I open the oven and carefully slide the child inside. I feel as if I am going to be sick. A knock at the door. I have to answer it before my mother wakes up, angry. I run to open it, glancing once more over my shoulder at the tiny coffin in the oven.
It’s the mailman. He has never come to the door before, let alone rang the bell that hasn’t worked since before I was born. The eating house, I think. It’s up to something. My face must show my surprise. He rubs a hand sheepishly across his face and clears his throat.
“It wouldn’t fit in the mailbox,” he says. For the first time I notice the package in his hands. I make to tell him that it’s not ours. We don’t get packages, but he reads my mother’s name off the label, so I unlatch the chain.
He nods at me before he walks away, and now I am holding a different box in my hands, my knees knocking beneath my white dress. There is a ball of tension inside me. It pulls tighter and tighter until I walk back into the house. I carry the box to my mother’s door. I can hear her stirring inside her bedroom, so I leave it there for her to find, and tiptoe downstairs and out of the house.
When I talk to my father for the first time, I think he’s going to fall backward down the stairs. I wait for him near the front door, on the usual night his cherry red Mustang pulls along the curb. He doesn’t see me when he comes in, carrying a brown paper shopping bag, ignoring the lightless room to his left, which is usually empty. I sit on a threadbare piece of furniture, left from my grandmother’s days, and wait for him to reach the stairs. I want to observe him without him observing me. When he’s two up, I say his name. The sound of startled paper lets me know he’s jumped in surprise.
“Howard Delafonte,” I say. He stays where he is, the back of his heels hanging off the second-to-last stair. “I imagine I get my shoulders from you. Did you play football in college? Shit, what a waste if you didn’t. I don’t really know anything about football. I don’t have a television, you know. Oh yes, you do know, don’t you? Was that your awesome idea?”
I hear him setting down his bag, while the floorboards creak overhead. I imagine that my mother is the one with her ear pressed to the walls now. Too frightened to put a stop to our meeting, but perhaps a little curious as well.
He comes to stand in the living room, his eyes searching for me among the shadows. When he sees my form, sitting quietly on the couch, he clears his throat and walks over to turn on the floor lamp.
“May I call you Daddy? Or does it sound odd coming from a white trash girl like me?”
He says nothing. There is a greasy yellow light between us now.
“Never mind,” I say, standing up. “I’ll stick with Howard. Or Mayor Delafonte. That’s what everyone else calls you, isn’t it?” I get up and walk around the couch ‘til we are standing face to face. It’s the first time I’ve been this close to him, and I can actually see his features. He looks like me: broad face, eyes spaced too far apart, so lightly blue they almost blend into the whites. He’s ugly, and strange, and striking, and I want to hate him, but I can’t, because he has the same flaxen hair that I have. It falls in the same odd way around his eyes. I look into his eyes, hoping to see contrition, a fondness he harbored without words. But what I see there is fear of me. Fear of what I can say about him—how my words, if directed the right way, can reach his friends at the country club, his cow-faced wife at home who never did die of her illness, his legitimate children at their Ivy League colleges. The thousands of voters … the news.
It’ll be out of the bag now, Papa, I want to say. Except I don’t make empty threats, and I have no intention of ratting out the secret life of Howard Delafonte.
I wait. I’ve daydreamed about this moment for so long, the moment my father says honest to God words to me. But, he says nothing. He’s waiting for me to speak, and without that he has nothing to say. I feel a crushing truth that can’t be reversed or unseen. It’s a black hole that starts near my heart and moves outward. I thought that when I met my father—the obscure man who I pictured having a broad, smiling face—he would embrace knowing me. He’d be delighted at this new relationship prospect, the chance to know his offspring, a girl who got excellent grades and was capable of taking care of herself. In my daydreams, my father never rejects me. I am ill prepared for this reality. He has nothing to say. When I realize I’m not going to get what I want, which at this point is a simple acknowledgment, I take a step back. My insides feel oily. There are too many paths of disappointment, too many ways that this can make me disappear.
