by BB Curtis

A two-year nightmare was over.  The future would hold what it held; but, for this evening, she sat holding her baby girl, rocking her as she had every night for four years until it had begun.

Her “baby” was seven now and more beautiful than she’d remembered.  Her thoughts drifted over the hundreds of nights and days filled with loneliness, despair, fear, and all those tears.  For the moment, at least, she was content just to touch her and to look at her thin face.  Her older daughter was on the floor by the chair, leaning against her mother’s leg and holding her sleeping sister’s hand.  She, too, was thinking about those days, wondering if she’d ever be able to forget . . . forget the looks on her mother’s face, the strain, the sense of loss, the pain, when it hit her fourteen-year-old mind, “Mom,” her voice cracked as she spoke, “what’s going to happen now?  Is Donna going to be alright?”

“Honey, only time will tell.  I’m sure we’ll need to get some help for all of us, I imagine.  For right now just be thankful she’s back with us.  I won’t tell you that the worst is over because if may not be.  Donna’s been through more than you or I can imagine.  Lord knows what she’ll be like after almost three years in that place.”

That Place.  Every time she thought those words she could hear her heart pound. feel her pulse race as rage streamed through every fiber of her body.  Those beasts!  No, that word was too good for them.  They’d locked her baby away from her.  She’d felt the child’s cries every day and night for so long it seemed that every second of those 30 months lasted a year.  Her beautiful, beautiful baby.  She closed her eyes tight to try to block out the anger and the visions of what must have happened.  She took a deep breath to calm her voice.

“Laura, let’s try to get some sleep.  Come on, honey, I want you both next to me tonight.”  She rose from the chair awkwardly, trying not to disturb her sleeping child, but the movement caused an outburst from the emaciated body in her arms that caused her to fall back into the rocker.

Donna’s arms and legs flailed, her face distorted in pain, and screams of seismographic intensity filled the silence of the home saddened so long by her absence.  Miriam suffered several bruises from the pummeling of small fists, but she didn’t notice until the next morning when she was brushing her teeth and realized her lip was swollen.

It had taken thirty-eight minutes to quiet Donna.  No one slept in their small house that night.  The three of them sat huddled together on the couch, eyes open, staring from one to another, silently wondering what the next moment might bring.

In the morning, Miriam put down the toothbrush without finishing, swallowed the toothpaste, and wiped her lips on the back of her hand as she walked resolutely to the phone.  She picked up the yellow pages and opened to the psychiatrist section, closed her eyes, and put her finger down on the page.  She dialed the number she’d chosen with her blind finger and made an appointment with the receptionist who answered the phone – and the nightmare repeated itself and repeated itself and repeated itself.

The Beginning

Miriam was feeling a little extra proud.  She was on her way to the Gifted Children Evaluation Center, recommended to her by a woman with whom she worked.  The whole thing had come as quite a surprise. The woman, Nancy Riggs was not her favorite person by any means.  Nancy lived with her nose in the stratosphere.  She would date only doctors and lawyers would shop at only the most expensive stores (though no one could figure out how she afforded it), and would pass judgment on anyone whose standards didn’t meet her own.  Her enemies amounted to at least ninety percent of her acquaintances, but she never realized how poorly she hid her feelings toward the people she met and/or with whom she worked.  Nancy was the best brown-noser and back-stabber in the insurance office where she and Miriam worked. Nancy, of all people, had told Miriam that her most recent doctor friend, a pediatrician, had mentioned the Center and its work with overly-bright kids.  Nancy had thought it might be a way for Miriam, who had very little money since her husband had left her with two children and all the bills a few years ago, to get Donna involved in programs geared to the over-achieving child without any monetary outlay.  Miriam had jumped on the chance, asking for the phone number and immediately placing a call for an appointment to have her bright four-year-old tested.

