Magdalenas shadow, p.7
Magdalena's Shadow, page 7
A voice answered but it was not Benny’s.
“Did you catch her?”
“No, the elevator was empty when it reached us. She stopped on several floors. I’m guarding the main exit, and we have staff going to the floors she stopped on.”
“Thank you.” Coco hung up the phone feeling breathless with terror before turning back to the stairs, only to bump into Rob.
“I thought I would help.”
“Thank you,” Coco answered, tears filling her eyes.
They continued down the levels, calling into each hallway, one after the other. When Coco stopped on the twenty-second floor Rob didn’t follow. “I’ll hit twenty-one.” He slid past her, moving down the stairs to the next floor.
Coco ran down the hall of floor 22 looking behind the furniture, before hitting the end and swinging back to the stairwell in the grip of terror. With a hand pressed to her aching ribs, she moved toward the twenty-first floor; the pain of running stairs coupled with the panic was terrible. She wrenched open the door just as Rob backed out of the hallway. His strong body hardly shuddered as Coco’s slight weight hit him. He turned to face her, holding a struggling, angry Bebe.
“She was hiding behind the curtains. If she hadn’t giggled I never would have found her.”
Coco swept Bebe into her arms and slid down the wall to sit on the last step, clutching Bebe firmly to her chest.
The toddler stopped kicking and stared in confusion at her sister’s anguished face. Coco rocked back and forth, tears streaming down her cheeks. She hardly noticed when Rob sat down next to them to rest.
Coco couldn’t speak; she could hardly breathe. Slowly the terror that had gripped her turned to soft sobs. She felt Rob’s arm around her shoulder, holding her close.
“She’s safe, Coco. Everything’s okay now.” Coco leaned into him, her head resting on his shoulder, her sobs gradually lessening in intensity. After a while Rob rose to his feet. Stepping past them, he placed his hand on Coco’s shoulder offering more gentle reassurance.
She could hear his voice, low and calm through the stairwell door, telling the tower employees that Bebe had been found.
Bebe stared at Coco, her face squished in apparent thought, her lips pressed tightly together.
“Do not ever leave me, Bebe.” Coco held Bebe’s gaze. “Do you understand?”
Bebe continued to stare, never breaking eye contact. She grabbed a hunk of Coco’s dark ponytail and shoved it in her mouth.
“Coco sad baby,” Bebe said, still staring at Coco.
Coco nodded and hugged her sister. Bebe patted her shoulder before jumping off her lap to climb the stairs and find Rob.
Rob hung up the phone and turned to see Bebe’s little fingers trying to push the heavy steel door open to the twenty-first floor. Coco stared after her looking worn and sad as the determined child struggled for a new escape. Rob opened the door and picked Bebe up before he walked to Coco.
“Give me your hand.”
Coco reached up, her slender fingers disappearing into his large hand as he pulled her to her feet. She felt his arm sliding around her waist as he steadied her, helping her reach the elevator door. When the car arrived, Benny stood panting and red-faced inside.
“There you are, you little… miracle.” A strained smile spread across his sweaty face. His smile faded when he saw Coco looking pale beside Rob.
Back in #2, Coco sank onto the sofa when Rob let go of his hold around her waist. He strapped Bebe into her swing before going to the kitchen for a glass of water.
Coco’s breathing was normal now but she still looked pale. She felt far away, as if an integral part of her had snapped.
Rob watched her with concern before offering her the water.
“Look at Bebe.” He settled down on the couch beside Coco. “She loves to swing as much as Mila does.”
Coco raised her unfocused eyes to the toddler, who swung her legs back and forth with such exuberance that the swing moved beyond its normal motion, rocking wildly front to back.
“I could have lost her. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t…” A sob broke her words as fresh tears filled her eyes.
“You would have found her.” His voice was certain, firm. “You were flying down those steps faster than I could have. You would have found her.” Coco didn’t seem to hear him. Her eyes were locked on Bebe as if she were afraid that the child might vanish a second time. “Do you have someone you can call? Someone who can come over?”
