TWELVE YEARS AGO
I’m walking home from school, slowly so that I won’t catch up to the group of girls in front of me, but not so slowly that Randall will be angry that I’m late.
Mandy Patterson is at the center of the pack like usual, impossible to miss with her long flow of ash-blonde hair, perfectly curled and tied with the kind of oversized cheerleader bow that has become such a trend at school.
I don’t have any bows.
I asked for one for my birthday. Randall and my mother got me a used violin instead. I have to take lessons with Mrs. Belchick every Tuesday and Thursday. Her house smells like rancid cooking oil, and I’m allergic to her budgies. My eyes swell up every time, and my fingers are so itchy that I can barely grip the bow. I’ve begged my mother not to make me go anymore, but this is my punishment for not practicing piano enough.
I fucked up bad at the recital.
I hate performing in public, hate everyone staring at me.
I had never played on that particular piano, and when I sat down on the bench in the awful silence of the auditorium, the glaring overhead lights reflecting off the glossy black Steinway, I was hit with the horrible realization that I wasn’t sure which key was middle C.
It sounds ridiculous after all the years I’ve played, but I always orient my hands relative to the chipped golden script on our own piano, which reads Bösendorfer across the fallboard, only missing the second “o.”
I stared at the keys, the seconds ticking past.
I could see my mother standing just offstage, already starting to pace in agitation, snapping her fingers at me to start.
“I don’t know where to put my hands,” I whispered at her.
“Play the song,” she hissed at me.
I was already sweating under the blazing lights, my hands shaking as they hovered above the keys.
Desperately, I repeated, “I don’t know where to start.”
She marched across the stage, furious and embarrassed, grabbing my arm and wrenching me off the bench. She dragged me off, not listening as I tried to explain that I could play it, I had practiced it over and over and knew it all by heart, if she would just show me where to put my hands …
That was six months ago. It could be six years past and she’d still enjoy punishing me for it.
They’re always watching, always waiting for me to make a mistake.
And that is the one thing in which I never disappoint them.
They can always count on me to fuck up.
The girls ahead look back over their shoulders, giggling and whispering behind their hands.
I can’t hear what they’re saying because I’m wearing headphones. This is the one gift Randall gave me that I truly love. He didn’t want to hear music leaking out of my room. Wearing the headphones encloses me in my own bubble of song. It protects and comforts me. My own little pod that follows me wherever I go.
I drag my feet, trying to create more distance between me and the girls.
They’re slowing in pace too.
Kinsley Fisher calls back to me, “Mara! Are you coming to Danny’s birthday party?”
I can hear this, just barely.
Sighing, I take a bud out of one ear.
Before I can answer, Mandy replies for me: “She can’t. She wasn’t invited.”
She makes the statement calmly, factually, her soft pink lips curved in a satisfied smile.
I thought Danny might invite me. Out of all the boys in our class, he’s one of the few who is occasionally nice to me. Once he even gave me a pencil that had little black cats all over it. It was a week after Halloween and he said he didn’t want it anymore, but I thought maybe it was because he knew how much I like cats.
“Why didn’t Danny invite you?” Kinsley asks with mock concern.
She already knows the answers to these questions. In fact, she probably knows them better than I do. The three Peachy Queens—Kinsley, Angelica, and her royal highness Mandy Patterson—surely were party to the conversations where it was publicly discussed who would be invited and who wouldn’t, how our classmates ranked as potential guests, and all the reasons why.
“Danny said his mother wouldn’t like it,” Mandy explains in the same matter-of-fact tone.
Mandy is not above lying, but this has the uncomfortable ring of truth.
The parents at Windsor Academy are much more involved than at my old school. They seem as highly interested in the social lives of the middle schoolers as the children themselves.
It’s only too likely that Mrs. Phillips has seen and judged me on some scale I can’t even begin to imagine. All I know is that I came up short.
“Maybe she knows Mara’s a little whore like her mother,” Angelica says sweetly. Angelica has the round, cherubic face you’d expect from her name, but she’s the meanest cunt in that whole group. Worse even than Mandy. “Everyone knows she married your stepdad for his money.”
