Snap Decision

She touched her, but pulled her hand away and glared at the woman with angry green eyes. She began speaking in a low voice that only the reflection could hear. The confusion and frustration was simmering white-hot now. Was the ornate mirror talking back?

“I hate you. Leave me alone. You make me sick.”

Someone called her name and she snapped to attention. “It’s not my fault. She’s the one who started it. Can’t you see that?”

Angela Mitchell had seen the same face all her life. She had grown up looking at that face. The same person was always looking back, no matter what she was going through in life. She would always see the same face.

Yet, a certain subject was a constant sore spot for Angela when she pondered the image. Who she used to be. Things she had done as a teenager and young adult. Heck, she was still a young adult. Only twenty-nine. That was young, right?

“The decisions I made were not all good ones, but who makes perfect life decisions?” she asked the small room. “The ones I made sent me down several painful roads with lots of blocks and low valleys.” She looked back into the mirror.

“You know that your own un-forgiveness is holding you back.” The single mother paused for a brief moment. “You have not forgiven yourself for your past. You are you, not like the girl in the mirror. Not at all. You are still you, Angela. Because of those life choices you are in the place you are right now. Those choices made you who you are today.”

She sat on the floor and tucked her long legs beneath her trembling body. She hated when she was right. Plain. Simple. In-her-own-face right. Yes, she was herself. She was also the girl in the mirror. She had built Angela Renae Mitchell from the mud and the muck she had walked through. Shouldn’t that be something to be proud of?

But the girl in the mirror was pointing at her now. “You no longer belong to God. Not at all. He designed you to have power, confidence, and boldness but you never tried your best and you never got anywhere. Everything you tried stumbled and failed miserably. Still does. You stomped on the emergency brakes. You burned out, Angela dear.” A long, maniacal laughter reverberated off the four white walls.

She scooped up her child and rocked back and forth, back and forth. She hummed a sweet lullaby from bygone days, soothing the child. Soothing herself. “Hush, baby,” the mother crooned. “Hush, baby doll.” But the baby was already silent. She rocked and rocked and rocked. Finally, she fluffed up a lone pillow, covered Destiny Sue with a pale yellow blanket and kissed her flushed chubby cheek.

Chores. So many chores. Bills to pay. Not enough money. Laundry to do but no detergent. Lunches to make. With what food? A neighbor had invited her out for coffee but who had the time? She could not do this anymore. She just could not provide. She could not think. She could not read or take a hot bath or run away screaming into the night …

Destiny had cried and cried. She wanted that fairy princess costume for Halloween. She needed to have that beautiful, shiny fairy princess costume for Halloween. Angela wanted to give it to her but she couldn’t. She could not afford it. She could not afford candy for the trick-or-treaters that would arrive that evening. She could not afford the rent that was due the following morning.

She snapped.

Her focus faded as she stared into the mirror, and from the corner of her eye, she saw her daughter standing, bloody, crying, in the reflection. She turned to see an empty room.

Dr. Courtney Kyle lowered her head and read from a small notebook. “Patient Case #7221485. Angela Renae Mitchell has been detained here within Austendo Therapeutic Care since November 9, 2001 after the murder of her three-year-old daughter Destiny Sue Mitchell on Halloween night 2000. She was twenty-nine at the time. She has shown little to no progress.”

“She was a single mother?” Colleague Dr. Eric Benjamin queried.

“Yes.”

“Does she acknowledge her guilt?”

“At times but she stays in her own world. In the past. We gave her the baby doll as a representation of her child. It helps somewhat. Normally we would not place a mirror in a dangerous patient’s room, safety precautions, you know, but it gives her someone to talk to. She will have an occasional outburst though. Normally around Halloween.”

“Most patients here don’t even know what day of the week it is. How would she know it was Halloween?” Dr. Benjamin asked.

“That’s something none of us have ever figured out.” Dr. Kyle’s brow furrowed as she watched a cooing Angela Mitchell caress the air just below her left hip. “We’re all baffled by her cognizant behavior.”