A Stranger Entered Our Bedroom Every Night Until I Learned Why
Before I went to bed I stopped at Sonia’s door. Her room had that particular smell of crayons and the baby shampoo she still preferred. She was already under her blanket with one hand tucked beneath her cheek.
I asked her again whether she had really seen someone. She said yes, he came when it was very dark. I asked whether Mommy had talked to him. She thought for a moment and said not really. She just looked sad.
I kissed her goodnight and carried the wrong thing away with me.
Anger was louder than sad. Fear was louder. The wounded thing that lived in the basement of my pride was loudest of all. I went to my room carrying all of it like a weapon, which is the only way I know how to describe it now.
Elena came to bed around eleven. She smelled like soap and something sterile and sharp that I did not have a name for yet, something that reminded me of a doctor’s office. She asked if I had taken my sleeping pill. I said yes. In the bathroom I turned on the tap, let the water run, and spit the pill into the sink. I put the wet tablet in my pajama pocket. Then I went back to bed, turned onto my side away from her, and made my breathing heavy and deliberate.
She did not sleep either. I could feel it in the particular quality of the stillness beside me, the kind of stillness that is not rest but waiting. Her breathing was too careful. She was listening for something.
