It takes a lot to wake Patricia up in general, but especially when she’s had both Percocet and a sleeping pill. She’s been holding herself carefully, with Brooklyn around, trying to stay alert should the child storm and need to be controlled, but tonight…well, she’s in pain and can feel her body struggling. She locks her granddaughter in the closet and takes both pills with only a little guilt. Her sleep is a deep and echoing chasm, and then…there are noises—so many noises—and something reaches deep within and pulls her up out of the sticky swamp of dreamlessness, bringing a rising tide of panic with it. She bolts upright, eyes nearly glued shut, ripping the Velcro open on her elastic mask to reveal the pitch-black room around her.
“What?” she rasps. “What’s wrong?”
“Mommy!” Brooklyn screams. “Mommyyyyyyyy! Help!”
It’s not a call, not a shout.
It’s the throat-tearing scream of terror that children are generally taught to save for kidnappings and incidences that will require an ambulance.
And it’s coming from her closet.
The child isn’t storming, though. In the throes of the Violence, there is only silence, not even animalistic grunts. Patricia knows that personally, now. She throws off her weighted blanket and rolls out of bed, her spine cracking audibly. The alarm clock suggests it’s some time after four. She hurries to the closet, feeling her way in the dark. Her hand fumbles for the chair wedged under the doorknob, and then the door is open and Brooklyn is pressing her wet face into Patricia’s stomach, the tears dampening her shirt.
“Mommy, it’s the dream. I can’t get away. He keeps chasing me and chasing me, and he grabs me with his big monster hands and turns me around and I can feel it, I can feel his arm around my neck and I can’t breathe, and I hate the monster, but he won’t let go.”
It all comes out in one rush of breath that ends in a shrieking sob, and Patricia wraps her arms around her granddaughter, holding her close. She wants to sit down and drag the little thing into her lap, but her stitches are hot and pulsing and it might be time to admit that women of her age can’t just topple over anytime they want to without repercussions. She can’t pick Brooklyn up, either, for the same reason. Instead, she inches backward, until she bumps into the big velvet chaise in the corner. As she sits, she drags Brooklyn into her lap, and Brooklyn willingly climbs in and latches her arms around Patricia’s middle, hanging on for dear life.
Her little body can’t stop shuddering as she gets out all her tears, and Patricia doesn’t know what to do other than rub her back and be there.
“Mommy, I want the monster to go away.”
Patricia draws a breath and doesn’t know what to say. Is it better, in the dark with a half-sleeping child, to remain silent and let her think her mother’s much-needed arms are shielding her from the world? Or is it better to speak and remind the child that even if her mother is gone, there is still someone present who cares for her? Without the lights, Patricia can’t tell if Brooklyn’s eyes are open or closed, if she knows where she is and what’s happening or if she’s caught in that strange twilight of childhood where the mind simply accepts what it wants over what it can’t see for certain.
“Will it ever go away?”
Patricia is fairly certain that the monster haunting her poor granddaughter is a he, not an it, and that it’s doing everything it can to claw its way back into the child’s life.
“Shh,” she croons, rocking a little. “Shh.”
Brooklyn goes still and pulls away, her body tense.
“…Mommy?” she asks, suspicious and full of dread.
“It’s Nana, but I’m here and you’re safe. I won’t ever let the monster get you.”
Brooklyn shudders again but doesn’t move farther away. She feels like a horse, skin twitching, muscles tight, deciding whether to run.
“Do you know how to get rid of a monster?” Patricia asks Brooklyn in a normal voice that suggests everything is exactly how it should be.
“No.” Brooklyn snuggles in the tiniest bit closer, listening.
“You stop believing in it.”
Brooklyn pauses, considering this statement.
“I don’t think that’s true, Nana. Some things…they don’t care what you think at all.”
Patricia pulls her in closer, nestles the child against her chest as she leans into the chaise. Her back is tensed up, but that’s nothing new. Brooklyn allows it and arranges her legs more comfortably as if they’re setting up for story time. Patricia is surprised she hasn’t asked for a light, but then…maybe really seeing that she’s not at home, that her mother and sister are gone, is worse than letting darkness mask the truth.
“In my experience, monsters feed on fear,” Patricia says, idly wondering which part of her is talking, as she feels half asleep and knows Patty is close under the surface these days. “Monsters need to know that you see them and are frightened of them, that they’re bigger and more important than you. If you run or cry, they like that. But if you stand up to them or—even better—don’t care about them, they falter.”
“What’s falter?”
Patricia’s lips purse that her granddaughter doesn’t know the word before she remembers that at this age, she didn’t, either.
“To falter is to hesitate and lose strength. To doubt. A monster wants to make you feel that, not feel that itself.”
“But what if he…if he doesn’t care about you at all? If he’s just plain mean?”
Well, that is the question, isn’t it?
A question asked by millions of women around the world and, yes, surely some men as well. What do you do when you’re chained to a monster that isn’t particular about what it destroys?
“Then you escape. Maybe you can’t do it when you’re very small; you just have to stay out of the way and learn how to be…” She racks her brain for a way to talk about such things that’s appropriate for a five-year-old, because she remembers when Mama had man-friends over, and how she felt, then. “You have to learn to be like a bunny.”
That gets Brooklyn’s attention. “How? Bunnies are nice and soft.”
Patricia’s eyes go unfocused in the dark as she strokes the child’s sweaty hair away from her face. It’s funny—when Brooklyn first attacked her, she was scared of having the child so close. But now she feels certain that keeping her close is the right thing to do.
“Bunnies are nice and soft, yes. But bunnies are also clever. They can hide and blend in and be silent. They can sneak and find little hidey-holes. They can run and jump. And then, when a bunny is cornered, that’s when the bunny knows the only recourse is to fight. Very fierce, are bunnies.”
If Brooklyn asks her how she knows all this, she will not say that it’s because she read Watership Down in tenth grade and was deeply affected.