Julia's Daughters

I stand there for a second, holding Haley by the wrist, staring at her forearm that’s scarred with bright red horizontal welts. I feel like I’m slogging through mud, trying to get my brain to register what it is I’m seeing. I think I know what I’m seeing. My mothering instinct, born the moment that Haley took her first breath, tells me what I’m seeing. But I don’t want to believe it. I want to believe that it’s a mistake. A misunderstanding.

My bright, obstinate, stronger-than-I’ll-ever-be daughter could not be self-mutilating.

I fight my tears. Choke them back. Haley is trying to get away from me, but I won’t let her go. I won’t ever let her go again. “Did you do this to yourself?” I ask. Why am I even saying this? I already know the answer. “Haley, why have you done this?”

Her eyes are full of tears. There’s black eye makeup running down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mom,” she keeps repeating, almost like a mantra.

I touch my finger very lightly to a smear of dried blood on her arm. I have no idea why. To be sure it’s real?

It’s real.

A part of me wants to tear off the wad of white gauze—taped down with what looks like the packing tape. Packing tape?—but I’m afraid to do it. “Haley,” I whisper again.

“Let me go.” She fights me, trying to break free. The way she did when she was a toddler. Haley was always a disobedient little girl. Spirited, I used to say. I remember, as a young mother, laughing about her defiance. I used to make jokes about how it would come in handy someday, a rebellious woman in what is still a man’s world.

What I would give now for a little submission.

I grasp her wrist with one hand and her arm at the elbow with the other. “Stop, Haley. You’re going to hurt yourself or me. Stop!” I say it so loudly that my voice echoes inside my head.

But she stops.

“You’re cutting yourself?” I search her black-tear-stained face. I can barely breathe. But I have to breathe, for Haley. For the beloved, insolent child of my body, of my heart. Because at this moment, I realize that no matter what she’s done, she’s still my child of my body and my heart. Worth no less than my Caitlin. Loved no less than my Caitlin, who I’ll never hold in my arms again, the way I’m holding Haley now.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I press. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

She turns her face away as if she can’t stand to look at mine. “And say what?” She presses her lips together, lips devoid of any color.

She’s so thin. So pale. When did this happen. How?

“You wouldn’t have heard me anyway. No one hears me anymore.” She whispers the last words.

I let go of her arm just long enough to throw my arms around her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, hugging her skinny body to my own. Bare bones to bare bones. “I’m so sorry.”

“Let go of me!”

She pushes against me, thrashing to get away again. She fights me so hard that I lose my balance. I go down sideways on one knee to keep from falling, but I pull her down with me. I won’t let her go.

I guess the sensation of hitting the tile floor startles her badly because she stops fighting me. Sitting down hard on my butt, I shift so I can lean my back against the island, my daughter still in my arms. “It’s okay,” I murmur, smoothing her hair with my free hand, still holding on to her with the other. “How long has this been going on? How long have you been doing this, Haley?” My voice is shaky, but I’m not falling apart. I won’t fall apart.

I won’t fall apart because I know deep inside that to fall apart would mean losing my child. A second child. And I’m not going to do it. I’m not, damn it. I’m going to pick up the pieces. I’m going to gather the broken shards of who I was and . . . and put them back together. I know I won’t be the same person I was before Caitlin died; I can’t possibly be. That Julia is gone and turned to ashes with my daughter’s body. But something deep inside me tells me I can be someone again. I don’t know who . . . but definitely a mother. Haley’s mother. Izzy’s mother.

I rock side to side and Haley lowers her head to my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” I murmur.

A sob escapes from her quivering mouth. “It’s not. It never will be. She’s dead, Mom. Caitlin’s dead.”

I keep rocking her, the way I did when she was a little girl. Haley was always falling, bumping herself. I must have bought a box of Band-Aids a week for her when she was a toddler. She was the one who broke her arm when she was six, trying to fly off the bunk beds she and Caitlin shared in our old house. She was the one who had to get three stitches under her chin when she fell off the slide at the park.

I look down at her and I can see the faint line of the scar from that tumble when she was eight. I kiss her dark head. I rock her. I make the little sounds a mother makes that only a child can understand.

I don’t know how long we sit there on the kitchen floor, me rocking my seventeen-year-old daughter in my arms as if she’s a baby. Long enough to begin to feel stiff. Long enough for Izzy to come home from her run.

My youngest walks into the house, slamming the door behind her. She slams it so hard that I want to holler, “Don’t slam the damned door!” How many times have I asked Izzy not to slam the door?

But I know it couldn’t possibly be as loud as it sounds. I’ve heard that door slam thousands of times, millions of times, in the eleven years we’ve lived in this house. For some reason, my senses seem more acute. Sounds seem louder: my breath, Haley’s, the trickle of water filling the icemaker in the refrigerator. My sense of touch is heightened; I’m more aware of the weight of Haley’s thin frame in my arms and the sensation of her hair against my cheek. I can smell the scent of her shampoo, the Downy freshness of her clothes, and even the lemon fragrance of the polish I’ve always used on the kitchen cabinets.

