Momma

Idle hands are the devil’s playground, that’s what everyone says, but if that’s true, what, then, is imagination? Worse yet, a child’s imagination? They can dream up anything, known and unknown, real, fantasy, friends. An imagination that can even blend into reality itself. Bea didn’t know if that’s what she had done or not, but she felt certain of one thing when she woke up this morning. Nothing anyone seemed to say could change her conviction, much less her mother.

“Oh, come on, Bea,” her mother’s voice said.

           The little girl shook her head, crossing her arms into a tight knot. “Only my momma can call me Bea, you’re not my momma. I want papa.”

           “Sweet girl, I am your momma.” The body was her mom’s, the voice was right, the face, everything. She took a deep breath and put on a calming smile. “I can play along though if you want, until papa gets home.” The figure that was her mom knelt and offered a hand to the girl, her other hand on her full tummy. “Beatrice?” The girl opened her eyes at the call of her name, and there was something there. It was a mystery as to what exactly the girl seemed to think she knew, what she might have thought she had seen, what reason she had to believe that her mom wasn’t her mom. “Maybe we could play a game to pass the time?”

           Bea looked skeptical, one eye half closed but ever on the momma who wasn’t momma. “What kind of game?” she asked.

           “How about…,” momma said, a finger to her chin, “your favorite, hide-and-seek.”

           The idea was appealing enough that it didn’t garner an immediate no. Bea mulled it over as much as a six year old child may mull over anything, and ultimately agreed. “I’m it though, you have to hide,” she said.

           “Is that a test?” Bea would have been happy to know that her poker face was solid enough to beat a grown man with a gambling addiction. “I know you like hiding first, silly. I should be it.”

           A hint of a smile hid beneath Bea’s otherwise stone face. Perhaps she was wrong, it said. Momma would know, it said. Maybe this is momma, it hoped. And it grew, slowly but surely that perhaps she was wrong, and that her imagination had run wild in her sleep.

           “Alright, you’re it!” she said with glee, loosening her arms up and sprinting to the stairs. “Start counting!” she yelled, and she could hear momma’s voice counting echo throughout the halls. One. Two. Three. Her feet clopped up and down the stairs, an attempt at misdirection. Four. Five. Six. She was definitely downstairs now, but that wasn’t her usual area. Seven. Eight. Nine. It was quiet now, and there was no doubt where she had hidden. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. The first spots always came first though. The bedroom, closet, parents’ room, behind the shower curtain in the master bathroom, and only then would the downstairs be ventured into, although that was a rarity. Thirteen. Fourteen. From there it would be a gamble, no order, anything was game. But this game would have only one final place.

           “Fifteen, ready or not, here I come!” Once the usual spots were checked, the tell-tale creaks of the floor and door hinges giving them away, the game was brought downstairs, to the right, to the garage door. “Oh, Beatrice,” momma called out, the voice echoing into the enclosed room, gliding around the car that had been parked for longer than anyone could remember at this point. Under it was a dark stain, a copper tint along its edges, and faint breathing that would have been unnoticeable to anyone else. She was trying harder than she ever had though to not breathe, as if her life may have depended on it, and any good mother would know that if that were the case, then she wasn’t yet ready to be found.

           And so momma looked around the rest of the garage first, behind the door, inside the car’s windows, behind long forgotten boxes from when the family had first moved in. Then finally, when the spots seemed exhausted, and when the fear in the room seemed to have dissipated, her voice called out to the girl. “Bea,” it said, then quickly remembered, “I mean, Beatrice.” Her face came down below the car’s undercarriage to see the young girl lying underneath, and Bea’s face softened. Only her real momma would have used up so much time to find her after knowing where she was. Only she would have cared enough.

           “I’m sorry I said you weren’t my momma,” the girl said as she crawled out from under the car, her hands and knees covered in dark smudges. She wrapped her arms around her mom’s belly just in time to feel a small kick. “I think I was just scared I was gonna lose you. Like in my dream.”

           “Oh, sweet girl,” her mom’s voice said, the words a lullaby in the darkness. She wrapped her arm around Beatrice and stroked her hair. “What dream was that?”

           The girl looked up, but she couldn’t bare to look into her mom’s eyes as she told her. Told her how in the dark of the night she had woken up—thought she had woken up to the sounds of clinging and clanging from somewhere in the house. How she stumbled and swayed from her bedroom, down the stairs, to the garage, to the sounds of scrapes against the cement floor, pants of air from beneath the car. How when she bent down, she saw her, saw her eyes staring back at her, her mouth open, blood in her tears. How when she woke up again the next morning, she quietly rushed back to the garage to find nothing of the sort, but she could still feel the stinging pain from having cried all night, having cried all over a nightmare that she had convinced herself had been real.

           “Oh, Bea,” momma’s voice cooed, stroking her fingers through Beatrice’s hair, interlacing strands between them. The belly kicked again. “You don’t have to be sorry, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

           Bea looked up, tears in her eyes. “But I said you weren’t my momma,” she cried. Momma’s face smiled down at her, and the squirming stomach started to growl.

           “It’s okay, baby girl. It’s okay.” The slender hands that were her mom’s pulled tightly at the hair now, and Bea’s eyes were glued to mine, seeing beyond the eyes that once belonged to her mother and into the ones that had devoured her. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said, the smile growing too long for the human face it was attached to, “because I’m not your momma.”