THE LITTLE GIRL WOKE UP the way she’d been trained: quickly and quietly. She inhaled once, a hushed gasp in the still night, then her eyes fixed on her mother’s drawn face.
“Shhh,” her mother whispered, finger to her lips. “They’re coming. It’s time, child. Move.”
The girl threw back her covers and sat up. The winter night was cold; she could see her breath as a frosty mist in the glowing moonlight. The little girl was prepared, however. She and her older sister always slept fully dressed, layering T-shirts, sweatshirts, and coats regardless of season. You never knew when They might come, flushing their prey from warm sanctuary into the treacherous wild. Unprepared children would fail quickly, succumbing to exposure, dehydration, fear.
Not the little girl and her sister. They’d planned for such events. Their mother, from the time they could walk, had trained them to survive.
Now the little girl grabbed her backpack from the foot of her bed. She slipped the wide straps over her shoulders while sliding her small feet into her loosely laced sneakers. Then she followed her mother onto the darkened second-story landing. Her mother paused at the top of the stairs, finger on her lips, as she peered down into the gloom.
The little girl halted a step behind her mother. She glanced toward the back of the hall, where her sister usually slept. The tiny rental didn’t allow for her older sister to have her own room, or even her own bed. Instead, her sister slept on the floor, with her coat as a mattress and her backpack as a pillow. As a good soldier should, their mother said.
But the spot against the far wall was empty-no sister, no coat, no frayed red pack. Fully awake now, the little girl felt the first tingle of fear and had to resist the urge to call out her older sister’s name.
Her mother’s instructions on this subject were firm: They were not to worry about each other, they were not to wait for one another. Instead, they were to get out of the house and into the woods. Immediately. Once they’d managed to safely evac and evade, then they would meet up at the predetermined rendezvous points. But first priority, get out of the house, elude capture.
And if they did not…
As their mother had told them many times, thin features pinched, face too old for her years: Be brave. Everyone has to die sometime.
The little girl’s mother descended the first step, staying to the far right, where the riser was less likely to groan. Her oversized wool coat swirled around her legs as she moved, like a black cat weaving around her ankles.
The little girl followed in her mother’s wake, placing each foot with similar care while she strained her ears for sounds from the darkness below. Their tiny two-story rental used to be a farmhouse. It was located away from town, down a long dirt road on a dusty brown patch of land at the edge of the woods. They had no roots in the community, no ties to their neighbors.
Everything the girl owned, she wore on her back. From clothing to water bottle to dried fruit and almonds to one battered Nancy Drew novel she’d bought for ten cents at a garage sale to a quartz rock she’d found two years ago along another road in another town where her mother had also woken her and her sister in the middle of the night and they’d never seen that house again.
Maybe other children had toys. Pets. TVs. Computers. School. Friends.
The little girl had her backpack, her older sister, her mother, and this.
Her mother had reached the first floor. She held up her hand, and wordlessly, the little girl halted. She still heard nothing, but watched silvery dust motes swirl around her mother’s boot-clad feet.
Now the little girl could hear a noise. A rattle, followed by two thumps. The old furnace, finally registering the chill and kicking to life. After another moment, the distant thumping ceased and the midnight hush returned. The little girl looked. The little girl listened. Then, unable to determine any sign of danger, she peered up solemnly at her mother’s pale face.
Sometimes, the little girl knew, they didn’t flee in the middle of the night because of the infamous evildoers, the nameless threat lurking in the shadows.
Sometimes, they fled because training didn’t allow time for working, which didn’t allow for money to pay for rent, or heat, or food. “They” had a lot of strategies, and keeping the little girl’s family hungry, cold, and tired was the most effective of all.
At this stage of her life, the little girl could drift as soundlessly as a shadow and see as keenly as a cat in the dark. But maybe her stomach would growl, or her body would shiver. Maybe, in the end, being too hungry, too cold, and too tired was all it would take for her to give her family away.
Her mother seemed to register her thoughts. She half turned, taking the little girl’s hand.
“Be brave,” her mother whispered. “Child…”
Her mother’s voice broke. The rare and unexpected show of emotion scared the little girl far more than the dark, the cold, the too quiet house. Now she clutched her mother’s hand as tightly as her mother held hers, realizing this wasn’t a drill. They were not practicing. They were not planning.
Something had happened.
They had found them. This was the real deal.
Her mother moved. Pulled the little girl toward the small kitchen, where the bank of windows allowed the moon to pool on the floor and cast rows of finger-thin shadows around the edges.
The girl didn’t want to go anymore. She wanted to dig in her heels. Stop the madness. Rush upstairs and bury herself beneath the blankets on her bed.
