Birthdays of a Princess (15 page)

“That was a one-time slip.” Gracie sounds unusually apologetic. “It
won’t happen again.”

“It better not. If this becomes a habit, and quite frankly, that’s
what I expect, we won’t waste any more money on grooming her.”

Gracie and the sponsor walk away, I can’t hear what they discuss.
I’ve already forgotten the sponsor’s face, but not her words. Gracie looks very
worried when she comes back, but I feel amazingly good. Kind of mellow, and at
the same time clever—like a cat basking in the sun. If I don’t win, they won’t
market Princess Tia any longer, isn’t that what the sponsor had said? No more
pageants, no more photos.
No more.
That’s exactly what I want.

And that’s exactly what Princess Tia did. Things went wrong for me
from that moment on. I forgot a dance step or a line to recite. Walking up the
stage, I smeared my mascara or messed up my hair. There were so many ways to
lose.

When I’m telling Stanley about my silent resistance, he asks me how
I felt about it. Good, of course, really good. By the end of that year, when my
tenth birthday came up, Gracie informed me that my career as a beauty pageant
queen had come to an end. She wouldn’t enter me into another contest. The
Stick—Tony—had also lost. He was not needed any more.

Mom was crying, telling Gracie it was all her fault. If she would
only have kept Tony on while there had been no pageants, if she hadn’t been so
miserly, I would have won. She was sniffling like a toddler denied her favorite
toy. Gracie blew up and called her everything under the sun. By now I knew
quite a few of those words, none of them were particularly flattering. Most had
to do with Mom ballooning out of proportion.

I was as happy as a button. I was doing a little jig until Gracie
got mad at me too.

“I’ll make you sorry for being so goddamn clever. From now on it’s a
lot more photo sessions for you, and you better not complain about it.”

Chapter
36

It had been another awful night. As soon as Melissa went to bed, it
seemed her problems became larger and more pressing. So many hours spent trying
to get them into perspective turned every “could be” into a “would be”. She
hated those nights. Tossing and turning and worrying about things she could not
change or influence. Like what the police would think once they found out that
Tiara had disappeared for days and weeks at a time, doing god-knows-what on the
streets of Vancouver.

Before she left the house in the morning she called her mother.

Louise came up with her usual quick patch-up solutions.

“Tell them that Tiara stayed with me,” she said.

“But what if they ask Tiara?”

“Who cares, nobody will listen to her.”

 Melissa didn’t buy into it. “What about your neighbors? Won’t they say
they’ve never seen her?”

“Don’t be silly, the police won’t bother them.”

“They’ll want to know about my home schooling her.”

“Why on earth did you bring that up in the first place?”

“I had to say something.”

“A lie by an overprotective mother,” Louise said. “Just stick with
that.”

Now she was back at work—a relief after the past few weeks—standing
idly at the cash register, wondering where
had
her daughter been the
past three years when she hadn’t been in the flat? Fact was, Tiara had come and
gone as she pleased.

Melissa hadn’t had the strength to stand up to her. My God, all
those dramas back then. Her heart broken, the upheaval of leaving her home, the
embarrassment of having to crawl back under mother’s apron, even the change
from the hot and dry Texas weather to the rain and coldness of Vancouver. It
robbed her of the last bit of energy. How could she be expected to put this
aside and supervise the movements of a head-strong teenager? That’s why so many
parents are desperate. There’s no mechanism to control kids at that age, once
they decide to do their own thing. Nothing in the world will stop them, short
of tying them up.

When exactly had this whole mess started? When did Tiara change and
slip away?

 Melissa hadn’t caught on for quite some time and when she noticed,
it was too late. Tiara didn’t listen, didn’t tidy her room, didn’t do her
chores, in fact, she hardly ever spoke. Always sulking. And the way she’d
scratch at her skin. Gracie was furious when she noticed it the first time.

Tiara must have been about eleven, sitting on the porch swing
Melissa didn’t dare use anymore for fear of breaking the chains. She’d been scratching
her arm with a broken branch, blood dripping onto the wooden planks. When
Gracie came home she went into a God-almighty rage.

“How can you let her do that?” she yelled on top of her voice. At
her
,
as if it was her doing. She even raised her arm and Melissa took a step back.
When Gracie noticed, she lowered her arm again but raved on. “What kind of
mother are you? Don’t you have a speck of feeling for your daughter? Letting
the poor girl suffer like that!”

