tell you I am not a smart woman, though I may write as if I have some education. I have, at various times in my life, been in love with those names that the avid reader may recognize -- Lawrence, Nabokov, Joyce, among others. But I tell you, and I must insist, that I am a liar. I am a cheat. I steal their many styles and take them as my own. I am a thief of so many things. And despite my love for them, all those wondrous authors who for so many nights in my past had entertained and amused me, and filled me with fear or sorrow or overwhelming happiness, my crushing love for them could never rival that of my love for Justine.

I am dreadfully alone now, with nothing left but a bit of paper, and a pen from her dressing table, and a sigh, and a broken heart, and a multitude of dreadfully foul things residing in my mind and soul. There is, fortunate for me, one final companion, far less intoxicating than her to my left. But forget that for the moment. Let me tell you first of my fondest companion of all, the fairest friend I ever owned, my dearest Justine.

She was born on a Tuesday and was “full of grace” as the good poem is sweet to say. The nurses brought her to me swaddled in a dozen blankets so that she looked papoosed like an Indian’s child. I remember crying, a bit from the pain that still wove its way through my throbbing body but also from another pain, deeper still, a pain that quaked and woke as if from a timeless sleep inside me, at the mere look of her face, the bright star in her eye, as if it were a loud scream, a car crashing, a flower blooming in slow motion.

Her father was a dark beauty as she was. Probably of some Spanish descent though I never asked him questions and did not know him long. How he shrank from her when he entered the room and insisted she was beautiful, his black eyes welling with silent tears, his large red lip trembling. [Oh, I loved you too, Armand!]

The nurses, who balked at me as I blindly unwrapped my little jewel to check her many fingers and toes [there were 20 in all], said later they had seen him pacing the floor outside our room at a late hour. He then finished an entire pot of coffee from the waiting room area before ushering a heavy sigh and leaving at last through the back door, as if he meant never to return.

And he never did.

But Justine and I were happy. We were alone [not nearly as alone as I am now] but we were comfortable. I made for us a home in a pretty place that I had once visited as a child, with sandy beaches and a historical little town square. For money, we took from various trusts that my poor dead parents had left to me. I was always a shrewd negotiator, a wise investor, a bit tight with my funds, and some may even use the phrase “thrifty” or “miserly,” but I swear to you that she was very well taken care of. We, the both of us, were sufficiently clothed, fed a variety of delicious wonders each day, and kept in books and lots of little treasures.

From her earliest years, I took great care to ensure that Justine was properly educated. I took her to the best dance classes. She was tutored by the finest teachers in the city. I took her to museums, the zoo, and to the beach on certain lazy Sundays. We were frequent visitors at the library, and even the public school on occasion, which I thought was too poor for my Justine, but supplied ample amounts of joyful children for her to romp with at recess, which was as much an educational experience for her as any art exhibit or historical tour in the many grand houses that lined Rockford Street.

So I must make it very clear that she, my dear sweet love, had a remarkably happy childhood. She was full of harmony, always a cheerful child, with a smile for all who greeted her, and a hug about my neck, and an “Oh, Mommy dear?” and an “I love you so…”

We were terribly fond of each other. We were all that either one of us had, you see. There was no one outside of our tiny circle whom we could turn to and so we leaned upon one another, with a kiss upon the brow at times and a step upon the toe at others.

I do not know at which point I became dependant on her. I do remember a very solemn occasion when Justine was 12 or so and she did not get off the bus as she usually did from her visit to this or that art show or lesson. I was frantic with worry! Panicked! I phoned every museum in the district. I called her art teacher, a horrible little man who had tried for many years to sell his obnoxious paintings at auction and never received more than a hundred dollars, to ask if he had seen Justine that day. He claimed he had not and hung up on me before I even had the chance to request he call me if he saw her, and did he know she was missing, that she was my only daughter, that I adored her beyond words, or imagination, or sanity.

