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
The girl wears a red sweater.
She wears it indoors. She would wear it outdoors too, if she were to go out, but she is staying in, remember. It is warm indoors for autumn, but the sweater keeps her snug, protects her. Red is easy for the mother to spot, when she wants to make sure the girl is where she ought to be.
What does the girl witness?
When the mother comes home, the girl tells her that she has seen things moving in the shadows between the trees. What has the girl seen? Strange, luminous birds. Pulsing patterns like the reflections on the bottom of a swimming pool. Also, she thinks, a face.
“Whose face?” the mother asks, her voice going sharp.
“Nobody’s,” the girl says. “It was just a face.”
The mother gazes deeply into the girl’s eyes, bending so that their faces are almost touching. “What did the face look like? Was it a man’s?”
“I don’t know . . . No.” The girl, frustrated, begins chewing a piece of her own hair.
“You didn’t go out, did you?”
The girl shakes her head.
Sighing, the mother plucks the hair from the girl’s mouth. In the morning, the mother braided the girl’s hair, and now her braids are matted and unraveled. Her breath smells vaguely metallic.
Where is it that she goes in her mind’s wandering? the mother thinks. What if she wanders too far? She will wander away from me, to a place I can’t reach. She will wander straight into the man’s arms.
A sob clutches the mother’s throat. The next moment, the girl is pressing herself hot into her mother’s arms. “Mommy?” The mother rocks her like water rocks a boat.
What else does the girl know?
“Mommy, do you remember a house with the tree that was the best tree?”
“What tree?” The mother is busy slicing cold hot dogs for the child to eat, rinsing the knife under the tap.
“I was swinging, it was a tire swing. And it was the best tree, with purple flowers, a zillion flowers,” the girl says. “But why was the house sad? I think it was a sad house.”
The mother forgets the running water and turns to face the girl, her mouth full of a question.
She knows the house the girl speaks of. She had lived there with the man. But the girl has never been to that place. The girl was just a baby growing in the mother’s womb then. Afterward, the mother vowed to never speak of that time, to never mention him to the girl.
“That’s not a memory,” the mother says. “You were never there.”
“I was,” the girl insists.
“No.” The mother shuts off the faucet, a sharp sound, water cut by steel. “You’ve never been there. Say it.”
Beyond the mother, the girl sees the kitchen window full of broken light and green branches. There is no moment but this.
“I’ve never been there.”
Could the girl remember such things?
The mother recalls the swing––she sits astride it. She’s seven months pregnant, the rope taut against her swollen belly. A wind is in the air, purple petals falling in the shadows around the house. Her hair is blowing, baby gazing out through the membrane of her skin.
And at that house, they had fought, she and the man. He always won. He won because he could.
One day the woman locked herself in the bathroom, afraid he would follow. In the mirror she saw her face: the red imprint of his hand. She had beaten her fists against her belly then. She wanted to stop it, to hurt the unborn child.
And after, how terrible. She knew she had done wrong. She hugged her arms to her stomach.
Perhaps the mother spoke about it once, without meaning to. Or perhaps she has pointed out another lovely tree, in some other gentler place.
Here is the book the mother reads to the girl:
It is a big book with a manila cover, the only book. Possessions are heavy when you move a lot. But stories you can also keep inside. In this book there are many stories about little girls, many of whom go into dark, scary woods. Each of the girls has a thing to keep her safe: a magic lantern, a cape that makes one invisible, a fairy godmother, an enchanted staff. The girls are precocious and restless. They enter the woods to meet their fate. Sometimes bad things happen to them. They receive warnings they do not heed. They are captured by monsters. Other times the girls escape.
“See how dangerous it is in the woods?” the mother says.
The girl knows already. For she is every girl in every story. When her mother reads to her, she feels that it is she who is stalking through the trees; it is she hiding inside the giant’s clock; she is the one riding with her knees pressed to the flanks of the white horse. It is as though she has done all of this before.
“I remember,” she tells the mother, about the story the mother is currently reading.
“You can’t,” the mother says. “I was making that story up.”
The girl firmly shakes her head. A tension in her small body, pulling slightly away from the mother.
The mother shuts the book. “Give me a kiss.”