With that she folded Tiara into her arms and walked into the house
with her, comforting her with the usual. “My poor little mija” shooing sounds
that Melissa had heard a million times. She probably bad-mouthed her once they
were out of earshot. Gracie put the blame on her for everything that had to do
with Tiara. In fact, with everything, period.

 It wasn’t right for Gracie to treat her like this. But it also wasn’t
right for Tony to do what he’d done. It wasn’t right for Mike to die and leave
her in Gracie’s care. Nothing was right in the world, then or now.

Melissa decided not to care anymore. Nobody had ever cared for her.
Mike had left her, Louise had abandoned her. As much as she wanted to be
accepted as a good mother, she was sure her daughter didn’t give a damn. Tiara
still refused to see her. She had abandoned her mother three years ago, not the
other way around.

A customer was approaching the register, loading her selection on
the conveyor belt. Melissa fake-smiled at her and picked up the first item to
scan. She would carry on living and working and not caring any more.

Chapter
37

“I’m going to see Tiara,” Macintosh said to Harding, while stuffing
a file into his briefcase. “On my way home.”

His partner came toward him with open arms, grinning sheepishly. “You’re
my man!”

“Don’t even think about it.” Macintosh took a step back in mock
horror. “What will the others think?”

Some of the detectives still on duty laughed.

“Hey Mac,” one of them yelled from a corner of the room, “soon you
two won’t have to pretend anymore.”

“Piss off,” Macintosh said. “You’re just jealous.”

He left the room, but Harding was by his side before he reached the
elevator.

“Are you gonna ask about the aunt?”

“Don’t know yet. It’s tricky. We know too little and I don’t want to
put words into her mouth. I’ll improvise.”

“Do you want me to come along?”

The lift arrived. Macintosh stepped in and pressed a button. “No
need. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

“You better,” Harding said when the doors closed.

Tiara looked pale and exhausted. Her cheeks were abnormally sunken
for a girl her age. Young people didn’t usually show the same signs of stress
as adults did. He couldn’t help but immediately worry.

“Are you getting enough to eat in here?” he asked.

There it was again, the giggle coming from within.

“Don’t you know, they fatten me up for the big slaughter.”

When he didn’t reply, she said: “My trial.”

“It doesn’t have to be one. I wish you’d give me something to work
with.” When she got ready to object, he stopped her. “I know, I know. You don’t
remember. But you’re talking to the shrink, so there must be something. About
you’re background, your upbringing. Anything you two talk about might give me a
lead.”

Now her drawn face brightened. “Can I tell my psycho-doc that you’re
fishing? Shouldn’t he be here if you do?”

“Don’t get smart on me. You can ask for a lawyer to be present, but
my understanding is you don’t want one.”

“No, I don’t. And I didn’t want to talk to you either, but they
forced me to come her.”

“I’m not forcing you to say anything. But you are smart. You know
I’m here because I want to help you.”

She considered this for a while, then she nodded.

“You’re smart too. So you’ll understand that although I might try to
figure things out while talking to the doc, there is no way I can put it in
perspective yet. Which means, whatever I say won’t give you the facts you need.
I’m doing talk-therapy with him. Loads of confusing stuff that’s messing with
my brain. What are you gonna do with that? Trust me, it’s all in shambles up
there.” With this she knocked on her left temple. “One gigantic mess.”

“That’s too bad,” Macintosh said. “I’ve been talking to your mother—“

As soon as he mentioned her mother, Tiara’s face drained again and
he thought she might faint. He moved forward to steady her.

“Please don’t touch me.”

“Sorry.”

They sat quietly for a while.

“Can we just talk?” Tiara finally asked.

“Sure. What do you want to talk about?”

“You.”

That surprised him so much that he had to laugh now.

“About an old man like me? Why’s that?”

She grimaced, eyes wide, eye-brows up, looking like a miniature
clown.

“It gets so boring talking about me all the time. And when Stanley
and I aren’t talking, I’m thinking about me. I could do with a little break
from this ego-routine.”

“There isn’t much to tell about me. I was married and my wife is
dead, I was a father and my daughter is dead, I was a policeman all my life but
soon I won’t be any more. That’s about it.”

