It’s hot outside for fall. I can tell by the perspiration on my mother’s upper lip and I stare out the window at the asphalt in the parking lot as they talk. It’s the kind of hot that makes shimmery pools of water appear and disappear in the dips and curves of the asphalt. I stare hard, unblinking, turning the puddles into dark pools with no bottom. I fill them with pale fish and gnarled mermaids, imagine translucent hands grabbing at the lips of the pools and pulling up creatures best left in the depths.
“Emma.” My mother is talking to me. Clearly she has said my name several times before I’ve heard it. Her eyes are pooled with unshed tears.
I blink my dry eyes and turn. The doctor whispers something that I don’t catch and then shudders a little. My mother does not see the shudder but the whisper makes her lips go thin.
“They want to do treatments.”
I keep my eyes on hers so she knows I hear her. She is not asking me a question. She is stating a fact.
The doctor leaves the room. Strides out quickly. Folks here are afraid of me. It occurs to me, seeing my mother, that she is afraid of me too.
“Do you want treatments?” my mother asks.
“Will they save me?” I ask. It’s my first sentence in weeks, and it comes up scratchy, possibly from disuse. They had me on a feeding tube. That was painful.
“Yes. They say that radiation should rid the rest of your body of the cells that caused the tumor. It’s the best-case scenario at this point.”
I look my mother in the eyes then and see her hurt. How deep it runs. How it has burned streaks of yellow into her irises and etched lines into her forehead. I see how easy it would be to fix her hurt. I could reach out and hug her or just relax my body so that she could wrap her arms around me. But I know that I am evil, that I invited it in a long time ago. And I wanted to hurt her.
“I don’t want to get better,” I say.
“Emma,” she says. A fat tear slides down her cheek and I want to smack it away. “I need you to try.”
They stripped my bed clean an hour ago so I’m sitting on the bare mattress. They launder the sheets, it seems, hourly, as if this will keep my filth from staining the hospital in some permanent way.
My feet don’t touch the floor; instead, they swing little-girl loose. I’m supposed to get up and walk the room five times a day to regain my strength.
“I can have you declared mentally unfit,” she says. Her voice is barely a whisper. “Considering what you did, you being eighteen now won’t matter. I can make the decisions, but I’d rather you did the right thing for yourself.”
“You’re going to put me in the loony bin?”
“No, they don’t have loony bins anymore,” she says. “That’s not a thing, but I will take over, Emma. I have power of attorney. You need help. I don’t know when things got so bad, but I can do better as your mother now. I can fix this. Are you still—”
“Still what? Suicidal?”
“I was going to say using.”
“Do you mean alcohol? Marijuana? Coke? I wasn’t planning on not doing it, but if you mean dosing up on all three to try to unsuccessfully kill myself, I guess I’ll take a break for a minute. The hospital has given me some better shit anyway.”
“Jesus, Emma. When did you get so selfish?”
“Like father like daughter, I guess.” It was a good call on her part. Selfish. I realized it in a flash right then. I’d imagined myself pathetic, unlucky, evil, but not what I really had become: Completely self-absorbed. Unsympathetic.
“You aren’t your father,” she says but I can tell she isn’t sure.
“I don’t want them to do more things to my body. They’ve done plenty and if you tell them they can now pump poison into me without my permission then…” I say, changing the subject.
“Then what, Emma? And since when do you care what you put in your body? Do you know how many drugs they found in your system?” she asks.
“Three,” we say at the same time.
“That’s right. Three different narcotics, and that’s not counting the alcohol.” The shake in her voice is gone. She looks momentarily angry but it drains out of her as quickly as it arrived. “What if I just tell them to keep at it? To save you whether you like it or not?”
“Well, Denise, I won’t ever forgive you and you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.” Ray always called my mom Denise. She hated it. She wanted to be his mother. I should give her more credit for that. I move my arms to cover my belly, which is sensitive to even the potential of pressure. The row of Frankenstein stitches is fresh.
“I had one baby, three miscarriages, and a dead husband before I turned thirty. You don’t get to quit. You have to keep trying to be happy.”
“You quit on Daddy.” I didn’t know about the miscarriages.
“That’s not fair.”
“You quit on me.”
“Emma,” she says, and her voice cracks in a way I haven’t heard before, as if I’ve reached deep down into her this time. Gotten at her in a way I never have before. “After your father’s accident, I wasn’t right. He was good to you, but he was never good to me. We weren’t good for each other, and to have him die like that before we could do right by each other, well, it was too much for me. I was too young. I should have asked for help.”
In the months after Daddy died, she’d disappear for days. Go into her bedroom and climb under the covers and slip into what could have been a coma. There were days when I thought she was dead, when I had to prove to myself by holding a mirror under her nose that she was still alive.
“You thought you were pregnant, didn’t you?” she asks, interrupting my thoughts. “That’s why you cut yourself like that? Were you trying to abort the baby or something?”
“Something like that,” I say. Explaining to her that it was the opposite, that I wanted to see the baby, hold it, prove to Ray and to myself that it was there, is impossible. The logic of it gone as soon as the drugs left my system. Before that even. When the cut started to burn, reality sliced through everything I’d ingested and shocked my system back into life. Saved my sad little life.
