Six Years Old and Sworn In

Chapter 2 The Notebook

I don't forget. That's the thing people don't understand about me. Teachers called it "delayed speech." Doctors called it "selective mutism." My grandmother called it "shyness." None of them were right.

I just didn't see the point in talking when nobody was listening.

But I could remember. Everything. The exact shade of Diana's lipstick the first time I met her. The way my father's hands shook when he signed the marriage certificate. The number of seconds between when Diana told me I was broken and when she walked back into the party. Sixty-eight seconds.

So I started writing it down.

I had a notebook. Blue cover, gold lettering, a present from my grandfather for my fifth birthday. He'd meant for me to draw in it. Instead, I wrote down everything Diana did. Everything anybody did.

My memory worked in pictures. If I wanted to remember something, I just had to close my eyes and flip through the pages in my head. The notebook was for the things I couldn't hold onto the first time. Reminders. Proof.

The candy incident was the first entry. Then came the others.

Diana knocking over my glass of water at dinner, then telling my father I'd spilled it on purpose.

Diana replacing my reading book with one for toddlers and telling my teacher I was "behind."

Diana standing in my doorway at night, not saying anything, just watching. I'd wake up and see her silhouette. When I told my father, she said, "She's just having nightmares, darling. It's normal for children who've lost a parent."

Diana took every toy I loved and put them in the attic. "We're making room for the new baby," she said. When I asked about the baby, she said, "Never mind."

She didn't know I could hear through the walls.

"You're not really going to let her dominate our child, are you?" Diana's voice, late at night, through the air vent.

"She's a child, Diana."

"She's your child. Not mine. And if you keep coddling her, she'll never learn."

"Learn what?"

"To stop being so strange."

My father didn't answer. I counted the silence. Eighteen seconds. Then footsteps. Then a door closing.

Diana didn't come to my room that night. She didn't have to. I heard everything already.

The notebook filled up fast. I learned to write small. I learned to hide it under my mattress, then in the crawl space behind my closet, then in a hollowed-out book in the school library.

The entries got longer.

October 14: Diana told Dad I broke the vase. I didn't. I was in the garden. She did it herself and hid the pieces in my backpack. Dad grounded me for a week.

November 2: Diana told Grandma I was writing "scary things" in my blue notebook. Grandma looked through it. I had written "Diana is kind" on the front page. Grandma told me I was sweet. Diana slammed the car door when we left.

December 19: Diana's baby is coming. She told Dad I should go to boarding school "to give the baby a calm environment." Dad said no. They fought for three hours. I counted every minute.

January 7: The baby is here. A boy. They named him Andrew. Diana didn't let me hold him. She said, "He's fragile." She told Dad I threw a tantrum. I didn't. I never said a word.

January 8: I wrote down every ugly thing Diana ever said to me. All twelve pages. Dad found the notebook while I was at school. I think Diana planted it. She watched me from the kitchen while Dad made me sit at the table.

"I'm very disappointed in you, CeCe," he said. "These are lies. You know that, right?"

I looked at him. "They're not lies."

"Excuse me?"

"They're not lies."

Diana stood behind him, one hand on his shoulder. The baby was asleep in her arms. She smiled at me. Not the tight smile. The real one. The one that said I win.

Dad threw the notebook into the fireplace.

I watched it burn. Every page. Every word. Every date and time and proof.

Then I went to my room and wrote it all down again. In a new notebook. Hidden in a new place.

Because I remembered everything. And if there was one thing I knew about lawyers, it was that they needed evidence.