“All right,” I say. And then again, “All right.”
My backing off has unsettled him. I see his Adam’s apple bobbing around his throat. Say something.
“Give me your watch.” I am startled by my request. Probably more so than he is. I can see it glinting out of the corner of my eye, that heavy thing I once held in my hand. I hadn’t known then that it belonged to my father, yet I felt strangely drawn to it. He doesn’t move, still doesn’t say anything. It’s a standoff—a battle of wills. He’s determined not to acknowledge me, even with his words. I stand there for a few more seconds before I am exhausted. I walk backwards to the front door, never taking my eyes from him. Committed to getting one last look at the man who was responsible for making me, yet responsible for nothing else.
The night air hits my shoulders. I feel the rain before I see it. My last glance before the door shuts is of my father, Howard Delafonte, walking back up the stairs, unperturbed.
The box, the box, the box, I think. Did the person inside belong to him? I go back inside to check on it—kneeling down in front of the oven and flicking on the oven light that has miraculously not yet burned out. It’s there. He or she, I think, resting my forehead against the door.
I go to Judah’s because I can’t stand to be within the same walls as them. He’s sitting by the window, his usual spot. I don’t bother to go inside. I slide down the wall until I am sitting directly beneath the window. I can hear him messing with something that sounds like a plastic wrapper.
“I have Cheetos,” he says.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You don’t have to be hungry to eat Cheetos, just depressed.”
“I’m not…” and then my voice drops off, because who am I kidding? I was born depressed. “I don’t eat that shit anymore.”
“Well la-ti-da, fancy pants. Didn’t know you were a health nut. Excuse me while I eat my orange-coated shit.”
I smile. All of a sudden I feel like Cheetos, because Judah makes me want things I have no place wanting.
“Judah, you suck.”
I hear him move away from the window, the clean squeak of his wheels on the linoleum. Then the door opens, and I feel something hit my arm. Judah leans out the door a little, and I catch sight of his wet hair.
Then the door closes, and he’s back at his post.
I reach down for what hit me. It’s a Ziploc bag of mini carrots. I smile as I open it. That’s more like it.
“We are both eating orange-colored food. I feel all close to you and shit.”
“And shit,” he says. And then,“Why you all sad and shit, Maggie?”
“Eh, just life. You know.”
“I know,” he agrees. “But sometimes it’s still beneficial to talk about it and shit.”
“And shit,” I say. “I met my dad tonight. He’s the worst kind of cracker jack loser lobster.”
“I’ve never met a cracker jack loser lobster. Is that like an asshole?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Exactly.”
“You know,” says Judah. “I know you’ve never met my dad, but he’s kind of a cracker jack loser lobster, too. He left my mom because he didn’t want kids. Didn’t even come see me at the hospital when I was born. Sent her the child support check every month though. The first time I met him was after my first surgery. He felt guilty and decided to start being a dad to his cripple son. Sometimes I wonder if he would have contacted me if I didn’t get the tumor. Sometimes I’m even grateful to the tumor f
or giving me my dad. It makes my mom’s life easier … the help. And he’s all right. But, I always feel like I’m disappointing him.”
“I don’t have anyone to disappoint,” I say. “That’s nice, I guess.”
“You couldn’t disappoint someone if you tried,” Judah says.
The silence that follows is a black hole. It sucks all of the air from the planet … or maybe just my lungs. I burst into tears. Girl tears. Foul, weak, stereotypical tears. I rub them away immediately, smearing them all over my palms, then rubbing my palms on the legs of my pants. I can feel Judah watching me through the screen that covers the window. I know that if it weren’t there, he’d reach down and touch me. That makes me feel better. Knowing that someone cares enough. Everyone should have someone who cares enough.
“Maggie,” he says. “People—our dads, our moms, our friends—they are so broken they don’t even know that most of what they do reflects that brokenness. They just hurt whoever is in their wake. They don’t sit and think about what their hurt is doing to us. Pain makes humans selfish. Blocked off. Focused inward instead of outward. “
What he’s saying makes sense. But the potency of it hurts nonetheless.
