When You’re the Female Police Officer
- Oct 16, 2020
- 2 min read
by Candace Hartsuyker
You tell anyone who asks that your daughter is missing, even though she’s dead. You didn’t kill her, but you might as well have. While you were at work busy poring over images of dead girls — bruised faces, broken cheekbones and chipped teeth — your daughter slipped outside, lulled by the jangly music of the ice cream truck. You imagine your daughter setting a two-dollar bill and four quarters on the counter, warmed by the pockets of her shorts.
In the abandoned truck, your coworkers found a hunk of your daughter’s hair and a teardrop splotch of blood, melted ice cream oozing from their cases, the key still in the ignition, the dizzying smell of petroleum,the ice cream man and your daughter gone.
You wonder if your daughter was wearing her LED sneakers, the lights like the glint of a firefly, attracting the kidnapper. At the grocery store, you avoid the dairy aisle, knowing you’ll retch if you see a Push-Up Pop, a package of Klondikes, a tub of butterscotch ice cream. This is what you miss most: the way your daughter would discard soggy socks on the floor, where they’d lie scrunched like caterpillars in vibrant turquoise, red and Kelly green. You remember how the nape of her neck smelled like baby powder, how her cheeks would bloom pink when she was angry, the careless way she’d double dip spoonfuls of creamy peanut butter straight from the jar after she thought everyone had gone to bed.
Not only have you failed as a mother, but also as a police officer. While you should have been watching your daughter, you were worrying about girls who weren’t your own, girls with sparkly shoelaces and pigtails and Hello Kitty shirts. If you were a good police officer, your daughter wouldn’t be missing but would be found. The murderer would not be wandering free. You see his face everywhere: in your dreams, in strangers’ faces and on fliers, his face duct taped to telephone poles.
Now there’s a new ice cream truck, a new driver. The new driver takes the same route and comes every Friday evening, and the music, that jangly tune like a worm slithering in your ear, goes on and on. From the kitchen window, you can see it is dusk; the sky is a muted purple. Your yard is littered with lizard tails and hummingbird heads, diving blue jays and their machine gun cries. As the ice cream truck drifts past, you imagine you can smell the sickly-sweet scent of melted ice cream, hear the turgid drip, drip.
In the freezer, you find what you are looking for: a blue raspberry Push-Up Pop, the kind your daughter loved. You rip off the packaging and take a bite, kneel on the hard floor. Your tongue burns from the syrupy coldness. Head throbbing, eyes blinking from unshed tears, you chomp until all that’s left is a popsicle stick, feather-light and sticky in your trembling hands.
Candace Hartsuyker has an M.F.A in Creative Writing from McNeese State University and reads for PANK. She has been published in Heavy Feather Review, The Hunger, Maudlin House and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter at C_Hartsuyker.
