fter Magdalene’s death, the crying in the night began again. Every night, at two forty-eight, a baby cried. It howled and sobbed through the hours until dawn.
When dawn broke through the windows, Melissa would realize that the crying had stopped, but she didn’t know when. She would lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, feeling as if time had stopped and was just circling, waiting to burst into motion. Perhaps it would reverse this time and start playing backwards, pushing through all of the events of the past. A pillow held over someone’s head would bring her to life. A stroke would restore speech, vision, and motor function. A sudden tug on her sister’s arm would put it back into place.
Wisteria. She often thought about Wisteria now. Sometimes she saw her, a little girl playing with a doll. The girl was unaware of anything around her except for the doll. Melissa tried to talk with her, but the child did not respond. After watching her for several days, Melissa realized that the girl set her doll through the same motions repetitively. Sometimes the doll danced: the girl held it by the tips of its hands and moved it one-two-three steps towards herself across the floor. Then, she dropped one hand. Holding the doll by the other hand, she spun it one-two-three-four-five times. The doll stopped, facing away from the girl. The girl took the doll’s other hand. Then, the doll jumped into the air, landed, and jumped again, higher. The doll landed on the floor, its legs splayed. The girl let its hands down slowly, and the doll sprawled on the floor in a bow, with its head touching the ground.
After a pause, the girl would snatch up the doll and either begin a monologue about her date with the man she knew that she would marry, or begin brushing the doll’s hair and plaiting it into a complex system of braids.
Melissa counted twenty-nine games that Wisteria would play with the doll. Three of them had variations. The third had sixteen different variants. Melissa watched and memorized them all.
She also took all of the towels and linens out of the cupboard in the hall, like this:
One morning, Melissa awoke to the sound of crying at two forty-eight in the morning. She went to the hallway and flung open the curtain. She emptied the towels and sheets and blankets and pillows and miscellaneous artifacts into the hallway. When the room was emptied, she was still not satisfied. Melissa found the old crib, rotting out in back of the house and put it together back in its place. She filled it with a soft pad and baby blankets, soft toys, and a set of baby’s clothes, placed cozily under the blanket.
When she first saw the room recreated, the crib seemed weather-worn. The clothes and blankets were frayed and moth-eaten. Over time, though, the wood regained its luster. The cloth became less worn and more soft. The clothes gained bulk and substance.
At night, when she would hear the baby crying, Melissa would go to the crib and pick up the swaddling clothes in her arms. She would walk the hallway, back and forth. She would offer her milkless breast to feed the unreal infant. In this way, she would quiet the babe.
Even the crack in the railing of the crib slowly healed itself. It was flawless, smooth, glossy, perfect. The grain danced and sang through the varnish. The heights of color were the tawny beige of a new fawn. The depths of grain were the blackest pitch of the richest soil. The sheen reflected every motion from the hallway.
One morning, when Melissa was feeding the baby, her mother shuffled into the kitchen. Magdalene went to the stove and began making breakfast.
Melissa assumed that if she spoke to this apparition, she would be unheard. The mother cracked eggs and sliced bread for toast. She began frying bacon in a solid iron pan. She put coffee in a pot on the stove.
When she finished preparing the breakfast, the apparition dolled it out onto two plates and set them on the table. Sitting in front of her food, she began to eat.
Melissa picked up her fork and found that the food had form and substance. They ate in silence that day and the next and the next. On the following day, when Magdalene sat down to eat, she said, “How is the baby doing?”
Melissa looked up.
“Fine.”
“She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?”
“So beautiful.”
“Have you thought about a name for her?”
“I think about it all the time.”
After this, Melissa had a conversation with her mother every morning at breakfast time. Her mother only appeared in the mornings, only in the kitchen. She always prepared food, and she never spoke until the food was made and laid on the table.
When they sat over their meals, they had conversations that they could never have had in life.
Melissa lived alone, but her life was crowded with family. Her nights were taken with her daughter. Her mornings were occupied in conversation with her mother. During her days, she watched the child Wisteria as she played eternally with her doll.
Melissa woke one morning at two forty-eight to the familiar sound of crying.
She rose from her bed, walked to the hall, and pulled back the curtain. She picked up the baby clothes, wrapped in a blanket, and held them to her chest. She walked in a small circle around the center of the hallway to quiet the cries.