Coco shifted her gaze slowly to his face. “There’s no one to call.”
“Where’s Tia?”
“We argued. I don’t think she’ll be back.”
Rob rose reluctantly to his feet. “Unfortunately, I have a meeting I can’t miss.” Looking back at Coco he added, “I don’t think you should be alone. You’re still really pale. Don’t you have anyone you could call?”
Coco shook her head. “It’s just us.”
“If you like, you can drop Bebe off with Karen. She would be happy to have a play friend for Mila, and that way you could get some rest.” Rob still looked concerned but Coco hardly noticed. She felt dizzy and far away as if she might pass out at any minute.
“I’ll be okay,” she whispered. “I’m just shook up. Thanks for your help. I….”
“No need for thanks, Coco, I know you’d have found her.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
Chapter Nine
Coco fed and changed Bebe before walking her to #1. Rob was gone, but Karen was happy to take Bebe for a few hours. Returning to the wind tortured emptiness of #2, Coco remembered how Tia had filled the apartment with the feeling that a family lived there. Now empty, dark, and silent, the place resembled a mausoleum more than a home. Tia was gone, gone like Magdalena, gone like the nannies and the housemaids, gone, gone, gone….
So Bebe ran away, Coco thought. She’s back now and safe, everything’s fine. So, Tia’s gone. She’ll be replaced just like all the others were. Still, Coco couldn’t shift the heavy grief.
A commercial blared noise, displaying happy teenagers chewing bubble gum on a California beach. That commercial was followed by a woman joyfully cradling her perfectly behaved child in a blindingly bright white room. As the jingle for a third commercial began Coco felt an additional sense of discontent, one that bordered on loathing. She felt hatred for the picture-perfect people who smiled from the screen.
With growing despair, she spotted the lie.
Through thick and thin she had held to the notion that somewhere – out there – people were happy, and that if she could talk, walk, or dress the right way everything would be okay. What a lie! Those beautiful people didn’t really exist. They were not real. They were actors, hiding their flawed existences behind sets, products, and concepts they wanted you to believe would fulfill you. They were selling the idea of happy, not the reality.
Coco clutched at her chest, feeling the ache of years of loveless living. Tia was gone, and Bebe had nearly gone too. During those twenty horrifying minutes of searching, Coco had lived as she had for so many years, running blindly in grief to look for someone precious who had left her.
In that moment, Magdalena’s face shone across the screen, peddling moisturizer to the masses with her seductive smile. Coco felt her hand flex around the remote, felt her knuckles blanch, the blood running from the pressure of her grip as she raised her hand far over her head, hurling the remote at her mother’s flawless face.
“Bitch!” she screamed, her voice reverberating off the walls, clattering over the surfaces of the Dali, the Warhol, and the Rivera. Coco slumped back against the couch, shocked by her own violence. The damaged screen blinked strange distorted images into the room while Magdalena’s soft Latin voice spoke through the advertisement, her careful syllables soothing away the last of Coco’s sudden rage.
Through the disfigured screen, Magdalena smiled on her daughter, her eyes sparkling with warmth, kindness, and love. Coco drew her knees to her chest and wept for the loss of that warmth, for all the years she had been forced to live without her mother’s love. Never in her life had she understood her abandonment. In the quiet recesses of her mind she replayed the rumors she had overheard of drug use, abusive boyfriends, and an unrelenting paparazzi. How long had she clung to these rumors as the real reasons for her mother’s neglect? How long had she forgiven Magdalena for every missed Christmas and forgotten birthday? Through rage and confusion, she had hidden her misery behind the belief that something terrible had come between them.
Staring up at the broken screen, Coco could no longer live with the lie that their separation was an unfathomable act of God. Slowly she allowed herself to recognize what had been so obvious for so long.
As the commercial died, Coco understood that Magdalena had simply left her.
