Losing Susie

Losing Suzie


When I get home Suzie is gone. There is nothing left - no note, no clothing or books, no scent, no trace that she has ever been here at all. I can hardly get my breath and feel like someone has cut out a piece of me and left the raw bits dangling like severed nerves. I grab the teapot and some tea, clumsily putting the water on the stove to boil, nearly catching the sleeve of my dress on the red-hot burner, and then concentrate on breathing, slowing down my heartbeat. I look at the clock and see it’s already 9:00 pm. and wonder where my "almost" daughter will sleep tonight.

Sitting down at the kitchen table and fingering the little glass vase full of tiny paper hearts she made for me, I put my head in my hands and cry. Softly at first and then huge gulping sobs that no one can hear, but I cry them anyway until I can't cry anymore. Then I go into her room, fall onto the stripped bed and try to rock myself to sleep. But sleep doesn't come and all I can think about is finally losing Suzie, wondering what I can do to find her or even if I should try. I remember this room the way it was only yesterday, with the pink bedspread and white frilly curtains, the bulletin board crowded with pictures and sketches, some of them of me. The tiny clothes hung in the closet by colour and type. The origami mobiles hanging from the ceiling.

********

I remember being enchanted with Suzie from the first day she came into my classroom. I can still see her standing at my desk behind her uncle while 20 pairs of eyes stared at the both of them while he pleaded with me to accept her into the class, despite the fact that she wasn’t yet 18 and this was an adult class.

She was all in pink, wearing clothes and accessories by Hello Kitty, clothes that my own daughter had worn when she was a little girl. A fuzzy pink hat with floppy ears, a Hello Kitty ring, and a little plastic purse that dangled from her fingers, the silly face of Kitty smiling at my group of middle-aged immigrants and refugees. Mevla, from Bosnia, who always took control in these situations, despite the fact that she couldn’t speak much English yet, said. “Sit. Eat. What you name?”as she held out a piece of her famous pita that we all snacked on every day at noon.

“Suzie,” she said, smiling that smile that would light up our hearts and our dreary portable for the next six months.

*******

I think about our first Christmas together, when I took her to my Mom's to celebrate the day with my family. She had never had a Christmas tree or gifts before, except for that one perfect day she had told me about when she was 12, her mother and father and she were together - before her father would be sentenced to death for dealing heroin in China, for just that one day, before her mother hung herself, before she would go to live with her aging grandparents. That Christmas was Suzie's second perfect day, she said. And I remember her captivating everyone who was there - my grown daughter, my brothers, my sisters, their husbands, wives and girlfriends - my nieces and nephews and especially my mother who took special pains to make Suzie feel at home, buying and wrapping gifts for her and placing the origami basket of flowers that Suxie had made in the middle of the dining room table surrounded by more traditional offerings - turkey, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.

"I like when your mother calls me 'honey,'" she told me later, smiling her sweet smile. "It's good."

********

I remember the afternoon she stayed after school to help me with the planting of more flowers and herbs that we kept on the windowsills. Her pretty fingers tamping the soil down and watering the tiny shoots with such care. Looking up at me and smiling that smile that could break your heart or make it sing.

"You always look so happy, Suzie," I told her.

She fixed me with a look I hadn't seen before and said, "You think so?"

"Yes, I do. You are the happiest girl I've ever met."

With that she put the little clay pot she was holding down on a desk, and put her head in her hands.

"I need you to help me," she'd cried.
"I can't live there anymore. They hate me."

I had put my arm around her while she cried like a baby until she got it all out and we rocked together like that for a long time. And then I invited her to come and stay with me for awhile, calling her family to see what they thought. I told them nothing about what she had told me - the aunt with the gambling problem who had spent all the money that had been sent for her care, the fighting between them, the feeling she had that she was in the way and not wanted, especially now that the money was gone, how they were supposed to adopt her and now didn't want to. No, I told them only that I would be happy to have her stay with me for a little while so she could improve her English and then be able to get into high school sooner rather than later.

There was no problem at all, and she arrived the same night with her bags, her uncle quickly emptying the car of everything she owned.

