Breakfast at The Grand Continental

The Grand Continental did not look like a place you’d bring your daughter to die. When Paula got there and looked out the window, the view was so beautiful she almost cried. The ocean had that impossible green-blue that water in postcards had—or dreams—hugging a gently curving shore, where couples walked hand in hand and ate ice creams. It was the nicest hotel she had ever stayed in. The only hotel she had ever stayed in.

The bed was big enough to stretch your arms and legs out wide in, without touching the sides. By the door was a fridge full of sodas, Pepsis, Sprites. And at the end was a cot for her eight-month-old, Franny.

Her thoughts were troubled by Franny. She had not eaten properly in days and now responded to spoonfuls of food by biting at Paula’s hands or kicking her in the ribs. Paula was quick, could easily shift her weight and dodge Franny’s pudgy feet, but that wasn’t the point. It was getting harder and harder to feed her. Her gums were hard too. Not baby-soft anymore. Paula didn’t want to look too closely.

Instead, she looked out the window that didn’t open all the way – perhaps to stop people throwing themselves out – with her forehead against the glass. When Franny was asleep and the room was quiet, she could pretend they were on holiday. That when her baby’s crying stopped, it didn’t leave her feeling tired and useless.

That she could afford a holiday like this and didn’t dream of pulling her hair out by the root.

It was falling out, anyway. In the shower, she ran her hands through it and caught clumps of it, loose in her fingers. She had started wearing dry shampoo, scarves to try to cover the patches, but people still saw. She’d had to promise Louis at the restaurant that she didn’t have cancer, made up that she’d had an accident at the hairdresser. He’d given her a rueful smile and said, “Bad day, huh?”

Maybe it was the scarves that had given it away. She still didn’t know how Mira had recognised what she had been going through at the restaurant that day, but she was grateful all the same.

Mira had been watching Paula wait tables over her bowl of Pasta Co Maccu. It was the sort of unguarded look Paula gave to people who had eyes that were different colors, or albino hair when their backs were turned. Mira hardly blinked, and when their eyes met, she shrank away, returned to the man opposite her. He was chatting to her about whatever.

There was a spark inside Paula—fear, maybe. Or hope dressed wrong. She couldn’t name it, only that something in Mira’s look made her feel seen in a way that was almost unbearable.

“You want anything else,” she asked.

“No, thank you, no. This was great.”

“Sure? Not even cheesecake? You feeling alright?” Paula gave the woman in front of her a hard smile. To her surprise, Mira took the man’s hand in hers and set it on the table.

“We’ve been together twenty years and this one’s never asked me how I am. Never does.”

“You always tell me anyways,” he laughed.

“You two on holiday here?”

She leant forward. Paula saw the hand grip tighten.

“No. More like work. We like meeting other people, doing our bit.”

“Giving people, huh.” Paula was on the balls of her feet, her heart pounding.

She could see a question forming on Mira’s lips, a dangerous one that she wasn’t sure she could let out. Mira lifted her gaze.

“I’m Mira,” she said, extending her hand. Paula took it and felt sweat, bones in her fingers.

“Paula.”

“Well look, Paula. I don’t mean to pry, I couldn’t help noticing. How old is she?”

And there it was. As Mira spoke, she ran a spindly hand through her dark hair and turned her neck slightly. To anybody else, that gesture that would have meant nothing, but it made Paula’s scalp prickle. She thought about Franny’s insistent tugs, the way she’d close her round and soft fist and yank at Paula’s fringe until it tore. The thought surfaced and breathed out hard, pushed it down.

“Don’t know what you mean.” And then she added. “Franny’s eight months.”

“Right, right. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve been there, that’s all.”

And she tilted her head further. Down her long neck, Paula saw clusters of pale red spots, like spider bites running down her neck. Pockmarks where her hair hadn’t grown back. Mira was clutching her partner’s hand so hard the knuckles were white.

She took a napkin from the table and started writing something on it in biro.

“Why don’t you come out and visit us. There’s plenty of people like you,” Mira said. She half smiled. “Up on the coast. You could bring her.”

“You’ve known me for what, three minutes?”

The thin woman swallowed, bit her lip.

“I’m not asking,” she said.

Paula said nothing but took the napkin from her, snatched it and walked away. She felt a kind of electricity running through her. She read it quickly on her way back to the kitchen and stuffed it in her apron. It said, “Grand Continental, Lime Beach. Room 403, Mira.”

