The noises that her mother made were empty, meaningless, but somehow Ruth understood that she had to make them, and she let her. It was her way of giving back a little comfort in return. It was all she had.
After a while, her mother let go. Ruth lifted her own hand to her face to wipe away the tears, and then to rub away the beginning of a headache. She felt the warm, oily skin of her forehead and drew her arm back with a breath of disgust. She wiped her hand almost absently on her pants, stared without seeing at a crayon scribble on the wall, at Minnie, curled in the corner with one ear cocked.
And as she stared, her eyes gradually closed, her chin sank onto her chest. She slept tucked in like a bird, floating with the tides of her dreams, her feet scrabbling frantically to reach the bottom of a cold, dark lake.
She was woken what felt like seconds later by a clatter of crockery, heard the slap-slosh of the mop in the kitchen, and, for a brief, soft moment, wondered why her mother was cleaning at that hour, how she hadn’t disturbed the kids. Her brain groped for clarity and was hit by the shock of memory.
The kids.
Her babies.
And she opened her swollen eyes on the horror of that quiet room.
She was shivering, feverish, her skin burning and her chest aching. She sat up, wrapped her arms around her body, trying not to think of her body, because that would mean thinking of the children it had carried and borne and fed and comforted and nursed and held and slapped and stroked and soothed and loved. It would mean thinking of where Frankie might be, and of something other than that present moment and the effort of breathing, and she was not capable.
Then the door opened and her mother was there and the soft shushing was gone. That harsh, dry voice was back between them, pecking, pecking, her beak rubbing the salty sting into the wound that was Ruth’s head and Ruth’s thin skin.
And as her mother spoke and pecked and jabbed, she hovered and flapped: cushions were plumped and straightened, magazines lined up with the edges of the table, and shoes picked up in pairs. Two-by-two by baby-pink and big-boy-blue. And her mother swiveled her head, her sharp eyes missing nothing. Then a pat of the neat gray hair, a sweep of that apron and those respectable tan stockings, and a final pat-a-cake of Max Factor no. 23 to hide any shameful trace of tears.
And it was done, and the room was tidy and ordered and neat. Her mother was tidy and ordered and neat. And in the middle of everything sat Ruth. Slumped on the sofa like a sack of old clothes. Her hair awry, her skin damp, her blouse wrinkled.
Her mother was silent but her eyes, those flat gray stones, were on her and in her, all the way inside her head where the sharp voice still pecked, insisted that it was all Ruth’s fault. The dirt in the apartment was her dirt, it was her sweat, her smell, her looseness, her leaking wet body that had betrayed her. It was her fault that someone had taken the children, her fault that Frankie was missing, that Cindy was . . . gone.
The voice followed Ruth to the bathroom, where she washed and redid her face, scarcely looking at her reflection, trying not to think of Frankie, trying not to let the waves of terror come, trying to concentrate on the temperature of the water, on reaching for the soap, on the lather in her hands, on getting the right amount of powder on the brush.
The voice followed her into the kitchen where she made tea. Where the marks of the mop were still visible on the floor, where it had pushed the dirt into brown corners. Her mother had lined up the jars and canisters at the back of the counter and she noticed that the jelly jar Cindy had stuck with shells and glitter was gone—hidden away or thrown out with the garbage.
The voice followed her into the bedroom where she changed her clothes slowly, as though her body was bruised. She combed her hair in front of the mirror, still avoiding her own eyes, sprayed a sticky spiraling web around her head, walked back to the kitchen and past the closed door of the other bedroom, past Minnie, scratching and whining to be let in, anxious because she couldn’t find the kids. Ruth snapped at her, watched her sink to the floor.
In the kitchen, she poured the tea, reached past her mother for the mop and bucket, for the bleach, took them back into the bathroom. And as she rubbed and scratched at stains, the voice grew quieter. As the sky paled into another hot blue dawn, she was scrubbing the sink, scouring the bathtub, polishing floors. She refilled the bucket again and again, breathed in the steam and the bleach, focused on her red, raw hands and on the ache in her back, knowing that if she stopped, the voice would start again.