Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

roaring through the house, not letting anyone forget she was gone.
    As if that weren’t enough, when Leon left the house, he hadn’t offered to kiss Madison good-bye, and when he came home, he’d ignored her completely. Apart from Emil/Emily, the kid was pretty much on her own.

CHAPTER 9

    It was almost lunchtime but I wasn’t hungry. I was still angry and I couldn’t shake it. But who was I angry at? Surely not Madison. She was a frustrating kid but she was managing any way she could, like the rest of us. She’d reacted to an extreme circumstance with extreme behavior, electing not to speak. Did that make her a criminal? Actually, it made her a survivor. Even the little turtle was helping her to survive, giving her some sense of control and a companion who couldn’t walk out on her.
    Was I angry at Leon? Wasn’t he doing the best he could, too? Wasn’t he trying to survive despite difficult circumstances and a severely broken heart? What more could I expect of him, or of Madison?
    Walking down Hudson Street past the big playground, I found myself shrugging my shoulders, talking out loud, like the rest of the crazies in New York. I needed to do something to get my sanity back. I thought about the blue walls of Madison’s room. I needed to get to the pool.
    I dropped Dashiell off at home, grabbed the bag with my suit, cap, goggles and lock and headed for the Y on Fourteenth Street, still talking to myself on the way there.
    I thought about my sister’s kids, kids who had every privilege, pricey private school, horseback riding lessons on the weekend, braces to fix their crooked teeth, a summer abroad studying music for my nephew, one of those expensive summer camps for kids who want to act for my niece. And what about Madison? A nearly empty refrigerator, hair that needed trimming, an isolating chronic disorder, abandonment, neglect and now suspicion of murder.
    Was that why I was so mad? Was I mad because there wasn’t a roast chicken in the Spectors’ refrigerator, because Madison’s nails were long and dirty? Even given Leon’s neglect, there were lots of kids who had it worse than Madison, kids without homes, kids who were abused by their own relatives, kids who lived with parental addiction or without parents at all.
    There was a water exercise class on one side of the pool, families with kids swimming on the other, the dads and moms encouraging their kids to swim, praising every effort. There were only three lap swimmers in the available center lanes. I slipped into an empty lane and began to swim, all the thoughts that had been plaguing me gone for the moment. I swam hard, wanting to keep my mind empty, just to feel my body working as I moved through the water, leaving room for nothing but what I was doing at the moment. I concentrated on my breathing, stretching my arms as far out in front of me as I could, trying to kick away my anger. There was something calming about the blue world under the water, something that allowed me to push away all the chatter that had been going on inside my head.
    But once I was out of the water, all the calm disappeared. Now there was a wall of noise from the kids, only a dozen or so of them but each one shouting as loud as possible. And as I walked toward the showers, all my own noise came back. Standing in the hot shower, I finally knew why I’d been so angry at Madison’s house. It wasn’t a coincidence that I’d been thinking about my sister lately. Because what had happened to me had happened to her as well.
    I was only five at the time. Lillian was fourteen. My mother sat us down in the kitchen and told us that she was going away. We were bad, she said, and that was why she was leaving. I remember how cold the air seemed, how hard the wooden chair I sat on felt. Lillian asked when she’d be back. My mother, who had been sitting with us, got up and walked over to the sink. With her hands on the edge of the sink, her back to us, she said she didn’t know. Without turning around to face us again, she left the room.
    It was my fault. I knew it. Lillian was always so good. I was the one my mother got mad at time after time. I was the one she said would aggravate her to death. I was frozen with fear and guilt. Lillian ran after her. “If you don’t love us anymore, then fuck you,” she shouted. I didn’t hear my mother’s answer, if there’d been one, and even though I waited for Lillian to come back and tell me what to do to keep my mother from going