Lost Child
He said, Come with me! Take Daddy’s hand.
How all the stories begin. A large hand lowered, your small hand lifted.
She isn’t sure, she admits, exactly what happened.
Or when. She knows that she was little.
Maybe four years old. Maybe three.
Just guessing. Mists of time, thinly whitewashed wall of memory . . .
No. Katherine does remember something about when. For today—Thursday, March 12, 2026—is an anniversary of that day.
It was, Take Daddy’s hand but hurry. Something was going to happen—unless it had already happened.
For, with Kit’s father, something was always either going to happen or had already happened, and it was either too late to stop it from happening or too early to even imagine it happening, but, in any case, Hurry, sweetie! God damn.
Read an interview with the author for the story behind the story.
Not used to dressing herself. The new rosy-pink raincoat, crookedly buttoned, but maybe Daddy wouldn’t notice.
Hours later, at the hospital, parking at the rear—a high-rise garage, which Kit’s father hated because it slowed him down, Fucking God damn.
Kit cringed a little when Daddy spoke in a harsh voice, but she understood: Daddy was not talking to her.
When they were alone together—which was often now—Daddy joked that the two of them were practically living in this shithole car. Daddy was rarely silent; he was too nervous, edgy, to be silent. He seemed to be addressing Kit, but Kit knew that he would be annoyed if she interrupted him to reply.
Crucial to Kit not to annoy her father. If she was sweetly quiet, obedient, Daddy smiled at her with the radiance of Daddy love, and Kit basked in his love like a cat stretched out in the sun.
Kit’s fear was that Daddy’s smile would disappear. Like a light switched off.
You would have to have known him to understand, Katherine says.
Cursing as he made his way up through the parking garage, turning the wheel sharply, row after row of vehicles, nowhere to park, though the sign at the entrance had said “Open.”
True that Daddy was in a hurry, but true, also, that, when Daddy at last found a parking space, on the top level of the garage, he did not drive into it head first but took time to maneuver the vehicle around so that he could back it in. Daddy felt compelled always to back into a parking space; here, an alarmingly narrow gap between two large vehicles which required many excruciating minutes, Daddy grimacing as he peered into the car’s side mirrors, easing back a few inches, then forward again. His breathing came fast. His forehead glistened with moisture.
Podcast: The Writer’s Voice
Listen to Joyce Carol Oates read “Lost Child.”
Rainwater in puddles on the garage floor. Slow-drifting fog, mist.
The smell of her father’s breath, like fumes.
In the back seat of the car, a potted plant, its blooms wrapped in crinkly cellophane, amid random newspapers, napkins, coffee cups. Also, a small suitcase so stuffed that one of the compartments was only partly zipped.
C’mon, silly. Nothing to be afraid of.
Kit smiled uncertainly. For Daddy was smiling. Nothing to be afraid of? It had not occurred to Kit that there might be something to be afraid of.
Two elevators in the parking garage. Both were slow to ascend to the top level. Daddy took the concrete steps down, gripping Kit’s hand.
Kit was out of breath descending the stairs.
But here was relief: in the cold, wet air, she could not smell Daddy’s strong breath. And Daddy stood tall above her and would protect her, for he was the daddy, as he told Kit often.
He remarked, as they approached the revolving doors of the tall building, on how “cavernous” this place was, which, he said, laughing, could sound to the careless ear like “carnivorous.”
Kit had no idea what her father meant, these jokes of his. Though, now that they were together so much, she heard them often.
Nothing to be afraid of, smoochie! Hauling Kit into the revolving door the way you’d lift a startled little dog, for, Daddy knew, Kit was afraid of revolving doors that moved too fast for her short legs.
See? Nothing to be afraid of.
Inside the hospital, a high ceiling, bright lights, and echoing voices. That sharp smell, a chemical smell, that made Kit’s nostrils pinch and caused a sick sensation in her stomach, for, she remembered, she’d been here before, in this hospital place.
It almost returned to Kit then—what this place was, and who was waiting for them inside. But then the memory faded the way a dream does when you open your eyes too soon.
Sir? Excuse me. . . .
