by Megan Hart
“Yes,” Marian said. “They killed it.”
“Rufus bit me.” Briella sounded sullen. Pouting.
“It wasn’t the same.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, Marian wished she’d said something else. It was not the same, that was the truth, but what kind of mother excused an animal that had taken a bite of her daughter’s flesh? That the bite was small and the animal had been pushed to it shouldn’t matter, should it? Briella was her child. Marian should defend her against whatever harmed her.
Right?
She would not let herself admit that maybe Briella had deserved to be bitten. She couldn’t go that far. The best she could do was soothe the pains and try her best to love her child and keep her safer in the future.
Marian wrestled herself up and out of the rocker. “If you’re not going to sleep, then you need to go take as shower. Let’s go.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to. You stink.” Marian looked at the clock. There was an hour or so before she could expect Dean to get home from work. She might even be feeling up to making him some dinner. “Go. Now. Don’t make me have to talk about consequences, Briella.”
After that, Briella got into the shower without too much fuss. Marian stood outside the bathroom door, listening to her daughter sing pop songs off-key and with the wrong lyrics. The water turned off too soon.
“Use soap. And shampoo. If I have to come in there and do it for you, Briella, I will.”
“You’re supposed to give me privacy!”
Marian nudged the door open to see the girl peering at her from around the shower curtain. Marian’s heavy eyes and aching hips told her it was late. She wanted to be in bed, hugging her mountain of pillows and trying to sleep as best she could without her guts turning themselves inside out.
“You stink,” Marian repeated flatly, her patience wasted. “Your body stinks, your hair stinks, your breath reeks.”
Briella grimaced. “That’s mean!”
“I’m your mother. It’s my job to help you be the best person you can be, not be your best friend,” Marian said. “Turn the water back on and wash your hair and your body. With soap.”
“I did.”
“God dammit, I have fucking had it with you.” Marian snapped and crossed the room to grab the kid’s arm with one hand while she whipped back the shower curtain with the other.
She turned on the water, not caring if it sprayed all over. Briella shrieked and struggled, but Marian’s fingers gripped her hard. The girl wasn’t even slippery, which meant she probably hadn’t been in the water at all.
“Shut your mouth. Now. Get under the water. Now,” Marian said. “I’m tired and sick and you stink.”
She steeled herself to the sound of Briella’s sobs and grabbed the shampoo from the shelf. A squirt into the thick mass of the kid’s hair, then a dunk under the water. Briella stopped fighting her and suffered the scrubbing, then the conditioner that Marian left to soak while she handed her a washcloth and the soap and ordered her to use it.
Twenty minutes later, she had Briella wrapped in a towel and had taken her into the master bedroom to sit on the edge of the bed while Marian pulled out a pick to get through the tangled curls. Briella’s hair, dry, hit just above her shoulders, but soaking wet hung midway down her back. Briella was silent. Exhaustion plucked at her, but Marian made sure to take her time with the knots, using both the pick and her fingers, along with extra conditioner to leave Briella with sleek, untangled curls.
At the sight of the bruises and raw flesh at the base of the girl’s neck, Marian’s heart leaped into her throat. “What’s this? What happened here?”
Briella pulled away. “Nothing.”
“Did the dog do that, too? Hold still.” Marian gripped her again, aware that she might be causing bruises of her own on her daughter’s upper arm, but determined to see what the hell was going on. She touched the wound, which was almost healed. “That’s not a bite. That’s a cut. What happened?”
“Nothing,” Briella insisted and tried to pull away.
Marian turned her. “Tell me what’s going on. Did someone do this to you?”
“No.” Briella shook her head. “I was…my hair was tangled and I wanted to cut it, so I tried to do it by myself, but I cut myself with the scissors.”
“Oh, Briella.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.” Briella hitched a sob and buried her face in Marian’s neck.
At least she smelled better, Marian thought, and felt instantly ashamed for the thought. She hugged her daughter as best she could around the bulge of her belly, then pushed Briella gently back. “Do you know why I want to you to keep it taken care of, then? So it doesn’t get so tangled that you have to cut it?”
“Yes. But I was embarrassed to tell you.”
Marian sighed. “Let me finish combing it out, and we’ll put some more conditioner in it. You can wrap it in a scarf the way I do before bed. Then you won’t wake up with it all a mess.”
“I want to look like you, Mama. I want to be pretty like you.”
Marian paused at the kid’s tone. Bright. Bubbly.
Fake.
“You’re pretty like you,” Marian said.
She studied the wound again. It was definitely a slice. Neat, tidy, not ragged. It looked as though it could have used a stitch or two, and her heart ached again at how she’d managed to miss something that serious. It looked worse even than the dog bite.
She finished combing through Briella’s curls, then helped her pick out a soft scarf to wrap around her already drying hair. Marian stood and pushed her daughter by the shoulder to walk out of the bedroom. “You’ve had a rough day. I think you should try to rest in your bed for a bit. You can read or watch something on your tablet until it’s dinnertime.”
“Aren’t you going to tuck me in?”