This is something so fundamentally acknowledged, even between Randall and my mother, that I can’t possibly deny it.
The problem is, Randall doesn’t have that much money anymore. From the shouted arguments I’ve overhead, even with my pillow pressed over my ears, I’ve gathered that Randall’s sons are running his business into the ground and my mother is trying to spend whatever is left before it all runs out.
“I guess those short skirts don’t work on Danny,” Mandy says, smiling enough to show her pearly white teeth.
We all wear the same uniform at Windsor Academy—the same white blouse, plaid skirt, maroon knee socks, and loafers. That’s why accessories like cheerleader bows and smart watches are so important—they’re the only way to show who’s in and who’s out.
I’m out.
I was never even close to in.
The short skirts are a different problem entirely. Randall refused to buy me new uniforms this year, even though I’d shot up two inches. My home room teacher keeps making me come to the front of the class and kneel in front of everyone, to prove that my skirt doesn’t come down to my fingertips. She’s given me detention six times.
Randall punishes me every time I’m late coming home, but he won’t buy me new clothes.
I’m going to be late now if I don’t run the rest of the way home.
I don’t have time to continue this conversation with the Peachy Queens. It wouldn’t matter either way. I’ve tried being nice to them. I’ve tried fighting back. They despise me, and nothing will change that. Even the kids that used to be nice to me, the ones I would have called friends, have learned better than to say a word to me where these girls can see.
“Tell me what does work on Danny,” I say to Mandy. “If he ever starts to give a shit about you.”
I’m already sprinting away as the calls of, “Freak!”, “Slut!”, “Bitch!”, ring out behind me.
I run until my chest burns and the backpack full of books slams against my ass with every stride.
Still, once I reach the red brick colonial, I stop and stand on the sidewalk, dreading opening the front door and stepping inside.
It’s hard to believe I was excited when I first saw this house.
I’d never lived in a house before. I’d never had my own bedroom, or even a proper bed with a frame.
Back then, I still believed I could win Randall’s approval if I was very, very careful and very, very quiet.
I knew I annoyed him. He wanted my mother, not another kid. His own sons were already grown. I met them at the wedding, where they barely consented to shake my mother’s hand. She laughed and said they were worried about their inheritance.
My mother never looked more beautiful than on her wedding day, her dark hair pulled up in a magnificent shining mass topped by a sparkling tiara, her mermaid gown encrusted with even more gems, to complement the rock on her left hand.
I was so proud of my flower girl dress that I couldn’t stop looking at myself in every window I passed. I had never had a dress like that, as puffy and ethereal as Sarah’s in The Labyrinth.
I got too excited though. I vomited, and a little splashed on the skirt of the dress. My mother was so furious that she slapped me across the face. I had to walk down the aisle trying to hold back tears, with my basket of petals and a livid handprint on my cheek.
The day ended sadly for her, too. She drank too much wine at the reception. When it came time to cut the cake, she smashed a handful of it in Randall’s face. She laughed wildly, head thrown back, swaying a little on her stilettos. Randall couldn’t say or do anything in front of all those people, but even I could tell he was shaking with rage.
That was the first night we spent in the red brick house. From down the hall in my new bed, I could hear the familiar sounds of my mother fucking. I was used to her theatrical shrieks of pleasure and even the banging of the bed against the wall. That night there were other sounds: slaps and screams.
In the morning, the left side of her face was more swollen than mine. She sat at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee and glaring at Randall, who ordered her to make him some eggs, then calmly sat down to read the paper.
She got up and made the eggs, scrambling them in a frypan. Then she walked over to Randall and dumped them in his lap. He hit her again, so hard that she slammed into the wall and fell behind the table, sobbing pitifully.
Randall might have been older, but he was tall and heavily built, with palms harder than iron.
I threw myself on top of her, blubbering and begging Randall to stop.
That was one of the last times I had pity for my mother. She wore mine out not long after Randall’s.
Seeing how she treated him with open contempt, deliberately angering him, and then how she would crawl back to him whenever she needed something, sitting on his lap and talking in a baby voice, feeding him sips of her drink, destroyed my last shreds of respect for her.
