BEATRIX SAID SHE’D be right back, that she needed to lower the blind in the other room so they would have privacy. Hanna found a puzzle of a real-life castle and brought it over to the table. A minute later Beatrix came in and shut the door.
“I’m glad to see you.” Beatrix had a nice voice, like honey and daisies. She got paper and a plastic box from the cart against the wall, and sat near her in one of the little chairs.
“You’ll have lots of time to work on a puzzle when I talk with your mom and dad. Do you think you and I could do something together for a few minutes?”
Hanna liked that she used the word “together.” Beatrix had a very nice way of making Hanna feel like she listened to and understood her, and without stupid questions or flash cards. She reminded Hanna of a character she’d liked in a book, who was the grandmother of the world and all its natural creatures. Sometimes the old woman in the book looked like a fairy godmother with smiling dimples, and sometimes she looked like the waves of the ocean, or a tree with beckoning limbs. She knew everything and saw the goodness in everyone. Beatrix made her feel like a chest filled with shiny treasure, so she nodded and pushed the puzzle box away.
“It looks like you hurt your wrist. Are you okay?”
Hanna nodded. She didn’t even think of it as Daddy’s fault anymore. In that moment he was a puppet, with Mommy yanking his strings.
“I’m thinking you all had a pretty dramatic weekend.”
Big nod.
“I hope it wasn’t too scary?”
Hanna tilted her head a little and let it wobble while she rolled her eyes. Beatrix smiled, and then Hanna smiled because she made Beatrix smile.
“Are you too brave to get scared?”
Big noddy nod.
“Well, here’s what I was thinking.” Beatrix laid out some pieces of construction paper in different colors and popped open the plastic box, which was filled with crayons and pencils. “I was hoping you could draw me some pictures. Like, can you draw me a picture of Mommy?”
Hanna scrumbled up her face, confused. She pointed to the other room.
“I know, she’s right in there—and you’re probably thinking I already know what she looks like, right?”
Hanna nodded. Beatrix was super smart.
“But you know what: sometimes people see different things. And I want to see how you see your mommy.”
Oh yes, so so smart. Beatrix understood that Mommy always wore a mask; she wanted to know what was beneath it. Hanna grabbed a piece of red paper and a black crayon. She couldn’t draw people very well—in spite of Mommy’s helpful lesson—so she just drew her face. Fat blobby head. Mean little eyes. A snarl. Some teeth sticking out. Then, so Beatrix couldn’t mistake it, she drew a big triangle hat with a wide brim and viciously colored it in. She pushed the paper around so it faced Beatrix.
“Is that a witch’s hat?” she asked.
Yup yup yup.
“Is Mommy a witch?”
Bingo!
“Now, she told me about Marie-Anne—I thought Marie-Anne was the witch.”
Nod.
“And she was helping you?”
Yes. But. She tap tap tapped on Mommy’s hat with her black crayon.
“But Mommy is a witch also?”
Hanna made her eyes go big and round and she nodded slowly so Beatrix would understand the gravity of the situation.
“Is Mommy a scary witch?”
Oh yes. Hanna took up a pencil and used it like a wand, trying to show Beatrix how Mommy cast spells. She made her face pinched and mean and jabbed with the pencil-wand.
“Is that a wand? Does Mommy cast spells?”
Instead of answering, Hanna grabbed up another piece of paper—a light-blue one—and used a darker blue crayon to try to draw Daddy. She made him with long legs so Beatrix would recognize him, and scribbled a beard around his chin.
“Is that Daddy?”
Nod. She pointed to the picture of Mommy, then thrust out the pencil-wand, banging it on Daddy’s picture.
“Did Mommy cast a spell on Daddy?”
Yes!
“Oh my goodness, that sounds very serious. Why did Mommy do that?”
With a red crayon, she drew a wobbly heart in the middle of Daddy’s chest. Then she put her hands, one on top of the other, over her own chest. She pointed from Daddy’s crayoned heart to her own real one, back and forth.
“Daddy loves you. He loves you very much.”
Hanna pointed from her heart to his.
“And you love him.”
Big nod.
“Hanna, I just want to say, you are doing such an excellent job of expressing yourself.”
Grin.
Explaining the next part was a bit harder. She pantomimed the love she and Daddy had, making her hand move back and forth between their two hearts. Then, frustrated and angry, she picked up Mommy’s wand and slashed with it like a sword, cutting the love she shared with Daddy.
Beatrix frowned. Hanna made the slashing gesture again, waiting for her to understand.
“Do you think your mom wants to stop your dad from loving you?”
Hanna’s body flopped with relief. She hopped up and gave Beatrix a kiss on the cheek.
“It feels good for someone to understand, doesn’t it?”
So so yes.
“I know you’re not quite ready, but someday, after you get over some hard things, some other things might become easier. Like, it might be hard to become someone who talks and interacts, but when you do, you might be rewarded by how other people respond, and how good it feels for other people to understand.”
Hanna shrugged, not quite able to imagine herself blah-blahing back and forth like everyone else. And still a little afraid that her most important words might yet come out as dead bugs, frightening nonsense that would earn her nothing but strange looks. She folded her foot under her and sat back down.
“So let’s get back to your drawings. Can you tell me why you think Mommy doesn’t want Daddy to love you anymore?”
Hanna picked up Mommy’s drawing in one hand and Daddy’s in the other. She had them face each other, then pressed them together.
Beatrix looked confused.
Hanna grabbed up a piece of yellow paper and a purple crayon and drew a little stick figure with two ponytails. She pointed to herself, then the picture.
“That’s you.”
Right. She turned over the pictures of Mommy and Daddy so they were face up. Picked up a pencil while pointing at Mommy. And cast a spell by tapping it onto Daddy. She picked up both pictures again and smooshed them into each other, twisting them a little like they were smoochy smoochy. She puckered up her lips to make it clear. Snatching up the picture of herself, she tore it into big messy chunks and swept them onto the floor. She made Mommy and Daddy’s pictures move like they were walking—walking away from the pieces of her scattered on the floor.
“So you think … Mommy cast a spell on Daddy. You don’t think she loves you?”
Big no.
“And the spell makes Daddy not love you anymore. And the two of them go off together, and leave you behind. They don’t want you?”
Sad no.
“That must feel very bad. I can imagine how sad I would feel.”
Sighing yes.
“So if I’m understanding everything right … Then you’re trying to hurt Mommy so Daddy will always love you?”
A nod. A shake. Not hurt. She drew a big X over Mommy the Witch’s face. Then slowly tore the paper down the middle.
“You want Mommy gone? Dead?”
It was necessary.
“You spend a lot of time with her—do you think you would miss her if she wasn’t around?”
Nope. She pointed at Daddy’s picture.
“You’d have Daddy then, all to yourself.”
Exactly.
“I want to thank you for sharing all of this with me. I’m glad you trust me.”
Beatrix was her second most favoritest person. And she understood everything. Without words. Hanna thought of Mommy—the way she liked to draw, and buy her coloring stuff for presents. Had Mommy known all along that pictures could be substitutes for words? Hanna tapped a finger on one of her half-grown-in teeth, considering the possibility of creating her own language out of colorful splotches. She could teach it to Daddy, and they could communicate that way.
“It’s important to me that you know that I care about you, and I only want to help you, and I’ll try to do what’s best for you. Okay?”
Hanna felt all singing and ringing inside. Because Beatrix knew what was best for her, and maybe with the help of a big person like her, they could finally make Mommy go away.