Or bolt out the door. Flee from her home, the tension, her mother’s harshly lined face. She could race to the old white house on the other side of the woods. A young boy lived there. She watched him sometimes, spied on him from the sprawling oak tree. Twice, she caught him watching her back, expression thoughtful. She never said a word, though. Good girls didn’t speak to boys. Soldiers did not consort with the enemy.
SisSis. She needed her older sister. Where was SisSis?
“Everyone must die sometime,” her mother was muttering. She’d reached the middle of the kitchen, stopping abruptly. She seemed to be studying the moonlight, maybe listening for sounds of further danger.
The little girl spoke for the first time. “Mommy…”
“Hush, child! They could be right outside the kitchen. Did you think of that? Right there. Outside that window. Backs resting against that wall, listening to our every footstep. Already getting hard and hungry with the thought of what they’ll do to us.”
“Mommy…”
“We should light it on fire. Torch the wall. Listen to them yowl in fury, watch them dance in pain.”
The girl’s mother turned abruptly toward the windows. The moonlight caught her fully in the face, revealing eyes that were huge, dark pools. Then her mother smiled.
The girl shrank back, letting go of her mother’s hand, but it was too late. Her mother still clutched the little girl’s wrist. She wasn’t letting go. She was going to do something. Something horrible. Something terrible.
Something that was supposed to get Them, but that the little girl already knew, from past experience, would hurt her or her big sister instead.
The little girl whimpered. “Mommy,” she tried again, searching those too dark eyes, trying to find a flicker of familiarity.
“Matches!” her mother cried now. Voice no longer hushed, but booming, nearly gay. They could be at a birthday party, lighting candles on a cake. What a grand time! What a great adventure!
The little girl whimpered again. She tugged on her arm, trying to pull her wrist out of her mother’s grasp, struggling more forcibly.
But it was no use. At times like these, her mother’s fingers were talons, her entire body radiating a taut, wiry strength that was impossible to break. She would have her way.
Her mother yanked open the first kitchen drawer. Her left hand still clutched the little girl’s wrist, while her right hand raked through miscellaneous contents. A glossy white shower of plastic silverware rained down on the peeling linoleum floor. Sprays of ketchup packets, mustard pouches, bags of free croutons the little girl sometimes crept out of bed to eat, because her mother believed hunger would make them stronger, but mostly it made the little girl’s stomach ache, so she would pop croutons and suck on ketchup, before stuffing her coat pockets with mustard for her older sister, whom she knew was also starving but couldn’t move nearly as quietly through the house.
Soy sauce. Chopsticks. Paper napkins. Wet wipes. Her mother pawing her way furiously through drawer after drawer, dragging the little girl in her wake.
“Mommy. Please, Mommy.”
“Aha!”
“Mommy!”
“This will teach the fuckers!” Her mother held up a matchbook. Shiny silver cover, fresh black strike stripe.
“Mommy!” the girl tried again, desperate. “The front door. We can go through the front door. Into the woods. We’re fast, we can make it.”
“No!” her mother declared, voice righteous. “They’ll be expecting that. No doubt have three, six, a dozen men already waiting. This is it. We’ll torch the curtains. Minute the wall’s fully engulfed, they’ll flee the property. Fucking cowards.”
“Christine!” The little girl cracked her voice, changing tactics. She planted her feet, drew herself up as tall as her six-year-old frame would allow. “Christine! Stop it! This is no time to play with matches!”
For a moment, the little girl thought it might work. Her mother blinked, her face losing some of its overbright luster. She stared at her daughter, right arm falling lax to her side.
“The furnace shut off,” the little girl declared boldly. “But I fixed it. Now go to bed. Everything’s all right. Go to bed.”
Her mother stared at her. Seemed confused, which was better than crazy. The little girl held her breath, chin up, shoulders back.
She did not know about Them. But she and her older sister had been preparing, planning, and strategizing to survive their mother for their entire young lives. Sometimes, you had to play along. But other times, you had to seize control. Before their mother went too far. Before they really were running for their lives, their mother having done the unspeakable in order to combat the unseeable in her mind.
Years ago, the little girl had suffered from bad dreams. She would hear a baby crying, and the sound haunted her. Her mother, calmer then, softer, rounder, would come into her room to comfort her. She would brush back the little girl’s hair and sing, in a sad, pretty voice, of green grass and sunny skies and faraway places where little girls slept through the night in big soft beds with warm, full tummies.
The little girl had loved her mother during those moments. Sometimes, she wished she would have bad dreams just to hear her mother sing, feel the gentleness of her mother’s fingertips tracing across her cheek.
But the little girl and her older sister didn’t have nightmares anymore. They lived them instead.