Karen returned Bebe three hours later exhausted but peculiarly pleasant. She didn’t run, scream, kick, or demand anything from Coco. Instead Bebe simply went to her room and began to make a pile of toys on the carpet next to her crib. Coco rested against the door frame and watched.
The things Bebe loved best sat piled on the floor, creating a pyramid of everything she considered precious.
“Coco play,” Bebe yawned. She added a plastic bug she had found at the park.
Coco crossed her ankles, sinking down on the floor opposite Bebe and her pile. She didn’t play. For Bebe it was enough that she was there, watching; after all, the child knew what needed to be done. Maybe this is what everyone does, Coco thought while she watched her baby sister add a pacifier next to the big green plastic grasshopper. Maybe we all build pyramids out of the things we love – only we call them homes, hobbies, careers…. When examining her own life by these standards, Coco realized her pyramid would be very small.
Coco slid deeper into depression with each conclusion she reached. Before Tia, before Bebe, she had been empty, finding joy in small insignificant things such as the arrival of a new Vogue or Bazaar. She had never before hurt the way she did now. Shaking her head, she tried to focus on Bebe and the moment, but her mind immediately strayed to the memory of Magdalena’s face staring down at her from the ravaged flat screen.
I loved my mother. I still love her and always will, but is the pain of being left and forgotten worth the few years I had with her? Perhaps if she had never known Magdalena, she never would have wept for her, never missed her, and her life could have been bearable. Now nothing in life seemed certain – everything was transitory and fading.
Coco wiped away her tears while she watched her sister play. She realized that someday even she would go; that Bebe, like Tia and Magdalena, was impermanent. Quietly, Bebe took Coco’s hand placing it firmly at the top of the pile. Startled by the action, Coco couldn’t fail to understand its significance. The baby had put her at the top of her pyramid. In that moment, Coco knew she would never do anything to jeopardize her place in Bebe’s world again.
Without Tia’s mothering hand to organize them, the two sisters fell back into their old sleeping habits. Every moment with Bebe felt suddenly fragile, bittersweet, and fleeting. Bebe fell peacefully asleep in the crook of her sister’s arm while Coco slept without rest, wading alone through the darkness in her mind. Depression crushed in from all sides, gnawing at her in sleep as it took the form of a dream too troubling to be believed.
The nightmare began with feelings of despair, loss, and futility. Coco stood alone in a shadowy open air garage, thirty stories above the earth. Luxury cars painted in primary colors sat in silent rows around her, their beautiful curves blurred by the screaming wind that tore at her hair and clothes, deafening her while whipping tears from her eyes.
Over the din, Coco heard a high sweet little laugh. She recognized it only when a dash of pink moved in the peripheral of her wind-stung eyes. When she shifted her gaze, it was gone. Further in the distance Coco saw it again, black-brown hair and the color pink coupled with the laugh. Bebe was playing a game, hiding behind the cars just out of sight.
“Bebe!” Coco called but the wind stole the name from her lips the moment it was spoken.
Coco ran to the end of the garage, to the spot where Bebe had stood only moments before. She blinked back tears as she scanned the garage looking for the baby who appeared on her left, a grin of ecstatic delight spread across her little face. Coco knew that grin; it was the come and get me grin.
“No,” Coco ordered, trying to make herself heard over the wind. Bebe’s grin broadened. She spun around, running to the far end of the garage toward an elevator door that hadn’t existed moments earlier. It stood at the far end of the building, its red paint grimy with exhaust and age. A large button glowed to its right, illuminating one arrow which pointed down.
Bebe ran blindly, too filled with the joy of her game to stop or think. In less than a second the toddler reached the door, her small palm hitting the glowing button while she turned to face Coco. The elevator chimed, the door slid open, and Bebe’s joyful grin grew mischievous. Raising her left foot, she stepped back into the empty shaft.
Coco screamed as she ran forward into the blackness, her outstretched fingers grazing Bebe’s hand as the child fell, disappearing end over end into the bottomless blackness.
“Breakfast,” a voice called into the silence, jerking Coco awake. A shivering full-body ache, stiff joints, and sweat soaked bedding told her she was ill. Every part of her body hurt.
