Parasite Life

by Victoria Dalpe

  Then he pulled out the big guns—he thought I wasn’t responsible enough to be a mother, that I wasn’t mature enough. I stood up. I know this sounds weird but I could almost feel him in my head trying to manipulate me. And weirder still, I felt like he’s been doing it to me all along.

  His touch, his voice, all turned my stomach in a way they never had before. I could see he was lying, that none of his reasons were the real reason. I demanded the truth. He wouldn’t answer, so I turned to leave.

  A few steps from the door he grabbed my arm. Hard. He slammed me against the wall. I have never in my life been so scared as at that moment. He was nearly nose to nose with me, eyes wild. I begged him to let me go and he said no. I started to cry. He wants to kill me. There was malicious violence in his eyes, in the set of his jaw, in the crushing grip of his hand on mine.

  My tears must have gotten to him, though, because he abruptly let go and stepped back. I just stood there crying and scared. After a long pause, he told me that this baby would kill me. That if I survived the pregnancy, which itself would be a miracle, then the baby would be my undoing. That was the weird word he used—undoing. He said if I had the baby, it would be my problem and mine alone. That he wasn’t responsible for what happened.

  And then Hugh begged me one last time to just have the abortion so that everything could go back to normal.

  To normal? How could we ever possibly do that?

  I left.

  September 3rd

  I just reread my last entry and it got me crying all over again. I haven’t been back to see Hugh and I won’t return his calls. He came by the apartment a few times with flowers as if that would mean anything and Gina threatened to call the cops on him. I’ve barely been able to get out of bed, but I’ve made my decision.

  I called Hugh and left a message on his machine that I’d had the abortion, and that everything would be fine. He called back but I let it go to messages. His relief chilled me. He told me I wouldn’t regret this choice, and that it just wasn’t the right time. He apologized for overreacting. He wanted to take me to dinner, to apologize, and to give me the money to cover the procedure. . . . Quite the gentleman. I didn’t return the call.

  Then I called Dad, told him I was coming up to stay with him for a while. That I wanted to make sure he was doing okay and I wanted to help him through the chemotherapy. He sounded so old and frail on the phone that I couldn’t bear to tell him about the baby.

  I’m so scared right now. I remember Mom, bald and thin, the wounds that wouldn’t heal, the stomach that could barely keep water down. I don’t know if I can stand to watch another parent die of cancer.

  How could everything be so good and then suddenly be so bad? I just don’t know how to feel anymore. Gina thinks I’ve gone insane. She doesn’t want me to go to Dad’s. She thinks it’s the worst idea. I tried to explain to her: Dad’s sick, I’m pregnant, I’m broke, and I lied to Hugh so I can’t be in the city. She just doesn’t understand why I need to have this baby. I guess I don’t either. It’s like my body is on autopilot, and this baby has already taken the wheel. Maybe that’s just biology, and how all pregnancies are. It’s all very irrational. I mean, my life’s just fallen into place, the stepping stones all laid out, the opportunities, the (not so) great relationship, everything. But, and I can only admit this here in my diary, I can’t give up this baby. I try to picture getting up on that table, spreading my legs, letting them cut it out and I can’t. It’s like it, the fetus, won’t let me. Now isn’t that crazy? How could everything I ever wanted turn to straw in a matter of weeks?

  Doesn’t matter. I’m going. To be with Dad, to give this kid inside me a fighting chance.

  X.

  It was almost dawn. I stared at my mother’s words for a long time. I wanted to read on, but my eyes ached, and my stomach was squeezed into a fist of nerves. I understood how she felt at the moment she wrote that last entry. I too had a monkey’s paw wish that had gone sour. I wanted the diary to fill in the spaces, but more than anything it opened gaps wider.

  I stood and stretched, my back popping. So, my mother had been in a relationship with a man who was biting her and drinking her blood. That explained the scars everywhere for sure. He’d also been terrified of her having a child, namely me. He’d warned her that having me would be her undoing, a flowery and strange warning. And now she was downstairs dying. He was right. His predictions had come true, and I looked to be following in his footsteps without knowing he existed. A silent fear that I didn’t dare give voice to rose up, an image of Sabrina beneath me, my mouth to her throat. I weighted it down with a mound of stones and left my room. Tommy slunk from one of the smaller middle bedrooms, meowing loudly for breakfast, startling me. I patted his head and picked him up as I passed my mother’s bedroom.

