Rosalind

by Stephen Paden

  He climbed off of her and got dressed. She went to the bathroom to pee and then came back to her room and curled up on her bed.

  Rosalind stared out of the window at the midnight sky. It was littered with stars and she wished that she was one of them. She knew that they were far away and that to be with them she would have to travel a long way, but she didn't care, and now that it was over, the pain and uncertainty that always followed came rushing in to bring her back to that bedroom; back to the stained mattress on the floor. She rubbed her belly. Her father opened the door and went back to the living room.

  When she heard the television in the living room resume its usual mixture of chatter and static, she turned over and reached under the bed for the picture. When her fingers had found it, she pulled it out and held it to the light of the stars. It was too dark to see the details and the silhouette of the woman was only an shape on the page, but her memory filled in the rest. She folded it up and put it back under her bed.

  Chapter 2

  The next morning, she awoke to Jared screaming in the living room. Shortly after her eyes adjusted to the morning light, her mother started screaming for Rosalind to make it stop. Rosalind put on the same clothes she had worn the day before, and did as her mother asked.

  After fixing Jared a bottle, she grabbed her stomach. She felt sick. She ran to the bathroom and expelled what little she ate into the toilet. Something was wrong. She knew it, but didn't know exactly what. She had no education to speak of—wasn't allowed to attend school like other kids her age—but she knew deep down that something was wrong. She flushed the toilet and went into the living room where her mother was smoking something from the metal pipe.

  "Don't pace back and forth, Rosa. Speak what's on your mind."

  "I feel sick, momma. Wasn't I supposed to get my monthly?" she asked.

  "Rosa, I'm a busy woman. I can't keep up with your cycles." Henrietta sighed and then looked her daughter over. "When's the last time you got it?"

  "I dunno, momma. It's been a while. Maybe a moon ago."

  "A moon ago? Honey what the hell are you talking about? You tellin' time by the moon now? You always was kinda dumb."

  "I'm sorry, momma," Rosalind said quietly.

  "I'm sorry, momma," her mother said in a mocking tone. "I'll add it up for you. Ain't hard!" Henrietta sat there counting her fingers on one hand, and then the other. Then she closed them and started counting on a new set of fingers. And again and again, until she was done.

  "That's forty days ago," Henrietta finally said. "I told you it ain't hard."

  "Is there forty days in a month?" Rosalind asked.

  "I dunno. No. God damn, Rosalind. You're just late. It happens."

  "Has it ever happened to you?"

  She sighed again, feeling the effects of the weed slamming into her addled brain. "Yeah Rosa but trust me, you ain't got what I had."

  "What did you get?" she asked.

  Henrietta laughed. She didn't hear her mother laugh that often, but when she did, it filled her with a mixture of elation and fear, because sometimes Henrietta Stump would start laughing and then go two shades of Kentucky-crazy, throwing things all over the house and knocking the shit out of whoever or whatever was in the way.

  She calmed down and took another hit from the metal pipe. "I had your daddy's pecker in me." Rosalind looked at her mother, confused. Henrietta rolled her eyes. "You ain't never heard it called that? His penis, dummy." Rosalind just looked at her. "You know? That swinger between his legs?"

  Yep, she knew what that meant, and when her face turned beet red, her mother also knew that she knew. In her dulled brain, Henrietta started forming a thought. That thought turned into muddied coherence and soon after that it turned into understanding. She dropped the pipe and rose from the couch in a motion too elegant for her clumsy, robust frame. Her eyes seethed and her lips turned from fat sausages into thin, razor-like slits.

  "Rosalind Ann Stump. You goddamn better tell me the truth right now! Have you been fuckin' that Colson boy down the road?"

  "No, momma," she said.

  "Liar! You don't lie to me, now. I want the goddamn truth!" Henrietta made a slow motion around the coffee table and approached Rosalind, ready to sink her teeth and claws into her.

  "Momma, I swear," she said. Henrietta stopped. Her daughter was a dummy, and a dirty ugly one at that, but she was not a liar. And if there was one thing Henrietta Stump prided herself on, it was her excellent judge of character. She took a deep breath and slowly backed away from Rosalind. She believed her about the Colson boy (he was kind of a retard, as she would often call him), but that still didn't explain why Rosalind wasn't getting her visitor this month. She tried a different approach.

