Mothers Don't

They are the acts constituting a criminal offense. The acts which have been committed, intended as a crime, subject to definition under the law. Always the acts, los hechos, the participle made noun, a grammatical device used to refer to the incident at the heart of a trial, or to avoid naming the incident altogether, given the fact that while still on trial, the incident isn’t quite made of solid stuff. The letters A-C-T conceal the act itself. Until proven, it doesn’t exist. I will also use those words: the act. Homicide, infanticide, murder, double drowning all prove to be unbearable, frankly. They resist leaving my fingertips, they hang in suspension over my keyboard and don’t dare jump.

In November of the year the act was committed, I took advantage of going to Vitoria to accept Euskadi Prize and visited the Armentia neighborhood for the first time. Niclas swapped afternoon classes with a colleague and we went as a family to receive the award. My father would come too, but on his own a little later. My mother couldn’t get a reasonably priced plane ticket; apparently, November is a busy month (the first I’d heard of it). I told her not to worry, it was just a formality. We would celebrate the next time she came to visit.

The weather was awful, rain sweeping across the highway and rattling the trees. Still, with just an hour to go before the ceremony, I convinced Niclas to make a quick stop in Vitoria’s wealthiest neighborhood. Finding a place to park was easy, as was locating the house, which had been thoroughly photographed in the days following the incident. The chalet rose elegantly from the edge of a field—the site of a popular annual pilgrimage—near the lovely Roman basilica and at a palatable distance from the other homes. Round and symmetrical, the house stood proudly under the rain, as if nothing of note had occurred within its walls, as if everything had gone just as the builders had planned. The entire façade of the second floor was a giant glass window, now hidden by grey blinds. The rest of the house looked like a traditional Basque farmhouse: pitched roof, exposed timber.

Although the house was shuttered and empty, someone had made sure the yard was kept neat. Maybe it was on the market, a likely assumption, even with no visible for sale sign. In Hong Kong, they use the word hongza or ___, to describe homes that are silent witnesses to suicide or crime. Their value tends to plummet, making them attractive properties for investors confident in the short memories of home buyers. In Japan, they are the jiko bukken, the ______, “marked” stigmatized homes you can search for specifically using filters on real estate sites, morbid details included. Who, how, when.

Two babies, drowned in the bathtub, the height of summer.

The acts.

Could something be sensed there? A light vibration? An air of doom, of foreboding? I thought so, but Niclas denied it: it was November, that was all, night was falling, it was pouring rain. I had the baby asleep in the carrier and a single umbrella couldn’t protect all three of us. Niclas was obviously uneasy standing in front of the house, but who wouldn’t be? What did the neighbors, who were few and far between, do when they walked past it? Did they bring visitors, linger out front, embellish their tour with sinister details? Or had it become the neighborhood’s big taboo, as it had in the fertility clinic? An incident to keep hidden, silent and forgotten for the good of the area’s reputation and property values?

We didn’t see anyone else, so I can only speculate.

Back in the car and on our way to the presidential seat of the Basque government, I took a few notes, unaware that my hair was completely plastered to my head. Pictures from the ceremony plainly show that I hadn’t looked in a mirror before I took the stage to accept the award from the lehendakari. On Twitter, my appearance was commented upon, as was the fact that I’d gotten the award because I was a girl.

The events of the first days are straightforward. Well-documented, exactly as they must be for well-oiled court proceedings. In my search for a full account, I don’t know whether such a profusion of details is an advantage or an impediment.

The authorities never considered alternate suspects. There had been no trace of anyone else, and the home security cameras didn’t register any movements in the four hours that passed between when the nanny left and when she returned. No wolves, no dingoes. The hypothesis of accidental death was automatically ruled out, due to the statistical impossibility of two identical accidents occurring successively. The media, however, did insinuate that the first death could have been a case of involuntary manslaughter, and that the mother—overwhelmed by the situation, in a grievous state of shock—then committed the second murder. Pure speculation. From the point of view of the forensic investigators, the case was simple. All evidence and reports were sent to the judge post-haste.

After dispatching her little ones, Alice was taken in police custody to the seventh floor of the Santiago Hospital, a habitual refuge for anorexics and alcoholics. The psychiatrists on duty noted that they found Alice “disoriented and in a state of shock,” leaving the door open to possible “dissociative amnesia.” They gave her sedatives. She barely spoke, although on several occasions they heard her whisper “where are they?” and “they’re all right now, aren’t they?” When asked what her name was, Alice told them “Jade,” which confused the doctors. Ertzaintza officers were posted outside her room the whole time. Forensic investigators had already collected her clothes, immediately sealing them in plastic evidence bags. Her hands were swabbed for biological material.

It was very late by the time they let her sleep.