Randall hates her, but he’s also obsessed with her. He says he’ll kill her before he ever lets her leave him.
I don’t know whether it’s worse when they’re fighting or when they gang up on me.
They’re both home all the time. Randall retired right before he met my mother, and she’s never held down a job unless she absolutely had to. Her only piano students were those who would put up with our succession of shitty apartments and her constant canceling of lessons.
Her real work has always been leeching off men. Randall has lasted the longest, because he was the first one stupid enough to marry her.
Even my father didn’t marry her. Whoever he might be.
When I can’t stay outside any longer, I slip my key in the lock and open the door as silently as possible.
I hate the smell of Randall’s house. It stinks of dirt from his back garden—in which he is always laboring without ever managing to make it actually pretty—and of the brand of cheap boxed wine my mother likes to drink, and Randall’s pine-scented aftershave.
The only part of the house I like at all is my own room. My goal is to get there as quickly as possible without being seen.
I creep down the hall, forced to cross the open doorway leading into the living room. I can see the back of Randall’s head as he sits in his favorite recliner. I hate the blocky shape of his skull, the buzzed gray hair, and the fold of fat between his hairline and his plaid button-down.
I’m tip-toeing across that opening when Randall says, “Get in here.”
My stomach sinks down to my loafers.
I creep into the living room, my hands already clammy.
He expects me to come stand in front of his recliner. I take a quick glance at his face, trying to gauge how bad his mood is today.
Three empty beer bottles sit on the side table next to him. Three isn’t too bad.
However, the ruddy flush on his face makes me think those aren’t the first three of the day.
“You’re late,” he grumbles.
Randall’s voice sounds even older than he is. It sounds like a bag of rocks tumbling around in the back of a truck.
“I didn’t have detention,” I say swiftly. “I was walking home with some girls. Mandy Patterson and some others.”
I’m hoping this will appease him. Mandy’s father is a real estate agent so successful that his handsome grin is plastered across every billboard and bus bench in our town.
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re walking home with the pope. You get here on time,” Randall snarls.
There’s no actual reason I need to be home by 3:50. Other than Tuesdays and Thursdays at Mrs. Belchick’s house, I have no appointments. But Randall decreed it, and that means I have to obey or suffer the consequences.
Of course I’m not going to bring up that rational and reasonable point. That would be suicide.
Instead, I swallow my sense of injustice, humbly saying, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
It will happen again, because something always happens to make me late. The universe wants Randall angry at me just as badly as Randall wants it himself.
I’m hoping this is the end of it. I can go up and hide in my room until it’s time to set the table for dinner.
Instead, Randall says, “Change your clothes and come down here to do your homework.”
Shit.
I don’t bother asking him if I can do it in my room. I simply set my book bag down by the edge of the fireplace, before trudging upstairs to change out of my uniform.
Changing clothes is my mother’s requirement. She says it’s so I don’t wear out my uniforms so fast, but I suspect it’s really because she’s noticed how much Randall prefers the plaid skirts. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that’s the whole reason he insisted I switch schools.
In response, my mother has been forcing me to wear more and more modest clothing. First, it was no tank tops, then no shorts. Last week she screamed at me over a scoop-neck t-shirt. I’ll be wearing turtlenecks in July by the time she’s satisfied.
I loathe the way everyone fixates on my clothing—the teachers at school, my classmates, Randall, and my mother. The taller I grow and the more my tits come in, the worse it gets.
I don’t get it. It’s not like I have some massive rack like Ella Fitz, who started growing them even before we left elementary school. Still, every sign of puberty seems to inflame my mother. She was furious when I got my period last year, and refused to buy me tampons, even though we have swim class as part of PE, and even though every other girl uses them. Mandy Patterson was delighted to tell the whole class the moment she spotted a pad in my bag.
I pull on my baggiest hoodie and jeans, so my mother won’t pitch a fit when she gets back from wherever she’s gone.
When I return to the living room, Randall has turned up the volume on the television. Either he turned it down so he could catch me sneaking in the door, or he’s blaring it now to irritate me.
