What do you want to be when you’re older?Suzannah is always asking questions.
I want to see a doctor who can help me go outside without my mask. And then I will go everywhere in the world.
Can I come?Suzannah asked.
No, silly. Only my mommy can come.
Only her mommy. She wants to be out of this house, free of these walls. And she knows Mick won’t be the one to save her.
Only her mommy can save her.
Her first mommy is dead. The one with the real blond hair and the lean body.
She’s stuck with me. And I can only help her if she gives me power over Mick.
“What kind of situation would that be—when you really, really need me?” I ask.
Coy Face recedes, and now comes Sad Face.
“I don’t know,” she says. I can tell that she means this. Confusion makes her sad. Uncertainty makes her sad. She needs to know the rules so she can keep her house in order. So she can keep another mommy from leaving.
I reach through the bars—something I rarely do—and touch her folded knee.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Let’s figure it out together.”
I continue.
“Do you think he just meant if you were hurt or sick?”
She shrugs.
Then comes Happy Face.
“I think if I did something in the kitchen that was dangerous. Like maybe if I burned something.”
I go with this idea.
“Like if you burned something and didn’t know how to stop the smoke? Like if you tried to boil some soup but maybe there was some butter on the coils of the burner? That kind of smoke?”
She thinks about this. “Yes,” she says.
“I’ve done that so many times back home!” I say. “Butter smokes a lot, but it doesn’t catch fire like oil. Still, it’s scary.”
Alice looks at me carefully. Then she turns her back around so she is facing the monitor.
“I can make us soup!” she says. “Since he’s not home and it’s so late. We need to have dinner. I’ve seen him make the soup. I know how!”
She says this loudly. She gets up and walks to the kitchen.
Ten minutes later I hear her feet running down the hall. I return to the edge of the grate and strain to see through the metal bars.
She runs toward me and she can hardly hold back a smile.
“I think I started a fire!” she says. “Cooking the soup!”
I stand now, look alarmed. We both speak loudly.
“Oh no!” I say. “Do you know how to put it out? Did he ever teach you?”
