When I was little, we lived in the apartment right above my grandfather’s shop. He was a tailor who, according to Dad, used to do quite well back in the day. Before fines forced him to shut down. Something to do with the IRS and unaccounted revenue. My poor grandfather was beside himself. I overheard Dad telling Uncle Eddie that their father was just too old to keep up with the place, and too stubborn to give it up. Now, the once thriving staple of their childhood sat fully stocked and lifeless.
Dad was forced to find other work, running through a string of jobs before settling for a sales position at some insurance company downtown. He hated it. And so did Mom. She became miserable over our new lifestyle. She started drinking a lot, something even my young mind had picked up on.
Then Dad caught her cheating and, rather than trying to save the family, she decided to run off with the new guy. It was strange how fast everything had changed. One night Mom was singing me to sleep, and the next, I was all alone. Dad did what he could, but he, too, was in pain and unable to truly explain to his six year old daughter what was going on.
That was when the night terrors started. I’d wake to the sound of someone screaming, this bone chilling screech that would pierce through my own shrieks from under the blankets where I’d hide. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of a woman standing in the corner of my bedroom, staring at me from behind a curtain of long, dark hair, mouth agape. It sent me into hysterics. My dad’s hurried arrival would soon become a tired routine, his frustration less subtle each time he listened to me rant on about the Screamy Lady. He tried assuring me that my mind was making me see and hear things that weren’t there, all because I missed Mommy so much. He said that sometimes the things that make us sad on the inside had a way of coming out.
This, of course, did nothing to make the Screamy Lady go away. She’d show up again and again, just as I was falling asleep. The neighbors must’ve hated me, and for a while I worried that my dad might too. Between the shop closing, my mother leaving, my grandfather’s steady decline, and the struggle to make ends meet, my dad was already going through enough. I didn’t want to add to it, and I knew that I was. Dad wasn’t sure what to do with me, nor was Uncle Eddie, who was kind enough to babysit from time to time so his brother could work the second job he so desperately needed.
Therapy was too expensive. We tried changing my diet, changing my bed time, leaving the lights on. None of it worked. The screams continued to wake me. Knowing they were coming but not knowing when, I stopped sleeping altogether, which then began to affect the rest of my life. My behavior slipped, my grades plummeted. Teachers were calling home in shock, wondering what had happened to me. My dad explained it away with the divorce, but he knew this problem wasn’t going away.
So he got creative. He made me a doll. One that loosely resembled my mother. It was shoddily made with scraps of old fabric that had long been sitting in the back room of the shop, but Dad assured me that the doll was special and would watch over me as I slept. I wasn’t receptive at first. Part of me was afraid of waking up in the middle of the night to find the thing screaming at me as I held it close to my face.
I was pleasantly surprised when, on our very first try, I woke to a brightening pink sky. I’d made it to morning without any screams, peering into the dark corner to find nothing there. I hugged that doll so tight and never let go, going on to sleep with it for far longer into my childhood than I probably should have.
My dad, of course, was elated. We were both finally sleeping again. It didn’t bother him that the doll needed its own dinner plate, or that it had to be buckled into the backseat, or that I’d spend all day speaking to it as though I was the mother and the doll was me. Dad would sometimes pretend to not know which one was me and which one was the doll, a gag I thoroughly enjoyed. I teased back that the Lilah doll was always wearing the same outfit! So he brought up more fabric for me to look through, smiling as he sewed to the sounds of my excitement. When I asked Dad if he could also get the Lilah doll a backpack and shoes, he laughed.
But then a light went off in his head. He thought about turning this into something big. A fully customizable doll, with an array of attachable accessories. Fun enough to play with during the day, but soft enough to be held tight through the night. He pitched the idea to Uncle Eddie who was immediately on board and probably desperate for a reason to get out from behind the supermarket cash registers. With my little Lilah doll tucked under my arms, I’d creep out of bed some nights to find them tirelessly sewing or debating business plans far above my head. They made deals with local retailers and even went door-to-door, selling whatever they could in hopes of one day bringing the corpse of their father’s shop back to life. It wasn’t long before we were changing the modest, black sign from Vinny’s Tailor Shop to a loud pink and blue that read The Lilah Door Store.
It was crazy how quickly our lives changed. Lilah Dolls sold faster than we could make them, and before we knew it, we were opening up a second store in the South Shore Mall. Dad moved us into a much nicer place, a house overlooking the hills of our downtown, the lights of the city shining into my bedroom window. I’d never seen him so happy, certainly not since my mother had left. When I asked if this meant she would come back, he got very stern and said no, a sharp and definitive refutal. I thought I’d done something wrong, and he must’ve felt bad because he softened his tone and apologized, telling me about how his mother had left him too, and that he knew how difficult it was growing up without a mommy. It would be okay, he said, because now he had me. I smiled as he tucked me in and kissed me goodnight, trying my best to swallow how deeply I missed my mother.