The morning of Donna’s day to shine was crisp and exhilarating.  Miriam had dressed Donna in a special occasion outfit; packed her Shrek lunch box with her favorite lunch (ham and cheese sandwich; cored, sliced apple; two Suddenly S’Mores; milk and a note to tell her that Mom loved her very much – Donna could already read at a sixth-grade level); put both kids in the car; and, after dropping Laura at her elementary school, drove to the Center in Midvale and took Donna in to meet the doctors and college students who would be testing her that day.  She kissed Donna and gave her an especially long hug, whispering that she was proud of her and to have fun.  Donna, a naturally out-going child who looked at everything in life as a new and exciting adventure, took the hand of the closest person she’d just met and said, “Shall we get started?”  

Miriam watched her little girl walk down the hall, smiled and waved though the child didn’t see her, felt proud all over again, and went back to her car to drive to work.  The whole day she resisted the temptation to call the Center and check on Donna’s progress.  She did not want to be perceived as either overly protective or overly anxious.  At a quarter to five, she hastily cleaned up her desk, drove to the daycare that normally tended both her children picked up Laura, and drove as fast as possible to Midvale to be at the Center by five-thirty.  Donna’s testing was to be completed by four, more observations made of her at play would be over at five-thirty.  Miriam pulled into the parking lot at five twenty-seven.  She and Laura, both excited, ran into the building and stopped at the front desk.

“Miss,” Miriam addressed the receptionist, “where would I find Donna Butler?”

The pleasant young woman smiled and looked down at her log.  “I’m sorry; Donna was picked up at eleven-thirty.”  She looked up to Miriam’s confused expression.

“No.  I’m Donna’s mother.  She was here for the Accelerated Testing Program.” 

“I’m sorry, but Dr. Schmidt signed her out at eleven-thirty.”

“Signed her out to whom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then would you ask him, please?  Donna was supposed to be here all day, and I’d like to know where she is and why she left.  She’s only four years old.  She didn’t just walk out your front door alone.  She knows better, and I would think that you do, too.”

The woman picked up her phone, hit a button, and waited.  “I’m sorry, there’s no answer in Dr. Schmidt’s office.”

Miriam leaned over the counter and put her face two inches from the woman’s nose, “You’re sorry an awful lot!  NOW, WHERE’S MY DAUGHTER?”

The woman cowered under her, “I don’t know.”

“Then you’d better find someone who does!”  The rage in Miriam’s voice was intense.  Laura backed away from her, never having heard her mother sound like that.  A door opened across the hall and a man in jeans and a western shirt emerged.  “May I help you with something?”

“Maybe.  Where’s Donna Butler?”

“I was testing her this morning, and she didn’t return after lunch.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little odd that a four-year-old just didn’t ‘return after lunch’ and disappeared from your facility?”

“No.  Dr. Schmidt told me that she’d been picked up and would return at a later date.”

“PICKED UP BY WHOM, AND WHO IN GOD’S NAME IS DR. SCHMIDT?”

“This is the craziest thing!” she grumbled as she drove toward Nancy’s house.  “Where could she be?  Laura, I’m really worried.”  Laura, age eleven, might not have been as brilliant as Donna; but she was no dummy.  She’d also been her mother’s friend and confidante since her father’d deserted them three years before, making her mature well beyond the average adolescent.

“Me, too.  Donna wouldn’t leave there on her own.  She knew we were coming to get her.  Someone’s lying.”

They drove in angry confused silence the rest of the way to Nancy’s house.  After pulling in the driveway, Miriam marched to the door and knocked ’til it shook in the casing.  Nancy’s voice could barely be heard over her hammering, “Coming, COMING, for shit sake!  What do you . . .” she opened the door and her voice failed.

“What have you done with my daughter?”  Miriam screamed in Nancy’s face.

“I don’t know what you mean.” she stammered, trying to grasp control of herself.  She hadn’t expected Miriam to come so close to the answer so fast.

“You’re the one who thought this up.  You must know something.  Now, WHAT do you know?”  Miriam was backing Nancy down the foyer and into the kitchen.  Laura was right behind Miriam.

“Miriam, calm down and tell me what you’re talking about.”  Her control was returning, but not fast enough for Miriam to miss the blush rising on Nancy’s cheeks, the changing pitch of her voice, and the darting of her eyes.