Long-legged Daddy walking fast but not fast enough, for he was stopped by a security guard and asked to show I.D. He extracted his driver’s license from his wallet, saying, in a loud, sarcastic voice, Every fucking time pretending you don’t know who the fuck I am!
Embarrassing to Kit, Daddy’s loud voice. Strangers glancing at him, curious, startled.
Usually, Kit’s father was affably smiling. People liked him on sight or wanted to like him, women especially. A man who, if he smiled, winked. Even sarcasm turned sweet in his mouth.
Kit’s father scrawled his name, or an insolent semblance of his name, into a book. The security guard issued him a time-stamped badge. Waved Kit’s father through the checkpoint stiff-faced, unsmiling.
But a smile for her, sweet little girl tugged along by Daddy.
More walking. More jostling. Behind Kit’s eyes, tiredness swam like a soft explosion of warm water.
Almost Kit’s bedtime, except there was no bedtime now, exactly.
For the day had been long. Kit could not remember the beginning of this long day.
Driving to the bank. It was impressive to Kit, to drive with Daddy to the bank.
Kit’s father expressed the wish for cash. Good old-fashioned cash. In polite-Daddy voice, expressed the wish to close out the account.
But there was a problem—a bank officer had to be summoned.
Your wife’s signature is required to close out the account.
Kit steeled herself, knowing that, since the bank officer was a woman, there would be a disagreement, because Kit’s father did not like to be “bossed around” by a woman.
Kit’s father’s voice rising, indignant. He sent Kit away to sit in a chair by the wall.
Eventually, a second bank officer was summoned. This was a man, an older man with a waffle face and a thatch of white hair atop a burly body, but he was a man, so Kit was not so worried.
In the hard-cushioned chair, Kit could not keep her eyes open, and being asleep and being awake became confused.
Roughly, Daddy woke Kit, tugged her to her feet, asking if she needed to use the rest room now. Better now than later.
What was the right answer? If Kit said no, she would be scolded for changing her mind later, for when Kit needed a bathroom it was often sudden, a near-emergency.
But, if Kit said yes, maybe that was a wrong answer, too, for Daddy was rattling his car keys. She could see that he was in a hurry.
Daddy’s eyes squinched when he smiled. Winking, assuring Kit that they were in the homestretch now.
The words “ho-o-ome streh-h-h-tch” were drawn out like an elastic band.
No idea what any of this meant, but Kit laughed to please Daddy.
Lunch they’d eaten late, in the car. Out of crinkly white paper bags. Daddy drinking from a can of something harsh-smelling, then from a bottle of something sweet-smelling inside another paper bag. Kit was very hungry, but then not so hungry. Coarse hamburger meat she had to chew and chew. Icy-cold French fries smeared with ketchup, falling between the front seats, where even Kit’s small hand could not retrieve them.
Hey! Wake up! Kit’s father sounded more amused than annoyed.
Kit’s eyes flew open. There’d been Kit’s mother smiling at Kit, trying to explain, but her words were muffled. Trying to explain why she’d gone away, how it was not her choice but just something that had happened.
Kit did not like elevators.
Daddy always positioned himself right in front of the elevator door. With Kit in front of him, his hands heavy on her shoulders.
But, when the elevator door opened, people pushed out. Kit’s father seemed never to be prepared for people pushing out, as if it were a personal annoyance to him.
Nudging Kit. Get in! Push in!
Always too many people. Adult legs, handbags pressing against Kit. Close, stale air that Kit tried not to breathe.
And, if you were the first into the elevator, that meant you were pushed toward the back as people stepped in, and always there were more people pushing in than there was room for, and so a man’s voice would intervene sharply, No more room! Take the next elevator, please.
The elevator door shut. Lights began to flicker on a panel above the door, indicating the floors—1, 2, 3. . . . Kit tried not to panic. As the elevator was rising, she knew, the cable pulling it up could snap at any time; suddenly, the elevator could be falling.
Once, Kit had seen an empty elevator shaft. Just greasy cables, like giant snakes.
The sight had terrified her, but Daddy had laughed. Indeed, Kit was being silly.