  "Okay, shush," she said, putting her arms around Rosalind and leading her to the couch. "Momma's sorry, now. Just sit down and we'll figure this out."

  In her entire life, she had never heard her mother speak so kindly to her, or place so gentle a hand on her body, and for the first time in her life she felt that her mother really, truly cared about her. She stopped crying and sniffed back the snot.

  "Okay, Rosa. Just tell momma what happened. Was it someone else? Did someone put their hands on you? Cause if they did, your father will take care of them proper. You're his little girl, and he won't take no man puttin' hands on his little girl." She put her fingers underneath Rosalind's chin and turned it towards her. "You know your father loves you, right?"

  She didn't know. She knew that he showed her affection, but she didn't understand what it meant. She answered the only way she could, and shook her head.

  Rosalind choked back the tears until she could do it no more. Her eyes became little levees that had broken under the pressure and the tears poured over her cheeks. She heaved and cried. Henrietta had never seen her daughter express such emotion, or any at all for that matter. She held her tight and rocked her back and forth.

  When Rosalind finally quit crying, she looked Henrietta in the eyes. "Please don't make daddy go away. I promise I'll be good!" she screamed. Henrietta was startled and confused. She hugged her daughter and consoled her for the first time in her entire life.

  "Honey, your father's not going nowhere. Why would he—"

  She stopped.

  Henrietta was never the smartest woman in the world and even she knew that. It may take her a few minutes to figure out what it takes others only seconds, but eventually, Henrietta Stump would figure it out. And in that moment, that instant where time stopped and the past and everything in it came rushing into her head (her daughter's silence and constant sorrow; his constant excuses for why he was too tired to touch her, the woman he vowed to love for the rest of his life; his insistence on getting high every night—getting her high—so she'd fall asleep) it was all there. It was all there and she was too stupid to see it.

  She guided Rosalind to her feet and looked up at her.

  "Honey, you listen to mama now. I'm gonna look at something and it's mighty private, but I need to look, okay? You be a big girl and help mama? Just hold my hand and lift up your skirt."

  Rosalind did as she said, but she turned her head and her face turned as red as the skirt. Once Rosalind had lifted it high enough, Henrietta slowly pulled her underwear down, and when she saw the how red and bruised her area was, she closed her eyes and her lips began to shake.

  She slipped her underwear back up and Rosalind let her skirt down. She gripped Rosalind's right arm and stood up. Henrietta then went into the bathroom, ran the hot water, and closed the door. She cried so loud that it startled Rosalind in the living room, causing her to jerk.

  When she was a little girl, Henrietta had wanted what every little girl her age had dreamed of—a perfect husband, a house on a lush hill, a garden to toil over, and three children who would play in the yard until their father came home to tell them the wonderful stories of his day. The sad irony is that she had gotten most of what she wanted, but her dream was twisted and deformed like Rosalind's inn
ocence.

  How did she let herself get here?

  How did she not see the destruction of her own daughter by her own husband? It was her fault. She thought back to the cornfield; the night she had gotten pregnant with Rosalind. In her moment of clarity, she took the blame for everything. All of this was her fault. All of this was the product of complacency that had plagued her since she'd met Paul. She should have broken up with him when he talked about starting a family and ditching college. She knew better! But he had said that he loved her. She looked in the mirror and felt remorse for a dream, no, for a life she had forsaken. She felt pity for herself, and remorse for Rosalind.

  And the shame?

  It was only a small scratch on the soul of a half-dead woman. She took the scalding hot water and poured it over her face. She wiped the mist from the mirror and thought about Rosalind when she'd been born. She thought about the times where she hadn't been a terrible mother—a time when she loved Rosalind with all of her heart—and while those years were long gone, it wasn't too late. It wasn't too late to save her baby. She smiled at the mirror as the water trickled from her chin and cheeks.