The boy, in the woods. Maybe, if she jerked from her mother’s grasp hard enough, ran fast enough…
The little girl drew herself up. She didn’t really believe a boy could save her. Never had. Never would.
“Christine, go to bed,” the little girl ordered.
Her mother didn’t move. She let go of the little girl’s wrist, but her right hand still clutched the matches. “I’m sorry, Abby,” she said.
The little girl’s voice softened. “Go to bed. It’s okay. I’ll help you.”
“Too late.” Her mother didn’t move. Her voice was quiet, sad. “You don’t know what I did.”
“Mommy-”
“I had to. You’ll understand someday, child. I had to.”
“Mommy…”
The little girl reached out a hand. But it was too late. Her mother was already moving. Dashing to the yellowed lace curtains. Match cover popping open, flipping back. First match ripped from the cardboard prison.
“No, no, no!” The little girl gave chase, clutching at her mother’s oversized coat, trying to grab the thick wool fabric and yank her mother back.
They were dancing, whirling around in beams of moonlight, twirling around long, quivering shadows, except her mother was bigger, faster, stronger. Her mother was powered by madness, and the little girl had only desperation on her side.
The first match flared to life, a beautiful lick of orange in the dark.
Her mother paused as if to admire her accomplishment.
“Isn’t it gorgeous,” she whispered.
Then she tossed the match at the dangling curtain. Just as the little girl’s older sister stepped out of the shadows of the family room and swung a brass candlestick lamp into the back of their mother’s head.
Their mother stumbled. Looked up. SisSis struck her again, this time across the left temple. Their mother dropped like a rock.
The ancient candlestick lamp fell to the floor beside her, while with a faint whoosh, the hem of the lace curtain burst into flame.
The little girl got to the curtain first. She beat it out with her bare hands, flattening the flames against the dirty wall, smacking it until, with a charred sputter, the fire was extinguished and only the palms of her hands burned.
Breathing hard, the little girl turned at last to her sister, the two of them on either side of their mother’s fallen form. The little girl looked up at her older sister. Her older sister looked down at the little girl.
“Where were you?” the little girl spoke first.
Her sister didn’t answer, and for the first time, the little girl noticed something else. The way her sister studied her left side. The way the gray nylon of her winter coat bloomed with a dark flowering stain.
“SisSis?”
The little girl’s sister clutched her side. She splayed the fingers of her hand, and the dark rushed out, racing across the gray of the jacket, stealing the moonlight from the room.
The little girl realized now why her sister hadn’t met her on the upstairs landing. Because their mother had woken her first. Brought her downstairs first. Listened to the voices telling her what to do to her older daughter, first.
The little girl didn’t speak anymore. She held out her hand. Her older sister took it, swaying, falling to her knees. The little girl went with her, down onto the grimy kitchen floor. They held hands, across their mother’s still form. How many times they had crept into this kitchen together, scrounging for food, hiding from their mother, just meeting, just being together, because everyone needed an ally in war.
The little girl was not dumb. She knew their mother hurt SisSis worse and more often. She knew that SisSis accepted the punishment, because when her mother was in one of her moods, someone had to pay. So SisSis was the good soldier, who kept her little sister safe.
“Sorry,” SisSis whispered now, a single world of apology, a single sigh of regret.
“Please, SisSis, please,” the little girl begged. “Don’t leave me…I’ll call nine-one-one. Help will come. Just wait. Wait for me.”
In response, her older sister tightened her grip. “It’s okay.” Her breath left her in a soft, hiccuping rush. “Everyone has to die sometime, right? Be brave. I love you. Be brave…”
Her older sister’s grip weakened. Her hand fell to the floor and the little girl sprang for the phone, dialing 911 just as SisSis had taught her, because they’d known it might someday come to this. They just hadn’t thought it would be so soon.
The little girl gave her mother’s name and address. She requested an ambulance. She spoke clearly and without emotion, because she had practiced for this, too. Together, she and her older sister had prepared, planned, and strategized.
Their mother wasn’t crazy about everything: Everyone did have to die sometime, and you always had to be brave.
Task completed, the little girl released the phone and raced back to her sister. But by the time she returned, SisSis didn’t need her anymore. Her eyes were closed, and nothing the little girl did made them open again.
Her mother stirred on the floor.
The little girl looked at her, then at the old brass lamp.
She lifted up the heavy lamp, thin arms straining, eyes watching how the silvery beams of moonlight gleamed across its dull surface.
Her mother moaned again, regaining consciousness.
The little girl thought of lullabies and matches; she recalled soft hugs and hungry nights. She remembered her older sister, who had genuinely loved her. Then the little girl clutched the top part of the shadeless lamp, stood above her mother’s body, and one final time, hefted its weight into the air.