The elevator jerked to a stop, the door opened, and people exited, but this was not their floor. Another stop, the doors opened and people exited, but this was still not their floor. At last, on the eighth floor, Kit’s father nudged her to exit, and so she did, pushing past legs, stepping out of the elevator with two other people, both men, and standing to the side, waiting for her father to join her, but where was Daddy? The elevator door was closing, and Daddy was still inside!
Kit stood staring, incredulous. Her mouth was slack with wonder at how the elevator door had just closed.
It had been one of Kit’s worries, for as long as she could remember, that in a strange place like this she would become separated from her mother: at the grocery store, with many aisles and people pushing shopping carts, or in Macy’s at the mall, or on an escalator that was moving, where, if you stepped onto one of the stairs, you could not step back down but had to go up.
It had not happened yet to Kit that she had been separated from her mother, but, still, her mother seemed to have been separated from her.
And now it was Daddy that Kit worried about being separated from. Daddy is just hiding, to make me laugh, she thought.
Daddy did like to make Kit laugh, and Daddy did like to tease. But Daddy could not now see Kit or laugh at her for being silly.
It was not possible that Daddy had stepped out of the elevator just behind her, because Kit would have seen him if he had. Kit would be seeing him now, and she did not see him.
Too frightened, too stunned to call, Daddy? Daddy? Her voice was such a sad, weak voice, no one would hear.
What to do? Where to go? She was just standing there by the elevator. Her heart beating as fast as a sparrow’s heart. Waiting for the elevator door to open—for Kit was sure that it would open, and Daddy would step out laughing at her.
Unless he was annoyed with her. Perhaps Kit had done something wrong unknowingly. Ketchup on the car seat, French fries fallen beneath the seat. A mitten lost. Another mitten lost.
He didn’t like her crying, that was for sure. He would probably tell her, Don’t be a silly baby, just stay where you are. I am on the way.
Trying not to cry. Trying not to shiver so hard. Waiting right in front of the elevator door so Daddy could not miss her. How long it was, how many terrible minutes before the elevator returned, going down. (Kit could see the numbers above the door, an arrow going down from 11 to 10 to 9.) And the door opened, but it must have been a mistake, as no one stepped out. The elevator was full of people, but Daddy was not among them. Daddy did not emerge from the elevator as Kit peered inside frantically. No one noticed her, no one cared in the slightest about her, brooding and inward with their own thoughts, as Daddy sometimes was, and, to her horror, the elevator door closed again.
But where was Daddy?
All this had to be a mistake: Daddy knew that Kit was on the eighth floor.
Daddy knew and had to be looking for her, so it was important to stay right where she was. If she did not, Daddy would not be able to find her.
Kit was so scared that her teeth were chattering. Her mouth had gone dry—she could not swallow. Could not stop shivering. Breathing in gasps like hiccups, couldn’t draw enough breath, so it felt as if she were drowning because she was so, so cold.
Abruptly, Katherine’s voice breaks off. She is very pale, seems to be having difficulty breathing even now. She lifts a water glass to her mouth, but a fit of coughing overcomes her. Water spills down her hand and onto the enamel tabletop.
Katherine? Are you all right?
I am anxious for my friend, who may be hyperventilating. But, when I reach for her hand, Katherine jerks away and, with a weak smile, signals that she is all right and I shouldn’t make a fuss.
Katherine’s eyes are shadowed; her usually smooth forehead is creased. Her hand holding the water glass is trembling. She is embarrassed and apologetic—vexed with herself for having lost control in this public place. It is so unlike Katherine Carpenter, who is normally poised, restrained. Not one to talk at length—and rarely about herself—but today she has been telling me her chilling story in a halting voice, as if she were groping in the dark. Though it is obviously a personal story, she tells it as if the child, Kit, were a stranger, a figure to be pitied.
Katherine rises unsteadily from the table. Excuses herself to go to the rest room. So sorry! I’ll be right back.
Left alone at our table, I am feeling awkward, self-conscious. Usually at the Purple Onion, a moderately priced café, we are a group, never fewer than four friends; always at one of the café’s round tables, which we book in advance.
The restaurant is nearly deserted, as it is early, only a few minutes past noon. The story that Katherine has been telling is painful to hear. I’m dreading what comes next.
Shortly after eight this morning, Katherine called to ask if we could meet for lunch. It was late notice, but there was such urgency in her voice that I hardly recognized it.