“Just tell me one thing,” he says. “Does your heart still beat … with the ache and pain there? Does it still beat?”
“Yes,” I say.
“That’s because humans are built to live with pain. Weak people let their pain choke them to a slow, emotional death. Strong people use that pain, Margo. They use it as fuel.”
When I go back to the eating house, I find his Rolex on the kitchen table. Tossed like the first day I found it in my mother’s bedroom.
“Fuck you,” I say, but I carry it to my room and hide it under the floorboards anyway.
I WAKE UP WITH MY PAJAMAS DAMP, and my hair stuck to my forehead. Before I have the chance to swing my feet over the side of the bed, my mother starts screaming. I run to her room, still disoriented, and fling open her door to find her standing at the foot of her bed, naked, her robe pooling around her feet. When she sees me, she points to the far side of the bedroom. I step around her, swiping at the hair falling in my face, almost tripping over the junk she has piled everywhere.
“What?! What is it?!” I ask.
My eyes search the darkness, seeing nothing, before I reach for her drapes and yank them open. Dust spirals in the air as light rushes into the room, hungry to devour the darkness. My mother lets out a little mewl of pain.
“Vampire,” I say under my breath. But then my breath is yanked from my lungs as I stare at the bloody mess in the corner of the room.
I look at my mother, who is clutching her swollen stomach, rocking back and forth. I now notice the bloodstains on her hands and legs that I hadn’t seen before. Shivering in the bright light, the blood on her pale skin looks garish and frightening.
“What is that?” I whisper.
She doesn’t answer me. I take a few steps closer. My hand flies to my mouth as my esophagus swells with vomit. “What have you done?!” My voice rumbles through the small space. I sound demonic as I drop to my knees in front of the baby. A baby. Can you call it that? Tinier than anything I have ever seen, its skin is purple, matted with blood and a foamy white substance. I touch it, pull back, touch it again. No pulse, no breathing. It’s too little. It—a girl. I groan and rock on my heels. How had she hidden it? How had I not seen? A billowing red robe. She no longer asked me to stay with her when she bathed. Had she done this on purpose? Rid herself of the baby. The answer is on her face, relief mixed with the pain. A baby, a little girl. I want to pick her up, carry her somewhere warm and safe.
My mother, gasping for breath and bleeding profusely, falls to the ground behind me. I take one last look at the little girl in the corner and walk out of the room.
I take my time walking to Judah’s house. Delaney has a phone. My mother has a cell phone; I’ve always assumed it’s how she makes her appointments with her various male clients, but there’s a passcode on it. I’m not sure if it will let me call the ambulance. And I want her to die. By the time I reach Judah’s gate, I am sobbing. Delaney opens the door. The smile falls from her face when she sees me. I’m sobbing so hard I can’t get her to understand what I’m saying. I point to the cordless, and she runs to get it.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
Suddenly, I am sober of the grief I was feeling. Sober enough to summon words, thick and clumsy.
“My mother,” I say. “She’s … had a miscarriage. I’m afraid she might bleed to death.” I hand the phone back to Delaney, who looks at me in shock, then repeats my address into the receiver. I walk home, soulless.
The ambulance comes; its wail cuts through the warm Wessex day like a thunderstorm, calling people to their windows and doors. I sit on the step and wait as the paramedics pound up the stairs to my mother’s bedroom. I don’t know if she will leave the eating house alive or dead. After I leave Delaney’s, I don’t go back upstairs. The paramedics leave.
They come to see my mother’s body—two men in navy blue uniforms with stars on their chests. Policemen. I want to clean away the blood on her face and hands, but they tell me to leave it. The morgue will take care of all of that after the autopsy. They’re asking me questions, wanting to know if I’m the one to contact about the autopsy, and if I’ll be making arrangements for her funeral.
“The autopsy?” I ask in a hollow voice.
