Page 38 of Clever Little Thing

“Blanka told you about it?” I said.

“I find blood in her underwear when I am washing clothes.”

I shifted uneasily. Wasn’t it strange that Blanka hadn’t told her mother that, finally, her period had started?

Irina was looking at me, like she wanted something more from me. Maybe she simply wanted someone else to know about this tragic irony: Blanka had in a sense grown up right before she died. Maybe it was enough to share this information with me. Or perhaps she felt guilty that she had not watched over Blanka closely enough. “Do you think there could have been a connection with her heart condition?” I asked.

Irina looked blank. “What condition?”

“The one that, you know…killed her.”

“Charlotte,” Irina said. “She kills herself.”

Blood roared in my ears like waves, pounding and crashing. “No, she had a heart attack. That’s what you told me. In the hot tub.”

She shook her head. “Neighbor has bad back. Blanka is house-sitting. She takes all his muscle relaxants, then gets into hot tub, drinks whole bottle of vodka.”

“But you said it was a heart condition.”

“She has sickness here,” Irina said, placing a fist over her breastbone. “I tell you this. She pass out. She go under. All this I tell you. You hear something else.”

“Oh god,” I said, thinking she must have thought that my reaction was lacking. She must have thought me callous, shallow. “I’m sorry. That day you took me to the hot tub, I didn’t realize what you were saying. I thought it was an accident. I didn’t realize she killed herself. I am so sorry, I didn’t realize the—the level of tragedy, if that makes sense.”

Irina bent over her crochet work, lips pursed. Maybe this was a way to survive: you focused on the next stitch, then the next. That way you could tell someone that your daughter killed herself, and not fall down on the ground and tear your own heart out.

•••

I was too upset to go home. I needed to move. I went to Alexandra Park, where Blanka and Stella had once spent so much time. I walked round and round the duck pond, where brown algae partly covered the oily water. It was cold, the sky grey and low. I found myself at these concrete cylinders of varying heights that were big enough to climb inside. Stella called them the soup pots. Once, I got home and Blanka and Stella were still out. It was past the time that Blanka was supposed to stop work, so I’d run to the park and found them here. Stella crouched inside one of them, and Blanka was making stirring motions with her hand and calling, “And now I put in parsley, chop, chop, chop! Salt and pepper! I am heating up water and boiling you!” Stella was laughing hysterically as she scrambled out and ran away.

Was Blanka depressed the whole time she took care of Stella, for four years, getting worse and worse? But why didn’t shetellme? If Blanka felt so bad that she killed herself, why did she never ask me for help? We weren’t close, we barely knew each other, but I would have helped her if she’d ever asked. I replayed the last few months that I’d known her, the last few months of her life, trying to find a clue in her behavior.

She became sloppier in that time. She took Stella to the park without taking her sunscreen or hat, even though I left the go bag packed and ready by the door. I frequently reminded her to put a drop of bleach solution inside Stella’s bath toys to prevent mold growth, but when I squeezed Stella’s little blue whale, black gunk shot out.

Still, I wasn’t about to look for someone else. Stella was happy with Blanka, and Blanka, in turn, stayed calm whatever Stella did.

The last day she worked for us, I had a deadline and worked late. I emerged from my home office and found Blanka tied to a dining chair. Stella had used loops of masking tape and several colors of ribbon from my gift-wrapping station. Wrapped around her middle was a rope made out of a couple of my bras and a few pairs of tights.

I could never tell if Blanka was brilliant at playing or incredibly apathetic. But I was tired, twelve weeks pregnant, and feeling very sick. I didn’t want to deal with this situation. I wanted Blanka to do the job I’d paid her to do. Stella’s cheeks were flushed, her breath smelled like chocolate. Blanka had let her plunder my secret stash. I felt a headache coming. “Has she had dinner at least?” I asked.

“She does not want,” Blanka said, and I thought, No kidding,why would she bother with vegetables after eating a bar of Green & Black’s Salted Caramel?

To be fair, I did tell Blanka not to force Stella to eat. But I also instructed her to put a proper balanced meal in front of Stella each night—whether she consumed it or not—and I saw no sign of cooking.

“Why aren’t you in bed, darling?” I asked Stella.

“We’re playing Houdini,” Stella explained. “Blanka has to escape.”

Looking closer, I saw there were knots upon knots upon knots: wool from a pompom-making project in which Stella had lost interest, even the bungee cords Pete used to secure his bike on the car.

I felt hungry but sick at the same time. I found my super-sharp fabric scissors. “I’ll have to cut you out,” I said. I started at the bottom. Her ankles were tied to the chair legs with kitchen twine. As I slid the scissors inside a loop of twine, Stella said, “No, Mommy! You’re ruining the game.”

Snip.

“I worked really hard on this,” Stella wailed.

Snip.At this rate it could take forty-five minutes to get Blanka free. Stella wouldn’t be in bed until close to eleven. Late bedtime meant freak-out mode tomorrow, and I would do anything to avoid that. “Blanka, I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait.”

“Oh yes,” said Blanka.

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