Our lunches at the Purple Onion are often lively, festive. The laughter of women together, without men. Divorcées, widows. When the ex-husband dies, the divorcée becomes an honorary widow. At another lunch, we’d welcomed Katherine to this status, amid much laughter.
Today feels odd, just Katherine and me. As if the world has shrunk.
We live in a small town—officially, a village—a university community. We can recognize when one of us is, but also isn’t, herself.
The first wrong thing: Katherine ordered a drink as soon as we were seated. Katherine Carpenter, who never drinks. She did this with a giddy, embarrassed laugh to acknowledge and deflect my curiosity, explaining that today was “sort of a special day, an anniversary.”
A frothy pink drink, she ordered. With a festive name, like Ginger-Lemon Spritz.
Anniversary? I asked.
But she didn’t care to explain at that moment. She’d taken up the menu, frowning. A menu she likely knows by heart, as I do.
Katherine Carpenter is an attractive woman in her mid-fifties, who carries herself so lightly that she might be mistaken for a much younger woman. She retired from her job as a full-time curator at the university art museum, but when the museum was renovated, expanded to twice its former size, she was rehired as a consultant, a position that suits her.
Katherine’s features are delicate, her eyebrows thinly arched like birds’ wings in an ancient Chinese scroll. She usually wears neutral colors, inconspicuous clothing of (probably) good quality. Her hair is brushed, practically, behind her ears, a fair, fading silver brown. Today, her eyes appear slightly bloodshot, as if she’d slept poorly last night. Her smile is twitchy, eager.
Flattering that Katherine Carpenter is eager to see me.
But she is clearly desperate not to be alone today. Perhaps she first tried other friends who did not pick up.
I understand that I must help her. I must not shield myself from her. Though it is not my way to share emotions with others. I am not an emotional person, and it is unfair to me to expect more of me than I have to give.
But now I’m wondering if I should follow Katherine to the rest room, see if she is all right.
Maybe she has changed her mind? Maybe she regrets speaking so openly to me, baring her heart?
Maybe Katherine has fled the Purple Onion and will send a text message, apologizing. Please forgive me. I will explain soon. . . .
(Which would be a relief to me, I have to admit.)
Not that I am afraid of feeling. For a very long time, I have avoided feeling, as I have avoided close contact with others. But it is not fear—just simple caution, not wanting old wounds to be rudely reopened after serviceable scabs, now scars, have grown over them.
The friendly waiter, Hugo, has delivered our lunches: heavy stoneware plates heaped with salad greens, multigrain rolls in a little woven basket. I am not sure if I have no appetite or if I am ravenous with hunger.
Katherine’s frothy pink Ginger-Lemon Spritz is inviting. I’m almost tempted to sip from it.
When Katherine returns and sits across from me at the table, she looks more composed. Though her skin is still ashen, her eyes threaded with thin, broken capillaries.
She says, embarrassed, Sorry! Couldn’t stop coughing. And touches the back of my hand lightly, in apology. Her fingertips are icy cold.
I feel a sudden urge to grasp Katherine’s fingers. To reassure her: You are safe now.
Katherine tells me that she would understand completely if I would prefer not to hear any more of her “sordid, sad tale.”
I assure her that it isn’t sordid.
But, yes, it is, she says, and laughs.
Of course I want to know what happened, I tell Katherine. How could I not want to know?
That poor terrified girl waiting by the elevator for her daddy—what became of her?
She isn’t sure, she admits, exactly what happened.
For it isn’t what happens that you remember but what you’re told to remember.
Waiting for Daddy, but where is Daddy?
Never would Kit think, Why did Daddy do this to me? A child does not think in such ways, ascribing blame to an adult; over the weeks, months, years to follow, Kit would think, What did I do that made Daddy abandon me?
Not what you see with your eyes but what you are told you have seen.
Kit waited by the eighth-floor elevator for almost an hour, or so she was told later, though to the child paralyzed with fear this was an incalculable amount of time.
Petrified little girl, with a sickly pale face in need of washing. Snarled hair that Daddy had given up brushing, crookedly buttoned raincoat with ketchup stains. It would be noted that on this wet, cold March day, Kit was wearing flip-flops on her very grimy feet.
