Love Bites

TWs: Missing children, suspected child death

The itching came first. The skin behind her ear was tight and hot from the constant scratching which continued at the breakfast table.

“It’s because you’re not wearing your hat,” her mother said. “Your poor ears are getting chapped.”

The girl frowned. She hated hats, especially the itchy one her mother insisted on. Her aunt had knitted it and even though she had learned to appreciate the star pattern, she pulled it off her head the moment she was out of her mother’s sight on her daily walk to school. Her mother was far removed from the particular embarrassment that came with dressing appropriately for the weather as a child.

The morning the itching began, her routine played out. Warm oatmeal with blueberries and bananas, cinnamon sugar and a glass of 2% milk. Teeth brushed with watermelon flavored toothpaste after her mother’s repeated requests to get ready. She had started choosing her own clothes and slid into the boots she had received for Christmas. They still looked new, yet to be stained by snow and salt.

“Do you have your key?” Her mother’s voice carried from the kitchen.

“Yes mama.” The key was in her backpack, nestled between mechanical pencils in her pencil case.

“Hugs before you leave – you know that.”

The girl sighed but complied. She waddled to the kitchen, wrapped in a puffy coat, a cocoon of winter defense. Upon hearing her footsteps, her mother turned with open arms, hugging her daughter before she could argue against it.

“Have the best day. I love you so.” She pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“I love you too, mama.” With that, she ran out the house.

—-------

The walk home was less eventful than the walk to school. This perplexed the girl. Most of classmates who walked in the morning would be picked up at the end of the day. She knew it was because her mother was at work and wouldn’t be off for another few hours but she had come to enjoy the few hours of solitude.

It snowed the weekend before – a wasted opportunity, since no one got a snow day and her mother couldn’t request a work from home day or even a late arrival. The remnants of the snowfall were mostly gone but lone patches of ice lingered on the sidewalk in certain parts. Several neighbors hadn’t salted their sidewalks recently, allowing the small patches to take speedy school children by surprise.

The girl was careful, though. She loved her boots too much to walk casually in the suburban slush. She noted every patch and moved with intention, each footstep an act of preservation. It was in front of the green house that her focus shifted to a black dog sitting in the middle of the street.

It was a curious looking creature. One ear stood up and the other flopped over itself. It wasn’t particularly fluffy or soft looking – short hairs covered its body. It sat on its hind legs, front paws paired closely together. She loved dogs, had begged for one for Christmas but had her expectations tempered by her mother’s grimace at the idea, making vague references to responsibility.

All this ran through her mind as she and the dog stared at one another. It’s eyes were a warm, chocolate brown. They were kind and gentle, she observed. The kindness in his eyes seemed human, something like what she imagined a sister would look like.

As they stared at one another, a deep familiarity between them, the dog cocked his head, as if recalling from where it was he had recognized her. She took a step forward, palms itching with the urge to pet him. Above head, a flock of pigeons flew and drew her attention away from the dog. When she looked back, he was gone.

—---

At the dinner table, the girl chewed the meatballs set in front of her. The pasta was untouched.

“What’s wrong? Spaghetti’s your favorite.” The girl’s mother wiped at her mouth with a paper towel.

The girl’s fork poked at the noodles. Her mother was right but tonight the long strands were unappetizing and the sight of them dried her mouth. The meatballs, however, were nearly finished.

“I’m just not too hungry, I guess,” the girl said, scratching behind her ear. “Gina brought in cupcakes for her birthday today.” The girl said this before she remembered it.

Her mother smiled. “What flavor?” She sipped the bottle of beer she had been nursing all night.

The girl scrunched up her face. “Banana – she said it’s her favorite. Whose favorite flavor of anything is banana?”

—-----------------

Standing in the bathroom, waiting for the hot water, the girl stared at her reflection in the mirror while brushing her hair. As the mirror fogged, she noticed how much coarser her hair felt. Her mother had washed it for her just the night before, in the kitchen sink, leaving the comforting scent of apple shampoo and conditioner with her all day.

Now, it was coarser, rougher. And there was that itch again, now extending up her scalp from behind her ear where it had begun a few days before. As she scratched her scalp, loose hair covering her face and shoulders, she realized that it wasn’t so much that her hair was coarser, but that the strands themselves were thicker and even darker. The girl was confused. Her hair hadn’t grown in length at all, it seemed.

