35 months, one week
dawn is breaking over the east. The horizon over the schoolhouse lights up pink and brown in a tie-dyed tapestry of factory emissions and ozone. It has been one week since his third birthday, and I am completely unmoored. I look at him and know he is changed. We both are.
Riya returned home from the airport to find me unconscious on the chaise lounge in the backyard. The blood on my shoulder had caked and dried to my pajamas in a stiff coating. When she shook me awake, I tried to run back to the schoolhouse, sputtering disconnected words about finding Rudy. She assured me he was sleeping peacefully in his room and caught me before I fell onto the cobblestones.
For almost a week, I slept and lived in the in-between spaces of awake and unconsciousness. I dreamed of my mother pulling the plaster from the walls of my room, revealing staggeringly thick root systems that pulsated like veins and boomed a rhythm of heartbeats in my dream. From them burst tiny white leaves the color of maggots, covered in minuscule thorns that dripped venomous red sap. I was pulled into nightmares that opened up into new ones like a never-ending set of Russian nesting dolls.
When I came to, Rudy spoke to me, and anyone else who would listen, for that matter. Almost overnight, he began speaking fully and in complete sentences. I knew I should feel grateful, but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that he just wasn’t him anymore. I tried to hide the paranoia (plaster chunks in a Revco bag), but Riya saw through me.
“It’s like you want something to be wrong with him, Eloise. It’s weird. It just took him longer to start talking. He’s fine.” She drew out the last word with annoyed emphasis.
“I know, I just…” Miss him. I struggle to say the last two words out loud.
He sits in the middle of a scattered pile of birthday toys. Smiling, he brings his new Paw Patrol toy to show Riya. I hold my arms out for a hug and he ducks, returning to the mess of plastic on the floor. The new set of Safari Limited dogs lies untouched under a table.
“No, Mama Elle, I playing paw troll now,” he says.
I give him a tight smile and hide my tears. I know I should be happy. He was playing with his toys and not spending hours arranging them without looking up to notice the world around him. But the Mama Elle killed me. I hear his baby voice calling from the past. It is my heartbeat. Maum, Maum, Maum.
When those same words wake me later that night, I smile in the dark.
“Maummaummaum…”
Rudy’s voice carries faintly through the vents. His old voice. The hardwood floor seeps cold through my thick socks as I pad into the hall to check on him.
His room is dark except for the night-light. He sleeps soundly in his bed, his tiny hands drawn up to his neck. He reminds me of my baby—my sweet, singing baby who loves sounds more than words. Who is both distant and inexorably attached to me by the golden soul-cord. He is the island and the sea between.
“Hi, Maummaummaum. See Go?”
The voice comes from far away, but not from the tiny body asleep in the bed. I resist the urge to place my ear against the plaster. There is nothing in the walls. There is no one in the walls.
I slip out the back door, stockinged feet soaking up dew from the damp grass. The air flickers around the honeysuckle as I approach. I hear his voice, floating from behind the fence, calling to me. I stop at the crux of the crisscrossing branches, drooping heavily with blooms. There, in front of the gate, was a perfect fairy circle of dog figurines. My baby is here. Just beyond the toys, a dark recess widens up between the branches. The honeysuckle gate opens and Rudy’s voice floats through, my heart twisting in recognition.
“See Go? Hi, hi, Maum-Maum-Maum. Om ear, Maum.”
I hesitate, feeling the pulsating pain that still radiates from the wound on my hip. Since that night, a new Rudy appeared, looking to all the world like my baby boy, but nevertheless, not my baby boy at all. I turn, looking back at the house into his bedroom window. He isn’t there, not anymore. I step into the circle and cross the gate.
“Rudy, baby. It’s mommy,” I call.
“Hi, Maum-Maum.”
I pull back the plaster and step through the wall.