“I think you know exactly what I’m referring to.  In fact, I think you know everything!  Now, where’s Donna?”  She spit out the words between clenched teeth.

“Dear, tell me what happened.”

“Don’t ‘dear’ me.  I went to pick up Donna from the Center, but there’s no Donna to pick up. ‘ Someone’ picked her up earlier today.  ‘Someone’ I don’t know.  ‘Someone’ with no permission from anyone, anywhere to pick her up.  Are you grasping this?”

“Sit down.  You’re overwrought.  I’ll get some tea.”  She turned her back under the auspices of putting the water on to boil so she could hide her sigh and a deep breath to calm down the rest of the way.

“I don’t want tea.  I WANT DONNA!”  Miriam was behind Nancy with her hands ready to circle Nancy’s throat, ready to squeeze as hard as she could, when her eyes picked up a familiar sight — Donna’s Shrek lunch box — the edge was visible from behind an oak breadbox on the counter.  She put her hands down before Nancy even knew they were there.

“Nance,” Miriam whispered so close behind Nancy that it startled her.

“How did she get so close to me so fast?” Nancy thought.  She froze, not sure how to proceed.

“I could use a cold, wet washcloth.”  Miriam hissed.

“OK, I’ll get you one.”  Nancy left to go to the bathroom for it, thanking her lucky stars as she went.  She needed a minute to regain her composure, and Miriam had given her one.  Miriam seemed to be calming down and believing that Nancy didn’t know what was going on.

In the kitchen, Miriam pulled the lunch box from behind the breadbox, grabbed Laura’s arm, and ran both of them to the car.  They went to the nearest police station.  Back at Nancy’s, she heard the screened door slam shut, ran to see Miriam’s car roaring out the driveway, and immediately placed a call to Dr. Schmidt.

The sergeant listened to Miriam’s story and started typing up a report.

“Wait a minute.  Aren’t you going to go to Nancy’s house and get her?  She’ll know I have the lunch box.  Do you think she’s just sitting there waiting for you to drag her in for questioning?”

“All in good time, all in good time, madame,” was the response she got.

When the police finally arrived at Nancy’s house five hours later, she was gone along with most of her clothes and personal items.  When the police called the Center the following day, all they could find out was that, “Yesterday was Dr. Schmidt’s last day,” and that he was going to another clinic, but no one remembered its name.  The signature on the sign-out sheet showing the last known location of Donna was illegible.

Miriam and Laura spent sleepless nights and distracted days from then on.  They were angry together; they cried together; they sought help from every known source together; but no one could find Donna — not a trace.  Miriam called the police station six or seven times a day at first, asking if they’d found or heard anything.  Their answers all amounted to the same thing:  “You’ll be the first to know if we do.”

Miriam, although she hadn’t suspected her ex-husband but had to be sure by his reaction to the news, contacted Jim by phone and told him that Donna was missing.  At first, he’d thought she was trying to get money out of him, so he hung up on her.  He called the West Valley City Police from his home in Castle Rock, Colorado; and, finding that her story was true, called her back, apologized, and offered his help.  He took a leave of absence and flew to Salt Lake City the next morning.  He and Miriam hired a private detective who was able to add nothing to the minimal amount of information the police had gathered.  After taking Miriam’s ex-husband’s money for five months and getting nowhere, he refused to take more.  He couldn’t watch the physical deterioration of the mother and sister of the pretty, little girl for whom he was searching and continue to be paid for finding nothing over and over again.  He kept working the case; and, eventually, he was the person who lead to Donna’s return home.

Nancy and Schmidt were never found.  Miriam found out from a friend with connections that the Midvale Police were refusing to cooperate with the West Valley Police and hadn’t run an investigation on the Gifted Children Evaluation Center.  She contacted the State Attorney General and reported the matter.  The Center issue was handled.  No connection to any other incident of this sort was found.  What was found, however, was that Schmidt had given false information on his employment application, resume, and other documentation.  The Center received a hand-slapping for not being conscientious about checking the backgrounds of their employees.  No other leads concerning his identity or location ever surfaced.  He’d been there only three months and had given notice showing he’d accepted a position in a fictitious clinic in Georgia.  Nancy had also used an alias.  She’d been in town several months.  Where she’d come from remained as mysterious as where she’d gone.  The initial position she’d taken with the insurance company had not required a background check so the fact that Nancy Riggs had been deceased for six years surfaced only after the police investigation had taken place.  That investigation was shelved after the first few months due to lack of evidence.