I take my book bag to the dining room table, which is in his sight range. I hate how he watches me.
I angle my chair away from him, spreading out my textbooks and notes. Windsor Academy makes us do a lot more homework than I’m used to. The other kids have been there since Kindergarten. I’ve been struggling so bad that my mother hauled me to the doctor for some stupid medication that’s supposed to help me focus.
It doesn’t help. Actually, it makes me jittery and my hands shake. Worse, it amplifies the problems I already had with lights being too bright and noises being too loud. Even normal sounds from the other students—snapping gum or a pencil tapping against a desk—sound like popcorn exploding inside my ears. It makes me jolt and twitch. Marcus Green calls me “Spaz,” and some of the other kids are picking it up too.
Randall’s blaring baseball game is driving me nuts. Every crack of the ball, every abrupt roar of the crowd, sets my teeth on edge. Even though I’m not supposed to wear headphones around him, I sneak one of the buds out of my pocket and slip it into my right ear, under my hair.
That helps a little.
I labor away on my chemistry assignment. We’re supposed to draw a diagram of photosynthesis, something I’m actually enjoying. I spend much longer than necessary sketching out the details of the plant cell, filling in the sun, the leaves, and the chloroplast with colored pencils.
Randall hauls himself out of the recliner to get another beer from the fridge. He comes back with two.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask him nervously.
“With Leslie,” he grunts, sinking back down in the chair.
That’s not good. Randall detests Leslie. Every time my mother goes over to Leslie’s house, she comes home tipsy, making raunchy jokes. Last time she ran her car into the corner of our garage.
Leslie is my mother’s oldest friend. They used to work together at The French Maid. My mother told Randall she was a cocktail waitress, but from the pictures in Leslie’s old Facebook albums, I’m pretty sure they were both strippers. This was before I was born.
The longer my mother stays at Leslie’s house, the angrier Randall will become. While I’m trapped here with him.
Once I switch over to math homework, baseball gets even harder to ignore. Knowing it’s a risk, I slip in my other earbud, turning my music up loud to drown out the game.
I’m just starting to grasp the properties of parallelism when my earbuds are wrenched out of my ears.
I leap out of my chair, almost tripping over my feet trying to get away from Randall. He’s holding my headphones by their cord, his eyes so bloodshot and his face so congested that I realize in an instant that he’s quietly been growing drunk while I was working over here, deaf and oblivious.
“I’m trying to talk to you,” he snarls.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, holding up my hands in front of me, helplessly, desperately.
Randall’s fists ball at his sides. I have no idea how inebriated he is, or how angry. He doesn’t drink as much as my mother, but when he does, it can get just as ugly.
Luckily, he’s not yet swaying on his feet.
“You know the rules,” he snarls.
He takes my iPod and locks it in the living room cabinet.
I want to cry.
Who knows how long he’ll keep it in there. I’ll have no music, none at all, until he deigns to give it back to me.
I don’t bother to beg—I already know that doesn’t work.
And now Randall’s out of his chair. Now he’s focused on me.
“Your mother’s obviously not coming home for dinner,” he grunts. “You’re going to have to make it.”
I don’t know how to cook. No one cooks with regularity in this house. Sometimes my mother does it, grudgingly. More often Randall orders in, or we scrounge leftovers out of the fridge.
After rummaging frantically into the cabinets and the fridge, I decide on spaghetti.
Before I’ve even filled the pot with water, Randall is already barking criticism at me from the kitchen doorway.
“That’s not enough water.”
“Why isn’t it boiling yet?”
“No salt? Perfect—assuming you want your spaghetti bland as plaster.”
“Don’t break the noodles, are you fucking stupid?”
He doesn’t tell me what I should be doing. How am I supposed to make the noodles fit into the pot when they’re too long and apparently can’t be broken? Desperately, I poke them with a spoon, trying to get them to sink beneath the bubbling water.
The noodles bend and I’m able to close the lid of the pot. Moments later, it boils over, dousing the stove top in foaming pasta water.
“You fucking idiot!” Randall roars.
He yanks the lid off the pot, turning the heat down.