“Shit,” she said. “And I thought it sucks to focus on me.”

Now they both laughed.

“My
daughter,” Macintosh said, “she had a laugh just like you.” He got serious
again. “Wish I’d spent more time at home. But the office always came first.”

Tiara seemed
to understand. “What will you do when you’re not a policeman anymore?”

“I got a
place up north. It’s nice there, quiet. My wife and I … well, I guess it’s just
me now, so I’ll make the best of it.”

She nodded. “I guess it’s nice to have a place where nobody bothers
you.”

“Tell you what,” he said on the spur of the moment. “When you get out
of here, you come visit. I can take you on a hunt.”

She lowered her eyes.

“I mean, you don’t have to hunt,” he said. “A lot of people don’t
like that.”

“No, I’d like that,” she said slowly. “Really, I would. But you
might be dead by the time I get out.”

For the first time in seven years a belly laugh burst out of him. It
shattered the hard crust of residue pain inside him into a million pieces. They
were all still there, would never leave, but now that they were broken up, they
could let other emotions in. And out.

“I’ll make sure I live a long and healthy life,” he said, once he
got his breath again.

“You should.” A shadow crossed her face. “Not just for me. You’re a
nice man. You deserve better.”

After that, they kept each other company, comfortable in the silent
admission of their mutual misery.

Chapter 38

No more birthdays

God, this is painful. All this mysoul-searching, this ridiculous
scraping and scratching at the bottom of my being-bowl, trying to loosen the
occasional burnt memory-bit enough to wash it out. What comes to the surface is
practically useless.

I have gone over the first ten years of my life again and again,
trying to sneak into my eleventh year. I know Stanley is coming today, and with
all that wonderful progress we have made, he will expect more than what I have
to give.

Since I’ve been opening up to Stanley, I have developed a writer’s
block. The moment I take the pen in hand, words elude me. It’s as if they are
punishing me for spilling my guts verbally—even if it’s useless rambling that
comes out of my mouth. But try as I may, that’s all there is.

I simply don’t remember much beyond the beginning of that elusive
eleventh year. My tenth birthday, yes, some of it is there. No big party, there
never had been one, but a cake in the afternoon and quite a few presents. Mom
had made me a new dress because I was growing fast now, a yellow one with
ridiculous bows in front. I hated it on sight. Gracie gave me a thin gold chain
with a sparkling, flower-shaped pendant dangling from it. I hated that one too,
didn’t wear it a single day.

Mom launched into an argument with her as soon as I unwrapped the
jewelry box. She said pointedly, “I thought we have to save?” to which Gracie
replied, “nothing is too good for my favorite girl.”

Both didn’t bother to ask me if I liked what I got. While they
bickered on about how difficult times were (Mom) and how much I deserved a
little treat (Gracie) and how she denied herself any small treat (Mom) and how
much harder it would be without me earning the money (Gracie), I said thank
you, ate a slice of the cake and went to my room. I was fed up with those
arguments. Gracie always said how grateful she was for me doing all the work,
but Mom mustn’t know about it, so all the arguments sounded lopsided. They never
talked about the same thing.

I was beginning to understand that the only two important people in
my life were engaged in a non-stop tug-of-war, with me securely fastened by the
rope they were holding on different ends. Sometimes I felt so torn apart, I
could have screamed.

I’m slumped on my bunk bed, unable to move. Stanley comes to see me
after I refused to go to the office where we usually meet. He knows right away
that something is wrong. Obviously all this psycho-training was worth the shit
load of money it must have cost his parents.

“I feel like kicking and screaming, but haven’t got the strength to
even sit up,” I answer truthfully to his honest-sounding concern over my
deteriorating state.

“I keep thinking about Texas, and a lot of stuff pops up. All the
stuff I’ve told you about. I come as far as my birthday, and then I remember
that horrible storm a few weeks later, and then my thinking comes to a
screeching halt. It’s like a train entering a tunnel, somebody hit the
emergency brakes and it derails in total darkness.”

I can’t help it, tears of frustration well up in my eyes. Stanley is
swimming in a milky fog.

“Which storm? You are talking about your tenth birthday, right? So
you can’t mean Katrina?”

