I’m standing in the open pantry of our darkened home, the clock above the kitchen stove reading 3:12 a.m. I grope the shelves blindly for chamomile tea, knowing I’d hidden a box somewhere, but also certain it would take much more than chamomile tea to help me sleep. I see Mia making her First Communion, see the distaste on her face when she first laid the Body of Christ on her tip of her tongue; I hear her laugh about it later, alone in her bedroom, just she and me, about how hard it was to chew and swallow, about how she almost choked on the wine.
And then it hits me like a load of bricks, this realization that suddenly overwhelms me: my baby might be dead, and there, in the middle of the pantry, in the middle of the night, I begin to weep; falling to the floor, I press the ends of my pajamas to my face to stifle the sound. I envision her in that olive bubble, see her flash a toothless grin as she hangs on to the edge of the coffee table and laboriously makes her way to my outstretched hands.
My baby might be dead.
I’m doing what I can to help with the investigation, and yet it feels entirely trivial and frivolous because Mia isn’t home. I spent an entire day in Mia’s neighborhood, passing out Missing fliers to everyone I passed. I taped the signs to lampposts and in store windows, an image of Mia on hot-pink paper that was impossible to ignore. I met her friend Ayanna for lunch, and together we went through the details of Mia’s last day, desperate for oddities that might explain Mia’s disappearance, of which there were none. I rode into the city with Detective Hoffman, after he had secured a key for Mia’s apartment and checked that it was not a crime scene, and together we sifted through Mia’s belongings, through every circadian object—lesson plans and an address book, grocery lists and to-dos, hopeful for a clue. We found none.
Detective Hoffman phones me once, sometimes twice a day. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t speak. I find his voice, his gentle nature, reassuring and he’s always amicable even when James winds him up.
James says that he’s an idiot.
The detective gives the impression that I’m the first to know any bit of information that crosses his desk, but I’m certain I’m not. He is proofreading the fine points before offering snippets to me. These snippets leave a thousand what-ifs running through a mother’s mind.
I’m reminded of my daughter’s dissolution with every breath I take. When I see mothers holding their children’s hands. When I see children climbing onto the school bus. When I see postings of missing cats taped to the street posts, or hear a mother call her child by name.
Detective Hoffman wants to know everything he possibly can about Mia. I rummage through old photographs in the basement. I come across old Halloween costumes, and size-four clothes, roller skates and Barbie dolls. I know there are other cases, other missing girls like Mia. I picture their mothers. I know there are girls who never come home.
The detective reminds me that no news is good news. Sometimes he calls to tell me nothing at all, no information, in case I was wondering, which I always am. He humors me. He promises to do everything he can to find Mia. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me, or when he lingers just a moment longer than he should, to make certain I’m not about to crumble.
But I think of it all the time, about how hard it has become to stand and walk, about how impossible it’s becoming to function and live in a world that still thinks of politics and entertainment and sports and the economy when all I think about is Mia.