Kit’s eyes were leaking moisture, her nose, too. She wasn’t supposed to wipe her nose on her coat sleeve, but she didn’t have a Kleenex. Just staring at the elevator door. So hard she stared, so badly wishing that Daddy would come back. Several times she was certain that she saw him in the midst of other passengers, and that he saw her, lifted his hand, waved, blew a kiss. Even as the elevator door shut again, bearing Daddy away.
Jostled by strangers. Exiting the elevator without seeing her, for they were looking over her head—Kit was so small.
But it was then, as she was waiting for Daddy by the elevator, that Kit’s brain taught itself a trick of survival: yes, Kit was that silly-sad pathetic child, but she was also observing that child from just enough distance that she could feel her anguish the way one might hear a muffled cry in another room.
Excuse me, little girl? Are you waiting for someone? You’ve been here quite a while. . . . Hello?
A kindly, concerned woman in a nurse’s uniform was bending down to Kit, who shrank away.
Not looking at the stranger’s face. Trying not to cry. Trying not to gasp for breath, to sob in the way that so annoyed Daddy and made Mommy wince.
We just want to help you. We are not going to hurt you. If you could tell us . . .
But, no, Kit could not. Was not supposed to trust strangers. Nor did she know her last name—her father’s name—he was just Daddy.
And soon a security guard joined the nurse. It appeared that the child was too young or too frightened or too confused to tell them her name. Or maybe this child was mentally slow? She could barely speak; nor did she seem to comprehend what she was being asked. Maybe she didn’t speak English?
Hello? Hello? Do you speak English?
Didn’t want to be lifted and carried in the woman’s arms, no, she did not.
Walked hand in hand between the nurse woman and the security officer, who took her to the nurses’ station on the eighth floor, asking if Kit was familiar to anyone there? No? Led along the corridor past patients’ rooms, peering inside: Excuse us, do you know this little girl?
Kit wanted to hide her face in shame. Daddy would be so angry if he found out!
. . . waiting out by the elevators, all alone, so we think she must have wandered off, and her mother or father is here somewhere. No? Are you sure?
Security was checking downstairs. Visitors to the hospital had to sign in with I.D. The missing parent’s name would be in the book.
An alert was sounded through the hospital. Attention, please! A little girl has been found on the eighth floor. Anyone who knows her, please report to Security, first floor. Attention, please!
Repeatedly, the alert was sounded. No one came.
A female police officer insisted on taking Kit outside to a police cruiser to drive slowly through the parking garage, past rows of vehicles, asking Kit if any of the cars looked familiar. The garage was still partly swathed in a thin mist, so that seeing was not easy, and Kit was barely responsive, very tired, worn out from crying, grinding her teeth in resistance. She did not like this woman’s loud, sharp voice, a remark the woman had made about Kit’s face needing washing, the flip-flops on her bare feet. Clearly, this was a case of child neglect, possibly child abuse, a case for child-protective services, she had said. Kit would be taken into custody even if they found her parents. . . .
Suddenly, then, Kit did remember that her father had parked on the highest floor of the garage, but when the officer drove to that floor there were only a few cars remaining, and none looked familiar.
You’re sure? You don’t see his car? Hey? Are your eyes even open?
Kit never saw Daddy again. Not ever.
Nor Mommy, either. The woman she remembered, vaguely, as Mommy.
More than fifty years have passed. Katherine still isn’t sure what happened, how they worked out who she was.
Shuts her eyes. Amnesia like drifting mist, fog.
What she does remember: that night, she was taken by police officers to a children’s facility, and, the following afternoon, picked up by an aunt, an older half sister of Kit’s mother whom Kit scarcely knew, did not recognize, who lived in another city, twenty miles away.
Just like that, it happened. Whisked away.
Daddy would have joked, Whisked away as quick as a whisker! Not to be confused with “whiskey.”
(Certain that she’d heard her father make that joke. As well as: Between whiskey and nothing, I will take whiskey. But why was it funny?)
From that rainy, misty March night when she was taken away to live with an aunt, an anxious woman, who would never explain to Kit what had happened to her parents, except that her mother was no longer living and her father was “gone from their lives.”
