Page 12 of Play Nice

The first night with my girls in the house, I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner and let them eat in front of the TV—something they weren’t allowed to do at their father’s.

I knew they would report back and that he wouldn’t approve.

For as long as I’d been a mother, I’d been made to feel like I was a bad mother.

My relationship with my ex-husband shifted after Elle, our eldest, was born.

I couldn’t get her to latch, and my failure to nurse her became indicative of my failure as a parent.

I appreciated that he loved our daughters, but it came at my expense.

I was never good enough for them in his eyes.

I also, apparently, wasn’t good enough for him.

He began an affair with our daughters’ dance instructor, spent a year denying it, accusing me of being crazy and insecure, and then one day I woke up to him packing a bag, telling me he was leaving me and taking the girls.

He promised I could still see them. He told me it’d be better for everyone if I didn’t fight.

He’ll continue to deny this till the day he dies.

He’ll tell you that I never recovered from my postpartum with you.

That I became reliant on alcohol. That I was paranoid and mentally unstable.

And that accusing him of cheating was my way of tarnishing his reputation while redeeming my own.

I know you love your father. He’s a great dad.

But he was horrible to me. This is the truth.

I know you’re smart enough to see it, if you look back, and look closely.

But I fought. Of course I fought. Eleven months later, I was in the new house with my daughters, but as far as he was concerned, custody still was not settled.

There were stakes to feeding them peanut butter and jelly for dinner and allowing them to watch TV. It didn’t matter that I was exhausted from the move, physically and financially. There was no room for me to fail, to open myself up to ridicule.

The pressure put me on edge. It made me vulnerable.

So when I went into the kitchen to find all the cabinets open and peanut butter smeared on the walls, even though I knew in my right mind, in my heart of hearts, that it wasn’t my daughters, I called them into the kitchen.

“Who did this?” I asked.

They looked confused.

“Is this supposed to be funny?”

“What happened?” Elle asked, anxiously shifting her weight, shuffling back and forth.

“You tell me,” I said.

“We were in the other room,” Dee said. “It wasn’t us. But I can clean it up. I’ll clean.”

“Cici?” I asked. “Was this you?”

She wasn’t tall enough to reach the cabinets. Not unless she climbed up…

“No,” she said. Then, very matter-of-fact, added, “It was probably the thing that lives in my closet.”

We all looked at her.

“What?” I asked, kneeling so we could be eye to eye.

She repeated herself in her sweet little voice. “The thing that lives in my closet.”

There was no trace of her typical impishness, no wink in her eye. I knew my daughters, I understood them. I saw them. And I knew Cici was being serious.

“What thing?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I dunno. It doesn’t have a body yet.”

“Cici,” I said, standing. “This is our new house. Why would you make a mess in our new house? Do you not like it here?”

“I didn’t do it,” she said, her cheeks going red, eyes welling with tears. “I didn’t do it.”

“She didn’t,” Dee said. “She was with us the whole time.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then you can all clean. Clean it up, and then go to bed!”

I stormed out of the kitchen, down the stairs, and into my room, slamming the door behind me. I regretted my behavior instantly and wanted to run back upstairs to apologize, but I couldn’t bear to face them. I was too ashamed.

An hour later, I emerged from my room to find the kitchen wiped clean, cabinets closed, and the girls asleep in their beds. I kissed them all on the forehead and prepared to make it up to them in the morning with French toast.

I know I was crueler in the moment than I recounted here. I will be sorry about this until the day I die, and probably even after.

Too upset to sleep, I decided to light some candles and run a bath. The downstairs bathroom had a sunken tub, which was novel to the girls. They liked it, so I liked it.

I set out the few candles I had, switched off the lights, and leaned down to turn on the faucet.

At first, I couldn’t tell, since the room was dark.

But by the soft flicker of candlelight, the water looked wrong, only I couldn’t determine why.

Or perhaps I just struggled to wrap my mind around it, to accept that the water was black as ash.

And that it smelled. That it stank of sulfur.

I pulled up the drain, blew out the candles, and told myself that I’d call a plumber first thing.

Needing fresh air, I sat on the back deck with a glass of wine, looking out into the woods, listening to the crickets and to the wind rustling the trees.

I had thought moving into the house marked the end of my nightmare, but it was only the beginning.

—

There’s a smell. Peanut butter and Coca-Cola. An anxiety hot and sharp, and it cuts straight through my chest without resistance, like I have no substance, like I’m nothing at all.

There was an incident in the kitchen. Something spilled. A mess made. Mom angry. Daffy attempting to defuse the tension. A sound. That sound. Hitting is so oddly distinct. Daffy holding her cheek. Mom yelling, Clean it up, and then go to bed!

That’s the cruelty she alluded to in her footnote, what she wouldn’t commit to paper for the masses, only to me. Because she had to. Because I was there. Because I remember.

But I have no memory of blaming a vague, formless, closet-dwelling entity for the mess.

I close my eyes, and I think back, and I try to summon that night, that moment.

My fingers sticky from the sandwich. My teeth gritty, coated with sugar from the soda.

The chitter of cartoons on the TV in the living room.

My mother in front of me, hair wild, eyes wide, mouth purple, breath sour.

My sisters beside me. A shadow in the corner with no eyes, no face, looking right at me—not there, not real. Memories are so easily manipulated.

There was a malevolent energy in the kitchen with us, but I’m pretty sure it’s the kind that exists in every house, in every family, in all of us on our worst nights. Mom surrendered to it, to her worst, and couldn’t take responsibility.

I imagine her tiptoeing into my room as I slept and kissing me on the forehead, an apology. I imagine my eyelids fluttering at her touch. I imagine a shape in the dark. I see it.

Not her.

My heart drops as it stares back at me, this shape, this shadow, this faceless thing.

I open my eyes.