Before she uttered something that made me shudder, my daughter was thrilled to embrace her newborn sibling.
Wearing her favorite red overalls and her slightly crooked hair, Lisa, my four-year-old eldest, sat cross-legged at the edge of the hospital bed, her tiny hands quivering slightly around the tiny body on her lap, as if she were holding something important, almost sacred. There was an odd glint in her eyes, not just enthusiasm, but a combination of seriousness and intrigue that I had never seen in her before.
After the delivery, my sutures yanked with each breath, but all I felt was enormous thankfulness. The air smelled of antiseptic and the gentle touch of newborn flesh. I had been concerned about Lisa’s reaction the entire time I was pregnant: would she feel excluded, offended, or envious? However, I believed that all of my concerns were finally dispelling as I watched her hold her sister while making soft “shh” noises.
She then leaned in. She whispered as her face got closer to the newborn’s:
— I have someone now.
I smiled emotionally.
Someone for what, my dear?
She responded quietly while maintaining her attention on the baby’s face and rocking her in the same slow, steady motion:
– Someone with whom I can share the secrets.
A chill went up my spine.
— Honey, what secrets? I tried to sound calm as I asked.
Then she looked up at me. They were too conscious for a child of her age, and strangely solemn. She gently nodded before stating unequivocally:
— The things I keep from Daddy.
I had no time to reply or even grab her small hand. She whispered something else while leaning over the infant once more. A statement that triggered a spike in the cardiac monitor next to me. The nurse was frozen in the doorway, her eyes wide open, by a statement.
She uttered…
(To continue in the first comment: everything I believed to be true about our house was completely destroyed by what Lisa revealed next.)
Lisa cradled her newborn sister as if she were a delicate gem. “Now I have someone I can tell my secrets to… the ones I don’t tell Daddy,” she said, as I watched her from my hospital bed with that beaming pride of a big sister. Those remarks stuck with me even though I initially believed it to be childish play.
As the days went by, Lisa continued to play and make up stories. She whispered to her dolls one afternoon, “We don’t tell Daddy.” She fled, ashamed, when she realized I was listening. A doubt started to arise.
She was talking softly to her sister by the crib one evening as the sun was going down, saying, “If Daddy asks, we say the monster only comes when he’s not home.”
I felt cold when she talked about this “monster”—a large black shadow that lurked in the kitchen and knocked on windows. Her story stuck in my head despite my best efforts to reassure her.
A few days later, I discovered a graphic artwork beneath her pillow that said, “Don’t let the monster take her,” and showed a dark creature towering over two tiny forms. After discussing it with Julien, we made the anxious decision to see a child psychologist.
Shortly thereafter, Lisa briefly vanished. Holding her sister close, we discovered her in the shed: “The monster claimed he’s coming back. Maybe I could offer him Lila,” she said with fear. However, nobody had come inside our house.
The truth was eventually revealed with the therapist’s assistance. It wasn’t a fantasy; rather, it was the shape her impressionable mind had given to her father’s rage during my pregnancy. The shouting, the smell of booze, and the slamming doors had all contributed to a hazy, intolerable anxiety that she was unable to articulate.
This broke Julien, who realized the consequences of his actions and resolved to change. The atmosphere in the house gradually became more relaxed. Lisa grinned once again, and her sketches began to fill with awkward rainbows rather than shadows.
“I don’t have any secrets to hide anymore,” she declared plainly one morning.
The final monster was eliminated by that statement.
