I am a murderer. I am the one. The children crowd about Mommy’s ankles, adoring.

  II

  When I Died

  When I died, my body became inert matter.

  When I died, my beauty became a ruin.

  When I died, my spirit did not rise from my body, there was only my body.

  When I died, my body was pushed off a befouled bed and onto the floor of the hotel room and dragged by its ankles across the floor stark naked, dead weight with mottled arms, fattish upper arms of the middle-aged female outspread as in a mockery of crucifixion.

  When I died, my body yielded its secrets: stretch marks in my abdomen, weblike creases in my thighs, bruises and welts in my white skin, and the imprint of a man’s fingers in my neck.

  Gaping lipstick-smeared mouth.

  Enlarged nostrils, the terrible effort to breathe where there is no air to be breathed.

  Wrapped in soiled bedding, clumsy dead weight pushed, dragged from the room and into the corridor by night in stealth and cunning, dragged to an elevator with no witness for it was very late in the night and the perpetrator took care to cover surveillance cameras’ lenses with black tape in the corridor and in the elevator.

  Dead weight gliding downward sixty floors to the ground floor of the hotel and there again the body wrapped mummy-like in soiled bedding was dragged along a windowless corridor through a double door marked employees only. Lifted with a grunt, dropped into a filth-encrusted trash bin hidden from view by housekeeping equipment—maids’ carts, vacuum cleaners, mops, gallon containers of cleanser.

  On top of this bundle trash was placed, in a crude effort to hide it.

  Styrofoam cups, plastic cutlery, wadded and discolored paper napkins, used tampons. Underground the vent-stirred air was cold as if refrigerated. The body wrapped in soiled bedding would not be discovered by hotel workers for forty-eight hours and in those hours, decomposition proceeded very slowly.

  Eventually, an autopsy would be performed concluding homicide: death by asphyxiation/manual strangulation.

  Evidence would suggest that the victim was believed to have been strangled over a period of time, a particularly gruesome torture death that involved choking the victim unconscious and then allowing her to revive, choking the victim unconscious and then allowing her to revive, and (again) choking the victim unconscious and (again) allowing her to revive, how many times repeated until the victim ceased breathing and did not revive.

  Burst arteries in her eyes like exploded stars.

  Infection

  Mrs. Jarrett—ma’am!

  Upside down in the dark smelly receptacle in which she has been shoved, rudely headfirst, naked, contemptible, that least sexually desirable of entities, a corpse—yet (so strangely) at the same time she hears her name uttered, a name attached to her as if (yet more strangely) she is still alive—Mrs. Jarrett!

  Teasing, taunting, a voice as familiar as her own but wrong somehow, in the wrong place, too close suddenly, begging—Ma’am, try to wake up please …

  No no no no. Deep-sunk in sleep. Black-muck sleep. Upside down in the trash bin, black blood settled in her brain like wet cement.

  … Katya has a bad fever.

  With these terrible words, Hannah is awake. Her memory afterward is that after strangling her into unconsciousness he had wakened her by slapping her face.

  But it is the Filipina housekeeper who is standing over Hannah, not Y.K. with the heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Oh, Ismelda—what? What are you saying?”

  Ismelda has dared to enter Hannah’s bedroom while Hannah is in bed, or rather lies sprawled atop the bed, having fallen asleep the previous night without fully undressing or switching off the lamp beside the bed, and on the bedside table a lipstick-smeared wineglass and a near-empty wine bottle … Even in this moment of confusion and dismay Hannah feels a stab of shame, the other woman has seen and will not forget.

  It is exactly as Hannah feared. But not Babysitter, Hannah herself is to blame.

  Thinking, panicked—My punishment is beginning.

  Ismelda apologizes for waking Hannah but since early this morning Katya has been coughing, and vomiting, and running a fever—“One hundred three point five degrees.”

  So high! Hannah is stunned. Trying to recall if this is even possible—such a high temperature in a young child.

  And feeling a stab of guilt, that Ismelda has been taking the children’s temperatures while the children’s mother has been sunk in a wine-soaked stuporous sleep oblivious to the children’s distress.

