Free The Memory Box by Eva Lesko Natiello Page A

for her bed or talk about changing the color of the walls from soft pink and yellow to something less nursery-looking, and prepare for an onslaught of hyper-emotional possession devotion.
    “Mommy, how can you take away my stuffed animals and dolls? They’re mine. I don’t want to give them away. Not even to ‘less-privileged’ little girls who would love them to death. I love them to death.”
    Just a sampling.
    So last night when I entered her room, I ventured with practiced finesse, navigating through baskets of old stuffed animals, boxes of hair accessories, and short stacks of clean clothes yet to see the inside of dresser drawers, and still managed to trip over the microphone to her karaoke machine and squash one of Smarty’s rubber toy mice, which let out a sickly squeak. Lilly completely ignores the clean-up schedule I tape to her mirror every Saturday. I shared a bedroom with a sister just like her, and it still drives me crazy.
    But even if you closed your eyes and were lucky enough to be lowered into Lilly’s room by trapeze, you would still know exactly where you were. Lilly’s room has the perpetual scent of strawberry and peppermint. Strawberry from her detangler, which she sprays on every night before combing her long, auburn hair, and peppermint from the boxes of Junior Mints she hoards behind her pink and yellow gingham dust ruffle (which will attract a real mouse one of these days).
    When I entered her room, the nightlight did something to the color of her hair, that for a fleeting moment made me think of JD, but then it was gone.
    Her writhing grew more intense as she clutched her steadfastly loyal teddy bear, Tunum. She received Tunum on her third birthday and decided immediately to remove the little tag from its back seam (which announced the bear’s factory-given name as “Giggles”) in order to give him a proper name. When she paused for all of five seconds, then declared that name would be “Tunum” (with an emphatic nod of her head), Andy and I thought she was speaking a foreign language. We quickly ran to get What to Expect in the Toddler Years, wondering if there was a chapter titled, “When Your Toddler Speaks a Foreign Language.” In the end, we chalked it up to Lilly’s burgeoning sense of originality.
    The allegiance Lilly has to everything else in her universe pales in comparison to that which she has with Tunum, the attendant of all things safe and good.
    To watch her squirm and babble in the thick of her nightmare was disturbing, and while I knew about the actual length of dreams, and that it would soon be over, I couldn’t bear it.
    “Lilly, sweetie …” I said softly while gently petting her arm and stroking her cheek with the back of my fingers. “It’s Mommy … I’m here with you. Wake up, sweetie, you’re having a bad dream …” Finally, she opened her eyes, and when she saw me, she sprang up, grabbed me, and cried with determination.
    “That girl!” she blurted, “And the lady. They’re back!”

CHAPTER FIVE
    Sunday, September 24, 2006, 2:18 a.m.
    “ O kay, slow down, Lilly, it’s okay, it’s not real.”
    She gasped big gulps of air and spewed huge drops of fear. Her arms were coiled tightly around my waist.
    “This is real, look around, you’re awake now.” I stroked her hair and started my nightmare-consoling speech, knowing that it wouldn’t erase anything. It wouldn’t take away the fear or confusion, or stop it from ever returning. But for what it was worth, maybe more for me than for Lilly, I always said the same thing.
    “Why don’t you try to calm down, take three big, deep breaths, and then start from the beginning …” Then it occurred to me that maybe this time we shouldn’t talk about it at all. What was the sense in that, anyway? She already experienced it once unwillingly. “Hey, why don’t we talk about something else? You don’t need to think about that dream again. Where should we go on vacation?” It sounded absurd