  My mother was where I’d left her, but I couldn’t go in just yet. My emotions were swirling. There was a temptation to erase it all, to pretend the last three days had never happened and just go on from where I’d left off. I watched her from a crack in the door, the bedroom dimly lit by a seam of light between the curtains. She was bundled in her blankets, her pale skin deeply lined and shadowed. Her hair a thin puff of cotton candy, her rheumy eyes shiny in the scant light. Forty years old . . .

  If she’d never met Hugh, if she’d never had me, what would her life have been like? She was a talented painter, she had friends and a life. Happy. She’d have been happy. I closed my mother’s door and went to the kitchen to start a very early breakfast since I was too wired to sleep.

  Once the water for oatmeal was heating and the coffee was burbling, I plopped down into a chair, fists pressed to my eyes. I wanted desperately to not feel bad for myself, but I’d never been more conflicted, never felt more unwanted. Obviously, my mother had had me, since here I was, and it was as horrific as Hugh had implied. But how much of that was self-fulfilling prophecy? How much of that was an isolated, unbalanced artist trying to raise a child on her own? And if illness ran in the family, it wasn’t too out-there to think that there would be a combination of postpartum depression and complicated health issues. I’d believe my mother went mad and was riddled with cancer more than that she’d had an affair with a vampire. . . .

  And there it was. The word I’d been hiding from all this time. It came with a slippery, nauseous feeling. Vampire. Vampire. Vampire. Vampires weren’t real. They were fairy-tale monsters.

  But there was no question that I had bitten Sabrina. That Hugh had bitten my mother, over and over.

  While the oatmeal cooked, I washed the dishes, wiped the counters and table. It did little good. This poor old house needed a bulldozer more than a mop. The floor sagged, the sink leaked, the drafts caused wind to scream through. I stared out the window at the woods, desperately wanting out of my head. I focused on the barren, gnarled trees and angry churning sky. Anytime now it would be winter. And the fields would be covered with white.

  I gathered my mother up, changed her, and brought her down to the parlor. Once seated and blanketed I brought out her breakfast. Instead of fleeing back to the kitchen, I sat with her by the stove. The moments ticked on, the scrape of spoon against bowl the only sound between us. It yawned wide, the oceans of unsaid things, repressed anger, and a lifetime of disappointments. Mine, hers, it was hard to find where one began and the other ended, our lives braided tightly in a sad, silent symbiosis. Deciding to go for broke I cleared my throat. Her eyebrows squeezed together, just once, so I knew I had her attention. I turned to her.

  “I went up into your studio yesterday.”

  I waited and watched her face. No response. She watched the firelight in the stove, I watched her. The clock ticked in the corner. Why lie? Even having the evidence of the paintings and journal, I was a coward. I scrutinized her ancient-looking, empty face, tried to reconcile it with the girl in the photos and journal. Tried to understand her choice to move up her to her father’s house and have me, giving up everything she cared for. I stared at my hands, nails b
lunt, fingers long. Not my mother’s hands. Hugh’s apparently. I steeled myself and pressed on:

  “The paintings in the attic, of me as a monster . . . hurt.”

  Still nothing.

  “And I found your hidden journal. I hoped it would give me some context. Help me understand who you are, why we live the way we do.”

  This got a reaction. When I said journal her face contorted, the sides of her mouth pulled down like they were fish-hooked. She nodded solemnly, and with one shaky hand she pushed up her sleeve revealing her forearm, mottled with scars and ropey veins. She slowly lifted it to me. When I didn’t take her arm, she frowned, easing her hand back into her lap, her gaze back to the fire in the stove.

  “Why did you let him do this to you?”