“You’re a big girl.…” Marian trailed off, thinking already of how steep the stairs would be, and how her hips would ache from the climbing. She’d be out of breath at the top. It had been months since the kid had asked to be tucked in. “Yes. Of course I will.”
In Briella’s bedroom, Marian tucked her daughter into bed. Tight, then tighter, the way she had when the girl was younger and would giggle about being made into a burrito. Neither of them said anything about it this time. Maybe Briella had forgotten that little joke, and Marian was too tired to make it.
She bent to kiss Briella’s forehead. “Don’t try to cut your hair again, okay? Let’s try to keep it taken care of, and then it won’t get so many tangles in it.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.” Briella sounded contrite, but something in the way she said the words left a sour taste in her mother’s mouth.
She was placating, Marian thought. Not really sorry. Briella didn’t think she’d done anything wrong, and that was the real issue, wasn’t it? Briella never thought she did anything wrong. She never saw that the trouble she’d gotten into had stemmed from her own actions. She mouthed the word “sorry”, but she didn’t feel it.
Itching with unease, Marian kissed Briella again and, in another moment of guilt, hugged her as best she could in the awkward position of bending over the bed. She loved her daughter, hating that she had to remind herself. Hating this growing sense of discomfort. She could blame hormones, but that didn’t make any of it better.
She would try harder, she told herself as she closed the bedroom door behind her at Briella’s request. She paused outside the door, one hand pressed to it. Listening, giving herself a minute or so before she heaved her bulk down the stairs again.
The rap of a beak on glass. The creak of the bed. The mutter of a window being pushed up, then Briella’s soft, indecipherable speech.
Marian reached for the doorknob, but at the last second, she stopped herself from opening the door. There would be a confrontation. She would y
ell and scold, and Briella would pretend as though she were sorry, but she would not be sorry. Marian listened a moment longer, but heard only silence broken by the hammering thud of her heartbeat in her ears.
She listened harder, eyes closed. If there was a whisper from inside or the soft, muttered caw of that damned bird, Marian didn’t hear it. And, satisfied if only by the barest amount, she went downstairs, where she collapsed into her bed, exhausted, and stared at the wall for a very long time while her mind whirled.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Do you want some iced tea?” Briella said.
Marian had switched off from the hot tea. In this late July heat, she couldn’t bear it. Briella, however, had become so proud of herself for being able to operate the electric kettle that she insisted on brewing tea anyway, even if it meant putting it in the fridge to be served cold. Nobody was drinking it, really. Marian was so sick of the antinausea tea that it made her sicker to drink it than to sip seltzer water.
“No, thanks, honey.”
“Are you feeling better, Mama?” Briella slid into the chair across from her at the kitchen table.
“Yes. I am.” Marian smiled.
Briella nodded. “But you could get sick again anytime. The baby’s still not born.”
Marian had tried explaining that it wasn’t the baby making her sick, not exactly, but she’d obviously not done a very good job of it. “It will be soon, though. Just another few weeks.”
Briella said nothing to that, but her face gave away how she felt. Marian closed the book she’d been trying without much luck to read. She fanned herself with a catalog Dean had left on the table this morning – he’d switched temporarily back to working nights because his boss had begged him to take some shifts. With Marian feeling good – if not one hundred per cent, at least better – he’d agreed so he could get the overtime.
“Was I baptized?” Briella asked abruptly.
Marian’s fanning paused, but only for a second or so. “Yes. Gramma wanted you to be, and it was important to her.”
“Why?”
“Because she believed that babies needed to be baptized in case something happened to them. So they could go to heaven, in case they died.” Marian didn’t hesitate on the word.
“What about the babies you had that died before they could be born?”
“No. I didn’t have them baptized.” She had mourned their loss, those tiny, unformed children. But she had not believed them in need of baptism, or even heaven, for that matter.
“What about that one?” Briella jerked her thumb toward Marian’s belly.
Marian shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t believe the same things my mother did,” she said.
Briella looked serious. “Babies are born empty. It takes them a while to get filled in with who they are. That’s why you baptize them in case they die, because they haven’t had time to get filled in.”
“Filled in?”
“With their souls,” Briella said.
Marian let the warm air wash over her with every stroke of her makeshift fan. She studied her daughter. “Are you still thinking about all of that? Even though you quit your project?”
“Just because they took it away from me doesn’t mean I ever stopped thinking about it. Someday, when I’m an adult, I’ll get to do whatever I want, and nobody will be able stop me.”
“That’s not exactly how it works,” Marian said and thought of her mother.
Briella didn’t crack a smile. “It should be.”
A cramp rippled over Marian’s belly. Braxton-Hicks. It was too soon for it to be anything else. In the next moment, the sudden pain deep inside her felt like something far more important than false cramps. The fan dropped from her hand. Breathing hard, Marian steadied herself with a hand on the table, the other between her back, where the dull ache she’d been having all day suddenly flared into sharp pain.
“Shit,” she muttered as another ripple stabbed her.
“Mama?”
