Once Upon a Time

A novella excerpt by Jennifer Frost

The springy coils of her glossy black hair defied the apple-red headband she wore to keep them out of her eyes. As she folded socks and underwear, pajamas, and blue jeans, she left room in her luggage for the brand-new baby clothes she’d brought home today. Now in the washing machine, she would pack them freshly laundered, softened by mild detergent to prevent rashes, rinsed free of department store starch, and made safe from pesky plastic tags. She congratulated herself on her smooth-as-silk response to the nosy Lisa that afternoon at Target. No one would derail her this time. This wouldn’t be another failed expedition like the one she’d had with Child Protective Services, that heartless, bureaucratic vortex rejecting her evidence of baby Grace’s suffering in the name of privacy laws and “just cause.” Grace, the smallest infant in the nursery at Little Angels, was precious to Millie. Though she hadn’t convinced the state agency the child was in any danger, she knew Grace was in trouble. Now, Millie would rescue her from the gnarled claws of the wicked witch, the child’s negligent single mother. The only person brave enough to step in, Millie would scale that tower of despair and deliver the child from Evil, no matter the personal cost.

With the suitcase in order, Millie moved to the kitchen, where two sturdy cardboard packing crates held the essentials Grace would need as they made their getaway. In the coming days, she would be vigilant and aware of security cams, the eyes that could catch her filling up at a gas station, eating in a diner, or checking into a hotel. The planning and packing for the journey steadied her, the orderliness of the cardboard crates, clean enough to be lined with white linen, deep enough to hold all the fresh-baked cookies they could eat. When the dryer in the adjacent laundry room sounded the end of its cycle, Millie, dreaming, moved to the door. She anticipated the fresh breath of clean clothes washed in perfume-free detergent. Instead, the door opened on a dark void, a dim scene coming slowly into focus, another kitchen, Vivian’s, on the day Millie saw her last. There, too, were cardboard boxes packed for a clandestine getaway. And there was Vivian at the cracked Formica table, skirt hiked above her thigh-high nylons, stubbing another cigarette butt into an overflowing ashtray.

At Vivian’s words, Millie stepped inside. A grown woman’s slippered foot left Millie’s scrubbed tile floor and landed across the threshold in a teenager’s battered canvas sneaker. The grimy, yellowed linoleum was sticky underfoot. Fifteen-year-old Millie saw the splitting cardboard boxes sutured with duct tape. One bore Vivian’s wardrobe. The other held what little else they owned, Millie’s clothes tossed in as an afterthought with a blender, a hair dryer, and a framed picture of the Virgin Mary. They fled again, escaping before they were evicted, running in the night to God knew where. Would she be in school? Would she go hungry? Would she sleep in the car until Vivian scraped together enough cash for a deposit on an apartment where they would never pay the rent? She cast her green eyes around the hopeless scene, the scarred cabinets, the food-splattered stove, the dishes reeking in a scummy gray pond in the sink. Vivian followed her gaze around the room until Millie met her eyes. “Admiring the place one last time? Wishing you could stay in this dump?”

“I hate it.”

“But you don’t want to leave.”

“Where are we going this time?”

“What’s it to you? I decide what we do.”

“I’m not going.”

“Oh yeah? What are you planning to tell the landlord when he shows up asking for three months’ rent? That’s a good question, isn’t it?” Vivian paused, twitching like a cat scenting her prey, a new thought crossing her mind. “What have you got to pay him with, I wonder?”

“I’ll leave. But not with you.”

But Vivian was up now, slinking like a lioness in the tall grass on black-bottomed feet, sinewy and lascivious. “Maybe we can both stay,” she said, her voice changing from a gruff bark to a velvet purr. “Maybe we’ve already got everything we need.” Millie backed away, but Vivian caught her arm and wrenched her forward. Millie froze, awaiting the killing bite, black curls falling loose around her shoulders, her mother’s steel grip immobilizing her. “You’ll come with me. If you know what’s good for you.” She released her hold and shoved Millie to the wall.

The edges of the room faded. She saw nothing, but her mother’s feline strut back to the table, the sinister smile she threw over her shoulder, still thinking she might trade her daughter’s innocence to a dirty old man in lieu of back rent. Young Millie closed her eyes and imagined herself at school, and saw Mr. Chevalier, blond-haired, broad-shouldered. In class, she pictured him in shining armor, armor to rescue her, rescue her not in his sensible car parked in the teacher’s lot but in a golden carriage drawn by six white horses wearing plumes above their forelocks. He noticed her, too, noticed her excellent grades that couldn’t hide signs of trouble at home.

