Instead, she grabs for Patricia’s leg and sinks her teeth into her thigh, in the meat right above her knee.
If the situation didn’t feel real, the pain now does, and Patricia feels her entire body kick into fight or flight, something she hasn’t truly felt in years. Her heart is clonking and pattering around, bolts of energy shoot down her limbs, and she smacks the child’s face away from her leg on pure instinct, knocking Brooklyn to the ground. She immediately feels a hot wash of guilt, but the way Brooklyn looks up at her from the floor, mouth open, teeth red, drooling blood, removes some portion of shame.
There is nothing in Brooklyn’s eyes, nothing.
Vast fields of blue with a tiny black pinprick pupil.
Her hand is raised but Patricia can’t bring herself to strike her own granddaughter again. Two oppositional animal instincts thrum in her body and mind, two wolves fighting: Hurt the child, or hold the child?
In a heartbeat, Brooklyn is on her hands and knees, and she crawls like a spider to grab Patricia’s leg, latching on to her like a koala, wrapping arms and legs around her lower leg before Patricia is sure how to react. She kicks feebly, and the child bites her again, this time right in the muscle of her calf.
“Brooklyn, no!” she shouts, even though she knows it won’t do any good. This time, her granddaughter won’t be knocked off so easily, and when Patricia tries to swat her away, Brooklyn clings, grinding her teeth together.
Patricia’s heart—well, it’s not ready for this. It feels like a hummingbird bashing against a wooden box. She’s not eighteen anymore.
She kicks and kicks, twinges something in her back, but Brooklyn won’t unstick, and then Patricia reaches down and sticks a thumb in the corner of her granddaughter’s mouth, back where her molars haven’t come in yet. She wedges a thumb into each side and grasps the tiny skull in both palms and pries the girl’s mouth open with shaking fingers until the teeth unlatch from her leg, which is good but also terrible because now she can feel it, feel the torn muscle and the ache and the deep burn. Blood runs down her leg into her shoe, wet and slippery. Brooklyn snaps at the air, turning her head back and forth like a confused dog, and Patricia frowns and uses gentle but unrelenting force to move the girl’s head back, thumbs still deep in her wet mouth. Brooklyn hasn’t made a single sound, and it’s unholy and unnerving.
Now that she’s got the child’s head firmly in her hands, Brooklyn unwinds from her leg and tries to scratch and kick her, as if she doesn’t know how to reach up and tug at the hands that hold her, as if she’s caught by some unseen force, wind or a storm, and can only fight aggressively forward. All offense, no defense, no intelligence. Time slows for a moment as Patricia holds the small skull, fragile as an egg, unsure how to move forward in a way that won’t damage one of them permanently. Her leg burns in two places, a harsh reminder that this is no game, no childish rebellion that calls for a curt word or appropriate punishment.
Her granddaughter is currently a mindless beast.
There is no good solution here. No treat she can offer. No punishment she can inflict.
No carrot, no stick.
Brooklyn’s hands scrabble madly like the monster from some old zombie flick Patricia saw when she was much, much younger and had the time for banalities. She’s afraid that if she holds the child’s head much longer, something bad will happen to the bones in her neck—after all, if Brooklyn turned her body too hard right now, it could snap her spinal cord.
Patricia is close to the wall, and she backs up toward it, gently pulling Brooklyn along with her—or allowing her to follow, more like, still holding her away from anything she could reach with hands or teeth. With her back against the wall, Patricia feels more certain. Something, at least, is still solid.
Carefully, her knees groaning, her wounds complaining, her heart stuttering, Patricia slides down the wall and sinks to sitting on the white carpet, rocking back on her butt, holding Brooklyn’s head all the while. At this angle, she looks the child directly in her eyes and still finds nothing, nothing, nothing.
“Brooklyn?” she asks.
Nothing.
“Brooklyn Madilyn Martin!” she snaps in a voice that never fails to get attention.
Nothing.
Bared, bloody teeth, reaching hands, flailing fingers, each tiny and pink and perfect.
She remembers seeing Brooklyn in the hospital, counting fingers and toes as is every grandmother’s right. She likes tiny babies—flawless and soft and sweet and unblemished by the world’s ills and the failures and whims of imperfect parents. And further back, she remembers Ella’s fingers, and further still, Chelsea’s.
They’d been perfect. Every one.
Everything about Chelsea was perfect when she was born. Patricia wanted to spend all of her time holding her baby, had bristled when anyone else touched her or when she had to lay her down to sleep.
But Chelsea had become such a contrary thing as she got bigger.
Crying, defiant, pushing her own mother away. The tears, the snot, the rage, the first time that perfect Cupid’s bow of a jolly pink baby lip screeched, “I hate you!” before Chelsea was even two years old. And her eyes, alternately judging and yearning. Wanting things Patricia couldn’t provide and measuring what she could offer against some invisible, imaginary yardstick. Even now—
With a burst of energy, Brooklyn lunges forward; Patricia got lost, for a moment, and didn’t hold tightly enough. She’s in shock, perhaps. Everything seems to be happening very far away, as if to someone else. The bites on her leg pulse with each heartbeat but feel as if they’re a mile away, something she’s watching on a movie screen. She must hold on to the child tighter.
Much tighter.
Patricia takes a deep breath and lets go of Brooklyn’s head.