When the itching on her scalp had somewhat soothed, she looked down at her hands. Her nails, always trimmed short and kept clean, were longer and sharper. Not sharp enough to cut or to cut through the tape on a package – she had seen her aunt do this with her nails before, usually after coming home from the salon fingers transformed into what the girl thought of as claws in a new color every time. Her nails weren’t painted but they did look like claws, upon inspection. Her legs too, hairless that morning, were covered in thick, black hair.

The girl breathed in – the bathroom was filled with steam and smelled of body heat.

—-----------------------------

That night she could only find herself in dreams where she ran wild and barefoot in open fields that turned into backyards. The fences caged her in and she clawed – her nails were, indeed, claws in her dreams – to try to get back to the green fields where the wind was at her back and the sun warmed her tendony flesh.

She often dreamed but never with her senses as sharp as they were then. It was not that she knew that the sun was warm on her skin, it was that she could feel the sun on her skin. Her unconscious mind did not inform her that yes, the air smelled of damp soil, but that the scent filled her nostrils and soothed her. Dreaming had never been so textured.

She awoke suddenly, two hours before her mother’s phone alarm woke her from down the hallway, travelling through thin walls. She was hungry, starving even.

The girl padded her way to the kitchen. The dark room filled with the yellow light of the fridge as she opened it. Last night’s spaghetti and meatballs were neatly packed away in the glass Tupperware whose purchase her mother had defended as a “treat and a needed upgrade”. The idea of a glass container as a treat suddenly made the girl sad – why were adults so content with such boring gifts? Wouldn’t her mother much prefer something like a bottle of perfume, some luxury she saw on commercials?

She pondered this as she opened the container and ate the cold meatballs. Did becoming an adult mean that you somehow wanted less or was it that things like perfume or tickets to Paris were so out of reach it was easier to convince yourself you didn’t want them anyway?

When the girl fell back asleep, she dreamed of racing with the black dog she had seen earlier that day.

—------------------

“101,” her mother observed, taking her glasses off to read the thermometer up close. “You’re burning up, honey.”

The girl did not feel like she was burning up but her body ached. She had refused to get out of bed to prevent her mother from seeing her now very hairy legs, which appeared to have become even thicker with sleep. The itching remained, worse now. Her arms were raw and red from the scratching. It was at this point that the girl grew concerned with the sudden changes. Her body ached, each bone feeling as though it had been hollowed and scraped of all its marrow.

Ignorant to her daughter’s thoughts, her mother decided that she would not be going to school that day. “You’re sick as a dog. I don’t want you out in the cold. You can stay in bed, stay on the couch, watch TV. Just get better, okay?” Her mother reached for her purse that hung on the door.

“You’re not staying home with me?” The girl’s voice was deeper and strained. She had begun to imagine a day at home, spent with her head on her mother’s lap while they watched The Price Is Right. She felt the idea of her mother’s fingers playing with her loose hair, the image saddening her for reasons she could not yet articulate. It was a memory she had not yet had but already missed.

Her mother cupped her chin. “I can’t, sweetie. I’m out of sick time. I’m going to try to leave early, though. I’ll bring you back that soup you like, how about that?”

“Okay.” The girl nuzzled deeper into her blankets. “Can I call you if I need anything?”

“Of course.” Her mother smiled at her. “My cell number is written by the landline in case you forgot it. Just call me.”

The girl’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t forget it,” she said, bristling at the idea of forgetting such important information.

“I know,” her mother said. “I’m going now. All I need you to do is get better, and take out the ground beef from the freezer, okay? Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, mama.”

“I love you so.” She leaned down to kiss her daughter’s forehead, lips leaving behind a Chapstick imprint.

“I love you too, mama.” The girl smelled her mother’s spit, sitting on her forehead.

—---------------------------

The rest of her day was what she expected from a sick day. She had migrated to the couch, and focused on drinking as much water as she could after one of the doctors on a morning show emphasized how important hydration was to recovery. To avoid having to get up to refill her glass constantly, she had taken down a large glass bowl with white daisies on its rim to pour from the pitcher into and drank from this.

She sat on the floor of the living room, watching game shows turn into soap operas before changing the channel to National Geographic, where they were playing a documentary about the wolves of Yellowstone. She felt her body hair bristle underneath her pajamas, watching packs climb cliffs and howl together. The vastness of their environment captivated her and she didn’t even flinch when watching them hunt an elk. The creature’s open neck was a deep, dark red, almost like a jewel she would wear on her throat.

The clanging of the front door’s mail slot broke her trance. Even though her mother hadn’t specifically asked her to, she collected the mail and put it on the radiator next to the door. This as part of her mother’s routine reminded her to take the ground beef out of the freezer. She had to use a stool to reach but was able to pull it out from under bags of frozen vegetables that were over a year old.