**********

I remember those first few days after she came to stay. How happy I was to have her with me, especially then when I was on my own again after separating from my husband a few months earlier. How suddenly the house was alive again with all the things I did't even realize I'd missed. How with every day that went by I fell more in love with her, even as my family and friends wondered what it was all about. She was the daughter I'd had too soon, who left too soon. And she was mine and my life was full.

The way she said she had never talked about feelings and when I asked her to tell me more about herself or how she felt about her family or being with me, leaving home or not having many friends her age, she'd shut down like a trap door and ask if she could go and study. How she didn't eat much and sometimes would exercise behind the closed door of her room until she fell asleep on the floor. How much time she spent in the bathroom. How when I asked her about it she didn't want to talk. How I'd arranged for her to see a doctor and a therapist and how I felt when they told me she was anorexic. How I wanted to make her happy and healthy and whole again.

"I'm not used to talking about those things, like feelings," she'd said. "No one asked me."

***********

How when she was ready to go to high school, how proud I had felt to meet with her teachers and some of her new friends. How I daydreamed about adopting her and then began to look into it. How she brought me little gifts and left them on the kitchen table as a surprise. How she loved to braid my hair and tell me she thought I was beautiful. And the day she gave me the bottle of a hundred tiny red paper hearts for Valentine's Day - so all my wishes would come true. How she eventually let me touch her without recoiling. And sometimes hugged me for no reason at all.

How happy she was at school, joining the volleyball team and taking art classes where she painted beautiful pictures that we put on the fridge and then sometimes had framed. How she loved mythology and thought the Greek gods and goddesses were the most amazing people she'd ever heard about. How she wished they were real.

How she finally made a best friend whose name was Jen. How excited she was to have her first sleepover at a girlfriend's house. How much she loved Jen's family and their dogs and the way they were with each other. How she told me Jen's father was a minister and had asked her to come to church.

How sometimes she'd seem to have disappeared even though she was right in front of me, her eyes narrowing and when I asked what was wrong she'd say "Nothing."

********

How jealous I was of Jen and her family, especially when they started coming by on Sunday mornings to take Suzie to church. And then during the week for meetings of the youth group. How she asked me to make one of my caramel apple pies to take to one of their meetings, holding it aloft like a sacred host, doing a little pirouette and telling me it would be the best thing anyone ever brought. Kissing me goodbye and saying she'd be staying over at Jen's and see me after school the next day.

How lonely I was when she was away.


********


I wanted to keep her for myself, tell her everything that was wrong with this family roping her into their church, how she was becoming a religious snob, not wanting to make friends or spend time with people who were not Christians. The feeling I had that Jen’s family was asking her about me and giving me a negative review because I wasn’t religious.

I tried to avoid the topic but it sat there like a smoldering fire between us, even in our almost perfect moments. I remembered how she began to want to say grace before meals while I looked at her and said, "What would you think if I prayed to Athena and Zeus before every meal?" and how she'd laughed.

I remember how I'd worried so much about her for so many reasons and was sad when summer came and she began to wear sleeveless tops that showed the cigarette burns on her arms, brutal mementos of her time in a Chinese gang after she’d spiralled out of control and her grandparents couldn’t help her or didn’t know how to. How cute she looked when she said. “I was a bad girl, you know” after telling me about the gang, the hurting of other people, the drugs, the loose sex and the boyfriends who beat her. It was almost impossible to believe those things but I knew they were true.

I remember hearing that she’d asked Mevla from school to give her back the Hello Kitty ring because she was a Christian now and Mevla was a Muslim and it wasn’t good. That Jen’s father had said she should only have Christian people in her life.

And how all of my worry came out as anger and we started to fight. How in the heat of our last argument, I had said "If the church makes you so happy, maybe you should go and live with someone from the church."


How she'd looked at me with her eyes half-closed and said “Maybe I will.” Then grabbed her purse and slammed the door.

And now I am crying for myself, for her, for the way the world is sometimes. For the children who are lost and the parents who can’t keep going, for the love and the heartbreak and the misunderstandings ... knowing that Suzie is truly and finally lost to me.