You are three, and have lately turned your teddies into school pupils. I have bought you a small chalkboard and an exercise book of squared paper, which I’ve made into a class register. I’ve written down the teddies’ names in a column, but you’re dexterous enough with a pencil to mark everyone in and out. Your current favorite pupil, though he’s naughty, is Maurice, a plush monkey in dungarees and a flat cap. I’ve invented a funny voice for him.
Your sister was expelled nearly two years ago, and because Greg has resisted enrolling her anywhere farther afield, I am supposedly conducting lessons at home for her. The reality is that she does what she wants, moving through the house and garden, and lately beyond its boundaries, like a semi-feral cat. If I’m brutally honest, I prefer it when she’s out. When she’s here we do nothing but circle each other, hackles up. It’s exhausting.
It’s mid-afternoon, and I’m in the kitchen, trying to work out why the fridge light is flickering, when it dawns on me that the house is too quiet, that it’s been too long since I’ve heard you moving about upstairs. That I haven’t seen Élodie for hours.
I crash through your bedroom door but you’re not there and neither is she. Élodie has recently taken to hitching lifts from the main road to go and see friends she won’t tell us about, disappearing for hours without explanation. She’s probably been gone awhile already, her thumb out to the cars heading south to the sea, hair and dress billowing in the hand-dryer-hot breeze. Probably.
I’m about to leave, my mind already frantically listing other places to search: the garden, the pool, the road. But then I hear a tiny whimper and freeze. For a second I think it’s coming from one of your stuffed animals that are, as usual, stacked high on the bed. But then I hear it again and realize it’s coming from the tall cupboard in the corner.
I fling back the door to find you cowering at the back behind a couple of bags of old clothes, your knees brought up to your chin and tears spilling over at the sight of me. Silent tears, though, because she’s tied a silk scarf of mine around your mouth, tight enough to leave marks. I wrestle it off, wringing wet with tears and spit and snot, and resist the urge to tear it into strips. Your face is flushed with panic and from being in the airless cupboard, but you also have two bright pink circles drawn on your cheeks. A different pink, darker like peonies, stains your lips. Spidery lashes are drawn above and below your eyes, each one a black line two inches long. It’s then that I notice the felt-tips scattered across the floor.
You don’t have any dolls. You don’t like them. Camille sent an expensive one from Paris for your third birthday, which I quietly put away in the same cupboard because, standing only half a head shorter than you, it terrified you. It takes me a moment to comprehend what I’m seeing because I haven’t thought about, let alone seen, that doll for months, but Élodie has stripped you of your usual T-shirt and shorts and dressed you in Claudette the doll’s scratchy nylon dress. It’s too small and the elasticized capped sleeves have made red rings on the delicate skin of your upper arms, to match the gag marks on your face. It’s the same around your neck.
It’s as I lift you out that I spy Claudette there, at the back, and of course she’s in your clothes. She smiles fixedly at me and the thought of you being trapped in there with her, when she frightens you so much, makes fury sear through me like acid.
The felt-tip takes a long time to scrub off. As we sit together in the bathroom, you and I—Greg absent as usual and Élodie God knows where—your skin sore from all the rubbing and the salt in the tears that continue to course down your cheeks, you tell me again and again.
“Élodie said I was Claudette. Élodie said I was Claudette now and Claudette would be me. That I would have to stay in the dark.”
Back in your room, I pull out the doll and notice what I didn’t before, in the gloom of the wardrobe. Her face is scribbled on with red felt-tip, and stuffed in your shorts pocket is Maurice, his small plush body ripped open to reveal the white stuffing inside, his head lolling where it’s been half torn off. I only realize you’ve followed me in from the bathroom when you begin to wail.
A couple of weeks later I venture into Élodie’s room to change the bed and find a roll of used film on her bedside table. She still uses the pink camera Greg bought her, the only gift that ever stuck.
When they’re developed, about half of them turn out to be of Élodie. I have no idea who’s taken them, though I guess it’s a boy, from the way she’s smiling and pouting. She’s always preferred men, and the way men look at her makes me queasy—not only that they do it, but her precocious ease in wielding that power.
Élodie has been in a hippie phase for months now, not caring that she is years out of date with her embroidered smocks, her hair hanging to her waist, her dirty feet. The look fits her and she’s stuck to it longer than any that preceded it—the chameleon that has found the perfect colors in which to hide. The soft lines and fabric make a clever disguise, just as her physical grace has always masked her iron determination. Sometimes she makes me think of those Manson girls that were all over the news the year she was born: flowers woven in their hair, drifting on the music, sloe eyes opening to reveal the void.
The other half of the photos are of you, dressed as Claudette the doll. In some you’re posed on the bed with your beloved teddies, the felt-tip already marring your little face. Others were taken after she pushed you into the cupboard, like an unwanted toy. Anyone looking at them would know instantly that you were afraid, your pupils dilated, your bottom lip drooping. You’re holding fast to your monkey in all of them, and I wonder when she tore it out of your hand, and whether she destroyed it in front of you. I wonder when she tied the gag tight around your mouth.
The next day, when Greg returns from his trip, I go to my bedside cabinet, where I’ve hidden the photos inside a book, only to find they’re gone. She’s taken them, probably burnt them. And though they might have been the proof I have been subconsciously looking for—the proof that will finally force Greg to admit what we both know—most of me is simply glad they no longer exist.