Young Millie went to the wall phone, ignoring Vivian’s hissing questions about who she intended to call. She dialed from a scrap of lined notebook paper she’d been carrying for weeks, Mr. Chevalier’s number given to her, even when he knew he shouldn’t because he saw something in Millie that needed saving. Before Millie could say more than her name, Vivian’s snarls turned to a guttural growl as she dragged the phone from her daughter’s hand and threw it to the floor. “Millie, are you okay?” said the thin voice on the line. Vivian screamed like a panther, and Millie went blind. When the flannel-black darkness lifted, her mother was in handcuffs while Mr. Chevalier talked to a pair of police officers out in the yard. Someone was talking, always talking, as the scenery changed around her. Now she was in a car, now on a doctor’s exam table, now in one narrow single bed, now in another. No matter how many times the scene changed, Mr. Chevalier never reappeared. After that, she was the straggler at the end of every line, the one left alone when the rocks fell, sealing the mountain cave forever. Now, the laundry machine before her buzzed a second time, awakening her from a sleep that could last one hundred years. She touched the doorframe, felt the warm dryer in front of her, and looked down to her feet shod in soft gray slippers standing on a clean tile floor.

***

Millie packed the car under cover of predawn darkness when her neighbors would be hibernating bears, snug in their deep-winter dens. Bundled against the cold in her wool coat, her black curls tumbled from beneath her crimson-knit hat. The crates and diaper boxes fit as neatly as wood block puzzle pieces into the trunk of her car, and the suitcase drew no attention to itself behind the passenger seat. As the sky turned pink, then yellow, she circled the car like a hawk, appraising it from every angle. She searched for signs that would give her away in the hours before they made their run, anything her coworkers might notice while the car was parked behind the daycare center. They would surely miss the changed license plates swiped from a hapless neighbor with a roughly identical car. By the time he reported the theft, if he did, Millie and Grace would be geese flown south for the winter, her own plates discarded down a storm drain behind the building. When she was satisfied the car would pass unremarked, she went inside and waited, watching the clock until it was time to leave.

She arrived at work as usual, not one minute earlier, not one minute later, executing every task as always, giddy as a girl on her first date. As she walked through the playroom with the overhead lights off, sanitizing surfaces, and opening the blinds, she looked again at the blocky primary colors on the floor. Alone now, before anyone else arrived, she could see the shimmering specters of the children she’d led in dances across these carpet squares, the walks to Grandma’s house, and rounds of duck-duck-goose. There was Nicholas with the golden curls, the son she and Rick might have had all those years ago when Vivian, a shriveled-up wicked witch rotting in the state hospital, died at last, and Millie was free, really free to find Prince Charming, climb into his saddle and ride far, far away. Her eyes fell on the library corner she’d curated with such care, the books offering nourishment for the minds of these ephemeral children sitting around her like fairies in a ring, eyes on her chair, waiting for the story to begin. Behind her, she heard the outer doors opening and felt the wind rushing in with the voices of parents and children bustling. She turned, her face alight, to greet the early morning drop-offs in the entryway, the flesh-and-blood children who would chase away these ghosts. Instead, the room was still, suddenly silent, and the doors remained closed.

The other employees arrived, and Millie greeted them, careful to keep her face neutral and pleasant as they said their good mornings, sharing a cup of hot coffee and preparing for the day. Before long, the playroom was crowded with wiggling bodies and ringing with the sound of little feet marching to the music, a sunny oasis from the winter weather howling outside the brick building like a hungry wolf. She retreated to the nursery alcove, where the babies napped and played. Grace wouldn’t be there yet, but Millie would wait for her, changing diapers and singing songs to the infants. She gazed into their faces and pressed her index finger into their palms, feeling the grip of their baby fists. She said her soundless goodbyes to their surroundings, a final inventory of what she was leaving. Goodbye, babies. Goodbye, quilt-draped walls and white-painted rocking chairs. Without realizing she was moving, she drifted from the nursery, Goodbye corridor. Goodbye, drinking fountain with a step stool for the little ones. Goodbye, playroom. Goodbye, part-time girls. Goodbye children. Grace arrived. The day passed in a dream.

In the afternoon, Millie left as usual at 3pm, parking her car, as planned, along a neighborhood street in sight of Little Angels. She waited for guileless Bella, her impressionable former coworker, Grace’s afternoon babysitter, to arrive for 4pm pick-up. Though the cold bit her skin, she waited without the heater to prevent the cloud of exhaust that would draw attention to her car idling. Bella came for baby Grace an hour later, never noticing Millie anonymously a block away. A few minutes later, she called Bella with a false story about the doctor’s forgotten appointment. Grace’s mother couldn’t get away from work, she told Bella. As a single mother, she had no one else to call. She said it was easy for Millie to help out, and Bella must agree that it just wouldn’t do to let little Grace miss a doctor’s appointment. So, she would be there in ten minutes to pick up the baby; Bella could take the rest of the night off. And that was enough for curvy young Bella, her thoughts running like a river to her lusty boyfriend. She’d have Grace ready when Millie arrived.

In less than an hour, Millie waved goodbye as Bella drove away and buckled Grace in, adjusting the straps until she was trussed up like a little goose in her factory-fresh car seat. Millie placed her phone under the wheel of her car and backed over it, leaving Grace for only as long as it took to discard the smashed device as she had the license plates down a nearby storm drain. Back in the driver’s seat, she beamed into the rearview mirror as she pulled away from the curb, navigating the shabby neighborhood with extra care, the car itself now pregnant with a new baby. They fled to the highway, obeying the speed limit. Millie drove into the night while baby Grace dozed like a purring kitten.

