Milk (26 page)

When the moment arrived, I walked to my handbag, stored on the top shelf of my closet, next to my hatboxes, as if in a trance; you were napping in your room. Your father was at work, Corb at school—this didn't concern them, only us. Your sister. You. Myself. Our femaleness, the cleft between our legs, a matter of honor and self-loathing. Insanity. Yes, an insanity forced upon us. In another life there would have been no need for this. Of course, in another life none of this would have happened at all, we would have simply carried on as mother and daughters, shopping trips, shared intimacies—an experience of looking into a mirror that was whole and smooth, reflective, unshattered. In this life, however, the mirror was shattered at the moment of your birth. Never could you look into my eyes and see love reflected there. Although, and I know you question this, the love
was
there. I loved you. But what you saw reflected in my eyes was clouded, murky, and all I had to offer: the love of a troubled person.

I held the gun to your head. I ordered you to pray. All I could hear after that was the sound of my breathing.
His
breathing, what I'd had to listen to every time he touched me.

This was after I placed the pillow over little Charlotte and pressed down with all my weight, until she stopped moving. Then I put the pillow back on my bed.

I realized I couldn't hold a pillow over your head. You were bigger than Charlotte, you would struggle more, call out my name—

Not anymore than I could shoot Charlotte with a gun. So I discovered.

Why? you wonder. Why would a mother do this? Kill her own children?

My God, he had ruined us. Had ruined me and he would ruin you and Charlotte. Better to take you with me than to let my father turn you into monsters, misfits—

Already he had started with you. Twice in the past month I'd found you sitting on my father's lap, him pulling his hand away suddenly, the look of my entire childhood upon your face.

So I held the gun to your head and ordered you to pray. You just sat there, a lamb, an innocent, swinging your legs against the bed frame. Clunk, clunk. Then you stopped. Silence, as if you knew it was time now to prepare for death. You stared straight ahead, your eyes crystalline like a doll's; never had I loved you more!

My finger on the trigger (my hand didn't even shake!), I listened for the last time to that terrible breathing, my breathing and his—how he had infected me.

Then there was a noise in the house, a scraping, a sigh. I halted, in a panic. Your father back early? Your brother home from school? Evan? When I'd told her not to come today? I set down the gun—on a ledge where you couldn't reach it, ironically, so you wouldn't hurt yourself. I listened hard, heard nothing further, then went to the toilet to vomit.

I was never positive what caused the noise.
If
there was a noise. Was it my imagination? Some last vestige of sanity distracting me, calling me off you? Or was it, as I came to believe, my Charlotte's soul leaving this earth, beginning its restless search?

In any case I couldn't pick up the gun again. Not even to shoot myself.

I nudged it off the ledge and into a hatbox, put the hatbox in my closet, and waited. Waited with you on the edge of your bed for your brother to come home from school, for your father to come home from work and peek into your sister's crib. When he did, I carried on like any bereaved mother, which I was. I fell to my knees, wailing uncontrollably, remembering how still Charlotte had lain afterward, how sweet; my distress wasn't faked and through it all nobody questioned me, not your father, not Lyla, not Evan. Not the doctor or the coroner.

You were sent to your room.

My psychiatrist made a house call and the order given: I was sedated.

As soon as I could manage—days later, a week later—I threw the hatbox into a dumpster in an alleyway and drove off, and within the month I'd landed in the hospital for the first time, never telling anyone what I'd done to Charlotte, what I'd almost done to you. While there, I hoarded the pills they gave me, first under my tongue, then in the little velvet bag I kept with my things, a jewelry bag. In it I always put my rings, my wedding band. I didn't like to wear them in that place. One night I swallowed all the pills at once; such a lot of work to swallow so many pills, the tongue dry and uncooperative, the throat sore and constricted. To no avail, that time. Only to have my stomach pumped and be sent back eventually to the life I hated, a life in which I hated myself.

At least I never touched you again, not in a way that was indecent. The gun put an end to that, mysteriously; made me come to my senses, such as they were. Nor, however, did I touch you as a mother should—no stroking your hair, or upsy-daisy onto my lap, no clutching you to me. Frankly, I've never touched you that way, although now I long to, before my death—I long to be the mother you deserve. Smartly, you won't allow it. Won't allow the hands of a murderer to touch you; you cleave to Evan, you look right through me. Although I cry and hurl myself on my bed and dig my nails into my sorry, misbegotten hands, I can't blame you. How can I? Inside, I'm even a little glad: this means you'll survive me. You'll
survive
. You aren't desperate as I am for love; you're full of judgment and disdain. You aren't foolish—this will see you through.