  When she finished drying her eyes and face, she went back to the living room. Rosalind was still sitting on the couch, holding her head in her hands. Henrietta sat down next to her, and started rubbing her back again.

  "I want you to look at me." Rosalind lifted her head. "I never meant for any of this to happen. This ain't the life I wanted for myself, and it sure ain't the life I wanted for you." She was still fighting the marijuana in her head, trying to articulate her words. "I want you to know that I love you with all of my heart. I remembered, baby. I remembered when I was in the bathroom just now about the day you were born, and that just might be the happiest day of my life." Rosalind had never heard these words and she didn't know what to do with them, so she sobbed into her mother's shoulder. Henrietta let her cry has hard as she wanted. She wanted to cry with her, but she had things to do, plans to make.

  "Hey, I know what. You make Jared a bottle while momma looks for something. Does that sound like a plan?" She'd also never heard her mother speak with such optimism. She loved her momma and for the first time, she knew that her momma loved her.

  That evening, when her husband had settled on the couch with a beer in one hand and the metal pipe in the other, Henrietta fixed the biggest dinner she had ever cooked. She used the last of the roast from the freezer, potatoes shaped like French fries (she had Rosalind cut slice them), and cottage cheese that was a day away from expiration. When dinner was ready, she brought the beast a plate, doted on him about how hard he had been working lately and that she wanted to personally cook him a dinner. When Henrietta refused to smoke with him, he should have known that something was wrong, but he dismissed it as Henrietta just being a crazy cunt and, what did he care? As long as dinner was on time, he could smoke his shit and pop his pills.

  Rosalind sat on the floor, flipping through the pages in a new catalog that her father had brought home. It was another one from J.C. Penny and she was damned sure she would look through all of it before it made its way into the wood-stove as kindling. She came to a full spread with the same model she had hidden under her bed and contemplated, plotted really, about when she would have a chance to rip it out and replace the old one.

  When she was satisfied that she had seen it all, she got up to make herself a plate, but when she tried to grab some milk from the glass container, her mother placed her hand over it and said it was for her father.

  That was okay, she thought. Anything to keep him happy. Instead, she settled for a glass of cold water, which is usually what she drank anyway.

  When dinner was over and her mother had collected the plates, Rosalind got up and went to make her brother a bottle, but again met resistance from her mother, saying that she would take care of it. She didn't know what to do with herself, so she went to bed early and grabbed the picture from underneath her bed and lay on her back, getting ready for the inevitable. She had to move the red suitcase on her bed that she was sure belonged to her mother, so she set it out in the hallway next to the bathroom. Her mother would know what to do with it.

  She unbuttoned her blouse and pulled her skirt and underwear down and stared at the picture. The sun had already gone down and there was a little light left in the day, and she knew that what was left of the moon would soon be visible through her window. She folded the picture and held it close to her heart. She lay there and waited. Waited to be transported away to some magical city where everyone loved her.

  Chapter 3

  "I feel like shit," he said, slurring his words. "Why didn't you let Rosa cook?"

  "I thought I'd do something nice for you," she said, finishing up in the kitchen. She opened the drawer as carefully as she could and pulled a steak knife from it. She put it handle first into the pocket of her robe, never taking her right hand from it, and walked seductively across the kitchen floor and into the living room. He looked up at her from hazy eyes.

  "What the fuck?"

  She straddled him and started kissing his neck. He tried to push her away, but he was too tired. He felt like shit. What did this bitch cook, anyway?

  "You never touch me anymore," she said.

  His eyes rolled in the back of his head and then came back. He tried to focus on her face. "Look at…you…fat bi—" He struggled to remain conscious, his head flailing around.

  She grabbed the back of his hair and pulled the knife from her pocket. Henrietta, with one last jerk of his head to keep him awake, put the tip of the knife to his throat. She laughed at him and licked his nose.

  "How about I go in the bedroom, put on a nice white blouse and a pretty red skirt, and then I come in here and let you fuck me on the floor?"

  "What? Woman…what—what the fuck did you feed me?"

  "No? See, I thought that if I prettied myself up to look like our daughter, you'd finally give me the fuckin' that I need so bad. You know what I'm tellin' you, right?"