  My mother swallowed audibly and looked distressed. The emotion surprised me. I had the fleeting urge to take her hand, offer comfort. One tear glinted on her face, hovering on her waxy cheek. Time stretched, her silently crying, while I tried not to fidget and demand answers. She cleared her throat. It was loud and phlegmy, no doubt a challenge since it’d been two years since she’d truly spoken. I waited expectantly. She swallowed again, looked up at me. Her eyes intense, focused on mine, and unnervingly clear.

  “If you still don’t know, you’re blind,” she rasped.

  I nearly fell to the floor. It had been years, actual years, since this woman had said that many words. Her voice sounded like storm winds cutting through drafty houses. Her fetid breath still hovered in the air between us long after she spoke. And this was what I got? I wanted to probe, to ask more questions, to actually have a conversation. But her eyes were clouding over, her head slowly turning back toward the fire. Dismissed.

  I jumped up fast, the urge to shake her, or slap her overwhelming.

  “If you still don’t know, you’re blind? What the hell does that mean?”

  Nothing. Not even a blink. My mother had retreated into her head again, to wherever she spent her days, escaping this life she’d built. I waited a few beats. Finally, after asking, shouting, begging with no response, I stormed out of the room. I was honestly scared of what I might do if I stayed.

  My hands trembled. Two years of total silence, and now this. My mother was as inscrutable as a sphinx. There was no questioning the blatant hatred that filled her eyes when she’d said those words. I had been a fool all these years, cleaning, cooking and slaving. Enduring the quiet loathing, the loneliness. All of it for nothing.

  If I didn’t know why I should not have been born, then I was blind? Bitch. Nasty, evil old bitch. Was it my fault she got involved with a fucked-up man, a wannabe vampire, who didn’t even want his baby? Was it my fault that my mother decided to have that baby on her own, isolated, and poor, without a support system? Was it my fault her parents were dead, that she had no friends, that she was sick?

  I paced like a caged animal. No, it wasn’t my fault, but that was the universe for you. It was intrinsically unfair. I would never get an apology, and I would never get the answers I needed from my mother. There was no justice. I was a child of spite. Hugh had controlled my mother, and she’d had me to prove she could. My mother had molded all of her anger and disappointment into a daughter-sized shape.

  I was in the kitchen breathing heavily, my anger looking for an outlet. I glanced at the stove, the temptation to turn on the gas and just fucking leave this place beckoning. The black thing in me, the snake beneath my skin, demanded restitution and violence. Destruction. Pain.

  But it was futile, and a cold truth burrowed out from deep inside me: I had no one else. My mother hadn’t ever wanted me, not really. I now knew my father wasn’t some Prince Charming, but instead something much darker.

  If I weren’t terrified of what would happen to me, I’d put my mother in a nursing home, let the state take her right then. Or if I found her dead tomorrow morning, fetal and stiff, cold in the dawn light, I wouldn’t even feel sad, I would feel free.

  “If you still don’t know, you’re blind.” I repeated this to myself, looking out the window at the backyard. The rusty swing set was moving in the breeze. I could picture myself a young girl sitting on it, alone, whiling away the hours.

  But my mother assumed I knew something from that damn journal, something that would explain why she hated me so. So the only answer I would get would be to finish it.

  I was so tired.

  In my room, the ghost of Sabrina was everywhere. I could picture her spinning in my desk chair, dancing, sitting with me on the bed. My breath hitched. I wanted her back. I wanted a life where I wasn’t on the outside looking in. And if I couldn’t have Sabrina, or any sort of normal life, then I needed to face that. I needed to know why, even if it hurt.

  I pulled out the journal in a vain attempt to solve the sphinx’s riddles.

  XI.

  November 3rd

  Hello, old friend. Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve written. I guess I just haven’t had the energy. It’s funny, since I’ve never been one to keep a journal, and always thought there was something kind of sad about dumping all your secrets into a book. Something egotistical at its core. But I’ve come to understand something over these past few months. Mainly that I literally have no one else to talk to. I can’t go to a therapist. They’ll think I’m crazy, delusional. I can’t tell my father, he’s too fragile. It’s only me, alone.