Growing up, Kit knew not to ask questions. Eventually, she forgot what questions she might have reasonably asked.
All the relatives Kit knew were her mother’s relatives. Who never spoke of her mother, either, except to say that she had been a beautiful woman, she had loved Kit very much, she had died far too young. But Kit did learn that her mother had been in the hospital that day, when her father disappeared; her father must have taken Kit there with the intention of having her visit her mother.
The flowers in the back seat were for Mommy, yes?
But that hadn’t happened. . . .
Instead, he’d abandoned Kit on the eighth floor. He’d gone up to the eleventh floor, where her mother was, alone.
From what Kit’s relatives did not tell her, Kit inferred that her mother had died in the hospital that day.
Obsessively, Kit turned over the details she knew, the way one might the beads of a rosary: a death in the hospital, a missing father, an abandoned little girl waiting by an elevator. All this had happened, yet it had happened outside Kit’s comprehension.
One thing she knows: she is not the story. There is a story. But she is not the story.
Surrounded by silence, like cotton batting, Kit grew up as an awkward stepdaughter-niece to her aunt, who had no children of her own, had never married, a highly educated woman who’d made her way in a male-dominated field, corporate tax law.
Kit, who became Kathy in high school and college, and, in graduate school and beyond, Katherine.
But still, she says, she is Kit.
Still waiting by the elevator.
Of course, she looked for answers. Not systematically but haphazardly, secretly. Telling no one, no lover, no husband, no close friend.
Each year, in March, as the anniversary approaches, a sensation of mounting dread. Each year, mounting anxiety, as if every nerve in her body were being pulled tighter, tighter—nearing the breaking point. Panicked neurons firing.
Lying awake for hours and, when at last she falls asleep, such strange dreams! In which she is not exactly a child but child-size, with adults looming above her.
Sometimes she is in the parking garage climbing the concrete steps, short of breath. Tugged by a disembodied hand. Thin swathes of mist surrounding her. Bare feet in flip-flops, so cold.
Sometimes she is in her father’s car, ravenously hungry, but her fingers are too stiff to hold on to a French fry, which falls between the seats; in the driver’s seat, behind the wheel, a hulking person with a face that resembles rough-textured canvas, with just indentations for eyes, mouth, nose—not quite a human face. . . . Daddy? Daddy!
Sometimes she is inside the hospital, waiting by the elevator, staring and staring, unable to look away, for if she dares to look away it might be in that fleeting instant that the door will open, and Daddy will appear, and, if Kit does not do something to make Daddy see her, the door will close again, and the elevator will bear him away.
The sensation of urgency is so strong that Katherine feels a sharp tingling along her spine, in the pit of her belly, a sudden need to urinate, which wakes her, and a sense of sexual desire, a tension that leaves her gasping for breath, soaked in sweat.
Don’t go away! Don’t leave me! Daddy!
All of her relatives Katherine has approached at one time or another, begging them to tell her what they know about what happened that day at the hospital; the younger relatives, Katherine’s age, are more open with her but are uncertain of the facts.
He’d gone to take her home with him—your father.
Your mother had had surgery. Probably some kind of cancer surgery.
She wasn’t doing well, I think.
He’d gone to take her home, or maybe he’d gone to smother her in her bed. Unhook machines. Because she was unconscious.
Because he was cruel, crazy. Because he’d hurt her—that was why she was hospitalized.
Because he did kill her. She died that day.
He’d gone to kill her. That was his plan.
By the time they discovered her body, he had got away.
They found flowers. Never found him.
Clay pot, broken on the floor.
Of course he forgot you. He’d come for her. Not you.
Katherine’s voice breaks. She can’t continue. It is too raw, too painful—the child waiting by the elevator all these years, until finally it became impossible for her to wait alone, and this morning, made impulsive by sheer need, she called me.
Like Katherine, I am exhausted. I rise from my chair as Katherine stumbles to her feet, as if to flee the restaurant to spare me further embarrassment, but I have hold of her, I am holding her, the sparrow bones so light, the reddened eyes, my arms are holding Katherine upright and steady, and to those strangers who have been watching us covertly I say, What are you staring at? This is none of your business. I am comforting my friend. ♦