In the weeks that followed, Paula played a sort of game. She couldn’t show up at the hotel immediately – that much she knew instinctively. There were barely any savings to her name, but she was scraping by well enough, not quite in need of charity. Or worse, pity.

No. The game was to bide time a little in her own place, beside the pictures of Christ her late mother had made her hang up, in the shade behind the closed blinds. She would wait out long enough that Mira knew she was a good mother, not a desperate one. A mother who felt curious to meet other mothers. Others who had kids that needed them the same way Franny needed.

And Franny had needed her. It was not only the long nights, the waking at 3AM, the hair tugging or the tantrums. It was an unusual depth and quality of need, that had become obvious to Paula the first time she had taken her to the park. She remembered how she’d slathered sun cream over her baby’s white, fat skin.

As she’d worked factor 50 into the gaps and creases in her, there had been redness, blisters blossoming under the heat. They had only just arrived, but they were instant, relentless. Franny had twisted and shrieked in her highchair. Paula had rubbed the sun cream harder and harder into the skin, but it had started to brown and then blacken, a curl of smoke rising from Franny’s bare knee.

She had stepped back for a second, watched her daughter smoulder and writhe. She thought about how little sleep she’d had, how her scalp itched. The smell of burning reminded her of the barbecue where she’d met Franny’s father, how he’d drunkenly asked her to join him upstairs. The shame and dirt of it clung to her, the stink of coals on her clothes.

She had quickly grabbed the pram’s hood and pulled the shade over her.

So over those weeks, she kept her baby indoors, away from the light. When Franny moaned and waved her arms, she took scissors and cut a chunk of hair from her own head, a snip here or there so the baby wouldn’t pull it. In her small fingers, Franny took the hair and squeezed it. Then she put it in her mouth, chewed on it until she slept.

When they had arrived at the Grand Continental, it was as if they had been expected. Paula checked in and they took her bags. On the way to her room, though, she was intercepted and escorted through the lobby by a small bellboy, past the indoor palm trees to a copper lift. She felt the weight of Franny asleep in her baby sling as she stepped inside. It was tight and comforting.

Room 403 was a big atrium, the kind that might be used for lectures or corporate plenaries. Behind the stage was a wide glass window that looked out on to the lapping ocean. It was empty for now. She took a plastic seat near the door and watched as the room started to fill.

They were women, of all shapes and sizes. Some wore bright headscarves in pink, brown, orange. Others wore coverings, exotic shawls. They were alone, without their babies, if they had them. They sat, chatting with coffees in paper cups. Paula lifted Franny to present her, to start a conversation. But nobody sat down next to her. The seat beside was left empty.

Franny wriggled restlessly and the lights dimmed. A curtain slowly closed over the window.

Mira walked slowly across the stage until she reached the center. She was taller than Paula could have realised, seeing her seated at dinner, and she wore a bright pink blazer. A green headscarf.

She said nothing and slowly began to untie the scarf. Then she dropped it to the floor, her hair unfurled, to scattered applause.

“I wanna tell you about Adelaide. My Addy,” she said. Her voice faltered.

“We used to think she loved dogs. That’s how it started. A spaniel, a retriever, would bound up to her in the street and she’d go quiet. Eyes wide. Her first smile was at one of those dogs, not at me. A big one, too.”

Behind Mira, a slideshow flicked on and there was a baby, just like Franny. Her skin was as pale as milk. She was sitting on the grass, drowned in an enormous sun hat that kept her in the shade.

“I wonder if it’s because dogs are covered in fur. Because you see, then came the hunger. Constant, nothing helped. We tried formula, breastmilk, goat’s milk—nothing. She wasn’t starving. But she wasn’t full either. She bit through pacifiers. She pulled out a dog’s ear. And after a while, I learned what you have all learned. I learned to do the easy thing. Not the right thing.”

And in her waist, Paula felt her baby stir, legs straighten as if having a bad dream.

“I used to say, ‘She needs me.’ But that wasn’t it. She needed something from me. And when I gave it, I left a little. You see, there are some babies that don’t need milk. They need something else. Something only you can give. And the more you give, the less you’re yourself. Maybe they’re not even real babies.”

The slideshow flicked on and there was an audible gasp in the audience. It was a photo of Mira, being held up by her partner. She was almost bald in that picture, patches of her scalp raw, hairless and scabbed. Where her eyebrows should have been, there were naked welts.