  “… tried to tell you, Mrs. Jarrett, when you returned home yesterday, that Katya was feeling sick after school, and Conor was coughing, so I gave them fruit juice and smoothies and a soup they like, and they ate some of it, not much but some. Before her bedtime I gave Katya a bath in cool water and she seemed to be feeling better, her skin wasn’t so hot. But now, this morning …”

  Through a roaring in her ears Hannah can hear only accusatory words.

  “‘You told me’—what?”

  “Last night, Mrs. Jarrett. When you came home I told you it seemed like Katya had a fever, and her throat was sore. I gave her some baby aspirins. She didn’t want to go to bed …”

  “‘Fever’?—no. You did not, Ismelda.”

  “Ma’am, I—”

  “Last night? When I came home? No.”

  Stubbornly Ismelda persists: “Ma’am, I tried to tell you, when I picked them up, Katya and Conor were both kind of sniffling and acting sick—”

  “No.”

  “When they were showing you their Easter eggs—”

  “Ismelda, you did not. I never heard a word of—”

  “—the Easter eggs, you were saying—”

  “Stop! Never mind the damned Easter eggs. You never told me they were sick, if I’d thought that, I wouldn’t have—just—gone to bed …”

  Hannah’s voice trails off weakly. She is frightened, appalled.

  Truly she cannot remember. The children were chattering at her, and Ismelda may have been trying to tell her something, but Hannah’s thoughts had been scattered, elsewhere.

  With him. In the hotel room, trapped like a moth beating its wings against a shut window.

  And now, in the only life that really matters to Hannah, the children are sick, it is her fault. And canny Ismelda knows and is blaming her.

  Hannah does recall the children fretting, fussing. Easter eggs, Easter baskets. Competing for their mother’s attention.

  Why d’you have children if you don’t love them. Ask yourself.

  Hannah wonders if she should be offended, Ismelda has taken it upon herself to take the children’s temperatures, presumably with the children’s thermometer. As if Hannah might not do this herself. She wonders: Does the housekeeper do this sort of thing routinely? Has she, in the past? Monitored the health of Hannah’s children?

  It’s like Ismelda, indeed it would be like Wes, to have recorded the exact temperatures: Conor, ninety-nine point seven; Katya, one hundred point two.

  Low-grade fever, considered not so serious in young children as in an adult.

  “A ‘low-grade fever’ is still a ‘fever.’ I—I should have been told …”

  Trying to recover her equilibrium, her maternal authority.

  Nothing more reprehensible, more shameful, than relinquishing her maternal authority to another person. If Wes knew!

  If the other mothers knew, in Hannah’s social circle. Those mothers who make it a (grim) point to drive their children to school in the early morning, faces pale and drawn without makeup, matted hair hidden beneath scarves.

  Hannah tries to think: How long had she been unconscious in the bed? Blissfully out? Ten, twelve hours? Mouth fiercely dry, sinuses parched. Alcohol dehydrates, no wonder she feels like a cast-off corn husk.

  He’d slapped her, had he?—vaguely she recalls the smack! of the open hand, the return smack! Trying to wake the woman-not-his-wife whose brain seemed barely flickering like a dying light.

  Now her head is wracked with pain (shame, guilt) as if a vise were slowly tightening around it. Yet trying to retain calm, dignity.

  “Yes, Ismelda—I should have been informed.”

  Before Ismelda can summon a reply Hannah manages on shaky legs to cross the hall to Katya’s room steeling herself for a shock, still she isn’t prepared for the unmistakable vomit smell or for the sight of the four-year-old lying motionless with her eyes shut, flush-faced, in the little white cradle-bed decorated with cherubic bear cubs and pandas.

  Kneeling by the bed. Clutching at the child. “Katya! It’s Mommy!”—her voice rises, she is helpless.

  How small Katya is. You never realize how small a child is until she is stricken motionless, lying in bed. No longer in motion, the flame-like energy diminished.

  Hannah begs Katya to open her eyes. It isn’t clear if Katya is awake, if she can hear her.

  Her eyelids are puffy, the whites of her eyes blurry and discolored. She blinks, squints, stares as if trying to get Hannah’s looming face into focus.

