Chapter 5 - The Bathroom Break I Used to Hear Her Clearly
The dessert plates had come out and nobody was really eating. My sister-in-law had set a strawberry cake on the island and the candles around it made the pink frosting look too bright. Lily was on my lap, her legs tucked under her, picking at a loose thread on my blue dress. She was calm now, the way she got after a scare, quiet and watchful.
Vanessa was across the room by the mantel. She had one hand low on her belly again, like she was holding the pose. Mark stood a few feet from her with a small plate he hadn't touched. He kept looking at the hallway, then away.
Lily leaned back against my chest and whispered, "Potty."
I nodded like it was nothing. "Let's go, baby."
I carried her down the hall past the closed closet door. I didn't look at it. I could feel the black lever handle in my peripheral vision anyway, still and shut. The hallway bathroom light was warm and buzzed a little when I flipped it on.
Inside, I set her down and locked the door behind us out of habit. The fan came on. She did what she needed to do while I stood by the sink and washed my hands just to have something to do. I didn't ask her anything. I'd promised myself I wouldn't.
When she was done, she climbed onto the closed toilet lid to reach the sink. I lifted her so she could wash her hands. The soap was the foamy kind she liked and she smiled a little at the bubbles. For a second she was just three again.
"Can we go to my room a minute?" she asked. "I want bunny."
"Yeah," I said. "Let's get bunny."
Her bedroom was at the end of the hall. Night-light on, bed unmade from that afternoon, stuffed bunny face-down by the pillow. I picked it up and handed it to her and sat down on the rug with her. I didn't turn on the big light. The hallway glow came in under the door.
She held bunny tight and looked at my stomach, then at her own. She didn't say anything for a while. I waited. The house hummed around us, glasses and low voices from the living room.
Then she stood up and patted her own tummy with her palm. "She did like this," she said.
My chest tightened. I kept my voice even. "Like what, baby?"
Lily hit her own belly softly with the side of her hand, not hard, just a quick tap. Then she pointed toward the door, toward the hall. "Mommy, she hit it," she said again, matter-of-fact, like she was repeating what she'd seen so I would understand it right.
I didn't correct her. I didn't supply words. "I see you," I said.
She walked to my bedroom door and pointed again, past it, in the direction of the living room and the hall beyond. She frowned, trying to get the order right. "In the closet," she added.
I nodded slowly. "Okay."
She came back and sat close to me. She pulled at the hem of her dress, the light floral one with the bow in back, and smoothed it out. Then she said it very quietly, almost to bunny, "The little thing has flowers."
Something shifted in my head when she said it that second time. In the living room it had sounded strange and scary, like an animal or something alive. Here, in her dim room with her toys around her, her voice was literal. She was describing a surface.
"What kind of flowers, Lily?" I asked before I could stop myself. I kept it light.
She shrugged. She touched her dress. "Like this. Little." She rubbed her fingers together like she felt fabric.
I stared at her hand on her dress. Not a living thing. A thing with a flower print. A soft thing, maybe. Something you could fold or carry.
I felt cold and then guilty for feeling relieved. An object was something I could understand. An object didn't breathe in a closet.
"You saw it where?" I asked. I hated asking, but I needed to know if she'd actually been near that hall.
She pointed again toward the door. "When I went to play," she said.
I pulled her into my lap. She settled against me, bunny squished between us. Her hair smelled like cake and shampoo, and the pink clip was slipping a little. I fixed it.
May you like
"Thank you for telling me," I said.
She yawned. The tension had gone out of her shoulders. She believed she'd explained it and that I would handle the rest of it. I held her a minute longer and listened to the grown-up voices down the hall, Vanessa's laugh a little too loud, and I started counting backward in my mind to figure out exactly when Lily had slipped away before the announcement.