When she finally walked through the door at half past six – a full two hours late – I was rocking with grief in my chair. And seeing her come in the door, smiling, hanging up her coat and talking excitedly about a wonderful boy she had met at the museum, and how they had gone for sodas at LaKings, and “Mother, you would just not believe what he said!” I felt myself rise up like a great storm from that chair and slap her cheek so soundly and with such a fierce passion that her little glasses were knocked from her face and broke against the wall. I remember that I reached then for her small shocked body and drew her to me and pressed my face into her hair, weeping and sobbing great heavy tears. Her hair smelled of crushed violets and hot orchids, and I knew then, as surely as I had ever known anything in my life, that I would die if she ever left me.

And so began our new life, the life I built with my own hands, though I promise you that I poured that foundation rather blindly and laid each new brick without a specific purpose known to me in the forefront of my mind. I wanted to keep her! It had occurred to me quite suddenly that she was growing up and that she would one day leave me. I could not have it! I became afraid of life. I stopped going out. Justine did the shopping, she got the mail and went to the post. She brought us books from the library, which we both attacked in earnest in our little apartment, laughing with each other, exchanging stories. These were our favorite moments together.

I assure you she was not a prisoner. I was! I was trapped by my love for her, my overwhelming need for her presence, her sweet voice at my door by morning – “I’m going, mother. I’ll be back at noon. I love you.”-- And her rosy cheek by evening, sleepy near the fire, struggling with the final pages of a play she was reading or sketching her own dainty foot in her notebook.

She was terribly fond of art, you see, and had been since she was a child. She loved Gustav Klimt, Renoir, Waterhouse, all those famous painters who were most likely to paint scenes of romance or passion.

Justine was not a child anymore, afterall, and though she never spoke of boys again after that fateful violent night, I could see in her those enflamed changes that happen to a girl who is on the brink of becoming a woman; the swelling of the breasts, the rounding of the hips, the almost quiet transformation of her many limbs and locks from plump and childish to thin and demure. She often stared dreamily into the fire, her soft lips parted slightly so that her little white teeth glowed against her wet underlip, her eyes half-open in a sensual sort of way, her hand laid gently, innocently, against her warm belly.

I am no fool! My Justine would never be the wanton, lusty slut of high schools and high-class socials alike. She was a dear, sweet girl, naïve and innocent to a fault, but she was a woman all the same! A woman who had from her earliest formative years been exposed to such romantic novels as “Son’s and Lovers” and “Wuthering Heights”. A woman who would take Clark Gable over your more modern movie-house hunk any day of the week, a woman who, no matter how I scolded her or brought it to her attention, would flush blood red across her cheeks and breast anytime a handsome young man came to the door with a dinner delivery, or the newspaper, or a “book” she had dropped on her way up the stairs.

But again, please don’t be mislead into thinking that my little Justine had any impure thoughts about such men. She would have told me if she had!

Wouldn’t she?

Nevermind. I digress. The hour is late now and I am drunk with sorrow, and weak in my bones, with eyes swollen and sore from so many nights of tearful sleep! (I tell you I cry even in my dreams!) She is gone! She is gone! Justine!

It was during the summer of her junior year, I suppose, that I began to divine a way to keep my daughter close to me. I must stress once more that the mechanism of my thoughts and even my actions were unclear to me at the time, and have only now become painfully distinct in my mind – as painful self-revelations are most pleased with waiting until the most opportune time to present themselves, so as to cause you the deepest hurt and the most fearful regret. I did not know what I was doing, but I guess it is safe to admit that it did occur to me that Justine was most attentive to me when I was ill. So I was ill often. I would keep a cold for weeks on end. I would refuse the doctor in an attempt to prolong the agony.

What a pity it was to see me, moaning in the bed and shaking with fevers so that my kind daughter would spring into my room and place a cool rag on my head and sing me to sleep. She would sometimes sing in French [she was self-taught, my bright girl] and I loved this most, as my father, who was dead long before the stunning creature ever entered the world, was French and used to sing French lullabies to me as a child.

How I would bury my face in the perfume of her rich skirts on those cold bleak mornings, my hot hands on her tiny wrists, begging her not to leave me in such a state! Had she no mercy? Where was she going? Would she be gone long? A cough, a cough, an ache, a sigh, “Ah, my head!” So dramatic were my shameful attempts to keep her home.

