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“That’s not you, Mommy, that’s me.”
My eyebrows pinch together. “Oh. But you have gorgeous red hair. Do you need pencils in a different shade of red? We can go to the craft store tomorrow.”
She shakes her head. “No, my hair was brown when I was bigger.”
I nod. “I see. And who is this little baby? Is this you when you were smaller?”
Yanking the paper from my hand, she carefully folds it and tucks it under the blanket with her. “No, that’s my baby,” she says softly, and so sadly, it makes my heart hurt. “But I lost her.” New tears squeeze from the corners of her eyes, and she wipes at them with tiny balled-up fists.
A chill ripples through me. I’m not sure how to respond to such a grave answer when she can’t possibly understand the meaning of her words.
It’s make-believe, I tell myself. She’s insanely gifted and has an incredible imagination filled with empathy. That’s a good thing.
Right?
“Time for bed,” I say, switching on the sound machine. It projects LED jumping lambs onto the ceiling while playing soft music. I bought it for her when she was just a baby. It’s always been the only thing to calm and lull her to sleep.
Placing the tattered, plush fox toy into the crook of her neck, she leans her damp cheek against it and closes her eyes.
I ache to stay here with her. To crawl under the covers with my baby, hold her tight in my arms, and watch the smiling lambs jump over the fluffy clouds. To allow the music to soothe my soul and help me find the answers to fix my child and my marriage. Me and Ben used to be happy and inseparable, but ever since Penny was born, we’ve slowly been drifting apart. As a baby, Penny seemed to struggle to bond with us and it hasn’t gotten much better. That quiet disconnect slowly trickled into our marriage. Now, we spend our days barely speaking and just going through the motions while our daughter cries every night, wanting to live somewhere else.
I feel helpless watching our happily ever after crack and crumble.
“She was at the window again,” I say as I climb into bed next to Ben. “Crying her little heart out. And she had that broken can opener hidden under her bed. Why does she do that? I threw it out days ago.”
He rolls over, huffing a deep sigh. “Just ignore her and she’ll stop. Making a big deal out of everything she does is only giving her attention and reinforcing her behavior.”
“Are you kidding me?” I whisper loudly in the dark. “I will not ignore her. She isn’t doing it for attention. Most of the time, she wants to be alone. This is not tantrum behavior.”
“What is it then?”
“I think we need to take her to a child psychologist. Something isn’t right.”
“A shrink? She’s a little girl, Laura. She doesn’t need to be dragged to therapy just because she has an overactive imagination.”
“I don’t think that’s what this is. For God’s sake, we had to install a security system just to keep her in the house at night. That’s a lot more than an overactive imagination, Ben. Something horrible could’ve happened to her.”
I almost had a heart attack when a neighbor rang our doorbell at two a.m. a few months ago with our daughter in tow, telling us she found Penny meandering around the sidewalk in her pajamas. Unbeknownst to us, she was sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night. At only six years old! The third time it happened, I was terrified the neighbor would report us to the police for child neglect. I wouldn’t blame them either. Who knows what could’ve happened to Penny if our insomniac neighbor hadn’t seen her on the sidewalk those times? We assumed Penny was sleepwalking—until she nonchalantly told us she was leaving because she was living in the wrong house.
“She hasn’t done that in weeks,” Ben countered.
“Thank God. I can barely sleep at night worrying about whether she’s going to be here when I wake up.” I came very close to being one of those people who locked their kids in their bedrooms just so I could have some peace of mind.
“She’s growing out of her quirks. When was the last time she had a nightmare or was afraid to get in the car? And the house thing is probably just her thinking she lives in a house she saw on a TV show or in a book. Kids do things like that all the time. They don’t know the difference between make-believe and reality. Penny’s totally fine.”
Frustrated, I turn on my side, away from him, but sleep doesn’t come. For hours, I lie in the dark as worry continues to twirl and toss things around in my mind like a tornado.
