Mid-afternoon, Hallowe’en, the room still filled with the slow dispersing acridity of extinguished matches used to light those myriad candles as decorate the house.
Mary checks her Polaroid camera to confirm it’s not empty then sets it back down to leave the room, only for it to be picked up by her young daughter mere seconds later.
cog (re-entering room): Careful with that Gertie, that is not a toy
stopping to watch her with the camera.
cog: Seriously I mean it, that’s all that b-... your father left me with.
colouring with a sudden embarrassment
cog: And you guys too, of course.
reaching quickly across to flip one of her pigtail ribbons with what she hopes will appear genuine affection.
Whatever clumsy way she is handling the boxy camera prompts Gertie to accidentally thumb the shutter, instantly blinded as the direct bright eruption of its automated flash bursts upon her face.
Rushing across the room, Mary seems more concerned to rescue the camera than with her daughter’s albeit temporary inability to see. She sits her down into a chair, rubbing her arms to calm her, and places the ejected Polaroid as illicit salve into the trembling little fingers.
With her vision slowly returning, Gertie’s now tempered initial excitement at the novelty of having photographed herself is superseded by a crescendo of panic, watching as the image develops.
cog (confused by the overexposed Polaroid, her features obscured by flash): But where am I, Mom? Mary? Where did I go?
intensely seeking her lost self in or somewhere beyond the glossy white-out, unaware as she is of the photographic process, its mechanics and chemistry. The sheet of film smells of exactly nothing.
cog: Where did I go?
eyes brimming with crisis tears, forced to question her ongoing actual existence in this absence of physical photographic proof.
cog (quietly): Don’t worry, Gert, it’s just a photo. It’s just.. You were too close to the flash that’s all, so the camera just couldn’t see you properly.
dabbing at her daughter’s damp face with tissue fragments hauled from out her pocket.
cog: Come on, let’s get into our costumes. Let’s go up and get ready. The boys will be back any minute and then I’ll take another one of all of you together, okay?
and again, to her daughter’s now audibly lessening distress
cog: What do you say, cowgirl?
Mid-afternoon, near Easter.
Mother (to her husband re-entering the room having answered a telephone call): Who was it?
already angry at having had to ask and not waiting for his answer before repeating
Mother: Who was it?
Father (rubbing both hands hard at his face): It’s, it was, the eh, the police
Mother (from his demeanour she understands it is not the news they want): And? What? What did they
Father (to quiet her): They’re asking for a photograph of her, for leaflets and posters, the missing
Mother: So help me, Christ. So help me, Christ.
Her husband exits, climbing the stairs to retrieve the shoebox of photographs they keep in the bottom of their closet.