It worked some days. Because, for all the sadness she must have felt, for all the many thoughts that surely passed through her mind of fleeing, of leaving me for dead on that bed of lies, I swear to you that she loved me. She loved me as inconsolably as I loved her. I was not a bad mother. I was merely sick, not of the body, but of the mind, and her loyalty was unbreakable. She was forever faithful even up until the end.

What a horrible mistake that was, my darling.

When she turned 18, Justine entered a small exclusive school in the city for talented artists. She was a remarkable painter, really. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that before. She painted tiny birds mostly, in various crystal cages, with multi-colored feathers, and golden beaks, and dark roses that sprung from their softly hued wings. And I wish somehow that I had not burned each of her paintings to nothing just a few nights ago so that their magnificent beauty might have been displayed in a museum of their very own some day. I took that from her too, sadly, and I am sorry, but the sight of them made me ache with mourning and their bold images were such an agonizing reminder of her own much sweeter presence than I can devise words for. They had to be destroyed.

It was in this school that she met a man, though I did not know it until it was almost too late. God is a cruel and ironic sort of fellow. The man’s name was Armand. He was “very tall and beautifully made, like Errol Flynn in Cry Wolf, with such strong features that make me weak, and such sad, dark eyes that make me want to cry so I do not look at them often.”

All this I read from her journal later, long after the affair had begun. He was a student at the school, older than she, and wanted her to run away with him. He had several promising offers in New York. She could leave this place and go to school there, find a job, live in independence, find true happiness.

I admit that upon reading this [oh, foul betrayal, why did you not go right away, love? Leave that night without clothes or books or brushes?] I became madly insane with jealously. She would leave me! She would abandon me for the dim mirror image of her father who had abandoned us both! In her mind, she had already packed her bags, I was sure of it!

And so I crawled into my bed, heartbroken, and created within myself the only other thing I ever created in this life as poetic and lovely as my pale daughter, whose hair was the color of chestnuts, whose skin was the texture of warmed silk, and breath was as sweet as fresh milk from a new mother’s breast – I created a darker thing than she, no less majestic, but by far more destructive than I ever imagined. I created an illness, a rough, deep cough, a gag, a pant, and a fever that wracked my small, aging frame from the tip of my ears to my very last toe.

And by the time Justine had walked through the door, bouncing with sunshine and laughter, still flushed and sighing from the warm caresses of her secret lover, I was near death at the edge of my bed. The heaviest blankets were thrown to the ground and my sad disturbed body lay misshapen on the mattress.

Justine gasped and moved to the bed, her long curls brushing my cheek as she heaved me up and held me to her chest. She placed her cool palm against my brow to check the fever. What bliss! Her lover was forgotten. Mother in trouble. Mother dying? All these thoughts rushed through her head as she stripped the bed of its remaining covers and ran to the freezer for ice and massaged my feet to bring the fever down into my legs, all the while sobbing with guilt and kissing the pale knob of my ankle and begging for forgiveness.

She was to have left that night. It had all been arranged. Armand was to meet her at the bus station and they were going to New York. She was going to a school there and a distant cousin of her love had set up a job for her. It was a horrible thing for her to keep the secret from me, but no, she would not go, she would not leave me. How she bent over me, crying, her hot tears stinging my feet. How she offered herself up so freely to my shock and my own tears.

“Oh, Justine, how could you have left without saying good-bye!”

I slept more soundly that night than I ever have in my entire life. And by morning, I was nearly well.

Justine made several quiet, tearful calls in the kitchen. I suppose she sent her apologies to Armand and let the poor soul down as gently as she could.

She brought me breakfast in bed, a pot of hot coffee, and then sank her own sad weight into a chair in the corner of my room, her limp hands resting in her lap, her eyes still lowered, her beautiful chest heaving a bit with what could only be grief.

I don’t mean to sound cold here. Her pain did touch me, I assure you, even through all that warm happy idyllic victory I felt in my heart. I had won her back! But I had bruised her in the process, and there were already the wicked workings of guilt building in me, behind my tired eyes and unintentional grin.