“Most mothers lose some hair. That’s common. But when Addy turned nine months, I lost my eyebrows. I fed her my leg hair, my bangs. I stopped sweating. I called a dermatologist, then a priest. I couldn’t feed her enough. I couldn’t take her outside, or she’d burn. The hospital didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do.”

She paused and drank from a plastic bottle of water.

“I needed somebody to tell me what I’m telling you now. Addy wasn’t a baby. Not in the way the world thinks. She wasn’t a monster, either. Just born different. We think it’s a mutation. Biological, a genetic evolution that means these kids need a form of nourishment that we just don’t understand. It’s not their fault. But also, it’s unacceptable. Unsustainable.”

She paused, a lump in her throat.

“So I did the difficult thing.” She said. “I let her go. Addy’s no longer with us. I want to show you why.”

The audience began to applaud, and Paula found herself clapping, her heart racing in the dark of the room. Franny seemed to wriggle in her lap in the noise.

Mira turned and waved towards the slideshow projector, and the image flicked. It was a film of a shadowy figure walking, bent double, eyes to the ground as if the weight of their head was pulling them down. As they stepped into the light, Paula saw that it was a teenager, no more than 14. People cheered and the applause continued.

The teenager approached the camera, and Paula could see that she was completely hairless. Around the crown of her skull there were deep lacerations, scars, and tears that ringed her forehead in a strange crown. Parts of her face were wrinkled with grafts, surgical stitches. Paula stared at her from the safety of the dark, eyes running over her damage, taking it in.

“I’m going to tell you what happened to Rebecca. She used to be our babysitter. The best in town.”

The teenager waved towards the camera. It was a pathetic, mechanical gesture, that seemed to cost her everything.

“She used to have beautiful dark hair, and she’d tie it in a ponytail. I’d gone out for dinner and left them alone.”

The image changed again, and Rebecca was jumping in a star shape in front of the Eiffel Tower. It must have been a school trip. Off the ground, her ponytail was elevated, defying gravity.

“As she turned to put a pizza in the oven, Addy jumped on Rebecca’s back. She pulled that ponytail so hard the skin broke. Rebecca lost most of her face, the scalp on her head. That baby—that thing – would have done it to others too. They will all do it to others too, in time. And that’s why I’m so sorry for you all. We’re the ones who have to be stronger than we want to be. You must not do the easy thing.”

Something rose in Paula’s throat—sick, bitter. The room swelled with heat and sound as the women’s cheers crashed around her like surf. She tightened her hold on Franny, terrified the baby might wake. That she’d scream. One of those cries Franny would let loose at 3AM, driven by pure emotions. Made of rage, tiredness. Hunger.

Paula stood. Scooped her baby up with her like she was rescuing her from a fire.

As the applause roared, she slipped sideways out of the row, bumping knees and bags, whispering “sorry” without meaning it. She climbed the auditorium steps on legs that felt far away.

The doors at the top glowed. She didn’t look back

And so she had found herself by that hotel window, staring out at the tide. She could have looked at it for hours, washing in and out.

It must have been about half an hour. Perhaps more. She would have lost track of time completely if there wasn’t a quiet knock at the door.

Mira was in the corridor, holding a purple bottle of shampoo.

“Here, it’s lavender.”

“No need.”

Mira nodded and smiled towards the carpet.

“Threw you in the deep end didn’t I. I’m sorry. We usually get more time together first,” she said, her voice earnest, sincere. “Hotel staff, eh.” She looked so much smaller off stage, weakened. Paula arched her back, looked down on her.

“Is what it is.”

Mira withdrew the bottle, held her hands behind her back.

“Well, I can’t say I’m sorry enough,” she said. “Paula.”

Paula smiled shyly.

“You make an alright apology.”

“And I’m not forcing you to do anything.” Mira’s hand crept out, found her shoulder.

“Franny’s your daughter. You don’t have to decide anything while you’re here. You can stay as long as you need to, see how others are handling it. We can help you honour her. She doesn’t need to hurt anyone.”

“She won’t hurt anyone,” Paula said. Mira nodded.

“Good,” she said. “That’s good. You just take your time.”

And Paula did. The days they spent there were the best and worst of her life. Every morning they brought breakfast—fresh pineapple, the most amazing croissants—to her room along with a plastic bag of dark cuttings for Franny. They ate together greedily, and Paula finished hers with black coffee, watching the sun.

