You look at Laurie one day and notice something off. Her hair is black when it should be brown. It’s infuriating, because she is only fourteen, and you know girls that young should not be dyeing their hair without an adult’s permission. Though it hurts you, you decide you have to discipline her. She’s broken one of the rules, and so of course she needs it. You lock her in the basement for an hour, and your heart breaks when you hear her crying behind the door, but at the end of her punishment, you give her a hug and present to her a plate of baked eggplants, her favourite.
The next week, you notice that Laurie’s eyes are blue when they should be green. It’s infuriating, because she is only fourteen, and you know girls that young should not be using coloured contacts without an adult’s permission. Though it hurts you, you decide you have to punish her. She’s broken one of your rules, and so of course she needs it. You force her to stand in the corner of the dark bathroom, and you lock the door. You can hear her crying, begging you to open it and save her from the monsters, but you tell her that it’s all in her head. Monsters don’t exist. At the end of her punishment, you let her out, give her a hug, and present to her a plate of baked eggplants, her favourite.
“She’s fourteen,” you tell yourself. “She’s old enough to be making her own decisions.” But Laurie is getting more and more disobedient. She watches television when she shouldn’t. She comes home, her hair dyed another colour or her eyes artificially stained with someone else’s colour. Your friends tell you to let Laurie live her own life, that you shouldn’t interfere so much, but it’s impossible. You can’t help it. You just love your baby so much. Is it too much to ask that she stay under your wing, just a while longer?
On your way home from the supermarket, your hands full with bags of groceries, you overhear several women in the parking lot, their faces creased with worry.
“Mrs. Lau was in tears when I saw her this morning,” says one of the woman, a pudgy Indian lady who looks as if she was about to burst our crying herself.
“It’s the third one this month,” another whimpers. “I haven’t been letting Amber out unless she’s with me or my husband.”
A woman with mousy brown hair and pallid skin shakes her head with a sad sigh. “They don’t come back. We don’t know what he’s been doing to the girls.”
You put your groceries in the trunk of your car and drive home. Laurie’s waiting for you. When you walk in the house, you exclaim, “Laurie, I’m home!”
But Laurie doesn’t answer.
Immediately, you race upstairs to her room, your heart pounding. You don’t care that the bags of groceries are sitting by the front door, and that if the milk will go bad if you don’t put it in the fridge. You burst into Laurie’s room, ignoring her surprised shriek; there are no secrets under your roof, after all, and whatever Laurie does, you want to be involved.
She’s sitting rigid on her bed, not looking at the walls you painted for her or the dolls you bought for her. She’s staring straight at you, her eyes wide.
“If you’re home, you should have said something,” you tell her, relieved. “I thought you were in tr -“
But then you notice. Her hair is black when it should be brown. Her eyes are brown when they should be green. You step over an eggplant-covered doll and sigh. “Oh, Laurie, you went and dyed your hair again? Now I’ll have to punish you. Such a shame; I was going to make you your favourite tonight.”