The girl does. The mother tucks her into bed. The mother goes to shut the curtains over the window but stops. She gazes outward with her face pressed against the dark. A wind claws at the walls. Trees drop handfuls of what sound like nails hitting the roof. Something scrapes against the night. Something out there moving slowly, heavily.
Yes, some nights the mother is distracted. The girl must read her own bedtime story.
The girl reads.
Sometimes she reads what is written, and at other times she holds the book like a mysterious artifact and forces her own story upon it.
The girl’s story:
Is about a little girl who goes into the woods. Already, there are so many such stories, so many little girls who venture into dangerous woods, but the girl knows that she is one of them. Something bad is out there––this time, a bad man––but little girls never listen. They grow bored of dolls and toys that are dead, and they no longer wish to play with dead things. Little girls all go into the woods at some point. Why do they go? Perhaps it is their innate doom.
So, when the mother leaves the girl at home alone during the day again, the girl zips herself into her red sweater. She unlocks the lock and goes.
Here is the lake the girl was told of.
It looks black, just like the mother said it would. It is small and shaped like a bruise. Where the lake begins, the forest chokes up. An old wooden pier teeters over the water, looking ready to sink.
Here too are the wild children, of course. The girl is not surprised to find them, looking as she’d expected: half-nude and semi-translucent. They seem to be itching in their skins, full of restlessness. They are the lost, the drowned, the ones who disobeyed, the ones that stories warn about. From her hiding spot among the trees, the girl watches.
It appears the wild children have something. They are forming a circle around something, and as the girl peers closer, she realizes the something is a living dog. The dog is big and brown and fuzzy. A rope winds around his neck, tethering him to a metal stake in the ground. The dog lies flat, paws on his face; he has given up. The girl can’t tell if the wild children tied the dog up, or if the dog got himself caught. But the wild children have certainly found him. Oh yes.
As they close in on him, the wild children appear frenzied, as if stirred by the scent of blood. They slap their stomachs and lick their graying teeth. They are almost definitely going to eat the dog, the girl realizes.
Where is the hero who can stop this? She wonders.
Then: Isn’t this my story?
She takes a shaky breath. Pulls her hood up over her head. Thinking of all those girls who entered the woods before her––when they run, haven’t they sometimes run straight toward?
When she bolts, the wild children have little time to react, and to all of their surprise––the girl especially––she runs straight through them. Through their clawing hands, into the center of their circle, to the dog she means to rescue. The wild children shriek in rage and vexation, failing to touch her. And then, all at once, they disappear. They go wherever wild children go to.
The girl stands trembling, breathing hard, feeling somehow even more alone than before. A softness nuzzles her arm. The dog. He is looking her over, his large head raised, his eyes gentle. He whines softly, as if begging.
“Are you all on your own, too?” the girl asks.
She feels that he is trying to speak to her through his eyes, though she can’t tell what he says. Be my friend? Take me in?
She manages to untie the rope from the stake, and she holds the loose end in her hand like a leash. She tells the dog to come, and he seems happy to follow.
How to tell the girl’s story:
Whenever the girl tells her own story, she knows that there is more than one way to tell it. Sometimes, a story is the spell you cast to keep yourself safe.
The girl returns.
“Where were you?” the mother demands. “Where did you get that animal?” She seizes the girl by the arms and pulls her into the house––first, prying the rope from the girl’s grasp––and shuts the dog outside.
“Mommy––”
“That filthy dog is not coming in. God help me.” The mother grabs at the girl’s clothes, she is not being careful.
She shucks off the girl’s red sweater and strips her down to her underpants. Tiny scrapes fleck the girl’s legs and arms; where did she get them? The mother wipes her face with a coarse rag. The girl turns to look out the window, to see if the dog is still there, but her mother pulls her back around.
“I’m crazy not to lock you in your room,” the mother says. “How did you get so dirty?” Tears slide down her cheeks, mixing with snot. “Did anyone see you?”
“. . . No.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“No.”
“Whose dog is that?”
“Mine.”
The mother hauls the girl to the bath. She is squeezing the girl’s too tightly, but the girl doesn’t complain. She has hurt Mommy, she thinks. She has behaved badly. Soon it will be over. Mommy will love her again.
The dog will stay, she thinks. Yes, she thinks, he has decided on his own that he belongs to her.