I want to scream at him to do it himself if he’s such a culinary genius. Because I want to keep my head on my shoulders, I bite my lip until it’s bleeding, hiding my face in the fridge as I search for the shaker of Parmesan cheese.
Randall has lapsed into sullen silence, furiously wrenching the lid off the jar of sauce and dumping it into the pot so hard that it splashes out on the kitchen tiles.
“Clean that up,” he orders.
I have to get down on my hands and knees to mop up the sauce with a damp paper towel. I can feel him watching me crawl around, wiping up every last spatter.
I have a horrible feeling that he’s angry enough to tip that pot of boiling noodles onto my back. As quickly as I can, I finish cleaning and throw away the paper towels.
I set the table for three, hoping, praying, that my mother is on her way home.
My throat is too tight to eat. Randall takes one bite and then spits the noodles out and shoves away his plate.
“Tastes like fucking play-dough,” he snarls. “How much salt did you put in there?”
“I don’t know,” I sob miserably.
He glowers at me, his pale, piggy eyes almost disappearing beneath the heavy shelf of his brow.
“You’re as useless as your mother. The only thing on this earth she’s good at is sucking cock. Did you know that, Mara? Did you know your mother is a world-class cocksucker?”
There’s no answer to this that won’t enrage him. All I can do is stare at my plate, guts churning, hands shaking in my lap.
“How do you think a woman gets good at that?” he demands.
When I remain silent, he slams his fists against the table top, making me jump.
“ANSWER ME!”
“I don’t know,” I say quietly.
“Practice, Mara. So much practice. I should have known the first time she put my cock in her mouth, looking up at me, smiling like a professional. I should have known then she was nothing but a whore.”
The thought of Randall’s wrinkly old cock brings me to the edge of vomiting. I have to swallow down the bile, my eyes fixed firmly on my plate. This is the only form of resistance now—staying quiet. Ignoring him. Not giving him anything that will justify what he actually wants to do.
He knows this, too.
Now we’re at the part of the night where he will do whatever it takes to break me.
He stands up, stalking over to me, looming over me. Invading my space, breathing on the top of my head.
“Is that your plan?” he grunts, each breath coming out in a hot puff that stirs my hair, that makes my stomach churn. He’s heavy and his breathing is even heavier. I can hear it all over the house, anywhere he goes. “I’ve seen your grades. You’re not gonna be a doctor, or a lawyer. I doubt you could bag groceries right.”
He’s leaning over me now. Trying to force me to move or make a sound. Trying to get me to crack.
“No, there’s only one career path for you.” His chuckle is cruel, sending spit flicking out onto my cheek as he bends even closer. “You’ll be sucking cock, morning, afternoon, and evening. Just like your mother.”
He puts his finger in his mouth and wets it with a loud pop. Then he jams it in my ear.
That’s what makes me snap.
I leap out of my chair, already screaming at him, “DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH ME! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOUUUUUUUUU!”
My scream is cut off by Randall’s hand hitting my ear in a slap that sends me flying into the wall just like he did to my mother at their wedding breakfast.
He hits me so hard that I black out. When I sit up, shaking my head, all I can hear is a muffled thunder with a high whine on top of it.
I must have been out a minute because Randall is staring at me with vague alarm, like he was just wondering how deep he’ll have to bury my body in his garden.
“Stop hamming it up,” he grunts, as I grip the edge of the table and attempt to stand.
My head throbs. There’s a sharp pain on the left side of my neck. Wetness, too. I touch my ear. My fingertips come away bright with blood.
Oh my god. If he made me deaf, I’ll fucking kill him.
No, I’ll kill myself. I can’t live without music. It’s all I have.
At that moment, I hear my mother’s key scratching in the lock. Scratching and scrabbling so long that Randall and I both know how drunk she’ll be before she stumbles through the door.
My mother is no longer as beautiful as she once was. She used to brag how well she held her liquor, how she could party all night long and get up as early as she liked in the morning, with hardly a headache.
Time is catching up with her at last. A tube of fat runs around her once-slim waist, stretching the tight dress. Dark circles shadow her eyes. Her hair is no longer long and shining, but frazzled from constant changes in color and length.