It's nearly one in the morning and I can't wait any longer.

I loved you.

T
WENTY
-F
OUR

At first I am calm.

My mother's letters spread out on the carpet before me, her handwriting exact and neat, nothing erased or crossed out.

They're written in pen, they're written in pencil, they're written in red ink. They're written on blue sheets of her personal stationary, monogrammed MGM for Marian Greer Mapes; one is dated, the rest aren't. None are paginated.

I don't know what else to do, so I lie down right where I am, easing myself down sideways, my belly not a part of me but an obstacle I must curl up around. My nose winds up near her letters and recipe cards. A musty odor, chalky to the touch, decomposing and turning to dust.

Then: the sound of breathing, in and out, in and out, all around me, as if I'm standing in a lung—as if somebody else is breathing, but it's me and I can't stop. I try. I cut off my air halfway through a breath, hold it, start up again, more softly. No use.

Somebody breathing in my ear. My mother?

Must call somebody. I start for my phone, crawling and creeping, my belly slung low, the baby kicking
let me out of this madhouse
, I can't seem to stand up and walk, why bother getting up anyway, the phone's just across the room—

The goddamned dollhouse in my way. Why'd I ever bring this back here? Did I think for a minute I'd want to give this to a baby? My baby?

I flounder on the floor like a helpless insect, a roly poly. I brush my foot against the house. It's painted vanilla with green shutters and a red chimney. My mother gave it to me, my father said, painting and fixing it up for me late in the night, working in the basement so I wouldn't see. The dollhouse had been hers as a child; I fancied it resembled the house
she'd
grown up in, although I never visited there that I could recall. Icebox in the kitchen, claw-footed bathtub, grandfather clock under the stairwell, an old black phone with a horn for your ear and a horn for your mouth and the whole town shared a party line.

I lug myself upright to open the doors on the side of the house. Stuffed inside are three plastic bags; I know what's in them since I packed them myself as a teenager when Dad married Dorinne, each bag filled with debris from the house.

This house I destroyed as a child.

I empty out the first bag, that awful sound of breathing in my ear. A number of tiny painted wood bed frames, a green couch with ripped upholstery, an oval rug, a highboy bureau, its drawers with their pulls made from straight pins; a cracked mirror the size of my thumb, a miniature vase with the flowers torn from it, the black phone—the cord cut; bathtub, toilet, sink, kitchen table, coffee table, all in surprisingly fine shape; the grandfather clock, its face scribbled over; several broken straight-backed chairs, rungs cracked, legs missing—I used to break them over the head of the doll without any hair, just as I used to run over her legs with the tiny metal vacuum cleaner, painted red and chipped, also here.

I feel as I've always felt about this dollhouse: fear and hate.

In the second smaller plastic bag are plump striped mattresses, teeny pillows still in their cases, towels with fringe, sheets with hems, quilted bedspreads and blankets with satin bindings, all of which my mother sewed herself to give to me.

Such a dollhouse should be a little girl's dream come true—why did I hate it so?

I try making a bed from the dollhouse: first one tiny, hemmed sheet goes onto the mattress, then another sheet on top of that,
then
a blanket, the bedspread, oh, and the pillow. Like making a real bed in miniature, but with no room to tuck anything in. In my mind—did my mother tell me this?—there is only one way to make this bed. You are not allowed to cut corners.

Making beds was the job of the doll with no hair.

My mother standing at my bedroom door, arms crossed, watching me play with my (dollhouse. It must've taken me all day just to make the beds alone. Then there were the towels to be folded and hung properly over the towel racks, chairs to be arranged around the tables, dishes to be put away—I forgot about those.

They're in with the dolls themselves, in the last plastic bag. Most of the plates are broken; a vague memory of throwing them against the walls of my room, or chiseling away at them with a ballpoint pen.