The mother sits the girl in the tub and gets the water hot. She soaps a washcloth and scrubs the girl’s body.
“We’ll have to get rid of the dog,” she says quietly.
The girl shrieks. “You can’t. He’s mine––”
“––No. No arguments.”
An invisible saw has cut a hole into the girl’s skull, and her mind is rushing out, draining like water from herself. The pain of this act is unbearable. The pain of the girl’s mind. To make it stop, she hits her own head. Hard, with a closed fist. That feels better somehow. So, she does it again.
“Stop.”
The mother seizes the girl’s arms, and the girl thrashes. She cannot use her fists anymore, so instead she knocks her head back against the porcelain wall of the tub. She succeeds. With each hit, the inner pain is dulled, as if blacked out by the realization of a different, more bearable pain.
“Stop,” the mother cries. “You can keep him. You can keep him!”
Still, the girl writhes; she is possessed by an urge. Until there is only one other thing that the mother can think to do: she hits herself. With her own fist, in imitation of the girl.
The girl stares. It is suddenly as though the mother has taken the girl’s pain into herself.
Confused, the girl thinks: My mother is me. I am her.
The girl keeps the dog.
He stays.
Every night the mother says a prayer.
Dear God or gods, let the girl not leave me now, let her innocence be preserved.
Regularly, the mother believes she finds signs of the girl’s transgressions. In the laundry, she finds drawings of families that contain more persons than just a mother and a daughter. On the kitchen floor, lists of toys and foods the girl would certainly like to have. Beneath the mother’s own pillow, what appears to be a torn journal entry:
“I loved someone once. It was a mistake. All of my life, I have been tricked, I have thought love, when there was only desperation.”
The girl has learned to write, the mother thinks, even though she only recently learned to read!
But how odd.
These are not the words of a child.
It appears, too, that the girl has used the mother’s favorite red pen. She has written in slant-letters that look suspiciously like the mother’s handwriting.
But this child.
Certainly, she would be capable of such a thing, the mother thinks.
Yes. Because she is always reaching. She reaches into the past, for example, and unearths her mother’s secrets. Then, she wants to be grown up already; she reaches into the very future. And always, she is reaching away from her mother.
How, the mother thinks, can I be expected to protect such a girl?
The mother inquires.
“What is the meaning of this?” the mother asks, holding out the crumpled paper.
The girl has just woken from her nap, her hair mussed.
“What is it, Mommy?” She frowns.
See how she strays, the mother thinks.
“Let me do your hair,” the mother commands.
She tugs her fingers through the strands, lacing the braids tight. The girl squirms, reaching out to pet the dog.
“Hold still,” the mother says, surprised at hearing her own brittle voice.
The dog sleeps at the foot of the girl’s bed.
He’s much handsomer since his bath. In the light, there’s a healthy shine to his dark coat. He’s thin for his size; clearly, he went unfed for some time, but he’s adjusting, his coat thick as a puppy’s. The mother doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like the thought of who the dog might have belonged to. That her child should sleep with a strange animal, a male.
The girl should sleep with her mother. Only her mother can keep her safe, the mother thinks. But now, the girl and this dog. The girl and the dog playing tug-of-rope. The girl and the dog by the back steps, where she is allowed to take him so he can go potty. The girl and the dog drinking tea with the dolls.
The mother has an idea: Why doesn’t the girl come with her to her work, the job the mother now has to care for an older woman. The mother cleans and does the laundry; she prepares meals that can be microwaved later.
“Just this once, we’ll make it an outing. I know it must get dull in your tower,” the mother says.
“I have to keep a lookout, remember?” the girl says.
When the woman returns home, the child is again cuddled with the dog.
“Let’s play a game,” the mother says. “I’ll be the witch. You’ll be my helper. What shall we brew up for dinner?”
“Fish heads,” the girl says. “Frog legs. Fingers of wild children. Ice cream for dessert.”
The dog nudges his food bowl.
“Not yet,” the girl tells him.
He’s such a good dog, too, the mother thinks, almost human in his intelligence. He does whatever the girl wants. It isn’t fair. A mother can’t do just what her child wants. A mother must know better.