She stares at us blearily, the strap of her dress slipping down one shoulder.
“You ate without me?” she says, her voice mushy and loose.
Either she doesn’t notice the blood on my hand, or she’s choosing to ignore it.
Randall’s piggy eyes flit between me and her, as if trying to decide whether to transfer his rage to a new subject.
My mother must intuit the same thing—she sidles up to him, laying a hand on his bicep, looking up into his face and batting her long false eyelashes.
“Should we go upstairs?” she slurs.
I see the struggle on Randall’s face—the offer of sex battling with his undrained rage.
“In a minute,” he says. Then, turning to me, “Get my belt.”
This is so outrageous that I gape at him. He already took my iPod and slammed me into the wall. There’s no way I deserve a whipping on top of that.
Through stiff lips, I say, “You can’t do that anymore. The gym teacher said.”
“The gym teacher said,” Randall mimics me in a baby voice. He points one sausage-like finger in my face. “FUCK your teachers.”
My mother makes a small sound from behind closed lips.
This wouldn’t be her first visit from CPS. Or even her fifth. They’ve been called to our various apartments many times over the years. The end result was a couple of weeks where I had lunch packed for school and somewhat cleaner clothes. Only once was she subjected to drug tests—that made her angrier than anything. We moved again, and our harried social worker never reappeared.
“We don’t want trouble,” she murmurs to Randall.
It’s so rare for my mother to stand up for me that for a moment I feel a slight flush of warmth, the last vestige of an affection that once dominated my entire life. She was everything to me, my only family and my only friend.
Then she says, “Punish her some other way.”
And I remember that I fucking loath her.
They both stand still, thinking.
Randall says to her, “Go get the teddy bear.”
The effect on me is electric. I have no resistance anymore, no dignity.
“NOOOOO!” I howl. “No, I’ll get the belt! Don’t touch him! DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HIM! Please! PLEEEEEEASE!”
Buttons is the only thing I have from my father. I’ve kept him with me through every move, everywhere we went. I’ve never lost him and always kept him safe.
He’s missing one glass eye, and I’ve sewn his rips with mismatched thread. But his warm, nubbly texture is still the most comforting thing in the world when I press him against my cheek.
Randall pins my arms behind me while I thrash and scream. I can already hear my mother’s stumbling steps ascending the staircase. I hear her bumping around in my room, and the thud of her knocking something over.
I’m praying she won’t be able to find him. If I can get up the stairs before Randall, I’ll hide him somewhere. And I won’t tell them where, no matter what they do to me.
She descends a few minutes later. When I see the old bear in her arms I let out a scream that tears my throat.
Randall holds me fast, saying to my mother, “Put him in the grate.”
She opens the fire grate as I scream and beg. I don’t know what I’m saying, only that I’ve never been more pathetic, more sniveling, more weak. And I’ve never hated them as I do in this moment. It’s a white-hot rage, burning me alive from the inside.
My mother douses my teddy bear in lighter fluid. She seems strangely sober as she does it, her drunkenness evaporated, her eyes fixed intently on the bear.
I’m still hoping in some desperate part of my brain that this is all theater. The punishment is scaring me, making me cry.
But I know better than that.
She lights the match, the flame flaring into life with the bitter smell of sulfur. Only then does she hesitate, just for a moment. Probably because of how loud I’m screaming, like I’m being tortured, like I’ll die.
“NOOOOOO! PLEASE PLEASE NOOOOOO!”
“Do it,” Randall says.
She drops the match.
Buttons ignites.
I watch him burn and I burn too, howling with pain that feels physical, like I’ve truly been lit on fire right next to him.
His fur singes away, his cotton ignites. His glass eye cracks.
I’ve never known agony like this. I never knew how much I loved him till this moment.
Randall holds my arms, knowing that I would still lunge away from him and snatch Buttons out of the fire with my bare hands.
He holds me in place until the bear is nothing but a smoking, melted ruin.
Then Randall says, “You’re too old for stuffed animals.”
