The Perfect Child

by Lucinda Berry

No matter how many times I was questioned by the police, it never got easier. My nerves jumped into high gear automatically. They always made me feel like I was lying, even when I was telling the truth.

“It says here that you were the original social worker assigned to the case?” I nodded, then quickly remembered I was being recorded. “Yes.”

What if I was partially responsible for all this?

Why did the universe allow people who hurt kids to have them? Why couldn’t it give them to people like me, who wanted them?

I wished I were as optimistic as I pretended. I used to be. Not anymore.

It gave us an opportunity to miss each other, and sometimes you needed that in a relationship even when you loved each other as much as we did.

It never crossed anyone’s mind that someone else might be in trouble. I wished it would’ve. Maybe then things would’ve ended differently.”

“They’d officially diagnosed Janie with child abuse syndrome. People always assume sexual abuse is the worst kind of abuse that a child can endure, but it’s not. It doesn’t have the kind of lasting effects that you see in kids who’ve been severely neglected. Don’t get me wrong. Sexual abuse is terrible, but the type of neglect that Janie experienced? That affects brain development.”

the best way to fix yourself was to get your mind off your own problems and help someone else with theirs.

“Children of trauma are experts at triangulation.” “Triangulation?” I asked. “The child will act a certain way with one parent and a different way with the other parent. They try all kinds of things to drive a wedge in the parents’ relationship.”

Their happiness had been contagious, and I couldn’t help but laugh. The memories hurt. I looked down at my hands twisting on my lap. This case would haunt me in ways I would never forget.

I’d trained myself a long time ago not to get excited. That was when you got hurt.

“No, but it doesn’t matter. That wouldn’t have changed anything.” He looked at me like he didn’t believe me any more than I believed myself.

“I’ll do better, okay? I’m really excited about the baby. I am. Things are going to be just fine.” It was the first time in our marriage that I had consciously lied to her.

“But it wasn’t that simple, was it?”

She crawled up on my lap and whispered in her sweet voice, “I like hurting people. Do you?”

“And by then it was too late, wasn’t it, Ms. Goldstein?” I couldn’t take it anymore. I burst into tears.

She’s just a girl. There’s nothing to be afraid of.