“If you thought you were pregnant, you must have been sexually active.”
I continue to stare at her and she can see her own stubbornness in my face.
“Come on, Emma. You can talk to me about this.”
“Fuck you.” I pull my arms tighter around my belly, thump my feet down onto the floor so that I’m standing. I feel a bit dizzy, the room spins, but I hold my ground. I’m wearing the lousy hospital nightgown they provide once they’ve got you trapped. The kind with the slit up the back and the three ties that won’t stay tied no matter how many knots you put in them. My gown is white with pale blue flowers, and my scabby, surgical wound glares right through the pilled-up cotton.
I hadn’t planned to cut into myself. Ray had gotten ahold of enough coke to either kill us or keep us happy for months. We chose the former, fronting it with weed and chasing it with alcohol. The antidepressants I was on were an added bonus, so I shared a handful of those with Ray too. Somewhere in there with my body buzzing happily along it occurred to me that the doctors were wrong. Pea Baby was real. I could hear it inside of me purring like a kitten. I tried to tell Ray but the words wouldn’t form or he wouldn’t listen, or both, so I found Ray’s pocket knife and opened myself up. The cut, gaping red and warm, weeping the loss of what was never there, woke me up.
“You were nine pounds one ounce when you were born,” my mother is saying. “So healthy. They took you away and cleaned you up. I didn’t see you for hours and when they brought you back I told them they’d brought me the wrong baby. I had a fit. You seemed too small. Too red. Your father had to calm me down.”
Silence.
“Later I was so angry at myself for not recognizing you. What kind of mother doesn’t know her own child? I couldn’t forgive myself, and now here I am again. I don’t recognize you, Emma. I haven’t in years and I don’t know what to do to
get back to you. I’d wish it different for you from day one if I could. From the moment I found out you were growing inside of me, but I can’t.”
“I don’t need you,” I say, and even as I say it I can hear how absurd it sounds, and as if to make it less unbelievable, I add, “I wish you’d died and Daddy had lived.”
Her body stiffens. I see her take three deliberate breaths before speaking.
She says, “You did a lot of damage to yourself, Emma.”
“I don’t remember most of it.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Ray was my memory.”
“Well, he’s gone now. What’s your plan?” she asks. “If it isn’t to get well or forgive me for whatever heinous acts you think I’ve done, what will you do next?”
“I’m leaving.”
“That’s it? That’s your big plan.”
“Ray and I wanted to travel. I’ll do it alone. I want to be alone.”
“You wanted to travel? Well, why didn’t you just do that? Seems to me that you wanted to ruin yourselves. Ray was, at least, successful,” she says, and then turns pale. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I’ll travel and kill myself. The radiation is supposed to ensure I live, right? Well, no radiation. Just me on the road till death do us part.”
Before I can think to stop her, she moves forward and yanks up the gown. Cold air rushes in. My wound flashes red.
“This, baby girl,” she says, and for a minute, I think she’s going to slap me with the hand that isn’t holding up the hospital gown. “This cannot be run away from or fixed. You have to start again. You have to forgive yourself and make this right.”
I smack her hand away.
All the fight in me has worked its way out through my pores to shimmer and slide like a fog around my mother and me.
“I loved him,” I say, and she studies me. I hold her gaze and I see when she gets it. Her eyes crinkle and then her face falls. I expect disgust or rage but she just looks sad.
“You mean Ray? You and Ray? That would never have worked and you know it.”
“Why couldn’t it have worked?”
“Honey.”
“You did not know him.” My throat feels tight, the burn from the harm I’ve done to myself flares up like fire.
“Frank and I knew more than he thought we did.”
“Don’t talk about him! You didn’t know him like I did. I did. I knew him.” I pound my fist to my breastbone as hard as my tired body will let me.
She sits next to me on the bed, defeated. Our arms touch.
“I need to leave, Mom. I need to get out of here. It’s not your fault or maybe it is, but it’s probably just my fault. I don’t know how to be normal or happy or sober.”
We sit quietly. She leans against me.
“Ray always wanted to see the Badlands,” I say. “I’ll stop using. I’ll go there and it will help me figure out what I need to do next.”
“I think you should stay,” my mother says. “Get help.”
“I know.”
She rises from the bed and I can tell she wants to say something else. Maybe I love you or I won’t let you go, but she says nothing.
A nurse comes in to take my mother’s place. They pass each other in the doorway as if they haven’t even seen each other.
I can feel where my mother’s arm sat in contact with mine. Her touch sits with me while the nurse takes my vitals.
“You need rest,” she says. “The wound won’t heal and you’ll have those stitches a lot longer.”
“I don’t mind,” I say, breaking my rule to never speak to any of them. I haven’t seen her before but she still looks surprised to hear my voice. Someone has told her about the crazy girl in 801 who tried to abort her own cancer as if a tumor and a fetus are the same damn thing. Didn’t her brother die too? they’d all whisper. Did she kill him? Maybe he tried to kill her? I saw them gossiping about it, whispering outside my door and shivering as if I’m not just tragic but also dangerous. A serial killer already made.