All the love I had inside of me is turned to hatred. I’d light this whole house on fire if I could. I’d burn them in their beds like they burned my bear.
I turn to my mother.
She’s pretending to be drunk again, eyes half-closed as she sways in place. Refusing to look at me.
Randall lets me return to my room.
I collapse on the bed. Crying so hard that I’m sick, that I’d puke all over this bed if I’d eaten any of that spaghetti.
After twenty minutes or so, I hear them having sex. My mother sounds like an excited chihuahua and Randall grunts like a buffalo.
I hold my pillow over my head, still sobbing.
Hours later, long after dark, my mother brings me a glass of milk.
I’m shaking so hard the bed frame is rattling.
“I need more medicine,” I croak.
I hate it, but when I don’t have it, the withdrawals are even worse.
“It ran out,” she says.
She keeps the bottle in her room. We both know there were thirty pills in it when we refilled the prescription earlier this week. She might have sold them to Leslie, but more likely she’s been taking them herself. She thinks they help her lose weight. Randall has been pinching her belly, telling her she’s getting fat.
“Call the doctor,” I beg. “I can’t wait two weeks.”
“I already called,” she says, the edge of frustration in her voice giving her away. “They won’t refill it early.”
I turn my face toward the wall, still shivering and shaking.
I can feel her sitting behind me, sullen and quiet. My mother knows what Buttons meant to me. But at the same time, she can’t ever be at fault. So it’s impossible that burning him was wrong.
“Randall was pretty mad,” she says at last.
That’s her version of an apology. Shifting the blame squarely on someone else’s shoulders.
“You could have hid him,” I hiss.
That’s not allowed. No one can be a victim except her.
“You know what he would have done to me!” she snaps. “But you don’t care about that, do you? You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You’re selfish. So fucking selfish. You’re the one that made him angry! You think I like coming home to that?”
She goes on in that vein for some time. I stay facing the wall, ignoring her.
She hates being ignored. When she can’t get a response out of me any other way, she falls silent to regroup.
Then, her voice low and soft and entirely sober, she says, “It was just an old bear.”
Now I do turn and face her. She’s wearing a Sailor Moon nightshirt that belongs to me. Her bare legs are tucked under her, below the short hem. In the dim light, she looks young again. Like my earliest memories of her: more beautiful than the prettiest princess in a fairy tale.
Her beauty has no effect on me anymore.
“That was all I had from my father,” I accuse her.
Her snort jolts me.
“That bear wasn’t from your father.”
I stare at her, too numb to understand.
She nods slowly, the edge of her mouth quirking up. “It’s true. I told you that so you’d shut up about him. He didn’t leave you any bear—why would he? He didn’t give a fuck about you.”
I turn back to the wall, waiting for her to leave.
Late in the night, when I know they’re both sleeping, I creep out of bed and rescue the ruins of Buttons from the fireplace. I want to bury him, but not in Randall’s garden. Instead, I walk the six blocks to Percy Park and dig a hole under the rose bushes with my hands.
Then I trudge back home, feeling a level of misery so heavy that I might be standing on the bottom of the ocean with nine thousand pounds of cold, black water on every inch of my skin.
I don’t know what hurts me more—the destruction of my bear, or the loss of the one tiny connection I had to my other parent.
I used to imagine my dad might be thinking about me. Looking for me, even. I hoped he’d take me to a lovely house in some other state. Maybe he’d let me have a kitten. I’d go to school where nobody knew me, where no one knew my mom.
My mother won’t tell me anything about him. She relishes the secret that only she knows, that I can never discover unless she tells me.
Enough time has passed that I no longer think he’ll come find me.
Still, the bear meant something. He meant my father had loved me once, if only for a moment.
I don’t even have that anymore.
When I lay down in bed without Buttons, I’m lonelier than I’ve ever been.
I think to myself, there are 1794 days until my eighteenth birthday.
That’s when I can leave. When I can run far, far away from here.
In school, we learned that fish brought up from the deep pressure of the ocean will explode when they come up into lighter water. They can only stand what they’re used to.
I’m leaving either way. Whether I swim or burst.
Assuming I can survive 1794 more days.