In the mornings she took Franny in her sling and sun hat, and carried her along the white sand, walking through the transparent blue water. She tickled shells and ripples with her toes. She had a spot, where the sand dipped, and she’d take Franny out of the sling and hold her so that her feet dangled in the water, among the light caustics. It was a little awkward – Paula had to bend over her, stand at an angle to make sure no actual sunlight touched her skin. But Franny seemed to like it. She cooed and giggled.

Out there in that cold water, she was so small. Her toes were like tiny buttons, wiggling and splashing. Paula couldn’t imagine that this child would ever hurt a dog or rip a babysitter’s hair out. She was too little, too dependent for that. Even now, Paula could weaken her grip, and she would sink in that shallow water like a stone.

Paula’s own mother had only ever held her once like this. It was in church at her baptism. She’d been six, and it was one of the few times she could think of where her mother had needed her, demanded that she attend. She’d held her over the font and pushed her head down.

She would do better than that. Franny needed her to.

But as the week went on, Franny got harder and harder to manage. On the third day, Franny threw an arm out at the breakfast cuttings and spat hair over her cot. She beat her arms, reaching and grasping towards Paula’s head. Her hands opened and closed on nothing. Paula found herself bending over the cot like she had so many times before, taking a strand of her own hair between her fingers and feeding it downward.

It was the first of many surrenders. She woke again at 2AM and then at 4, red-faced, frustrated. And as Paula soothed her, sang to her softly, she heard the distant cries of other babies in far off rooms of the hotel, echoing to her through balconies and corridors.

She thought she could hear their mothers too. Wailing, inhuman sounds.

There was nothing that could be done. The only thing that would quiet her was the root of the hair; the very end pulled from her head. The pain was searing, burning, and Paula winced and thought of the water, as she did it.

On Friday, at 5AM, there was a knock at the door. It was quiet, unobtrusive. Paula was still awake and opened, as Mira stood before her, smiling sadly. She wore a beige spa robe and sandals.

“It might not be today,” she said. “Shall we see if it’s time? Go and get Franny.”

Paula gathered Franny in her shawl and followed Mira down, through the corridors and down the copper lined lift, towards a door that lead directly to the sands. She walked quickly ahead, so that Paula couldn’t ask questions, couldn’t raise what was going on.

Out in front of the water she could see huddled shadows, some bent double, some standing. She followed Mira’s prints in the sand, down towards the waters edge.

As she approached, her eyes adjusted to the morning gloom, and she saw that it was women; a crowd lining way along the shore, wearing the same hotel spa robes as Mira. They held candles and swayed. In their pale kaftans they looked out of place, as though lost on their way between the sauna and the reception.

It reminded Paula of nature documentaries she’d seen on TV, where people stood at midnight to watch Galápagos turtles hatch, waddle out into the surf. There was often a predator – some hungry lizard – looking to catch one on the way.

The sand under her feet seemed soft. She was walking, but her steps weren’t going anywhere.

She could hear the women’s cries now. Some were weeping quietly. Some openly. And in front of them at the water’s edge, there were tiny bundles.

Inflatable pool toys, carrying babies.

As the tides came in, they bent and pushed them out into the water. With frightening speed, the sea graciously accepted these offerings and its tide scrambled backwards, dragging each inflatable with it. Mira stopped and hugged Paula and Franny hard as they watched the women collapse to the sand and howl, hug each other. Some helped slide the bundles out together, held each other’s hand. On the sea Paula could see tens, dozens, hundreds of floating rafts—pineapples, donuts.

“They’ll drown,” Paula said weakly.

Mira shook her head and held her closer.

“No. In an hour, the sun will rise. These mothers have done a difficult thing. They’ve saved hundreds of lives tonight. They’ve honoured these babies by letting them stay this way.”

She tapped Paula’s thigh, gently.

“You don’t need to do it now if you don’t want. We can stop at any time.

And Paula looked down, saw by her feet the fat, plastic wings of a pink blow-up flamingo. It was pre-inflated, too little for an adult. It might have been intended for a drinks tray. There was no wind to carry it away.

Against her side, she felt Franny flex her legs, her toes. She thought about them wriggling in the water, the way she had laughed and fussed. She thought about their games.

“There’s no way,” she said.