“What an odd thing to say. You don’t mind?”
I don’t answer.
Ray and I were always touching when we were alone. Our backs pressed to each other as we faced away from each other on the bed. Our arms linked as we shared headphones. We considered ourselves one body, one pile. The warmth of him near me like a child’s blanket or a teddy bear. He loved me.
“Don’t cry,” the nurse says. “Jesus. You’re crying. Stop it now.” The nurse pats me too harshly on the back, as if she’s confused about whether she is burping me or comforting me. “I’ll get you something.”
She disappears briefly and returns to press two pills into my palm. I tell myself that at least it’s not alcohol or weed or cocaine. It’s not the same using I’ve done before.
I pull it together and stop crying, mostly to make the nurse feel better.
“You want me to see if I can catch your mother for you?”
I shake my head and lie back on my pillow.
“I’ll get your bed made up again for you and I’ll get you something else to help you sleep.”
I curl up on the bare bed. I pull pieces of Ray into my mind. I’ve been practicing. Teaching myself how to bring him back.
I begin with his smell. All of it. The sweetness of him and the sweat. Then I remember how he felt against me. His hair on my neck. His hands wrapped around me to rest on my belly. He hooks one thumb into the waistline of my jeans. Then I animate him. Feel his chest rise, his breath on my neck. I scrunch my eyes tighter and feel him twine his legs through mine. I work harder still and reach back with my hand to feel the rip in his jeans. I reach through and touch his soft thigh. His body. My body. We are the same.
“I love you, Gobs.”
He lifts his head to whisper into my ear, his breath tickling like feathers. “Rest now, Emma. I’m here.”
I let myself drift.
NINE
The snow is deeper than it looks. My boots sink in high enough to catch its chill. The sun ricochets off the white ground.
“The barn’s not far,” Earl says over his shoulder. “It’s where I stay most of the time, and it’s where George keeps the truck and all the winter supplies.”
Earl tied on his butterfly mask again before we left the diner. When he turns to speak to me, the sunlight bounces off its crinkles and folds, making him look like he’s caught fire.
“You don’t have to keep your mask on,” I say. “I’ve seen what’s underneath. It doesn’t bother me.”
“It’s for safety,” he says, and I don’t ask or argue. I know what it feels like to want to hide. Such scars are evidence of a very private emptying of the soul.
Earl stops. I run right into him and fall backward in the snow.
I wrestle myself up, brushing snow from my butt. My hands hum with cold, but they aren’t shaking. I have not thought about Vicodin in some time.
“Where’d your scar come from?” he asks.
“I was sick. Before I went on the run. I told you that, didn’t I?”
“Sick how? The flu?”
I almost say yes, just so he can believe this simple thing.
“No, no. Cancer. I had a hysterectomy.”
“What’s it mean?”
“They took out my uterus and ovaries,” I say. This might help her depression as well, the doctor told no one in particular before I slipped under.
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t have babies,” I say, as if it is a simple fact like I can’t roll my tongue or My left foot is bigger than my right. The permanence of the fact that my body has been emptied out, however, never fails to make me feel like there is a dark, empty spot in me. A hollow place. All my remaining organs shrinking back from that dark, empty spot, nothing moving in to warm or replace what was or might have been.
“Is that bad?”
“Let’s just keep walking,” I say. The world around us is monotone and bleak. Its harshness is wo
rking its way through the layers of my clothes and into the already deep cracks in my lips, grooving them deeper. I’ve hung on to George’s ski mask, and I know I should put it on. I can’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I trade it from hand to hand so that I can wrap the knit around each fist for warmth.
“There’s good stuff in my barn,” Earl says, not noticing my tone. I’m grateful for the interruption to my thoughts. “George always brought the most back before the snows. Extra clothes. Tons and tons of food. This storm is too early so we aren’t ready, but he did just make a regular run. We can use the gas for your car. We might not even need what’s in the truck.”
“She’s a van, not a car. And you should call her Veronica,” I say. Earl giggles. He sounds like a little boy, looks like a little boy even now after I’ve seen what body he was born into.
“George said we were done here. He brought back more gas than usual. Gonna burn it down for the assurance.”
“Insurance.”
“I said insurance.”
“I thought we had to siphon gas from the truck?”
“I didn’t say that word.”
“‘Siphon’? No, but it means get gas out of the truck. You need to stop lying to me.”
“I wasn’t lying.”
“Well, we’re on the same team now so tell me the full truth.”
What a hypocrite I am. Tell me the full truth, I say to him as if I’ve ever done that or even ever thought it to be the right thing. What would I say to him that would be truthful? I found your mother rotting in the cellar next to the cans of gas I need to get out of here. Want to step over her body and help me grab a couple? Truth is not kind or necessary.
“We are on a team?” he asks. “The Emma and Earl team?”
“Why not?” I stumble and catch myself with my hands. My fingers dig into the snow. I’d pay big money for gloves right now, but all I have are my sleeves and George’s old ski mask. I pull one sleeve down over my frozen fingers and wrap the hat more purposefully over the other hand. I deserve the discomfort even as it turns into pain. “Are there full gas cans in the barn?” I ask, willing myself to stop thinking so much.
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