When the sun rose, they were sleeping in a castle room a hundred miles from town. It was the tower stronghold discovered in Millie’s meticulous preparation for this desperate rescue, whisking Princess Grace to the safety and succor of a regal palace. Engle’s Castle boasted one hundred themed rooms, faux-silk wallpaper, and velvet-draped canopy beds. Its entrance hall billowed to a vaulted ceiling hung with an iron chandelier on black chains, studded with electric candles dripping plastic wax. Snug benches of black-varnished wood nestled on either side of an enormous fireplace opposite the check-in desk. Outside, an acre of frozen grass studded with the winter skeletons of one hundred oak trees sloped down to the tops of the slump-shouldered bluffs overlooking the turgid brown Mississippi River. The castle façade rippled with crenellations and round towers with pennants flapping from spires on their conical roofs. A stage-set drawbridge lay permanently open before the bannered entrance, a place to unload passengers and luggage on the way to the ample parking lot.

It was here they’d arrived the night before. Millie was wearing a pair of thick-framed prop glasses to alter her appearance for the security camera behind the receptionist. Now, as the hands of an imitation-antique clock on the nightstand announced 7am, Grace was a restless bear cub fussing in the folding bassinette where she’d slept. Millie lifted Grace, cuddled her, changed her diaper, and prepared a breakfast bottle. But the baby wouldn’t take it, pushing it away and thrashing like a hooked fish in Millie’s arms. Louder and louder, she squalled. Calm at first, Millie soon felt her insides collapse as the cliff face of her infant expertise crumbled, bouncing the baby on her shoulder, patting her back, confounded when her methods didn’t work. All the magazines touted the soothing effects of gentle words and a soft voice, but the baby’s wailing overpowered Millie’s words and drowned out her mellow tones. Grace didn’t want the bottle, wouldn’t look at the painstakingly selected learning toys, and screamed when Millie tried to sing lullabies. She threw away the teething biscuits Millie offered and balled up her fingers, fists like tiny hammers pummeling anything they could reach.

What was left to try? Many advice columnists recommended letting babies cry, leaving them safely in their cribs, and closing the door. Babies must learn self-soothing, and crying is inevitable. It’s okay to walk away. But Millie couldn’t walk away. Someone would hear the siren, knock on the door, and turn them in. The carefully built plan would erode like a ruined castle exposed to the elements for a thousand years. So, Millie tried “Hush, Little Baby” again, and when that didn’t help, she showed Grace a colorful picture book, hoping to distract her. But the baby cried loudest when Millie put her down on the bed and stood before her performing “I’m A Little Teapot,” with the actions that always delighted the children at Little Angels. In this hellish room, Millie sweated and strained to keep her calm. As she sang, smile glowing bright on her beet red face, she felt tears like drops of molten iron on her cheeks, tears of frustration, humiliation, and defeat. She’d given up everything to be here and turned her back on everything she’d built from the ashes Vivian left her, but she was failing again. She was no mother, no caregiver, no savior. Grace hated her so much she screamed at the sight of her. She felt Vivian’s rage rising, a feral growl forming in her guts, the words of the song now a furious string of pleading and curses. “Shut up!” she roared in desperation, “Just shut up!” Grace was startled into momentary silence but, in a moment, howled louder than ever.

The sound rose and distorted as the scene changed around her, no longer the castle’s fastness of fantasy with its black-oak bureaus and brass curtain rings, but the worst of Millie’s childhood memories, the air around them a foul fog of smoke and body odor. It thrummed with warped music, ambient and liquid, first loud and bright, then sucked away like light into a black hole, now back again, now gone, rippling and fluid, disorienting and nauseating. With it mixed voices of all timbres. Men and women shouting, singing, swaying, and falling over, their clamor ever rising. Millie saw them, though her eyes were closed, but she didn’t see Grace. Where was Grace? Millie crawled on all fours among the elephant legs of the men and women as they walked, danced, and kicked, but to no avail. She couldn’t remember what she was searching for or where she was. There was a pair of shoes she recognized. They belonged to Vivian. She was hungry as a homeless dog, hadn’t eaten for two days, and was tired. She stretched her hand to the familiar shoe but couldn’t reach it. Her fingers extended, but the lights were dimming. She wasn’t going to make it. She lowered her head and closed her eyes.

As her black curls touched down, her eyes flew open, and she was there on the canopy bed of the castle room, baby Grace asleep in the bassinet, darkness gathered in the corners like a bad omen. Breath by breath, Millie walked herself back to the present. Was Grace breathing? Yes. Were they alone? Yes. What was the time? 10am. When she flung open the carved wooden wardrobe and switched on the TV hidden inside, her face was there, with a photo of baby Grace and a sobbing Bella explaining all that had happened. “If you’re watching, Millie, please bring Grace home.”