“It feels impossible. But she won’t feel anything. She will just sleep warm in the sunshine. This is the best thing you can do for both of you.”

“I can’t.”

Mira turned to her and nodded.

“Of course. I shouldn’t have asked you to decide now. We won’t do it tonight.”

So they sat together, on the sandbank and listened. Candles winked in the shadows like fireflies, and Paula saw that women were holding them high, mouthing prayers to the sea. Some sang songs, or shouted names. She placed Franny on the flamingo and held it close. Close enough that she would never let go.

And after an hour or so, Mira tapped her on the shoulder and stumbled up. She walked to the women on the shore and began to console them. She hugged them and whispered in their ear as they cried.

Beneath her nightclothes, Paula felt cold seawater, colder than it had been earlier in the week. She watched as Mira turned and pointed to something in the distance.

“There,” she said.

Far out on the horizon, a pale stripe of light was rising—thin as a thread but growing. The sea caught it first, turning red, then gold. Then the sky followed, slowly blushing at the edges, flushed with life.

Paula heard a sound at her side—a soft crackling, then a faint hiss, like hair catching on a candle. Her hands flew to Franny in a blind, animal reflex.

And as she clutched her close and lifted her up, a tide came in fast and snatched the flamingo raft from under. It spun out into the surf.

Out on the water, the bundles lying on the other toys had caught fire. Donuts, pineapples, unicorns—their colors flickered orange now, warped by heat. Tiny flames licked their seams, dancing as they drifted further out. From the crowd of women behind her came the sound of something breaking open—not just crying but keening. A guttural, whole-body grief.

Paula did not cry. She held her child against her chest and watched the sun and water take the others.

She had nearly done it.

Nearly.

And then she felt it—not Franny’s heartbeat, but something deeper, stranger.

They were calling to her.

These burning children were still alive. They were screaming wordlessly for help. They were ear-splitting, impossible to ignore. They were calling out for someone to choose them. Someone strong enough not to let go.

She looked again at the firelights dotting the sea, and then at the women on the shore, some crumpled, some clutching each other, others still holding their bundles close.

“I can’t do this,” she whispered.

She kissed the top of her daughter’s head and stood slowly, seafoam gathering around her ankles. She covered Franny in her sling. Behind her, the dawn was climbing, no longer just a thread but a wide, golden stain.

And then she ran out into the water. Watching her wade and grab at the distant shapes in the tide made Mira feel sorry for her. Mira wondered how far out to sea Addy’s raft was, and if it still had air left in it after all those years.

Paula took the Pacific Coast Highway north to drive home. The afternoon sun was high now and glinted on her UV windows. The Grand Continental, its postcard beach and high rooms, was far behind her.

She drove fast and only stopped once for gas.

Beside her, Franny sat in a cot on the passenger seat, shrouded in her large Panama sun hat. Occasionally, she pushed at the brim, made lumps with her fingers against the inside. She was happy, shaded, and that suited Paula just fine. It gave Paula a slow, creeping dread to imagine what might happen if Franny had yelled, raged in that seat. She would wake the others.

At the shoreline, she had considered her options. There had seemed only one at first. Stay, a welcome guest at the hotel. Eat pineapple salad and Italian ice until her resolve weakened, and she gave in, gave in for the last time, and she pushed her baby out to sea. She and Franny would spend their last days together in luxury, but that luxury wouldn’t be enough to withstand the hunger for hair, and her baby’s eventual need to rip it from somebody in the end. She would be welcome there for as long as it took, months, maybe even years.

But there was another option. There was always another option really. That was something Paula had learned when she’d run away from home, started her own life away from God. She could just get in the car and drive, follow the road wherever it took her. You didn’t need to do the difficult thing. Sometimes the difficult thing was not knowing exactly where your choice would leave you, making it anyway.

And if she was being honest, it hadn’t been a choice. Not once she’d heard their cries from the floats, their raw need.

She drove with her hand on Franny’s cot and her teeth clenched. For the first twelve miles, she shook and sobbed. By the time she reached the passing place and pulled in there were no more tears.

She came to a stop in the empty lot and opened the glove box. Took out a pair of scissors and a comb and began to snip locks from her own head.

Then she turned towards the back seat, and the sunburnt creatures she’d rescued, laying there over the cover. There were two babies, still with sand on their feet. She passed the hair to them. Their mouths opened, soft and birdlike and in silence, they fed.