Anne with an E. draft 2
People living with dementia may sometimes experience hallucinations… A hallucination is a false perception of objects or events and is sensory in nature. When individuals living with Alzheimer’s have hallucination. They see, hear, smell, taste or even feel something that isn’t really there. They may hear people talking to them and respond to those voices.
The first time she saw the little girl was an afternoon in May. She was watering her hydrangea. The sun was at the back of the child so it was almost impossible to make her out except for the red dress she wore and the sunlight halo created around her fine blond hair. The child neither spoke nor moved.
“And whose little girl are you? And where do you live,” she said.
The girl remained silent. She pointed at the house next door.
The child then turned away and went out through the garden gate, a gate she kept locked. She stood looking after the girl, still holding the hose with its rainbow sprays. Had she imagined it, or had the girl passed through a locked gate? She turned off the hose, walked over to the gate and pulled on its handle. To her relief, it came open.
Must be new neighbors, she thought. The house next door had been vacant for quite some time. Rumors abounded that it had some unpleasant history. She had bought Her house at a discount years before because it was located next door. Distaining rumors and gossip, she had never become quite clear in her mind about the history. She couldn’t help but notice that the house changed owners frequently. The term “haunted” was whispered. Nonsense, of course.
At 80t her brain did not function as it once had. She had lost the ability to remember new telephone numbers, though the old, even her earliest remained accessible. Her life had become a series of lists. When to do laundry. When to order groceries and what to order. (Thank God for online shopping and for Her computer skills.)Her dreams, too, had changed, they had become more vivid and easier to recall. She awakens early now with the first daylight but lay in bed for at leas 20 minutes before facing the day.
That night she dreamed of the girl who seemed to be trying to speak. She awoke early with an uncharacteristic feeling of sorrow. Better to rise early than to luxuriate under the warm covers as she normally did. Coffee and a store bought muffin sufficed for breakfast cheered her. She consulted her list. Tomorrow, not today, was the day she could expect the weekly phone call from her daughter Carol, who lived thousands of miles away in California.
She went to Her computer, checking the emails and Facebook posts t her primary connection with the outside world. She took her daily walk down the block. It took her past the notorious house. The battered “for rent or for sale” sign was still there The little girl must have meant another house further away or maybe the new tenant/owner simply hadn’t bothered to remove it.
No one on the block had moved out or in since her friends, younger than she, had been packed off by their children to an “elder care” facility on the grounds that they were too old to function on their own. Fortunately, Carol was too far away and too busy to fly out to monitor her progress. She didn’t tell Carol how lost, confused and alone she sometimes felt in her own house.
The second time she saw the girl she was standing by the garden gate. The sun was going down and she could get a clear look at the girl’s face. It seemed strangely familiar. Like a face she might have seen in an old high school yearbook.”What is you name?,” she asked.
“Anne with an E,” came the whispered response.
“Like Anne of Green Gables.”
“Yes, my favorite book.”
“And where do you live?”
“Nowhere now.” Anne walked over to the bed of Michaelmas daisy’s that grew along the fence next to the gate. “I loved daisies,” she said. Then, once again Anne walked out through the gate that was always kept locked. Once again she tried the gate and found it unlocked. Something else to put on a list, “new lock for gate.”
What did Anne mean that she “loved daisies” and “lived nowhere?” She was dressed neatly enough, not disheveled as a homeless child would be and her blond flyaway hair looked clean.”Curiouser and curiouser.”Words and phrases from books read as a child floated into her mind frequently now.
Too bad she couldn’t remember telephone numbers and addresses these days, not even her daughter’s. Maybe time to get one of those phones that stored and dialed telephone numbers. Carol had offered to buy her one, but trying to learn how to use it was daunting.
“Ive made a new friend,” she told her daughter that night during their phone call, a little girl. I think she just moved in next door. She seems like a sweet child. ‘Anne with an E’ she calls herself.”
“That’s nice. Have you met the parents?”
“No. I should probably give them time to settle in.”
“Did you see what kind of furniture they were moving in.”
“I haven’t seen a van. Maybe the house was rented furnished.”
“After all this time?”
“I don’t know. I’ll keep you posted.”
The conversation moved on to Carols life. Her new boyfriend (if you could call a man of 40 a boyfriend) was beginning to hint at their moving in together. Carol wasn’t so sure. She valued her independence. Her real estate business was doing well. After 20 minutes they hung up. Another call without a promise/threat to come flying out to check up.
It was not a pleasant surprise when Carol telephoned the following night. She came right to the point. “I’ve checked with a local realtor. That house next door hasn’t sold or been rented. You need to be careful. This child could be lying. She could be—I don’t know what, part of a gang preying on old people living alone. Don’t let her in your house. Best to keep the garden gate locked, too.
She hadn’t mentioned the garden gate and she didn’t now. Carol’s imagination was getting away from her. She placated Carol promising not to allow Anne into the yard and certainly not into the house and to lock the house tight before her daily walks.
That night, once again, she dreamed of the girl. This time she spoke. “Look for me. You will find me if you look,” she had said. “Please look.” She was crying.
After checking her email and facebook the next morning, She went to images and searched under “Anne.” And, there she was a picture from a newspaper story 40 years before.The picture was of a missing girl, believed kidnapped. Last seen wearing a red dress getting into a car with a neighbor. Neighbor had committed suicide in his cell after refusing to reveal what had happened to Anne. She vaguely recalled the story. Her own mother had worried and warned her against trusting even neighbors.
Her search in the online archives of the local newspaper reminded her that no trace of Anne had ever been found. The police had closed the file. For a few years, every year on the anniversary of her disappearance her picture had been featured on the front page under the heading, “Where is she now?”
She spent most of the afternoon in the garden, neglecting her emails and facebook, hoping Anne would appear. As the afternoon sun began to set, she looked over the fence. Anne was standing under a maple tree. She hurried to the gate, fumbled with the new lock and hurried next door. Anne was gone.
Days and nights passed. Anne never appeared again.
A year later when Carol visited, She told Carol the story. The house next door was now occupied by a family with three active boys. No way to search under the maple tree. Carol’s response was to send Her to a doctor for evaluation and insist that she sell her house and move into an assisted living facility.
Three years later, one of the boys, trying to did a hole to China, came across the remnants of a red dress. She shared the headline reading “Remains of Lost Girl Found After Many Years” with her with her friends at the facility. Some of them even believed her.