  It’s amazing how quickly you become alone. I had a life, and now it’s all gone. I can’t even tell you exactly when it went, really, but I need to vent. I need to write, or I’m afraid of what I’ll do.

  I don’t want to do this alone. But that’s the choice I made, and I’m stuck with it now, I guess. And I don’t want this child. A part of me, a big part, doesn’t understand why I don’t just go and do it. Get rid of it. It all sounds so simple. But, and here’s the strange thing, even though I want to make the appointment, I can’t. It’s as if this baby already has some control of my feelings and my choices. Crazy-sounding, huh?

  But I’m starting to think things weren’t as good with Hugh as I’ve been telling myself. When I left the gallery, my arm still stinging where Hugh squeezed it, it was like the tether between us snapped. I think about his face, his voice, and his touch and it repulses me now. Psychologically, even physically.

  A man who doesn’t stand in solidarity with the woman he knocked up is a coward. A man who is cagey about something potentially life-threatening to me, or whatever bullshit he’s peddling, is a coward. The man who scars my body for his own pleasure without my consent is a coward. My desire for him and for the life he could give me really messed with my judgement, but it’s finally leaving my system. It feels good to write this, cathartic, therapeutic. The man is obviously disturbed. Eccentric is one thing, kinky is another.

  I have to take supplements now to improve my blood volume and deal with my iron deficiency. The bites Hugh left won’t heal. It’s like they don’t want to scab over, and when they finally do, they scar. It’s strange how the longer I’m away from him, the more I can see him for who he really was. The revulsion isn’t just morning sickness, I know it. He may be handsome, and funny, and wealthy, and intelligent, and a million other things, but that’s not enough. Maybe it’s the pregnancy or the hormones, but it’s like a lightbulb over my head. A wake-up call that I was in an abusive relationship with a sick person.

  It’s insane that I’m going to keep this child. And I worry I won’t be able to love it properly. And besides, I have no job and my painting money will last us maybe a few more months—if I’m super careful. I love NYC—hell it was always my dream to make it here—but I can’t survive here as a single mom. God, I’m going to miss the city, miss my friends and my life. But I have to have this baby. I have to, like some sort of compulsion. Maybe all the love I had for Hugh has transferred to this life inside me?

  Hugh is obviously unwell, and maybe even psychotic.

  But I can be a good mother to this child. I can give it a chance.

  It’s a
ll nuts. And I’m terrified. I’ve stayed in the city as long as I could, but it’s becoming obvious that I’m pregnant. I’m packing up and will be out of here by the end of the month. My dad is excited for the company—his last surgery had complications and now he has home nurses visiting. So it’s good that I’ll be there. We’ll be a good family, the three of us, I really think so. Maybe I’m delusional, but I need to believe that Dad will get better, he just has to. And who knows, maybe he’ll be well enough to watch the baby while I work in the daytime? Or maybe I’m crazy. But there are no other choices. Dad has to get better and I have to have this baby. It’ll all be okay, it has to be. Hugh is too connected in NYC. This is a small city when you’re trying to hide. So, Fresh Start—here I come!

  November 10th

  My father’s recent surgery didn’t go as planned, and he may need to go back into the hospital. I have to leave sooner than planned to be with him.

  I work, I sleep, and I lie. I feel this is all I do in a day. I haven’t had time to paint, and the doctor has frowned upon me being near all the turpentine and fumes anyway. Carcinogens, apparently. I thought I’d go nuts without being able to paint, but I’ve been so dead tired that my free time is reserved for sleep anyways.

  The doctor’s noticed something problematic with the pregnancy already, mainly that I can’t shake the anemia. How am I still anemic? I take so many supplements and shit I’m practically an exclusive carnivore. I only went to the appointment because there was blood in my urine. Apparently, anemia while pregnant is not uncommon, but it’s worrying that nothing seems to be getting my iron count up. I’ll work on it with whatever doctor I go to up north. I can’t hide my pregnancy much longer. I’ve gained very little weight though. I think I’ve lost more than I’ve gained. But my stomach grows. I look like a starving child from those fundraising commercials, all distended bellies and skeletal limbs.