Here is a list of things to keep the girl safe:
– a hood
– a dog
– a mother
Here is list of things one might think will keep a girl safe:
– a hood
– a dog
– a mother
The big book says:
“Always be careful when entering the woods. Every bad thing out there disguises itself.”
At night, the mother wakes to a rustling at the foot of the bed.
Someone has gotten in. Someone who is creeping beneath the mattress.
The mother thinks that the intruder will wait until she falls back asleep, or else will wait for her to get up, and will seize her by her ankle. She reaches out a silent hand to grasp her only possible defense––the metal lamp.
Swish, and the dog slinks out from the shadows under the bed.
The mother curses. Sets down the lamp. Turns it on, and glares at the dog. The lamp is her ally in this, she thinks, the lamplight also glaring.
The dumb dog doesn’t care. He looks at the bed as if he wants to get in.
“No,” she says.
The dog leaps onto the bed anyway. He arranges himself to fit into the bend of legs.
“No, no, no.”
She kicks him gently. She can’t make the dog hate her. What will the girl think? “Fine.” She reaches out a cautious hand, and he nuzzles his face eagerly into her palm. His face is damp and warm. He smells vaguely like a man.
She feels a hitch, like two fitted pieces failing to lock together. A wrong familiarity. It flashes through her: an instant with the man. The man is lying atop her, the brute weight of his fully clothed body pinning her to the bed. He is laughing. He laughs and laughs.
The dog looks at her with the man’s eyes.
Oh God, she thinks. It’s him. He would go that far––he really has. Changed his very form to get to her, to infiltrate them.
He nudges her hand. Come on, he’s saying. Don’t you love me?
Alarm signals drill in her head.
He paws at her. See how I have changed for you? Do you really think I can hurt you like this?
She thinks that perhaps he cannot. Is it possible that the man could become gentle? She tries to imagine. Imagine: a family, instead of a pair. No. He can only be lying again.
She seizes him by the fur of his neck––but he’s too big for her. She pretends instead to kiss him on his wet nose.
“Sweet,” she says. “Dear. Wait for me right here. Show me how you can behave, and I’ll get you a treat to show my love for you.”
She shuts the door to her room and hurries into the kitchen, thinking: What can she use? A bottle of bleach. A can of pest spray. Will the combination do it?
Will he be able to tell?
Will there be noise, retching?
She takes out a plastic bowl and begins mixing ingredients. First, something to entice him. She opens a pack of ground hamburger and drenches the raw meat in chemicals. She finds a box of sleeping pills, crushes a few capsules, adds them.
How long will it take? And how to dispose of the aftermath?
But how easy it is to lure him, promising her faithfulness, offering this bloody meal.
See the new hole in the window screen?
“The dog got out, honey,” the mother says. “I’m so sorry.”
“He wouldn’t,” the child insists. “He would never.” She thinks the dog must have seen something out there in the night, something bad. “He was protecting us. He prob-ly needs our help.”
“He’s a dog. You are my little girl. Do I have to tell you again it’s not safe?” the mother hisses. “You are not going anywhere.”
The girl must wait for night to return.
Night is the only time, aside from when the mother works, when the mother’s watch lets up, even for a minute. The mother has not left the house since the dog went missing.
Dark again.
Woods again.
Now, the lake is truly black, except for the luminous eye that floats at its center––the reflected moon. The wild children have not returned here. The girl is again alone. She wears her red sweater, yet it too looks black. Every bad thing hides within the dark, but the girl is also hidden. She calls out for the dog, and her voice echoes against the trees. No one can trace its origin.
Anything out there?
The girl knows what lurks in the woods. So many tales of girls entering woods and what happens to them. She moves with the knowledge of those who came before her. She knows that the moon could tell her everything it has seen if only she could speak its language. But perhaps the moon is giving her a signal. Its eye pointing at the lake.
She steps onto the pier, testing its strength. The boards groan but hold her. She gazes at the water, imagining the dog down there in the black. His body gone slack, his eyes doll-like. Is this what the end holds, after all?
Must it always be this end?
“Careful,” a man’s voice calls out.
The girl turns. Sees the beam of his flashlight. His tall silhouette.
“It’s all right,” the man says. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
He approaches, saying kind, simple things. His hair is shaggy and long. The girl tenses.
“You’re safe,” he says.
He holds out a hand, and she wonders whether to take it.
END.