Marian waved a hand. “I’m okay.”
“I bet you can’t wait until that baby is out of you.”
“That’s the truth,” Marian agreed, but paused to add, “Briella. This baby is not going to make me feel any differently about you than I already do. I promise you that. I know you don’t believe me, and I understand why. But I want to reassure you. There are going to be huge changes, but it’s not going to change how I feel about you. Or how Dean feels about you, either.”
“I know it won’t change how you feel about me,” Briella told her in a flat voice that gave Marian a chill.
How she felt about Briella had been complicated for a long time now. Love, but distrust, fear, dislike. Affection. A fierce urge to protect her, coupled with frustration. Reluctance. None of that had anything to do with the baby. It was all about Briella.
What was motherhood, Marian thought, but an endless stream of guilt and shame and grief for never being able to get it quite right?
She forced herself to sit higher upright to ease the ache in her lower back. She’d get the heating pad and veg out on the couch all day, reading and keeping her feet up. She’d nap while Dean slept, let Briella rot her brain on stupid television. Except she wasn’t going to get to do any of those things, because as soon as she stood, the phone rang.
* * *
It took twenty minutes to get to the hospital and felt like as long as that to get her enormous self out of the car and into the lobby, where Marian struggled to catch her breath around the tears. They’d already brought her a wheelchair and wanted all her insurance information before she could explain that she was not there to give birth, but to see her dad.
He was asleep in the hospital bed, hooked up to a bunch of wires and tubes. He looked shrunken, diminished. But when she sat in the chair next to him and took his hand, careful not to dislodge the IV running into the back of it, her father opened his eyes.
“Hi, Daddy.” She hardly ever called him that, but now the endearment slipped easily out of her.
“Hi, baby girl.” Her father’s fingers squeezed hers without much strength.
“You don’t have to talk. Just rest.”
Her dad shook his head. “I’ll be resting soon enough.”
“Don’t say that.” She scooted the chair closer and gently let go of his hand so it could rest on the bed. “You’re going to be fine.”
His eyelids were already fluttering. They closed. Marian watched him for a minute or so, looking up when the nurse came in to check on him. Informed the doctor was in the hall, she heaved herself to her feet to find her.
“Your dad suffered a drastic fall. He’s banged up. Bruised. We’re watching him closely to make sure there’s no internal bleeding,” said Dr. Patel, a tall woman with dark hair twisted into a bun and compassionate dark eyes. She added after a hesitation, “We haven’t been able to determine if the fall was the result of a stroke, or if he’s had intercranial bleeding for some other reason. It could have been from the fall, or it could have been what caused the fall. We simply don’t know.”
“Intercranial bleeding? Oh, God.” Marian put a hand over her mouth. “That’s serious!”
“It can be. But he’s stable right now, not having any difficulties breathing on his own or any additional symptoms. So we’re monitoring him, and if anything changes, he’s here in good hands.” Dr. Patel reached to squeeze Marian’s shoulder and gave her belly a significant stare. “But you, miss, ought to be taking care of yourself right now.”
“I need to be here for my dad.”
“I understand. Of course. But you need to also make sure you’re taking care of yourself and the baby. I’ll have the nurse bring you something to drink. Stay hydrated. Stay off your feet,” Dr. Patel admonished. She turned on her heel, but paused to return to Marian. “Has y
our father exhibited any strange symptoms prior to this? It might be helpful to determine if there’s a precedent for anything.”
“Like what?”
“Any…drug use? Of the illegal sort?” Dr. Patel looked uncomfortable. “Hallucinations?”
“Jesus, no. Nothing like that.”
“He fought the EMTs when they tried to get him into the ambulance. He kept making raucous noises and flailing his arms. It took them a bit, but they figured out he was cawing like a crow. He kept trying to…fly. He was clearly hallucinating, but so far we haven’t found any indications that he’d taken anything to cause them. Which leaves neurological reasons.”
Marian staggered. Dr. Patel caught her by the arm. Marian fought back the faintness.
“It’s a shock, I know. But it could have any number of causes,” Dr. Patel said. “We’re going to figure it out.”
Marian pulled her phone from her purse before going back into the room. She’d missed a call from Dean and dialed him back without listening to the voicemail. He hadn’t been happy that she’d insisted on driving herself to the hospital, but she’d gone fierce on him, and he’d conceded so long as she kept in touch.
“Hi, babe.”
“How’s your dad?”
She laid out what the doctor had told her, adding that he seemed tired but otherwise fine. She did not mention the hallucinations, the cawing, the flying. That damned raven, she thought. That goddamned bird.
Her voice broke. “I’m not sure what exactly happened yet. They don’t seem to know.”
“Do you need me to come to the hospital?”
“No, no,” she assured him. “I’m just going to stay with him for a while. I wanted to let you know what was going on. I’ll try to be home before you need to leave for work. But if I can’t, can you call across the street to Amy and see if she’ll take Briella until I can?”
“Of course. If you need anything, let me know.”
“I love you,” Marian said around her closed throat and the sting of tears.