The Dark Child: A Family Tale

The Dark Child: A Family Tale

The orange flames whipped into the blue Midwestern sky, the house immersed in black smoke. And for the first time, she managed a smile.

She preferred to play alone. Sitting in her small room, she would play with her fashion dolls, dressing them up, struggling with their tiny shoes. Her bedroom door burst open as her smiling mother barged into her quiet. “C’mon baby, everyone wants to see you. Come say hi.” She grimaced at the woman, not wanting to move. “Oh come on, they love you!” Like that meant something. She was marched out to the family room, filled with loud music and cigarette smoke and given a gentle nudge. She barely knew these people. Her mother used her as a prop in her bid for constant attention, the cute little girl with a head full of blond curls and big blue eyes. She stood there as relative strangers pinched her cheeks, told her how adorable she was. A man took her by her chubby hands and began dancing with her, spinning her around.

She pulled her hands back and shot him a look of venom but all he did was chuckle. No one took her anger seriously. She was only six years old but these people felt entitled to pinch her cheeks, hold her hands, stroke her hair as if she were a doll. She began to make her retreat to the safety of her bedroom but her mother blocked the way. “You know what we’d love to hear, baby? That piece you just learned on the piano. That would be wonderful” she said clapping her hands together.

She balled her fist, rubbed her eyes and feigned sleep.

“Oh look everybody, my little princess is sleepy. Would you like me to tuck you in?”

She shook her head no, gently tossing her curls.

“Well okay, sleep well, baby. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

And just before she could close the door, “I love you…more tomorrow than today, my angel.” She could hear her mother’s footfall coming toward her room. “Baby, don’t you have something you want to tell me?”

“I love you” she muttered. “Well I love you too. You don’t want to hurt your mommy’s feelings do you?” She shut the door behind her and returned to her friends.

She felt her stomach turn and the bile rise into her throat. She turned off the clown lamp, climbed into her canopy bed and attempted to sleep. She could hear her mother over the music gushing about her as if she were an inanimate object, a new handbag. Her baby was the sweetest little girl, made of cotton candy, in love with love.
“She wants to get her hair cut but I won’t let her. She’s just so cute with it long. Besides it hides her pointy little chin. She gets that from her father.” Her father, oblivious to all that happened in the house, sat smoking a Lucky Strike and strumming the guitar he would never learn to play.

If her parents only knew, she thought. There was no cotton candy. Only arsenic and caustic acid. They saw her as they wanted to see her. They had no idea what was in her heart. That a black void swallowed it when she was very small, leaving only a tiny crack for light.

Her mother always thought she had the perfect child, so innocent and obedient. She cherished every moment with her little one, watching her grow into a quiet girl who mostly kept to herself. The parents ignored the troubling signs of their precious daughter, all the signs that something was deeply wrong. It was easy to miss with her cherubic features and her sweet quiet ways. It was also easy to miss when they just ignored what was right in front of them. They excused away the devilish glares, a look so cold that no one would believe came from such a child. Her parents knew she wasn’t like her classmates in first grade. They attributed that to her being gifted, special. They once caught her setting earth worms on fire in the backyard. Her mother took away the magnifying glass. She stole it back a week later and began setting fire to ants.

When the school called her mother in to speak to her about how her precious one was bullying little boys, she became indignant, arguing that her daughter would never behave that way. The meeting ended in her grabbing her child’s hand and marching out of the school, considering homeschooling.

The years had passed since that day. Her hair had grown longer, from blond to light brown, the curls now became waves. She had become...different. Gone were the days of agreeing with mommy and daddy to keep them quiet. Gone were the late parties that kept her up at night. Gone was her conscience.

I tried to tell you, she thought as she watched the flames shoot up into the sky. You just wouldn’t listen.