By Jacqueline Ruddell
You say your sleeve of tattoos has nothing to do with your heart—no, you’re not sad or angry. You yell at me, call me a dinosaur, say I don’t understand.
I throw your age at you, but you are stubborn.
Sixteen is basically an adult. I can do what I like, you say. You tug at the tufts of your pixie hair; the red dye has faded to a needy shade of pink.
I need you, I want to say.
Instead, I take your phone. Ground you. Because you can’t, you can’t just…
Your feet attack the stairs. I hear your bedroom door slam. Familiar. You rage in your room. My head is swirling, so I turn to Netflix and crisps. I lift my phone to text your dad, but he is offshore and consumed by someone else.
I flick on an art documentary with Bob Ross. His voice and brush strokes feel like a lullaby, and I drift off to sleep.
I wake with a crick in my neck and the television off. The stark digits of my smartwatch read 01:01. I think about the kitchen and the deserted dinners; the spices of my chicken curry soured by the five hours I lost to sleep. Yet I can’t face opening the kitchen door to a tsunami of dishes, just like I can’t face checking in on you when my feet reach the top of the stairs.
I wonder about the passcode on your phone. Then, a weight in my gut stops me from typing, and I tuck the cracked screen safely under my pillow. Too exhausted to fully straighten up in bed, I fumble for my own mobile in my jeans pocket, the fabric scraping my skin. With a red hand, I post a picture of you from when you were three years old on Facebook.
It reads, Where did my baby go?
I wake early, my eyes crusty from sleep and sadness. I sit on the edge of my bed and glance in the mirror—I see a middle-aged woman I don’t want to recognis=ze. Her hair is tired and brittle, her face lined and grey. Still on the bed, I swivel my body to face the door. The paint has yellowed over time. I stare at it for a while, wishing it were white. My body is weary with guilt; I must check if you are okay. I am coming to you now, my baby.
Your room chills more than just my skin. I close the window before turning to a messy bed, empty of you. My legs trample through the room. Checking. Half expecting you to pop out of a drawer or a closet rammed full of clothes and unkempt schoolbooks. You never wake up this early; 05:30 is the dead of night to you. Perhaps you couldn’t sleep and decided to go for a walk. Not likely. You never go anywhere without your phone. Why didn’t I check on you sooner?
Alarm bells ring in my chest. I tell myself to wait until lunchtime to take action. You’re sixteen, if I call the police now would they even take me seriously? I pace the house, cleaning and re-cleaning the kitchen. The letterbox rattles. It’s 08:42. I scurry into the hall. My heart falls as I pick up the mail and curse the heavens for sending the post instead of you. Time taunts me with its sluggish progress while my heart darts and my stomach heaves. My resolve is withering. Something is wrong. Where are you? I cling to the phone that I took from you. How can I reach you now?
Please call, I whisper with my eyes to the ceiling, holding your phone to my chest.
At noon, I run outside onto the main street, calling for help; the wind and the loud traffic are thieves. An elderly lady looks at me with haunted eyes before crossing the road to avoid me. What am I doing? I phone your Aunty Sandra. She says my Double Dutch is untranslatable, but she’s my sister and comes straight away. The police drag their feet. You’re not missing long enough for them to worry yet. They scan the house and the garden for clues with their hearts asleep. There is a sudden downpour of rain. They overlook the rosebush …
There, among the thorns, Sandra finds a black hair claw and, in its teeth, a soiled letter from you.
An intangible maze of pain and what-ifs is etched into my heart. The rain has washed away most of your handwriting. Ink bleeds across the page. I squint to see, but all I can read are the words: I’m sorry, mum.
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Jacqueline is a fiction writer from County Down. She won the Flash Fiction Armagh competition and was longlisted in the Flash 500 competition in spring 2024. Jacqueline received a bursary for The John Hewitt International Summer School 2024 and is pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University, Belfast.