Broken Marilyns

LULL-A-BYE

"Bianca, how can I help you?" Mr. Henley asked, looking both confused and troubled. My mom's spine straightened, making her taller - the movement resembling a snake ready to strike.

"Tom, I'm looking for my son. Have you seen him?" her last sentence didn't sound like a question. She was different with Mr. Henley.

"I'm...sorry," Mr. Henley furrowed his eyebrows defensively at the hidden accusation, "we've been gone all day - we were out running errands in town. I'm sorry. I haven't seen your son."

There was a slow movement in the darkness of the living room and I knew by the way it crept that it was Chad. We looked at each other as he slowly pulled himself over the arm of a large couch. He looked terrified. Another figure skimmed the wall to the right and Chad shrunk back down into the shadows.

My mom and Mr. Henley stared at each other and before turning to leave, my mother nodded as if answering a silent question she'd asked herself. Taking my hand firmly in hers, my mother shifted her body to walk away. After taking a few steps, red and blue lights blared their way into our driveway. Turning to give Mr. Henley one more look, I could almost hear the message in her eyes: we'll see about that.

From my room, I watched while my mother explained and cried down the hallway. The officers who'd arrived at our house looked on with bored eyes and took turns asking the same things. "When was the last time you saw Charlie? What was he wearing? About what time did you notice Charlie was missing?" My poor mother treated each question as another opportunity to give the men information she might have left out - trying hard to remember every grain of a detail.

The officers watched my mother and looked at each other. My mother watched the officers and looked at me, and I watched her while looking at the statuesque officer who held his pen to a notepad but wrote nothing.

* * * *

I couldn't sleep that night. I kept imagining I could hear Charlie screaming out for me. Resting my head on the windowsill, I cracked open my window to let in the warm early morning air. Outside, the crickets were still playing their stridulating lullabies and I wondered if Charlie heard them too wherever he was.

The sun hadn't risen yet, but its fuchsia glow was peeking out from behind the hills, breaking apart the sky's black to blue gradient.

In the distance, I heard footsteps in the grass and the sharp wail of rusty door hinges. It was 5:11 a.m. so my mom wouldn't be up for a couple more hours. Climbing out of my window, I stalked quietly towards the metal shed in the Henleys' back yard. Someone was moving inside of the shed. Pulling up on the latch, the wind was knocked out of me as someone collided with me from behind and wrestled me to the ground. A fist made contact with my face and my eyes closed.

"Jenna," someone whispered, waking me. Opening my eyes, I panicked, not recognizing my surroundings. My body was sore and heavy as I tried to push myself up. "Shhh," the voice said again from somewhere far-off. Though my vision was hazy, I made out a human-like shape on the floor a few feet in front of me. Slowly, I reached my arms out and began to crawl. There was dirt beneath me, and as I neared the person, the dirt got damp. I heard a gasp and then hurried footsteps began to disappear. A door opened behind me, blinding me with the Nevada sun before a shadow engulfed me in darkness. Past the person, I was calmed at the sight of my street. As my vision adjusted, I was able to see a face just before the door closed. The heat from outside turned the room into an oven, and soon the heat forced my eyelids down, coaxing me into a slumber.

Gasping, I shook awake at the sound of loud barking and sharp claws tearing at the aluminum siding of the shed. Outside a man radioed for back-up.

Quickly, the door to the shed was ripped open, revealing a police officer with an aimed gun. Scanning me and the area behind me, he kneeled down by my side, another man outside yelled for paramedics. "Are you okay, ma'am? What's your name? Do you know where you are?" Nervously, he looked behind me again.

When the paramedics carried me out of the shed, my mother ran up to the stretcher and clasped my hand. "Jenna, baby, are you okay? Oh my God," she covered her mouth with a shaky hand and sat with me inside of an ambulance parked on the street. People were slowly trickling out into the street.

I was tired and sore, but people berated me with questions, poked my wounds with stinging cotton balls, searched and photographed my body. "Did you see anything, Jenna?" the officer who found me in the shed asked. I nodded. Out of all the chaos and confusion, I focused on the one thing I was sure of. "What did you see?"

"Mr. Henley."

Behind the mob of people around me, I could see the entire Henley family being taken away one by one to different police vehicles for questioning. I now understood the profound sixth-sense a mother has when it comes to her child. My mother knew the Henleys had my brother.

Police began to swarm around a particular area inside the shed and then something was lifted up and put onto a stretcher. As the men guided the stretcher over the threshold, a small foot in dirty green-bottomed sneakers flailed lifelessly before a white sheet was draped back over it. The gut wrenching finality of the moment set in; my brother was dead and I had been just feet away from him. This was real. My brother was gone and he was not coming back.

Just then, two officers emerged from the house with Mr. Henley in handcuffs. Walking him to a police car, Mr. Henley stared at me with a malevolent look in his eyes; I couldn't break free from his glare.