as casualties of the war I had begun fighting, a war I hadn’t chosen. We were all victims of cancer, with them being the most undeserving.
Then my sweet, crazy, naughty Isabelle—this child who had grown inside my body at the same time the cancer was growing—began making me see things in a different light.
After I was discharged from the hospital, we stayed for an extra two weeks in a furnished, rented townhouse near Beverly Hills, rather than returning to New York immediately. I wanted more time in Los Angeles to follow up with doctors, recuperate, and be with family and friends I normally didn’t have much opportunity to see. My parents’ house was too inconveniently located on the east side. The rental was cheap and served its purpose, but it was old, dirty, and badly in need of renovations. And for better or worse, it was haunted.
Two nights after we moved in, while making our way through the usual traffic on Olympic Boulevard back to the rental, Belle declared suddenly in her babylike voice, “Mommy, I’m afraid of the dark.” It was the first time my unusually articulate, not-quite two-year-old had ever talked about being afraid of the dark. But to tell the truth, I’ve stopped being shocked by the things that come out of her mouth, having concluded that many of her precocious statements were the results of being the younger sibling of a three-and-a-half-year-old who is pretty perceptive herself. “Belle, there are lots of lights. So you don’t need to be scared of the dark,” I reassured her.
Then, that night, the girls insisted that I lie down with them, especially Belle. So I lay down on the edge of the bed, with Belle next to me and Mia next to her. After a few minutes of silence, Belle sat bolt upright and said again, “Mommy, I’m afraid of the dark.” Indeed, the room was dark, but it was lit by the faint glow of streetlights. “Belle, Mommy is right here. I’ll keep you safe. There’s nothing to be scared of. Now lie down and go to sleep!” She obediently lay down and then seconds later sat bolt upright again, looking around the room with those dark, piercing eyes of hers. “But, Mommy, I see ghosts.” Now, that was definitely a first. Mia said she hadn’t been talking to her sister about ghosts, and I believed her. In the past, months ago, they’d played games that involved throwing blankets over their heads and going around in broad daylight, moaning “Boo!” But for Belle to talk about ghosts and associate them with fear of the dark was a bit more than I could expect of even her. Chills ran up and down my arms.
Having just had surgery a week earlier and being keenly aware of how much closer death now seemed, I wondered if the Angel of Death was in that room, and if somehow my clairvoyant child could see him.
The next ten days passed with Belle occasionally stopping whatever she was doing in that house to stare at a spot with the look in her eyes that told us she was seeing something we couldn’t see. Once, she asked whatever it was she saw, “Why did you come back?”
Another time, when our longtime babysitter put the phone to Belle’s ear for her to say hi to the babysitter’s sister, as she had done a dozen times before, before the sister could even speak, Belle told her, “I see a ghost in this room.” After we left that house, Belle didn’t fix her stare on a spot, nor did she speak of ghosts again. But I have no doubt that my child saw something in that rented house. Whether it was the Angel of Death, a guardian angel, or some other random spirit, I don’t know. I do know that my Belle is special, that she has magic within her.
And after I left the hospital, Belle’s behavior toward me changed. She became unusually clingy for a while. I chalked that up to the long separation of my hospital stay. The intensity of her need to be near me eventually eased. Now she will suddenly come up from behind and put her arms around my neck and hug me for a good ten seconds, which is indeed a lot of time for a two-year-old. Sometimes, she’ll come up to me and plant a big wet kiss on my mouth and then throw her arms around my neck and hug me