Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey through Hell and Back

I give posters to the street kids, I say the reward is big, no questions asked. One girl says she's seen Mia around, a week ago maybe. She gives me nothing useful, but she cares, they all do, one actually pets me and says don't worry. These kids I've avoided and pitied are pitying me. Many won't live past twenty, twenty-five. A girl with fat, shiny cheeks and a shaved head hugs me and says she wishes her mom was nice like me. She can't be more than thirteen.

Paul and I lay in bed a couple of hours, not like people resting, like felled trees. We don't hug or cling. One touch and I will fall apart. My heart hasn't stopped beating like a chased rabbit since I saw her empty bed.

I go over the last time I saw her, Thursday morning. She followed me to the door, shivering with fever, hugging me with her little stick arms. She already knew then. She said, I'm glad Bubbie is coming. Why, Mia, so Bubbie can comfort me, provide minor distraction?

"Don't let this disrupt your lives, just think of me like when I was on my student trip in Thailand."

Right, I'll take Bubbie to Las Vegas as planned, see the Cirque du Soleil and pretend you're hailing a tuktuk in Chiang Mai. Mia left before my mother came because she knew Bubbie would see through her charade. She knew her grandmother would have seen what her mother was blind to.

Paul and I have gone through a thousand possible scenarios, explanations. We have no more guesses left. We lay on our backs, whispering into the darkness.

"It's so cold tonight." "She must be soaking wet - her raincoat is here." "Her fever will get worse."

Neither of us says, "Don't worry, we'll find her tomorrow."

Before sunrise, I raise a glass of water to my lips and find that all of my teeth have loosened.

We meet early to strategize, five teams, each taking part of Venice. My brother Henry will search on foot. The Beverly Hills police have sent two off-duty officers on bicycles. By now, I know how rare, this is. Even more so because it's raining and cold.

Venice is Hollywood Boulevard on the beach. Every slimeball who made their way west seems to end up there hawking something - string bikinis, incense, drugs, sex. I'd corner every one of them but the rain's cleared the streets. I'd follow them into whatever holes they crawled into, if I knew where they were. I'd follow them and figure out what they want more than they might want my daughter. Shop owners here shrug off my pleas and posters. They earn their livings off kids like Mia.

My girlfriend drives me through the tourist areas. It's hard to see behind Dumpsters or into doorways, the skies are so dark with rain.

"Maybe she's inside somewhere," she says hopefully, trying to cheer me.

"Inside is bad."

I don't speak much, I can't manage whole sentences. My brain's looping images with short captions: defense wounds, dental records, kitchen knife, coroner.

I search the rooms in Venice's skuzzy youth hostel. I walk into a dank room with a picnic table and fake trellis. A scruffy, pony-tailed guy in leather pants sits there smoking. European for sure. I show him my poster, asking if he's seen her. He waves me closer with the cigarette, his eyes narrow as he scrutinizes Mia's face, nodding slightly, as if she looks familiar. My heart starts thumping with hope.

"She's only fifteen, she's sick, we'll pay anything!"

He looks up at me for a moment and then because he thinks I don't understand him, he says in French that she would make a nice little fuck.

Henry has been walking for hours in the rain. He's tall and massive, a body-builder with a deep, booming voice. His sheer size and sound are frightening, thank God, because when he turns out of an alley to go to home for a rest, he frightens a grubby guy named Rain when they practically walk into each other.

Rain is walking arm in arm with Mia and Talia.

"Mia!"

It takes but a second for Henry to recover his surprise, Rain to backpedal and Talia to take off running. Mia is so stunned to see her uncle, she hesitates long enough for him to grab her. He yells for Talia but she's already down the block.

They were walking to the old school bus Rain lives in. He was about to drive the girls to Haight-Ashbury. His bus-house was parked a block beyond Henry's car. If Henry had turned that corner a minute earlier or later, we may never have seen her again.



Henry has taken Mia to his fiancée Margaret's apartment. I call him on the way there, breathless with questions, bright with happiness! He's evasive, just saying that she's not, uh, happy. That's okay, we've found her, she's safe, I can fix whatever's wrong, I'm her mother!

Henry and Margaret hug me as soon as I come in, a little too tightly. The look in their eyes makes my stomach sink. His manner on the phone only now kicks in. Mia's in the bedroom. They don't accompany me.

Mia's hunched over on the bed, turned away from the door. Her amber curls are lank and matted, her feet are bare and muddy, she's got on wet clothes I don't recognize.