“Standard procedure. You need one to be able issue a death certificate,” one of the cops tells me.
I look at the bottles of pills next to her bed, overturned and empty.
“My mother wanted to be cremated,” I tell them. My mother wanted no such thing. Or maybe she did, but she never told me. I don’t want to deal with her body—coffins and gravestones. Give her back to me as ash in an urn, and I’ll be happy. They ask me how old I am.
“Eighteen,” I tell them. They ask to see my driver’s license, but I don’t have one. I show them my school ID, and they look almost disappointed that they can’t cart me off to a group home. They won’t be putting me in the system tonight, or any other. I’ve never been so grateful to not be a minor. They hand me a stack of papers, some brochures for funeral homes and crematoriums. There is one with a flower on the cover that is for a grief support group. I watch the police talk to the two guys from the morgue who have come for their bodies, leaning against the rotted siding of the eating house. Judah finds me there, his face drawn and concerned. “The morgue is here to pick up the bodies.”
“My mom told me,” he says. “She wants you to come spend the night at our house.”
I look past him to the bad people house. All of the bad people are outside, drinking beer and waiting for the body bag. Some of them are shirtless; a man and a woman are kissing by the back door, coming up for air every few to look toward the eating house.
“That’s the difference between the rich and poor,” Judah says, following my eyes. “The rich peek through their drapes to see the neighborhood tragedy, while the poor don’t try to hide the fact that they’re looking.”
“Thank you,” I say. “But I’d prefer to stay here.”
“I’ll stay with you,” he says quickly. “Just let me wheel home to get some of my shit.”
I think about saying no, but, in the end, the idea of sleeping in the eating house frightens me. I nod. I watch him go, the muscles in his arms pressing against his T-shirt as they work the wheels of his chair. He stops when he reaches the bad people house. A couple guys swagger up to where he’s stopped, giving him daps and offering him a beer.
Everyone likes that goddamn cripple.
I smile a little, but then my mother is wheeled out the door, and I have to use the eating house to hold myself up. There is a smaller bag for the baby. The second of the two morgue technicians carries that one out in his hands. He has gloves on, and he carries her, slightly extended from his body like an offering for some god who eats dead babies. It’s her, that litt
le baby girl, who I’ll grieve for in the coming days. A child, wanted by her half-dead sibling, murdered by her already dead mother.
When they are gone, I go into the house to clean the mess the bodies left behind. The eating house is quiet. I wait for the grief, but it doesn’t come. I want to feel something so I know I’m still human. But, I don’t know how to grieve someone I didn’t know. I knew Nevaeh. I didn’t know my mother.
Delaney comes to help me, carrying buckets of hot water and Pine-Sol up the stairs. We work without talk, using my mother’s sheets as rags, sopping up the blood until they are stained, and the smell of pine pervades the house. We carry the buckets outside, dumping the pink water into the grass. I hug Delaney, an ungainly hug, to thank her for not making me do that alone. Her eyes are pink-rimmed when she steps back. Her lips trembling. They share the same plumpness as Judah’s lips, but hers are not sensual like his. They look almost clumsy now as she struggles to know what to say.
“No one should have to do that,” she whispers. Her hair is damp and sticking to her face. I can see Judah in her features—the broad forehead and graceful slope of her nose.
“You children suffer too much.”
As she walks up Wessex, I watch her, thinking about what she said. Children. Suffer. Yes, maybe more than adults. That’s where we become broken, in our youth. And then we wear it like a shroud for the rest of our lives.
I name the baby Sihn, because she bore the sins of her mother and died for it.
I drag the big, wooden ramp from Judah’s porch over to the eating house, and set it over the steps. When I push him up the makeshift ramp, it wobbles and bends in the middle like it’s going to crack in two. It’s Judah’s first time in the eating house. I leave the door open, letting the light stream across the living room, and I suddenly feel self-conscious of all the rubbish. Not literal rubbish, just the rubbish of my life—the old oldness. The damp dampness, the poor poorness.