“No, Katrina was long gone. I mean Ike. I think by the time it made
landfall it was downgraded to a cat two, so in reality it wasn’t a hurricane
anymore.”

 “Why don’t you start at your birthday and take it from there. Tell
me all you remember about those weeks leading up to the storm.”

So I tell him. About the birthday presents (the ugly dress, the
golden flower), the arguments (money, me, money), and then, the weeks after.

About two weeks after my birthday, I had to do a photo session
again. By now, those sessions are physically painful to me. By this I don’t
mean the sitting down for hours or the rough application of my make-up and hair
style Gracie got into—she is forever pulling my hair too tight, or stinging my
eyes with lash glue, or rubbing too hard with the remover—it’s more a dread I
have before it starts. My stomach contracts into a hard ball the moment she
bundles me in her car. The photo studio is in Texas City, a suburb by the
ocean, and in the fifteen minutes it takes to get there I feel this hard lump
forming inside me. Gracie has forbidden me to eat or drink anything a few hours
before each session because I had thrown up on several occasions when she got
me ready to go to the studio, but she always gave me a few sips of juice to
drink just before we arrived.

“The juice calmed you down?” Stanley asks. “What kind of juice was
it?”

“I don’t know. Gracie wanted me to feel good. When I felt bad, she
suffered with me; she always said so. It hurt her more than me when I had an
ache or something. The juice was like medicine, and it helped me relax. I
didn’t like it but I didn’t want Gracie to fret so much over me, so I always
drank it.”

“Do you know why you felt so uptight?” Stanley asks.

“Sure I do,” I tell him. “They made me do all sorts of artsy things
which made me feel very uncomfortable. I hated doing them.”

“Can you describe one to me, so I understand better?”

Most of it is lost in a fog, but one especially bad session raises
its ugly head and beckons me to remember.

I see myself, already fully made up, when Gracie tells me to undress
completely. We are doing a very special art number today. Gracie urges me to
drink more juice and leaves. I’m sitting there in the nude, drinking as I’m
told, and then the Purple Shadow comes in and dresses me up, but this time the
costume isn’t a fancy fantasy creation, it’s just a few ropes. I remember me
starting to cry because I felt more embarrassed than usual—I had started to
feel embarrassed about everything they made me do, I guess that’s normal at
that age—and because the ropes were at places that cut painfully into me.

“They hurt me!” I’m surprised at the sudden revelation. “They tied
me up like a goddamn parcel and made me sit and lie on those ropes for hours.”

“How did Gracie react when she came back?”

I shrug, trying to collect myself again. This is embarrassing me, I
shouldn’t have told him.

“Didn’t you tell her what they had done to you?”

My memory quickly colors in the fine lines of the emerging
recollection. I ran to her as soon as she came in, sobbing uncontrollably. She
ushered me out of the studio and into her car. There I showed her the welts on
my thighs where the ropes had cut into, and she gave me a Kleenex to dry my
tears and told me it wasn’t too bad, they would disappear again.

“But she was upset about it,” I said to Stanley. “Honestly.”

He doesn’t believe me. Half-truths are not his thing, he’s too smart
for that.

“No, really. She sometimes couldn’t show it so well. But she did
care about me. Life isn’t always a bed of roses and no matter how much we wish
for our loved ones to be happy, it isn’t always working out like that, right?”

“Is that Gracie talking?”

“In the end she told me to stop whining. She explained it to me. It’s
art, she said. My pictures don’t sell because I’m a cute little kid, and it’s
my own fault for having messed up my chances to become a famous beauty queen.
I’m too old for that now, there is no way back, and unless I prefer that we all
starve to death, I better do as I’m told. There is nothing to it, I shouldn’t
be such a baby. I am nearly grown up and have to take on my responsibilities like
everyone else. You get the gist.”

He did. “Looking back at it now, did you realize then that those
pictures were for a certain purpose?”

“Of course I understood that. They were art. But I was at an age
when I didn’t give a shit about art, and that’s why I hated it so much.”

“Do you still think they were art?”

I nod.

“Tying up a naked young girl—doesn’t that strike you as odd when you
think back now?” he insists.

“No, not really. Of course it’s a bit freaky, but I’ve seen those
type of pictures before.”

“Where?”

“Here in Vancouver. I often crashed at a girlfriend’s place—you
know, when I couldn’t handle being close to my mom—and she had one of those
coffee table books full of bondage pictures. By Madonna. You know Madonna?”