When Grandpa passed later that year, I held my breath at the thought of her attending the funeral. It felt wrong anticipating such a thing at that time, as Dad was more upset than I’d ever seen him. Many people (most of whom I did not know) were stopping by the house for lengthy visits, distant family or friends of my grandfather. Even some loyal customers of years past who’d grown to care for him, telling tails of the work Grandpa had done to save their weddings and such. Dad accepted their sympathies as warmly as he could, as well as the never-ending onslaught of food he’d tasked Uncle Eddie with stuffing into our fridge somewhere. Uncle Eddie had been staying with us during that time and was trying to remain busy to keep his mind off this new reality of his. It was hard seeing my ever-jolly uncle so lost and empty.
With so many people showing up over the course of that week, no one batted an eye when we received knocks on our door late one night. But the concern in Uncle Eddie’s voice when he called up to Dad got me out of bed and peeking from around the wall atop the staircase, my Lilah Doll laying limp in my hand. It was my mother. She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and a knowing smirk plastered upon her face. I gasped and dropped the doll, my Dad snapping back at the sound and ordering Uncle Eddie to take me back to my room. I cried out for my mother as Uncle Eddie marched up the stairs and carried me away. She wouldn’t look at me. Just kept her eyes on Dad who was ushering her outside. I hurried to the window while Uncle Eddie stood awkwardly by, unsure whether or not to stop me. I could hear their muffled voices spitting back and forth at one another. She was demanding something, putting my dad on the defensive, but about what I wasn’t sure. He told her to leave and then slammed the door in her face. I watched her turn around and head back into the night, crying out for her still even as she disappeared down the driveway and out of sight.
When Dad came to check on me, I shouted at him for the very first time. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t let me see her. All he could say was that he was sorry, which wasn’t enough for me. I continued to shout, when he suddenly snapped. The look on his face, I’d never seen it before. Even Uncle Eddie looked down at his feet. Dad spat that Mom was poison, and that seeing her would only cause me harm. That one day I’d understand. He then ordered me to bed, and that was that. But I couldn’t sleep. Not that night, or the next. I’d stare out my window, waiting for Mom to come back. And when she didn’t, I started to slip again. I started hearing the screams.
Dad was frantic. All the progress we’d made, lost. I remember him taking me into the shop early one morning, holding my hand as he showed me around the back room where countless boxes of accessories sat waiting to be put on display. He told me I could pick one for my Lilah Doll, anything I wanted. It was like Christmas! I wanted all of them! When I couldn’t decide, he allayed my stress by promising me that I could choose one new accessory every time another shipment came in. Within weeks my Lilah Doll was a whole new girl, dawning sunglasses and a bright yellow shirt, with a pretty little bow on top. I pressed each new accessory onto her like the bandaids they were.
As I got older, the power of the doll faded, but my need for her remained. She sat on the shelf and watched as I snuck booze into my bedroom, my new remedy for nightmare-driven insomnia, one that, fortunately, would not last very long. The mere thought of vomiting into my toilet one more time was enough to make me sick. I knew I had to change, to find some other way to feel okay. My best friend knew it too. She dragged me with her to the animal shelter where she volunteered. It was there that I finally found some semblance of peace. I couldn’t believe how much of an immediate impact it had had on me. I started volunteering on my own most days after school.
Still, Lilah Dolls remained a big part of my life. At 15, I got my first job working weekends at both stores, filling in whenever I was needed. Kids at school would make fun of me. They all knew I was the “doll girl”. It didn’t bother me. I took pride in my ability to run the store, and in my knowledge of the products we sold. As graduation drew nearer, Dad gifted me a managerial opportunity for the shop. I didn’t know how to tell him I didn’t want it, or that I’d applied to a university several states away, with dreams of working in wildlife conservation. All that he had done for me, it hurt me to hurt him, to turn him down and abandon the empire he’d built for me. I cried when I finally told him. But he wasn’t mad, or even upset. He lifted my chin so I could see his smile and then pulled me in for a hug. As we rocked gently back and forth, he whispered to me that it was okay to chase the thing that silenced my demons. He let go but kept his hands on my shoulders, gazing at the young woman I now was. There was something else in his eye, an understanding of what I was going through, of everything I had been keeping from him. It all tempered with that one look. When I left for school, my Lilah Doll stayed behind, because I didn’t need her anymore.
The next few years were like a dream. I loved my classes, my friends, the view from my dorm of the mountains I hiked every weekend. I even met a guy. Caleb. His friends called him Texas, something you understood the moment he spoke. He sat next to me in an ecology class but spent more time studying me than he did the material. He laughed when I told him I was practically famous, so I told him to look up Lilah Dolls. He was stunned. From that moment, he began calling me Lilah-doll (something I pretended to hate), and we were dating not long after. Everything seemed to be falling into place for me, and for the first time in my life I was happy.
