“We are taking Jenny away from you,” I said. “You are done being her mother.”
“You can’t have her,” she said. “She’s mine.” Her voice was caught up in her throat and all of the words were only coming out halfway. She was missing the beginning of some words, the ends of the others, and it sounded like one long noise.
“Mom, you cut her hair, you hurt her arm, you cannot keep her. You do not know how to be right.”
“I know more than you,” she said. “More than you ever will.”
“I know enough,” I said. “I know when it is time to leave. And it is time to leave.”
“You’ll never get rid of me,” she said. I knew she was right. She was my mother. But I could fix it so that I was in control. All I had to do was leave. But I could not leave without asking one last question.
“Why can’t I feel?” I said.
She shot her head up.
“You know. Down there. I have never been able to feel anything at all.”
There was a weary smile on her face. She had gotten into our heads and ruined our insides. She had chosen to do it. It was her will.
HOW DID THAT STORY GO AGAIN? The one she always told me late at night, leaning over me. That smell on her breath. That look in her eyes.
Later on, he pushed her down on his bed and he lay flat against her and jerked himself off to the side. He picked up her arms and wrapped them around him.
Can’t you just pretend you like it?
They slept for a few hours, and then, before the sun rose, he walked her back to the train. They did not look at each other, and there was no goodbye. She slid under the turnstile. She looked at the subway map. One transfer, and she would be at the airport. With her bruised face, with her swollen lip, she was sure they would let her fly home. Never to return.
She stood on the platform and waited for the train to arrive. A few businessmen joined her. A side glance at the young woman with the long blond hair and the messed-up face. The train pulled into the station. She sat down. She straightened her dress. She pulled her legs together. Her thighs stuck together. She pulled up her dress a bit and looked down. She was bleeding.
MY MOTHER PULLED THE BEER can to her mouth stiffly, first hitting the top lip as if it were lost, then sliding down to the bottom one. She drank and drank and it spilled a little down the corner of her mouth and down her neck. I watched the line of beer drain into her housecoat. Her eyes drifted, and then whatever light was in them before was gone. She put the can down. It was empty. She crushed it with her fist and the table shook.
She started to stand. I said, “Sit down.”
“I want another beer,” she said.
“No,” I said.
“You get me another one,” she said.
“Talk,” I said.
She slumped down in her seat and flopped her hands on the table. She stared down sullenly, then jerked her head up at me and held her gaze on me for a while. Finally, she said, “You can’t feel because you’re not supposed to feel.” Her words came out a slushy mess, as if she were wading through them in her mouth. What a wasted mess my mother was.
“I’m not explaining it right,” she said.
“Figure it out,” I said. “I can wait.”
“You can’t feel because if you feel it will hurt,” she said.
“Mom,” I said.
“Can I please have a beer?” she begged.
“No,” I said.
She bent her head down, then said, very quietly, “I didn’t want it to hurt anybody anymore.” She slouched forward on the table, her head still down, and then held it up with her hands. “You were my little girls.”
“That’s right,” I said. And then I spoke very clearly so that she would understand—and so she would remember it after I had left—that what she had done was wrong. “We were just little girls.”
Valka came down the steps with Jenny. My mother stood and I stood and pushed her down and she barked a noise at me.
“We are done here,” I said. And we unlocked the dead bolt on the front door, the three of us crazies, and walked out into the snow.
25.
I had to do one last thing before we headed out of town. I was cold and shaking. I made Valka drive. The snowflakes were gigantic and lovely and we could barely see but I knew how to get there by heart. We rode slowly, past the last working stoplight before the railroad tracks, and down the barren back roads between farms. I blasted the heat. Jenny fiddled with the radio and she sang along quietly in the backseat.
“Couldn’t we do this tomorrow?” said Valka. “Like when we can see. Like when we’re not going to hit a snowbank and be trapped forever.”
“No. Now,” I said. “You made me come home, and now I am going to finish it.”