“The singer, yes, of course.”

I have to laugh.
Me,
digging into
his
brain all of a
sudden, now isn’t that hilarious.

“See. She’s famous and had those artsy pictures taken.” I pause. “Are
you surprised I know the word bondage? You look a little freaked out.”

Now he is laughing too. It’s good to be on the same level again.

“You never let on how much you know about sexual practices.”

My laughter wilts in my throat, a dying bunch of daisies.

“That wasn’t sexual.”

Every fiber of my inside screams
but it was but it was but it was
.

Before I get lost in too much thinking, he changes the subject.
“Tell me about your girlfriend. I thought you didn’t have any friends.”

“She wasn’t really. I met Connie about a year after we came back. I
took to wandering around the area, not going anywhere in particular. She was a
hooker, working the Eastside. She told me to go home, said I’m too young to be
on the streets, and I guess she took pity on me when I told her why I didn’t
want to spend much time at home.”

“And why was that?”

“I told you, I can’t stand being close to my mom.”

“And your friend Connie, she accepted this reason?”

Damn, he is good.

“Okay, I lied to her. I said my mother is trying to make me do
things I don’t want to do, you know, with men.”

“I see. Wasn’t that the truth? Didn’t your mother make you do those
sessions?”

Not so good after all.

“That was Gracie. How often do I have to tell you? It was Gracie who
was in charge of all that picture taking, my mom had nothing to do with it.”

Change of subject. Dove-doc tries to redirect my mounting aggression.

“So, Connie took you in.”

“I reminded her of her little sister, Connie said. I could always
crash at her place. Wasn’t much, but it was comfortable and peaceful there.
Nobody ever came. She didn’t bring work home, if you are wondering. Needed a
place for herself too. We hung out together, not doing anything in particular,
just watching silly shows and a shit-load of movies on TV and then talking about
what we’d seen and having a few laughs together. She’s been easy to be with,
never bugged me, never touched me, never demanded anything of me.”

“Okay, let’s go back to the time after your tenth birthday, to that
terrible session. Was there only The Purple Shadow and Gracie’s photographer friend
present?”

This question annoys the hell out of me. Suddenly I can see two
black holes. There were two cameras. One that made ‘click-click’ and another
producing a constant humming noise. A movie camera! Both black eyes staring at
me.

“Gracie left, and then there were only those two—and me.”
That’s
my girl! That’s my girl!
“The photographer always told the Purple Shadow
what to do and then the two black holes sucked me in.”

“Did your sponsor never show up at any of those sessions?”

“No, never. If she was there, I would remember, wouldn’t I?”

“And you have no idea who the Purple Shadow was?”

“No. All I remember is that they get me ready and then purple fog
swallows me up. I know they are there but it doesn’t matter what they do. Or
what I do. Because I’m not really there. I’m far away. And the next thing I
know is me sitting in the car with Gracie, driving home. Anything in-between is
… just not there, it’s kind of … uh, I don’t know. I’m soaked in purple liquid,
swimming in it … drifting ... drowning …, uh, I really can’t describe it.” It’s
so frustrating not to get a clear picture. I must look so stupid. What kind of
fool forgets stuff like that?

Stanley feels my desperation and guides me away from fruitless
self-reproach. “Did you tell your mother about the rope session when you came
home?”

I sigh and explain for the umpteenth time that I never-never-ever
talked to my mom about those sessions. Why should I mention that particular
one? Sure, it felt worse than the ones before, but only because I got more
sensitive, more irritable, more touchy, more whatever.

No, no, no, that was not the moment the train stopped and derailed.
That came about another week later. It was early September, and I’m pretty
certain about this because I know when the storm hit, and it had everything to
do with the storm. Now the memories roll in so powerful, I stumble over my own
words to make sure I get it all out.

Stanley doesn’t interrupt me once.

Hurricane Ike was racing toward the Gulf Coast, and Galveston and
Houston were in its direct path. The authorities warned the people living in
the low-lying houses of Galveston Island that they faced ‘certain death from
flooding’ if they didn’t evacuate. For several days, there was nothing else on
the radio and TV but those warnings. The forecasters predicted a wall of water
so high, it would flood the whole coast.