Coco shivered in the 72-degree room, the darkened windows restraining the sunlight, maintaining the constant gloom that characterized #2.
“Breakfast,” the voice called again.
Bebe rolled onto her side, pressing her fists into the mattress to raise her head. She moved to a crawling position before slithering backward over the edge of the mattress. Coco watched her sister rappel down the side of the bed, using the sheets like a climber’s rope, her eyes still half closed from sleep. As always, Bebe managed a perfect landing before setting off at a steady trot to the kitchen.
“Tia!” Bebe squealed with delight.
Coco rolled onto her side and pulled the blankets up over her head.
Ten minutes later Tia poked her head into her room. “I’ve made breakfast.”
“So you said.” Coco pulled a pillow over her head and ignored her housekeeper. She had missed the old woman so much the day before that now she was angry with her for leaving.
“You okay?” Tia watched Coco sink low under the covers and disappear.
There was no answer. Coco didn’t feel she owed Tia a response, not when the woman could disappear as easily as a curling twist of smoke in a Chicago wind. Tia closed the door as Coco pressed her face into the pillow and tried not to cry.
Almost an hour later Coco got up to run shakily to the bathroom. She hadn’t eaten in so long that there was nothing to throw up. She gagged on misery until she could only crawl, her body so choked with bile that every muscle ached and she passed out.
“She’s in here.” Tia’s voice echoed through the fog in Coco’s head. “I can’t lift her. That’s why I called you.”
The man walked forward but stopped, his cheap black vinyl shoes only inches from Coco’s face. She lay curled in a ball on the floor, half in, half out of her bathroom. The man hesitated before stepping over her. Moments later she felt her shoulders lifted as the man pushed his arms through hers, pulling her to a limp standing position.
“Wish my wife was this light,” the man commented when he had settled Coco on the mattress. Coco recognized the voice; it was Benny.
“You shouldn’t,” Tia scolded. “I doubt this child’s eaten a thing since the day before yesterday.” Tia pulled the blankets up, tucking them gently around Coco’s shivering body.
“Stomach flu’s going around,” Benny said, as he walked from the room.
“Stomach flu,” Tia muttered, her voice edged with doubt.
The miserable illness that gripped Coco had a teasing essence that toyed with her memories, painting the lonely insignificance of her life on a mental canvas to be jeered at and ridiculed. Faces smiled through half-forgotten memories: Magdalena laughed while a dark eyed boy stood crying at the door. The boy looked familiar but Coco couldn’t remember his name. He had dark brown eyes and curling black hair. Before she could comfort him, he was gone, leaving her alone to be eaten by the darkness which fed on her. The darkness caused the lonely ache in her chest to expand until the vomiting returned in the form of dry heaves.
Tia held Coco in a sitting position, forcing a blue bucket into her lap. Nothing came up as long as the grief remained lodged.
“Cry it out,” Tia urged, patting Coco hard on the back. “Just cry it out.”
“Go to hell,” Coco growled, her voice sounding hard and cruel. With the back of her hand Coco hit the bucket, sending it flying across the room. She shrugged Tia off, giving in to the convulsive shivers which overtook her.
Thankfully Bebe was not there to witness Coco’s illness. Mila and Karen had arrived that morning to take Bebe to #1 to play.
“Stomach flu,” the doctor said. “Give her as much fluid as she can keep down. If she’s not better in twenty-four hours take her to the ER.”
Tia bit her lip but was silent.
“So I left,” Tia said, staring down at Coco an hour later, “and you lost Bebe for a little while. You’re okay, I’m back, and Bebe is safe. What’s this all about?”
“Stomach flu,” Coco replied obstinately, not looking at Tia.
“I know, I know, it just seems like something different. It seems like… grief.”
“What do I have to grieve about?”
“A lot of things,” Tia soothed, her worn, cold hand coming to rest on the girl’s arm. Coco was running a fever and her face was flushed. Tia watched her for some time, concerned.