“Mom? What’s going on?”

I look up to see Izzy standing over us. Her face is flushed and beaded with perspiration. She’s breathing hard. She’s wearing a pair of shiny green running shorts hiked up way too high. “Mom?” Her pre-puberty-pitched voice is one beat shy of panic. “What’s wrong with her?”

Instinctively, I push Haley’s sleeve down. “Go to your room. Please, Izzy.”

She stares down at us. I still have Haley wrapped in my arms. Haley’s eyes are shut.

“Izzy,” I repeat, sharper this time. “I need you to go to your room.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Izzy sounds angry. “What did she do now?”

“Isobel Mae. Go to your room and stay in there until I come for you.” I don’t give her a chance to talk back. “Now.”

Izzy gives a huff, but thankfully, stomps off.

I take a moment to catch my breath. Haley’s loose in my arms. So relaxed that I wonder if she’s asleep. Or dead and broken. A sob rises in my throat and I choke it back. I brush a wisp of blue-black hair off her cheek and kiss the top of her head. I can hear her breathing. She’s not dead. Not dead. I kiss her temple. It’s damp from the effort of fighting me.

At least she didn’t cut her face.

I wonder where such a thought could have come from.

I have images in my head from somewhere. The Internet, most likely. Photos I stumbled on accidentally while googling self-motivation or something like that. Photos of cuts very similar in appearance to the ones on Haley’s arm, across a teenage girl’s forehead. On another girl’s cheek. Permanent scars. Scars they’ll carry for a lifetime, even if the girls manage to heal inside.

“Haley,” I breathe. “You need to tell me why you’re doing this, so I can help you.” “Haley,” I repeat when she doesn’t answer.

“No one can help me,” she says, her eyes still closed.

“We can call Dr. Pullman. We can—”

“No doctor! No doctor!” She shudders in my arms. “They make me think of that night in the ER. About lying there in that bed, knowing Caitlin was still lying in the road.”

Tears well in my eyes. I want to tell her that no one left Caitlin’s body in the street. That by the time she reached the hospital, Caitlin was there, too. Her body, at least. But my instinct warns me that telling her that won’t help. Not right now, at least.

“Haley, we have to find someone to help you. This . . . what you’re doing to yourself... You could get an infection. You could—” Kill yourself, I want to say, only I can’t say it because what if that’s what she’s trying to do?

“I’ll be all right.” She stiffens and then pulls away from me.

I let go of her. I hate to do it. But I do. Because the moment, whatever it was, has passed. And when I look into my daughter’s eyes again, I see the sulky teenager I know, not the broken child that was in my arms a minute ago.

She gets to her feet, tugging down both her sleeves, but not before I see that her right arm is, thank goodness, unmarked.

“Where are you going?” I ask, getting up off the floor. One knee hurts, as does my butt. From where I went down so hard on the tile, I suppose.

“My room.” Haley wipes at her eyes with her sleeve, smearing the black eye makeup even further. “I’m just going to my room,” she flings.

I don’t know why she’s so angry with me. Because I saw that vulnerable part of her that she’s kept so well hidden? Or is she not angry with me at all? Just with herself?

I don’t stop her. I watch her walk out of the kitchen and I reach for my cup of coffee. I take a sip. It’s cooled. I leave it on the counter and go to my room. I stand in the doorway of the bedroom, looking down the hall as I dial Ben’s cell. Izzy’s door is closed. Haley’s door is closed. Caitlin’s, too. I need to go into Caitlin’s room and start cleaning it out, I think absently.

Ben’s cell rings four times and is about to go to voice mail when he finally picks up.

“I need you to come home,” I say without preamble.

“Why? I’m right in the middle of something. What’s wrong, Jules?”

“We’ll talk about it when you get here.” I’m surprised by the strength in my voice. I don’t feel strong. “I need you to come home. Now. I don’t care what you’re doing. It has to be now.”

He’s quiet on the other end of the phone. Quiet just long enough for me to wonder if he doesn’t come, what will I do? Will I go get him? Or will I just say screw it and tackle this on my own?

For a moment, I’m not sure if I want him to come home now or not.

“I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

I exhale with relief and hang up.

Now what? I wonder. What do I do now? Do I go to Haley? Do I leave her alone for a little while? And what am I going to do long-term? How am I going to fix this?

I walk down the hall and listen at Haley’s closed door. I hear her talking. On her cell. That’s good. She’s talking to a friend. I put my hand on the doorknob, then let go. If I were Haley, I wouldn’t want me in my room right now. Too much.

I walk to Izzy’s room, tap on the door, and walk in.