For Miriam and Laura day and night, month and year became indistinguishable.  Work days went by, and Miriam was running on automatic.  She knew her job.  She knew how to approach new clients and how to please existing clients.  Her warm, helpful smile had been one of her best assets; and it continued to pay off, covering for the pain she felt every minute.  Laura did reasonably well at school after the first few weeks of fear and disorientation.  She was enough like her mother to gather the necessary strength each morning to continue through each day until her mother came to get her at the day-care center.  Their rides home, as both of them relaxed and allowed themselves to feel again, were lonely, too quiet, and too reminiscent of old rides home with Donna, the vivacious one of the three, monopolizing the conversation.  By the time they got home Monday through Friday all they managed to do for the first hour was sit on the couch and hold each other, sobbing quietly or crying convulsively.

And then one night . . . 

The phone rang only a few minutes after they’d begun their ritualistic observations of the empty chair at the dinner table.  Miriam went to the kitchen, sniffled, composed herself, and picked up the phone.  “Hello?”

“Mrs. Butler?”

“Yes.”

“This is Scott Rivera.”

Pausing for a moment in disbelief, not lack of recognition, “Oh, Scott.  I’m surprised to hear from you.  I’d thought you’d forgotten about us.”

“No ma’am.  I couldn’t forget you or your daughters.  I know it’s been a long time.”

“It certainly has.  Close to two years.”  She then realized that he’d have no reason to call unless he had some kind of news on the whereabouts of Donna.  Private detectives whom you hadn’t heard from for extended periods of time didn’t just call to shoot the shit.  Her excitement was evident in her voice, “What’s happened?”

“Please don’t get your hopes up, but I think I may have a lead.  May I come to see you tonight?”

“Certainly.”

“I’ll be there in a half hour.  You still live at the same address?”

“We do.”

He hung up.  Miriam stared at the phone a moment before placing it in the cradle.  After all this time, what could he have?  She talked incessantly until he arrived.  Laura sat and listened to her mother hypothesize for the entire half hour.  Both of them were breathing too fast when Scott Rivera pulled into the driveway. They met him at the door with sparks of hope showing through their dark-circled eyes.  He noticed that Laura looked too thin.  She’d grown about four inches since he’d see her last but didn’t seem to have put on an ounce of weight.  Miriam, who was an exceptionally pretty woman in her late thirties, had streaks of gray through her jet black hair and the wrinkles of a sixty-year-old in her forehead and around her eyes and mouth.

“Mrs. Butler, I came across something I think you should see.  I don’t think it’s a good idea for Laura to be with us, though.”

“Mr. Rivera, Laura has been through every detail of this with me.  Her sister is as important to her as she is to me.  What is it that you have?”

“I’m  . . . this makes me very uncomfortable, Mrs. Butler.  Laura needs to leave the room.”  Laura took the hint and went into the kitchen.  She needed some cold water anyway.  

“First of all, I hate that name.  I’m Miriam.  Second, I’m very impatient.  What do you have?”

Scott took a deep breath, glad that Laura was receptive to his request since he couldn’t possibly show what he had to a fourteen-year-old.  It was hard enough to do what he had to do next.  “I came across this magazine while I was running an investigation for a client with a cheating husband.”  He pulled the rolled-up rag from his pocket and opened it to a page he’d marked.  He noticed that Miriam was so interested in what he was specifically going to show her that she hadn’t yet noticed the type of publication he was holding in his clammy, shaking hands.  He held the glossy pages open for her to see, stealing himself for her reaction.

Miriam was silent, mouth clamped shut, eyes wide.  Neither Scott nor Miriam breathed.  Miriam’s hands clenched into fists.  Her nails dug into the heels of her hands making eight small slits.  Scott choked out, “Does this look like it could be Donna?” 