The dolls. I spread them out before me. The mother doll in her clingy red dress, platinum blond hair pulled back severely, black metal shoes. No father doll—was there ever a father doll? Six children dolls, one missing a leg. Instead she has a cutout piece of cardboard stuck to her torso with a Band-aid. Another pretty doll is missing a foot. There are two boy dolls, unscathed, one in a plaid shirt, the other in a green felt sweater. Then, the doll that hurts me most to see: the doll without any hair. In her pink shorty dress and no underwear, she is bald, except for the miraculous presence of two teeny felt bows. You can still see the glue on her head, where the hair used to be. There's a seam there, where her head is joined together, as though she's survived brain surgery or chemotherapy. A lumpy fabric face. She's ugly, I think, though she might've been pretty.

Her head always hurt and she worked all the time and tried to stay clear of the other dolls, the pretty two-faced girls who were maimed nonetheless and the two boys who were perfect-looking and not always mean to her, but who never stuck up for her either.

The mother doll—my stomach still churns at the sight of her. Sometimes she was nice, or pretended to be. Then she stood up straight, dipped her fabric head kindly. What would a nice doll say? I didn't know. So she said very little. Then she'd leave and come back, her chest bent out, legs splayed, metal shoes clacking, her head twisted and contorted.

At the mere sight of the doll without any hair she would fly into a rage, destroy the house, beat her with the vacuum cleaner, break a chair over her head, stick her head down the toilet, kick her with her hard metal shoes. Only her for some reason: the other dolls were too attractive and clever to incite her rage, and besides, they only lived in the house sometimes, they could get away—

She is a prisoner, the doll without any hair. Not forever, though. In her painted-on blue eyes is a kind of lumpen determination, despite the glue on her head and the seam up its back. Oh yes, here is her cardboard suitcase and her rocking chair. She rocks in her chair, faster and faster, suitcase on her lap, until she imagines she is somewhere else.

When I think of her head, my head hurts, a pain that erupts in her stomach, my stomach.
She can make the pain go away. She twists her fingers around each other and stares at them until they aren't connected to her body anymore, and she feels nothing, no pain. It's really miraculous, this trick she has, and things are soft and distant, as though she were wrapped in flannel.…

That sound of breathing in my ear, still. I make it over to my desk, to search for some scissors, where the hell did I leave them? Here are the nail clippers I left out earlier, they'll do. I swivel out the nail file, stab it deep into the legs of the platinum-haired doll.

Bitch.

I laugh aloud, a howl. A doll, for God's sake, what am I doing? I force her chest outward, contort her head, yes, like this she looks monstrous. Flesh-colored string goes round and round her legs; I unravel it, tear at it, rip out the batting inside her legs, attempt to hack off the black metal feet—where are my goddamn scissors?

I spot them, on the counter from cutting the twine off the carton of my mother's linens—

I snip off her feet, right, left, then throw them at the walls. I cut her body in half, then into segments. I turn what's left of her dress into a messy red fringe, tatters, then it's off with her head.

I giggle. Inside I feel vile. Relief. Nausea. Guilt like an avocado pit in my stomach.

The other dolls I leave alone. The one without any hair I set upon her rocking chair, place her suitcase at her feet.

I finish what I began as a child. A rampage, a riot—I carry out furniture and smash it to the ground, stamp it with my feet. Getting out my X-acto knife from my desk drawer, I carve my initials everywhere, on the walls of the dollhouse, the floors, inside the tiny bathtub, the icebox. I scratch the finish off the tables, slash the face of the grandfather clock—

I stop. The breathing in my ear, loud and venomous.

Those fucking little beds with their sheets and blankets. I grab one of the sheets, skewer it with the X-acto knife and let 'er rip, along with another sheet, a bedspread, then a tiny towel. I get to thinking about my mother's linens, how they sat unused in the sideboard in our dining room for all those years after she died. Irish linens, filmy organdy, embroidered edges, the finest cloth. How, as a child, I would open the sideboard with the skeleton key just to read her handwriting on the clear plastic-wrapped packages.
A dozen placemats, dozen monogrammed napkins, one runner
. She had written this, she had held the pen in her hand: it seemed astonishing. I'd search for more words, a message to me, to no avail.
Two dozen doilies. Round tablecloth, 5 ft. diameter
. Her wedding presents, no doubt, and now they are mine. Sitting complacently on the pool house floor, protected by plastic wrapping; the linens are white, lace-edged, themselves the virgins my mother and I never were.