And then I got the call. Dad was sick. Cancer.
It was awful how fast it took him. How rapidly he’d deteriorated before my eyes. I’d dropped out of school to take care of him, and within months he was gone. I could hardly look at him in the end. One of the last conversations we’d had, he’d taken my hand from the hospital bed in which he was bound, begging me to remember the man I knew him to be. I promised I would. My savior. The day he passed, I sat in my old room, waiting for him to come comfort me like he always did. It was just me now, and my Lilah Doll up on the shelf where I’d left her. She looked so different now than when I first got her, adorned in the very many accessories I’d collected over the years, the sunglasses still fixed upon hr face, her bright yellow shirt now torn and faded. I held her close like I used to, curling into a ball at the foot of my bed. It was the closest I could get to my dad being there.
I never finished school. Dad left me his share of Lilah Doll and, with just four semesters left, I decided to run the stores instead. Caleb was supportive throughout the whole thing, as was Uncle Eddie who, of course, knew a whole lot more about how to run the business than I did. I picked up on it quick. The hardest part was being enveloped around a permanent and painful reminder of my dad, and wasn’t any easier when that pain went away. I didn’t even notice it had happened. I just woke up one day and went to work, carrying on with my new routine. Paid the bills, watched TV, ordered takeout. Laughed without remorse, and cried about other things. Things really took off after Caleb moved in. Within a year, we were engaged, married, and announcing our pregnancy to a room full of what was almost entirely Caleb’s loved ones. He could sense the hurt I was holding inside but was too kind to challenge me on my weak assurances. I’d sometimes catch his eye from across the room, gauging my demeanor. So I’d bury the pain deeper.
None of it would matter after one cold, February morning. Sophia Grace was born healthy, beautiful, perfect. It took some time for me and Caleb to adjust to our new lives as parents. I loved being a mom, but it was exhausting, even with all the help from my amazing husband. Not only was he running around for me and the baby, he was also looking after the stores in my absence. It was a lot. He’d try so hard to pitch in when he got home but was almost always the first to fall asleep. I couldn’t fault him. I was used to functioning on limited sleep. Most nights I’d stare down into my little girl’s crib, studying her unconscious twitches until I was finally ready drift off, myself.
Caleb caught me one time just as the sun was beginning to come up. I lied and said I had just woken up. He continued not to push, instead retrieving my old Lilah Doll and placing into the crib beside Sophia. The sunglasses were stuck permanently askew and the faded yellow shirt was becoming unstitched. Caleb joined me in admiring our daughter, wrapping his arms around me and assuring me we were safe. He then smacked me on the butt and said I should get some sleep.
I wasn’t out long before I heard it. A shrill, violent scream. It shot me awake and sent me into the kind of frenzy I hadn’t experienced since I was a child. Caleb came rushing back into the room in a panic, checking first on Sophia, who was now awake and crying. Shaking, I asked Caleb if he heard the screams. He looked at me bewildered and said only the baby’s, and mine. This was his first experience with my night terrors, and I think it frightened him more than it did me. I had no idea why they were happening again, I just knew it was finally time to open up to Caleb about my long history with the Screamy Lady. He put Sophia down and held me close, rubbing my back as I sobbed and poured it all out. Once I was settled, he told me he knew what I needed to do: I needed to confront my mother.
I had no idea where she was and hadn’t seen her since that night she showed up to our door. Neither had Uncle Eddie. Caleb dropped it for a while and continued to support me as best he could, trying to hide how much he, too, was plagued by the situation. A disposition I knew all too well. I worried it might tear us apart when, much like Dad had almost twenty years prior (and in the very same room, in fact), Caleb turned to me with excitement, the light bulb in his head shining brightly upon his face. He suggested I submit my DNA to an ancestry website to track down traces of my mother’s existence. There was a part of me that rejected the idea, this little pocket of fear that didn’t want to get my hopes up. But Caleb insisted, because he is the most wonderful man I know.
And because my bouts of screaming in the middle of the night were scaring him more than he would admit.
I was told I could expect my results in no less than eight weeks. When they finally arrived, I was afraid to look at them. Caleb came home and found me in the living room feeding Sophia, the envelope on the table before me. I’d run out of nails to bite. He opened it for me, my stomach sinking as I watched his eyes dance along the pages, when he suddenly stopped and grinned: I had a half-sister.
Rachael and I messaged back and forth on the website before agreeing to meet in person. She actually lived nearby. I wondered how often we might have passed each other without realizing it. She invited me over for coffee and was very excited to meet, waving at me from her doorstep before I even stepped out of the car. She, too, was married, with three kids, as was evident from the state of her home, something I found endearing. Sophia was still only an infant and I was already thinking about having more.