  Sallow-skinned, dehydrated Hannah kneels over the stricken child. Trying to speak with her usual Mommy authority but her voice is a hoarse croak and her mouth is too dry as if she has swallowed sand.

  His sand, gritty encrustations of his semen.

  Hours of night sprawled on her bed unable to think of anything, anyone except him. Reveling in him and what he’d done to her while in the child’s room a few feet away Katya’s fever was steadily climbing. The infection had leapt from Hannah to Katya and was coursing now in Katya’s veins.

  No idea, I had no idea. It is not my fault …

  Hannah is pleading: trying to explain.

  … not my fault, I lacked the information.

  Hannah’s weak lung, wheezing, feels as if it has been punctured. Yesterday in the hotel room in the sumptuous sinking-creaking hotel bed she’d been unable to breathe for panicked seconds, flailing to save herself, on the edge of drowning.

  Trying to clear her head. Focus on Katya. Sweet, frail, flushed little face.

  And the little bed hand-built to resemble an old-fashioned cradle, though larger than a cradle, a bed that looks as if it might rock, though the bed doesn’t actually rock … White headboard decorated with cherubic baby animals to give solace at such despairing times.

  And the wallpaper in the room, charming pale pink flowers, cream-colored lambs, kittens cavorting in a world in which illness, pain, death do not exist.

  Katya’s eyes, usually bright and alert, are sulky-dull, opaque.

  Pressing the back of her hand against the child’s forehead, the skin is burning hot to the touch, astonishing. Katya winces, whimpers like a pained creature, the tender skin hurts.

  Whimpering turns into a fit of coughing, dry wracking cough terrible to hear. Helpless! Mommy is so helpless! Oh God, wanting to hug Katya, hold her in her arms, reassure her, but hardly dares touch her, the fever-skin hurts.

  Piteous to see the forehead of a child damp with perspiration, fawn-colored hair flattened damp against her scalp …

  A mistake. Some persons are not worthy of parenthood. Hannah should not have become a mother, should not have dared.

  Recalling that her mother had (evidently) come to the same conclusion. Not wanting to love her children, not wanting to be vulnerable, yet, in a time of crisis, terrified on their behalf, all defenses gone. As, confronted with the (evident) fact that her husband did not love her, the woman was broken, exposed.

  Formerly a beautiful woman. If beauty is control: dominance.

  But then, succumbing to the man, broken in the man’s hands, dominance passes to the man.

  Her children had seen their mother’s dismay in those cold eyes. As of one who, at the wheel of a speeding vehicle, realizes that the wheel is not attached to anything—she is in free fall.

  Once a mother—no turning back.

  Once the love gushes like a burst artery—no turning back.

  Hannah asks if Katya’s throat hurts and Katya nods yes. Hannah asks if Katya’s neck is stiff and Katya doesn’t seem to understand.

  “Honey? Your neck? Is it—stiff?”

  Katya’s head is unnaturally rigid on the pillow. Stiff head, neck, high fever—what could that mean? Meningitis?

  Hannah feels faint. Meningitis!

  A fatal illness, fatal for children. Punishment directed at her.

  Yes, Katya’s flushed face looks swollen. What does that mean—water retention? And the temperature—four or five degrees above normal!

  Hannah looks about for the children’s thermometer, intending to take Katya’s temperature, for perhaps Ismelda made a mistake.

  Trying to gently lift Katya’s head from the pillow, resettle her in the damp bedclothes, make her more comfortable, but Katya shrieks with pain.

  “Oh, honey! I am so, so sorry …”

  Hannah looks to Ismelda, helpless. Her hands are badly trembling. Her head is pulsing, pounding.

  She has forgotten entirely about the thermometer—taking Katya’s temperature herself.

  Useless! What a useless mother.

  On the bedside table are a pitcher of (melted) ice water, a child’s yellow plastic mug in the shape of a baby chick. Ismelda has placed these here, has been trying to get Katya to drink water, now Hannah tries, holding the mug to Katya’s dry lips, but Katya winces, no.