The sobs were just descending when Melissa heard the sound of a disruption from the front of the house. There was a crashing noise, a sound like furniture overturning. Melissa pulled the baby clothes to herself and backed away from the stairs.
It was John who struggled up the stairs. He was badly burned, and the skin was pulling off of him in black-red sheets.
“Melissa,” he said as he stumbled up the stairs.
Melissa screamed, backing away.
“Get away,” she said. Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Melissa,” he said. He fell to the ground and pulled himself up again. “I want my baby. Give me my baby.”
“No! No! You can’t have her. Get away.” She held the baby clothes to her chest.
She backed into her bedroom, to the wall. He came slowly toward her, dragging one leg, leaving bloody footprints along side the dragging smear from his other leg.
Melissa slid down the wall until she was crouching on the floor in the corner.
“No, no, no,” she said.
She cringed in the corner, holding the clothes to her, until she looked down and realized that they were only clothes. She looked up and saw that she was alone. There were no bloody footprints on the floor. There was no one moving toward her.
That was the only time that she saw John.
Weeks or maybe months later, her father came.
He was sitting in the big chair in the living room where he always sat. She walked into the room, and he was just there.
“Come here,” he said. “Come sit on Daddy’s lap, Melissa.”
She backed out of the room she had just entered, slamming the door behind her.
She stopped going into that room.
He was always sitting there.
Sometimes he called to her: “Melissa! Get in here. Don’t disobey your father. You’ll see the back end of my belt before the day is over.”
He did not seem to be able to get up out of the chair.
Sometimes she heard him in there, crying.
“Melissa,” he would say. “I love you, Melissa. Why are you treating me like this? Why won’t you let me go?”
He never moved from the chair.
Melissa began venturing into the room, standing against the opposite wall from her father.
“Come here, Melissa,” he would say. “You’re such a beautiful girl. Come sit on Daddy’s lap.”
Sometimes he looked old. She would walk into the room and find him vomiting on himself.
“I don’t feel so well,” he would say.
Most of the time, he looked young.
“Why?” she would ask him. “Why?”
“Melissa, is that you?” he would say. “Come here. Come sit on Daddy’s lap.”
One day, she got so angry with him that she heated up a pot of oil on the stove. She took the pot and walked into the living room.
“Why are you here?” she said. “No one wants you here. Go away.”
“Melissa, is that you?” he said. “Come here. Come sit on Daddy’s lap.”
“I hate you!” she said. “I hate you!”
“Come on, honey. Be a good girl.”
She screamed and threw the pot of oil in his face. She could see his skin bubbling and scorching under the heat.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s Daddy’s good girl. Yes, oh yes, such a good girl.”
It was not long after this incident that the people came.
First they knocked on the door. Melissa came to answer it, but she could not seem to get a grip on the handle. She could hear them talking through the door, a far away mumble.
“Not seen her for days—” she heard.
“—gone away?” she heard.
After she had struggled with the door handle for a while, it swung open.
“Hello!” Melissa said.
The people were an older woman and a younger man. They looked familiar, but she could not remember where she knew them from.
They did not answer her but looked around the room.
“Maybe she’s just out.”
“Nonsense. Let’s look around.”
They came in the door, and Melissa stood back to let them pass.
“It was nice of you to call,” Melissa said.
“It’s cold in here,” said the woman.
“Melissa?” called the man. “Are you here? Is anyone at home?”
“I’m right here,” said Melissa.
The man and woman looked in the living room and the kitchen and then mounted the stairs. Melissa followed.
“Melissa? Are you here? Is everything okay?”
They paused in the hallway and then went into the bedroom.
“Melissa?” the man said again. He rushed to a pile of something on the bed.
“What is it?” asked Melissa. “What’s wrong?”
“You better not come in,” said the man. “You don’t want to see this.”
The woman stood by the door. “Is it bad?”
Melissa walked over to the bed slowly.
“It’s pretty bad. She’s been dead for a while.”
Looking over the man’s shoulder, Melissa saw that the figure on the bed was herself, and her eyes were opened in a vacant stare.
The man reached forward and closed her eyes.
Everything went blank.
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