“Yes,” she mouthed, no real sound came from her throat.

“I thought so.  I’ve already begun inquiries into the source of the photos, the location of publication anything that might lead me to Donna.  Miriam, are you going to be alright?”

“I’m not sure.” she croaked.

“Do you have someone who can come and stay with you?  I know this is a huge shock.  I wasn’t sure how you’d take it but had to be more sure of the identity of the child in this photo.  I’m so sorry!”

“I’ve seen my child naked before, of course, just not with some son of a bitch’s penis shoved in her mouth.”  Her voice became more shrill with each syllable she spoke.  Scott dropped the rumpled piece of rat shit, as he thought of it, on the carpet and leaned over to take Miriam by the shoulders. 

“Miriam,” he yelled at her face, “MIRIAM,” louder this time, “for Laura’s sake get a grip!”  

Miriam closed her eyes, the picture of Donna burned into her brain.  She opened them again and, setting her jaw forward a bit, said, “Scott, get those fuckers.  We’ll be fine.”

For the next few weeks, Scott pushed all other cases aside and concentrated exclusively on finding Donna.  The kiddy-porn magazine sold in Europe and South America and also to an “elite” group of upper snobby Americans.  His secretary was able to access the mailing list on the internet.  The publisher’s address was, according to the New York City Police Department, an abandoned building in an industrial area — not too surprising.  The man who’d purchased the copy of the magazine that Scott had in his possession claimed he’d picked it up while on a business trip in London.  He wasn’t able to come up with any clue to Donna’s location, and this case was pissing him off. 

During those same weeks, Miriam and Laura slowly got over the shock but not the anger.  Miriam called the police and asked them to reopen the case based on the photograph that proved that Donna was still alive.  They told her to call the FBI since the photograph also proved that it was not a local issue.  She did and was told that they’d request the police file and get back to her, but it would take at least six to eight weeks.  She wanted to scream, “Yes, six or eight weeks more for those scum to do more unspeakable things to my baby girl,” but she knew that making enemies out of the authorities would not make them move any faster.

Four weeks later at three forty-eight AM, Miriam saw the flashing of red and blue emergency lights reflecting off the walls in the hall outside her bedroom.  Something told her to get up.  She grabbed her robe, got Laura up, she wasn’t sure why and had her put on her robe and shoes, too.  Although she’d never been one to run to see a building burn or slow down to see a car wreck, she and Laura went outside to see what all the flashing was about.  Outside of their circle, down the access street and west three houses was a roadblock of police cars and a lot of screaming and shouting.  Miriam and Laura crossed the circle and walked to the edge of the ruckus.  As they walked in that direction, she could hear words from her neighbors that made her skin crawl, kiddy-porn among them.  Three handcuffed men and a familiar-looking woman were being pushed, pulled, or dragged through the house’s front door.  The woman saw Miriam coming in their direction and turned her face away as quickly as she could but not before Miriam clearly recognized her old “chum,” Nancy.  The last office out of the house carried a bundle wrapped in a blanket.  Miriam ducked around the officer blocking the sidewalk with Laura running right after her.  Their hearts pounded as they both ran to see the bundle.  Two policemen ran up behind them to pull them back.  One of them snagged Laura’s arm, but Miriam’s hand pulled down the edge of the blanket just as the other officer grabbed her by the shoulder.  Miriam’s scream woke anyone who still happened to be sleeping in the neighborhood.

“DONNA!”  She pulled away from the hands on her shoulders and yanked the body of her child away from the man who was carrying her.  “YOU BASTARDS!  YOU SAID YOU’D GONE THROUGH ALL THE HOUSES HERE!  YOU SAID THERE WASN’T A SHRED OF EVIDENCE TO PROVE THAT MY BABY WAS STILL IN THE STATE.  YOU BASTARDS!”

Miriam and Laura walked home.  Not one officer moved to stop them.  Miriam’s cheek rested on the brown, curly hair that had once smelled of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.

The End, or is it?