It was strange noting the familiarities in Rachael’s face as she spoke. Our eyes were especially similar. She told me that she’d always suspected Mom was hiding something, and that she was not at all surprised to learn exactly who I was, given that Mom would never allow her have a Lilah Doll. Rachael described Mom as conniving and manipulative, her father having filed for divorce after years of unhappiness. Now, Mom only came around when she needed something. Rachael was happy to give me her address but cautioned me not to expect very much from her.
If only she’d known the scenario I’d played out in my head over and over. It flashed in my mind as I pulled up to Mom’s trailer later that very same afternoon. I sat frozen in my car for a while, anchored by the weight of this moment. There were people sitting in lawn chairs in front of the neighboring trailers, staring in my direction, increasing my nerves. I tried not to look at them as I marched up to my mother’s door and gave two crisp knocks. My hands grew numb as I waited. The door opened and my mother was standing there with a cigarette in her mouth, looking just as sour as she did the last time I’d seen her, only this time I was close enough to see the work she’d had done to her face. It was not appealing.
She blew smoke out her nose and asked who I was, and when I told her it was Lilah, she continued to stare through me. Her daughter, I reminded her. She asked what I was doing here, and I wasn’t sure how to reply. It felt stupid having to say out loud that I was just looking to see her after all these years, that I was hoping she’d want to see me too. She hardly reacted. Just took another drag of her cigarette. I informed her that she had a new grandchild, taking out a photo for her to see. She glanced at it and scoffed, mumbling about how my dad must have been proud. When I told her that he died, she said she was sorry to hear it, and didn’t even try to sound sincere. I could feel the soul being ripped out of me. I politely apologized for showing up like this and assured her that I wasn’t trying to be a burden. But I meant so little to her, I was less than a burden. I was an annoyance. An inconvenience taking her away from the daytime television that was blaring in the background. When I ran out of things to say, we stood in momentary silence. She broke it with a groan and wondered if I was going to give her the money or not. I had no idea what she was talking about. She said it was the least I could do given how successful the business was. That she deserved some credit for giving me my name. I suddenly understood why she showed up in the middle of the night all those years ago, and why my dad never wanted me to see her. It was to shield me from the pain I felt in that moment.
As spring rolled around, Caleb and I decided to throw a party. We both needed it, and there was still some family that had yet to meet Sophia. It was nice being able to turn our brains off while other people watched our kid. If anyone needed a drink, it was Caleb. I was more than happy to just sit back and bask in the glow of my new family, watching them take turns with my sweet little girl, her attentive eyes gazing out at all the love she did not yet know she had. It had suddenly hit me how much I missed my dad. It really sneaks up on you in those moments. Caleb must’ve noticed, because after hurrying upstairs he returned with my Lilah Doll in hand. I watched him wave it in front of Sophia’s face, making it dance and playing peekaboo with the sunglasses. My mother-in-law stood by looking bemused; all of the brand new toys we’d been gifted, and he went with the ragged, old doll with the very noticeable stain. But it made Sophia smile, which made me break down. A hush fell over the room as I was instantly consoled by those around me, Caleb’s sisters each rubbing my back while Uncle Eddie fetched me tissues. I always hated others’ sympathy, but this time was different. This time was okay.
The moment was interrupted by loud knocks on the door. Everyone looked around at each other as though trying to figure out which relative wasn’t already present. Caleb announced that the door was open, but the knocks rang a second time, loud and impatient. The playful confusion had quickly turned into concern. We all listened as Caleb answered the door, trying to figure out whose voice was speaking to him from the other side. His curious cousins peeking from around the kitchen doorway suddenly parted, and my husband returned looking pale and serious. He said it was the FBI, and that they needed to speak with me about something.
I could hear guests panicking in the background as I nervously escorted the two agents into the living room. They placed a folder onto the glass table and spread its contents across it. Crime scene photos. Reports. They were disturbing, something I’d wished they had prepared me for first. But they were very direct. They told me that they believed Dad was a serial killer. One that they’d been hunting for nearly two decades. I was more than confused. I told them they were mistaken. Dad was a doll-maker, and a great father. They said that when I submitted my DNA to the ancestry website, they were alerted to matches on over a dozen unsolved murders in the area. My arms were tingling. I couldn’t speak. They went on to describe their struggle in putting together a profile of who they’d long called The South Shore Strangler, explaining how he’d chosen his victims seemingly at random. I reluctantly gazed upon the photos once more. All women. There was something familiar about them. One was wearing sun glasses. Another, a yellow shirt.
Caleb appeared in the doorway with Sophia in one arm and my Lilah Doll in the other. When I figured it out, I screamed.