  "Rosalind," he said with a dreamy smile.

  "Yeah that'd be just fine, wouldn't it?" she whispered in his ear. He smiled.

  "But there's just one thing you need to know." She leaned in closer, her lips touching his ear. He managed to put his hands around her and smiled even wider. "Rosalind's pregnant. You fu—" she cried, but then collected herself. "You motherfucker. You fucked your own daughter," she whispered into his ear. "And you made her pregnant!"

  She pulled her head back and looked him in his guilty eyes—eyes too drugged up to lie.

  He reached for the tomato crate in the corner of the room. "Jared…my boy, my precious boy," he said through the tears. The more he tried to move, the less he could. He was slipping into something cold and dark and there was no more feeling in his legs.

  "I poisoned you, rapist. I poisoned you and, well, you won't be needin' to worry about that little shit-turd neither, 'cause I poisoned him too. No son of yours is ever gonna do to his daughter what you did to mine 'cause I poisoned him too!"

  He mustered as much scream as he could but only managed to exhale. How could she do this to him? After all he had done for her and the children? Evil bitch! he thought, still trying to gain control of his thoughts, his body. Just then, his arms went numb and fell to his side.

  "Rosa…please," he whispered. They were his last words. The paralysis had now taken full effect, and the only thing he could do was move his eyes back and forth at the spinning room. She spit in his face, the saliva slowly trickling down his cheek.

  "But I'm gonna do one kind thing, the last Christian thing I can do for a maggot like you." She gripped the knife tight and shoved it into his throat. There was not as much blood as she thought there would be, but what did come out squirted on her face and her shirt. She looked down and put her fingers in it, smearing it all over her hands. When they were covered in red, she smeared it on his face and with her thumbs she pushed his eyeballs as far as she could into their sockets. He gulped as the copper
y flow streamed into his lungs, and after a few labored breaths, his eyes stopped moving. He was dead.

  Henrietta hopped up and grabbed some wood from the bin and placed them around her dead husband. She searched frantically through the cabinets for matches, but couldn't find any.

  His pockets!

  She reached into his right pocket, but it was empty. She reached into his left pocket and there it was: his Zippo. She stood up and smiled at him—her face a contorted mixture of happy and crazy—and then lit it.

  Something's missing! she thought.

  She closed the Zippo and ran outside, trying to find the gas can. Where'd that fucker put it? she asked herself. Henrietta jumped off of the porch and ran to the shed. She flung the door open and the smell of stale grass and gasoline rushed into her lungs. She rummaged blindly through the contents on the right-hand side, and found it; the can was full.

  She raced inside, careful not to fall or spill it on the way. If she was going to do this right, she would need all she could get. When she got back to his body, she had stopped laughing. Her husband lay there with blood spilling into a pool that collected in his undershirt below his neck. She had killed her husband. Her body went numb.

  Rosalind, who'd become concerned that her father had not come to her room when he normally did—he had never once been late—walked out of her room, buttoning her blouse. Henrietta turned to the hallway and saw her fixing her skirt at her waist. Henrietta turned back to her dead husband with rage. She took the gas can and started pouring it over his body and the wood that she had stacked haphazardly around him. Rosalind screamed.

  "Momma no, don't hurt daddy!"

  When Henrietta had poured the entire contents of the can over him, she looked at Rosalind. "Suitcase…the red suitcase. I packed it for you. There's twenty-three dollars in there and that should get you away from here. Are you listening to me?" Rosalind was hysterical. Henrietta threw down the gas can and ran over to Rosalind. She grabbed her by the arms and shook her until she stopped screaming. "You listen to me," Henrietta yelled. "You take that money and you get out of here." Henrietta started crying. "I did wrong by you, Rosa. You were always my angel and I did wrong by you. I never did nothing for you and I'm sorry. But now I'm doing you right. Take the suitcase and run and don't you ever look back." Rosalind started crying again and walked over to her mother. She tried to hug her, but Henrietta grabbed her by the hair and threw her down. "Go! Take the suitcase and go. Don't you dare look back, baby. Just go!"