  Hannah begs Katya to try, please try, just a little swallow—but no, Katya squirms away. Water runs down her chin, wetting her pajama top that is already damp with sweat.

  The pupils of Katya’s eyes are the size of poppy seeds, not dilated as you’d expect with fever. And her breath short and shallow like a dog’s panting.

  On the bedside table is a washcloth Ismelda has been soaking in ice water, pressing against Katya’s face, upper chest, bare shoulders to bring down her fever, and this, too, Hannah takes up, recalling having done this when the children were younger, hardly more than infants; the kindly grandfatherly pediatrician had assured Hannah that fevers in young children are “not uncommon,” chest colds, coughing, loss of appetite, stomachaches, all common ailments that shouldn’t throw parents into a panic, treatable with liquids, sponge baths, baby aspirin. Symptoms will usually subside within a day or two and if not, give the office a call …

  Recalling the blithe assurance—give the office a call. How is Hannah to do this without abandoning the child?

  Wakened by the commotion Conor enters his sister’s room boldly. Stares at Katya in her bed. He’s in rumpled pajamas, barefoot, thumb shoved into his mouth.

  Smells in the room are wrong, Conor’s nostrils quiver with repugnance. He is a lively cheerful child who, in the blink of an eye, can become a spiteful punitive child. Now frightened, somber, but (also) resentful, the “sick” baby sister has drawn all adult attention that should belong to him.

  As years ago when they’d brought her home from the hospital one day, a tiny red-faced bawling thing, not just to visit but to remain, attention that rightfully belonged to Conor was lavished upon her.

  Hannah tries to dissuade Conor from coming farther into the room. Telling him that Katya may have a “contagious” disease.

  Of course, Conor ignores Hannah. That pleading in Mommy’s voice, almost certainly the child senses weakness in the mommy, will not obey.

  Boldly continuing to stare at Katya as if subtly repelled by her, resentful.

  “Conor? Please stay back.”

  “Why?”—Conor makes an impudent face.

  “Because—I told you. You might catch Katya’s illness.”

  Conor laughs, in a kind of bliss.

  Hannah recalls: Young children are said to hope for their younger siblings to die, disappear—to restore the happy equilibrium of an earlier time.

  As, in a marriage, one might glance back to the earlier time—before children, and the lurching into a new, unanticipated reality that children entail.

  Dissolution of love. Breaking into components. Not enough love to go around.

  “Conor! I’m telling you …”

  But Hannah doesn’t speak sharply. There is no threat in her voice as there would be in Daddy’s voice in such circumstances.

  To discipline a child is to risk losing his love for you. Hannah can’t take this risk, her children’s love is essential to her, deeply gratifying, she hasn’t the strength to resist.

  Joker Daddy’s grim strength, in discipline.

  His children had come to hate him, as a consequence. Even Hannah, who’d been entranced by her father. Love for Joker Daddy riddled with hatred like a radioactive vein in a mineral.

  Lovehate. Hatelove. Stronger than either love or hate.

  Conor is sniffing loudly. His nose is running, he hasn’t made any effort to blow it, even to wipe it. Now wiping his nose on one of his pajama sleeves until Ismelda comes to him with a tissue.

  Hannah feels a stab of gratitude, the petite Filipina woman is so capable.

  Amid so much, in the “white” Jarrett household, that feels incapable.

  Between Ismelda and Conor there is some sort of rapport. Conor will disobey Ismelda gleefully but without disrespecting her as, gleefully or meanly, he will disobey Hannah as much as he can, testing Hannah’s patience.

  Ismelda tells Hannah that she’d taken Conor’s temperature as well as Katya’s and his temperature was ninety-nine point seven that morning. Which is near normal.

  But Conor has a cold, he should not be barefoot.

  “Then why is he barefoot?”—Hannah asks sharply.

  Ismelda fetches socks and shoes for Conor but Conor shrinks from her, giggling. Ismelda approaches him, he dodges her, pushes at her, runs from the room giggling, coughing, with Ismelda in pursuit.

  Hannah wants to call after them to chide them both but thinks better of it.

  Thinking: Meningitis. Why has she not focused upon meningitis?