The Missing

16

For a long time, I thought of Papa as missing. In the apartment block where we lived, it wasn’t uncommon for fathers to leave their families. They would simply pack up their stuff and walk out the door, never to return. That’s not what happened with my father. But what difference did it make? He was missing all the same.

Afterward. Seconds afterward. I remember how we stared at each other, my mother and I. How, for a brief moment that seemed like eternity, we shared a wordless connection. We knew. We were the only two people in the world who knew what had just happened. But then she turned her back to me, breaking eye contact. I don’t really know what happened after that. Except that we moved apart, that she shut me out. I was a child, but I wasn’t stupid. I understood that I was to blame. That it was all my fault. But her rejection still hurt.

Sirens wailing on the street below, blue lights flashing across the front of the building. The front door standing open to the stairwell, men and women in dark uniforms, their faces tense, going in and out of the apartment. Throughout all of it, the door to Mama and Papa’s bedroom remained closed. Desperate sobbing—at times, a hysterical scream—issued from inside. I sat on the floor in my room. Clutching Mulle, waiting in silence. I didn’t know what else to do. I just knew that if I didn’t stay there until the door in front of me opened, until Mama came in and put her arms around me, then I might as well disappear from the earth. Me too.

Two men in dark uniforms tried to talk to me. The police, they said. We’re with the police. At first, they stood there, then they crouched down. They asked me questions, but I pretended not to hear. When they kept on talking, saying my name and repeating the questions, I began humming to myself. If I pretended that everything was the same as usual, maybe it would all go back to normal. Maybe I could make the bad thing that happened disappear. All I had to do was not think about it. Finally, the older policeman took me by the arm and spoke firmly. I hit him in the face. Then he yelled and took Mulle away from me. He said I was too old for such nonsense. His partner turned pale and looked grim. He pulled the other policeman out of the room and whispered something about just a kid, and in shock.

Then he came back, the younger one. He sat down next to me and talked to me nicely for a long time, explaining that everything was going to be fine, that the police only wanted the best for me, they wanted to help me. That’s why they were here. I realized that he wanted me to trust him, and I tried, at least a little. But that didn’t make any difference. It was too late for trust. They had taken Mulle away from me, and I would never forgive them for that.