Anna Quinn - The Night Child

“Are you with me?” he says.

“Mmmhmm.”

“It’s possible your mind pushed a trauma into a corner of your subconscious, and now the memory is coming through—through the altered consciousness of the voice you are hearing.”

She resurfaces, though her eyes stay fixed on the ceiling. “Why? Why now? Why a voice?”

“I don’t know. No one really knows—though there is certainly a lot of speculation—”

“Like what? What kind of speculation?”

“Well, for example, sometimes when your child reaches an age that was difficult for you as a child, sometimes … things are relived. And the fact that both she and Fiona are six, well, there might be something to this. But what we do know is that at its root is extreme stress, trauma.”

“Oh, my God,” she says, looking at him now. “Here we go again with the trauma. Did you even hear me when I said I haven’t been traumatized—at least anything near enough to cause this?”

“Yes, I heard you. Listen, I’m not sure why this aspect of you, this little girl, would need to speak. I just know that whatever is hidden in the subconscious will struggle to reveal itself. You have basically been keeping a secret from yourself all this time.”

She stares at him, unblinking, rocking gently back and forth.

“And again, for the record, your mother beating you and dying in front of you is pretty serious.” He pauses. “And your father abandoning you when you were eleven is no small thing either.”

She says nothing for a moment. Those things are in the past, and except for the last few months, she’s been able to leave them there. “Do I seem like someone who’s been traumatized?”

“Nora, trauma survivors respond in different ways. They may do well in one area but not in another. They may function well at work but not in personal relationships. They may be great parents but have a debilitating addiction. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s just too early in the process.”

“Shit,” she says, forcing herself to stop rocking. “I can’t believe this, I really can’t believe this.”

“Dissociation is a normal response to an abnormal situation. It’s a way of coping. We’ll figure this out.”

“What did she—the voice—say?” Nora asks, finally.

“She only said a few words. She seemed very in control but very scared. She didn’t want me to look at her, and when I turned away, she was gone.”

She stares at him for a moment. “But what did she say?”

“She told me her name.”

Shock breaks across her face like a slap. “She has a name?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Margaret.”

Margaret. Nora’s heart pummels her chest. Margaret.

Then, images: A book. A book with a purple velvet cover and a gold lettered title, St. Margaret . A crown. A sword. A dead dragon. Sister Rosa.

Nora hears David calling her name and slowly opens her eyes.

“What is it, Nora?” he asks.

Nora gets her bearings, stammers, “I … I need to go—I’ll call you,” she says and runs out of the room.

Nora has an hour before she is expected home. She will walk, pull herself together, insist herself into a calmer state. She doesn’t know why images of Sister Rosa, the dragon, and the book of St. Margaret have materialized in her mind. They must have meaning, must have something to do with “ Margaret ,” but what? And how are they related to the Valentine’s dress? She remembers so little about that time in her life, rarely thinks about it—but she needs to try and remember, to sort this out.

The day is cold, and she wraps her arms around herself to push away the chill, a chill magnified by apprehension flailing like a trapped sparrow in her chest. Up ahead, in Pike Place Market, there’s a Starbucks, and she thinks she might feel better if she has something to eat. A croissant maybe, or a blueberry muffin and a latte. She enters, orders three croissants (she will bring two home, one for Paul and one for Fiona) and a nonfat decaffeinated cappuccino. “You mean a ‘double nothing,’” the young barista named Clive says, and she nods, smiles a bit—the first time in days. She asks for a pat of butter and strawberry jam. The coffee shop is crowded but quiet, filled with people who seem content and sleepy, relieved it’s Saturday. Billie Holiday plays in the background, and Nora feels a little more in control now.

She finds a table way in the back with a single chair. She sits down, sets the coffee and white bag on the table, and stares at them. The fat from the croissants seeps through the bag, and she thinks maybe she isn’t hungry after all. She takes out her notebook and a pencil and begins to sketch a picture of Sister Rosa, her old teacher, the one who made them stop and pray a Hail Mary every time a siren zoomed by the school. Nora is startled at how easily the details come to her: the black veil with its stiff white wimple tightly wrapping Sister Rosa’s round face, escaped wisps of black hair in such contrast to the bleached linen; the loose black dress draping to the ground, wooden rosary beads clipped to little hooks on a black woven belt, a large silver crucifix hanging from a black cord around her neck, the simple silver wedding ring on her left hand, the functional black shoes.

Nora draws question marks in the spaces, traces the outline of Sister Rosa over and over. Then, her hand, the one holding the pencil, suddenly feels like it belongs to someone else. She watches as the hand writes: Everyone has their own way of being brave. And then she remembers these are Sister Rosa’s words—she’d said them to Nora at the convent. The hand puts the pencil down then, takes a croissant from the bag, butters it, smears the jam into the butter, and shoves it into Nora’s mouth. The mouth eats it all very quickly and wants more. The hand feeds the mouth another croissant, and the eyes close.

Nora is in first grade at St. Raphael’s Catholic School in Illinois. She is marching through deep snow in oversized red boots from the school to the convent. It is her job during lunch recess to bring a carton of milk from the school cafeteria to the nuns. She counts her steps as she marches. She tries to make it in exactly 256 steps. Sometimes she has to make giant steps toward the end of the path, or it would go over 256. The day is cold, but the sun is strong and the sky a bright blue. A light wind lifts new snow from old snow, and the flakes swirl around her, and she feels like a body in a snow globe.

Sometimes Sister Rosa invites her into the library and reads her a book.

“I like this one,” Nora whispers, holding a book with a picture of a beautiful woman riding a white horse on the cover.

“That’s a book about St. Margaret,” Sister Rosa says, kneeling next to her.

“Why does she have a sword?”

“St. Margaret dedicated her life to protecting those in danger. When she was little, her mother died, and her father gave her to a shepherdess in the country. Margaret spent her days watching over the lambs. While she was tending the lambs, she would pray her rosary. Later, when her father found out she was dedicating her life to God, he became angry, and she had to leave their home, and she went off to protect those who were in danger.”

Nora traces Margaret’s sword with her finger while Sister Rosa speaks.

“And once she stood in front of a dragon with her sword raised in one hand and the cross of her rosary raised in the other, and the dragon lost all its powers.”

“Why does she have a pearl necklace on her head?”

“That’s her crown. The name Margaret comes from the Greek word for ‘pearl.’”

“I wish I was brave like St. Margaret,” Nora says.