The girl left the meat to thaw on the counter in her bowl of now lukewarm water. She had planned to return to the couch to keep watching her documentary but found that she could not leave. She sat with arms folded on the kitchen table, chin resting on them, absorbing the scent of frozen meat. The bowl turned pink and she licked her lips with thirst.

—------------------------

The girl was better the next morning and slid back into her routine. Oatmeal with peanut butter and blueberries today, although it tasted like mucus on her tongue. She slid into her boots, still hiding her hairy legs, and buttoned her coat.

“Do you have your key?” Her mother’s voice carried from the kitchen.

“Yes mama.” The key was in her backpack, where it always was. She had gym that day and she carried her clothes and sneakers. Today, she would get to run around the gym and although she had never done it before, she she would be faster than anyone in her class. Maybe her whole school even.

“Hugs before you leave.” The girl jogged to the kitchen, where her mother always was, it seemed. This time, she stood facing away from her, drying the last of the breakfast dishes. The girl stopped to observe this sight – the way the winter sun turned her mother’s frame into negative space, the sound of the dripping tap, and how her mother’s scent, something like blooming jasmine, greeted her before she registered it.

You are going to miss this, the girl thought to herself. Someday. Maybe not today, but someday sooner rather than later.

“Have the best day. I love you so.” Her mother bent down in her black work pants and wool sweater to embrace her daughter.

“I love you too, mama.” She absorbed the sensation of her mother’s lips on her forehead, memorizing how they almost stuck to her skin.

The girl stared at her mother’s face and was suddenly overcome with the immense sadness that comes with loving something impermanent built of flesh and bone. She nuzzled her face into the space into her mother’s shoulder. Just hugging her mother back, kissing her on the forehead or the cheek even would never be enough. Without thinking, she licked her mother’s face and gave her cheek the gentlest bite she could, tasting her own salt.

—----------------------------

The girl did not get to run in gym that day. After her mother had settled in at the office, unable to shake off the strangeness of her daughter’s behavior that morning, her school called, asking if she would be absent again that day. She had not made it to school that morning and it was unlike her mother to not call.

Routine, again, followed: 911 was called, police officers searched and found nothing. The day went by in flashbulb moments. The only sensation that cut through the constant noise and pacing was a feeling of nausea she had not experienced since pregnancy, the seasickness of a life altered. When the police came to her door to curtly inform her that they had found her daughter’s boots – the pair she had just gotten for Christmas, still new and almost perfect – behind the school, she vomited into the umbrella stand that had stood empty next to the front door for years.

Faster than she could have imagined, a day without her daughter turned into a week. The Staples’ off the highway printed missing posters free of charge. Using the last of her PTO (and the extra her co-workers had donated, a kindness that felt almost like cruelty) she spent all her time hanging posters.

She had thought staring at her daughter’s face would be painful – it was, but not in the way she expected. Seeing details of the school photo that had previously been obscured by a watermark, removed by a Photoshop-savvy neighbor, made the loss permanent. She would never have seen the slight chip in her daughter’s tooth and the fly away hairs in the photo had her daughter not been lost.

It wasn’t that she would not see her daughter’s face again but that the dreams of her daughter growing into an adult, a woman with an apartment and lover, a woman who wore lipstick and had a favorite cocktail, crumbled before her. She grieved the person her daughter would never get to be.

It was dark by the time she had run out of flyers. Every store had at least two, even the Wal-Mart a town over. The woman, who had been a other once, took herself home.

After parking her car in the driveway, she directed herself to walk up the front steps. Before she could, she paused. A black figure sat in front of the door, laid out on the porch. She made out two eyes, deep brown, as the streetlights reflected in them. It was a dog – a large one at that, black and tired. Its floppy ears lay against its head and it stared back at her with a familiar, knowing gaze. Had she seen this dog before? There weren’t many strays here but surely, she must have seen this dog somewhere, perhaps scrounging for scraps at the liquor store’s dumpster. The two needed no introductions; they knew each other – maybe not in this form, but in some life, they had known each other.

She cocked her head, staring at the creature with curious empathy. She moved forward, kneeled in front of it – of her. There was no fear, no apprehension from either of them. She extended a hand and the dog raised her head. Her fur was coarse, dark, and oil slicks of light moved around its back as the street lights reflected. The dog was too well taken care of to be a stray.

“Are you lost?” The mother cupped the dog’s face in her hand. The dog licked her hand in reply.

“Someone must be missing you,” she said, a smile that should have felt wrong in her circumstances spreading on her face.

The dog bit her, gently, with love.