Justine retired to her room by late afternoon, claming she had a headache [heartache?] and would like to lie down for a while. I allowed it, encouraged it, even.

“I feel much better now, darling. Go on. I’ll be fine. Get some rest. You were up late. And Justine…?”

“Yes?” she said, turning a bit toward me on the bed, not looking exactly at me, but more through me, as if the bedside table at my back, where her private journal still sat, was more important to her than anything I might say.

“I love you,” I told her.

“I love you too, Mother.”

Then she was gone. And those were the last prized words that Justine, my nurse, my only child, and my dearest friend, ever said to me.

At some point in the night, when she did not come out of her room to check on me, I went in to find her molten hot with fever, quaking, moaning lowly and doubled over like an infant in a tight womb. Dear God! What had I done? The poison had seeped into her blood. I kissed her cheek to check her temperature, and she trembled, and my lips burned.

I ran from the room in search of a calling directory. There was none. Justine knew all the necessary numbers by heart. I ran to the door to fetch a neighbor and realized, though only after placing my hand - my cruel, treacherous, foul, disgusting hand - on the knob that in the six of seven years I had not left the house, having gifted that satisfaction to Justine alone, a terrible physical fear had actually taken root in me of being outside my own rooms. I could not leave. The door might as well have been welded shut. I could not open it.

Pure panic kept me from thinking of the most simple of solutions. I could have screamed aloud. Someone would have heard me and called the police. I could have banged the walls with the same effect. I could have dialed any random number on the phone and begged the odd stranger who answered to send help. I could have broken the windows or slipped dozens of panic-written notes under the door into the hallway. I could have done all these things, but I was too desperate and stupid to think of any of them.

I went back into her room. I stripped the bed as she had done for me the night before. I iced her neck and every other part of her I dared to touch without making her groan or cry out.

I crept into her lonely bed, the bed that had never known the pleasure of a man’s heavy weight or an infant’s light one, and never would. I laid down beside her still body and smoothed her warm hair with my hands and cried into her naked shoulder and begged her, as I had on so many occasions, to stay with me.

I’ve never known a pain such as that, a grief that is so deeply imbedded in one’s soul that they feel choked by it, drowned in it, smothered, and would rather die than endure it. I cannot even write about it here without wanting to run from it.

When I woke, it was still dark outside. The sheets beneath Justine and I were damp and I thought at first that her fever must have broken while I slept, and it was only her sweat that had soaked us both. But there was a queer smell in the room and I realized she had lost control of her body in the night [Justine – I’m sorry!]. And when I went to turn her so that I could change the sheets and make her more comfortable, her skin to me was as cold as freshly fallen snow, and her eyes were open in the moonlight, shining brightly and staring up into the ceiling, where my French Papa was singing lullabies to her beyond that opaque sky in the bruised heavens.

How I shook her and kissed her open mouth but there was nothing left there of my Justine. She had fled from me at last, ferried off by way of my own deceit, my own evil. And she had no reason, no reason at all, to feel guilty anymore.

I closed her eyes and cried into her hair for a long while. Then I wrapped her in a dozen blankets just as she had been brought to me that first bright morning when I first met her. I burned her paintings in the fireplace, along with her journal, and her favorite books, so that their smoke and ash might rise up into the pearly shadows to be with her.

Days have passed and I am tired now, and my hand aches, and my heart aches, and I wish very much to die. I have the way to accomplish this, of course – you remember my companion? – and should have done it years ago to spare her, but nothing can be done about that now.

Let me just say this before I go. There is much that can and will be said about me. That I was a monster, that I was vile, that it was I who caged the pure little bird in her paintings, that I was selfish and childish and hopelessly cruel. But what I was most, and what must be noted here, was an adoring mother, one who loved her child with a width and breadth that most will be unable to grasp, that my dependence on her was merely a crutch upon which my ever-lasting love was propped. I would never have harmed her and hate myself more than any human on earth, or angel in heaven, or demon below ground could for what I have done to her.

She was once warm. I worshipped, as one worships idols or gods, every atom of her being, ever square inch of her golden flesh, where her sweet nerves were housed, and her dark colors sang, and her rich blood swam by day and slept by night.