Little Girl Gone: The can’t-put-it-down psychological thriller. Alexandra Burt

loved how she studied my face, trying to memorize it, as if I was all the comfort and love she needed. She’d wake up in my arms, open her eyes, and frantically search for my likeness, immediately settling down when she recognized me.

      Mia’s cries were distinct, one seemed to complain about a minor discomfort, like a sock too tight, a jacket too warm. There was the tired cry, fussy, drawn out, telling me she was ready to take a nap. Then there was a more relentless cry that seemed to signal hunger. Nothing a bottle couldn’t fix. And then, at about three months old, another cry emerged. An abrupt cry, a cry that seemed to signal pain, as if stuck with a needle, a cry that made my heart pound in my chest, tuning out everything else. All that remained was her wailing and my pounding heart. And she suddenly shunned containment, something that had calmed her before, and protested every time I swaddled her. It seemed as if there were wires inside of her every time I wrapped her in a blanket; fists clenched, back arched, muscles tensed, limbs stiffened.

       Need to make a fussy baby feel safe? How about the age old tradition of mimicking the condition in the mother’s womb? All you need is a blanket and a clever folding technique.

      Her abrupt cry was not a mere request, but an urgent demand to fix whatever bothered her. Mia put more energy into her demands, cried more loudly, fed more voraciously, and protested more forcefully. If I didn’t respond to her needs immediately, she’d fall apart, come undone.

      She seemed to feel deeply, and therefore she reacted with fierce power when her needs were being ignored. I went into overdrive to respond immediately and I became obsessive in trying to prevent her from getting upset. She extracted every bit of energy from me, and I willingly complied, but still, she wanted more.

      I gave her all I had, yet something had gone amiss, had gone awry. I was somehow removed from the person who had entered the hospital and emerged with a baby in her arms, as if I had left one person behind and had returned home another. I woke up just as tired as I had gone to sleep and blamed it on not getting enough rest. Every waking hour was a never-ending stretch of time with the volume turned up. Chunks of sleep broken up into pieces that left me exhausted. Every day posed a new nightmare; not waking up when Mia is in distress. Jack too busy to help on the weekend. The pediatrician administering the wrong vaccine. I will feed her too often or not enough. Even though I went on with my life, took care of Mia, sang to her, gave her a bath, something felt horribly wrong. What had happened to the euphoric love I initially felt? Why wasn’t I happier? Who was this woman living inside of me?

      Every morning when I woke up, before reality closed in on me, after a peaceful second or two, a dank layer of sadness wrapped itself around me. I felt as if I was playing a role and never was that more apparent than when I met other moms at the park. They seemed more cheerful, happier and content to be mothers than I ever was or ever could be. And even so, I could have adopted their story as mine, could have pretended to be one of them. I decided to accept my lack of enthusiasm as a personal character flaw, and make up for it in other ways.

      One day during breastfeeding, Mia dozed off and unlatched. She had long unlocked her lips, but her tongue still made clicking sounds. I reached for my camera, snapped images of blue veins running across her eyelids, too small for even a thread to fit inside of them. There was a larger vein by her temple, like a widening channel of a river nearing the sea, its currents waiting to be met by the tides.

      My camera, small enough to operate with one hand, turned into my new obsession. I photographed Mia from every possible angle, perspectives of feet, toes tucked under, spread apart, soft tiny nails, bending easily, and elfin hands grasping small objects. My lips seemed to sink into her, her limbs were malleable and soft, yet the core of her body remained inaccessible to me. I attempted to capture the part of our relationship that remained inadequate, and though our bodies connected - ears folded like rose petals moving up and down as she drank from my breast, pink lips curling around the nipple – we remained strangers.

      I took close-ups of breast milk running down her cheek, towards her ear, as if the amount of milk had just fallen short of reaching its intended destination. I took shots of my engorged breasts, drops of nourishment trailing from my cracked and sore nipples.

      The camera flash irritated her, sent her into a frenzy, up a notch from her usual agitated state. She cried and wouldn’t stop as if my attempts to capture her likeness repulsed her somehow. I rocked her, allowed her head to rest on my chest. Nothing consoled her, not my songs, my gentle voice, not my nipple, nothing. She cried every single day and nothing I ever did soothed her.

      I sang to her, Sleep, baby, sleep, your father tends the sheep, your mother shakes the dreamland tree, and from it fall sweet dreams for thee, Sleep, baby, sleep.

      In what twisted universe is a mother incapable of consoling her own child? How it must feel to live in this tiny helpless body with such obvious discomfort and your mother just looks on, incapable of easing the suffering, inept to give you what you need. It was undeniably my fault. My way of making up for my shortcoming as a less than mediocre mother was by going from doctor to doctor and the same diagnosis was thrown at me as if I ought to know what to do with it: Colic. Otherwise healthy. Cause unknown. No obvious reason.

      While her constant state of crying seemed acceptable, Jack became increasingly worried about the bills and out-of-network doctors; ‘Colic,’ he said. ‘They all told you the same thing. A lot of babies are colicky. It’ll be gone before we know it.’

      Jack’s objections were logical to say the least; after all he seemed so natural, capable of bouncing her on his knee as he studied case files, putting her to sleep within minutes, never a single sound of fury directed towards him. But his logic fell on deaf ears.

      ‘I want to take her to another hospital. Maybe there are some more tests they can do? If I can’t get a referral, we’ll have to pay out of pocket.’

      I saw pity in his eyes but at the mention of money Jack stiffened. Ever so slightly, but I saw it. The way his spine straightened, his eyes narrowed. I was afraid to mention that my credit cards were maxed out.

      ‘Give it another month or two,’ he added on his way out the door, ‘she’ll be fine.’

      I nodded, even more exhausted than I had been minutes earlier, as if that were even possible. Two months, that was 60 days and 60 nights.

      ‘You know you’re nuts, don’t you?’ Jack said and slammed the door shut.

      One morning, a Saturday, too early to get up and too late to fall back asleep, I reached beside me and found Jack’s side of the bed abandoned.

      I heard a voice that almost made me panic, a high-pitched babble voice unknown to me. I got up and went to Mia’s room. There was Jack, holding Mia, a five-month-old grouchy bundle of anxieties with fingers moving around like an orchestra conductor, under her armpits.

      ‘Why won’t you sleep?’ Jack said.

      Then he switched over to a whiney, high-pitched voice. I don’t want to. I want to be awake so I can look around.

      ‘How come you can talk?’ Jack pretended to be confused.

      I can do anything, daddy. Jack, mimicking a conversation, impersonating Mia, switching from his regular tone to a squeaky voice.

      ‘Why won’t you settle down, little girl? Something on your mind?’ Jack’s facial expression was sheer concern.

      Mia’s arms were flailing, her legs kicking.

       Nothing wrong with me, daddy.

      ‘I know there’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve been fed, you’ve been changed, you’ve been burped. No need to be fussy.’ Jack then rocked her gently in the cradle of his arm, the crook of his elbow a perfect fit. ‘There you go, princess, that’s better isn’t it?’

       Much better, daddy.

      ‘Just relax, go back to sleep. Mommy doesn’t like it when you cry so much.’

      I’d go one, sometimes two days without closing my eyes. When I did sleep, I crashed.