My mother makes a small sound from behind closed lips.
This wouldn’t be her first visit from CPS. Or even her fifth. They’ve been called to our various apartments many times over the years. The end result was a couple of weeks where I had lunch packed for school and somewhat cleaner clothes. Only once was she subjected to drug tests—that made her angrier than anything. We moved again, and our harried social worker never reappeared.
“We don’t want trouble,” she murmurs to Randall.
It’s so rare for my mother to stand up for me that for a moment I feel a slight flush of warmth, the last vestige of an affection that once dominated my entire life. She was everything to me, my only family and my only friend.
Then she says, “Punish her some other way.”
And I remember that I fucking loath her.
They both stand still, thinking.
Randall says to her, “Go get the teddy bear.”
The effect on me is electric. I have no resistance anymore, no dignity.
“NOOOOO!” I howl. “No, I’ll get the belt! Don’t touch him! DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HIM! Please! PLEEEEEEASE!”
Buttons is the only thing I have from my father. I’ve kept him with me through every move, everywhere we went. I’ve never lost him and always kept him safe.
He’s missing one glass eye, and I’ve sewn his rips with mismatched thread. But his warm, nubbly texture is still the most comforting thing in the world when I press him against my cheek.
Randall pins my arms behind me while I thrash and scream. I can already hear my mother’s stumbling steps ascending the staircase. I hear her bumping around in my room, and the thud of her knocking something over.
I’m praying she won’t be able to find him. If I can get up the stairs before Randall, I’ll hide him somewhere. And I won’t tell them where, no matter what they do to me.
She descends a few minutes later. When I see the old bear in her arms I let out a scream that tears my throat.
Randall holds me fast, saying to my mother, “Put him in the grate.”
She opens the fire grate as I scream and beg. I don’t know what I’m saying, only that I’ve never been more pathetic, more sniveling, more weak. And I’ve never hated them as I do in this moment. It’s a white-hot rage, burning me alive from the inside.
My mother douses my teddy bear in lighter fluid. She seems strangely sober as she does it, her drunkenness evaporated, her eyes fixed intently on the bear.
I’m still hoping in some desperate part of my brain that this is all theater. The punishment is scaring me, making me cry.
But I know better than that.
She lights the match, the flame flaring into life with the bitter smell of sulfur. Only then does she hesitate, just for a moment. Probably because of how loud I’m screaming, like I’m being tortured, like I’ll die.
“NOOOOOO! PLEASE PLEASE NOOOOOO!”
“Do it,” Randall says.
She drops the match.
Buttons ignites.
I watch him burn and I burn too, howling with pain that feels physical, like I’ve truly been lit on fire right next to him.
His fur singes away, his cotton ignites. His glass eye cracks.
I’ve never known agony like this. I never knew how much I loved him till this moment.
Randall holds my arms, knowing that I would still lunge away from him and snatch Buttons out of the fire with my bare hands.
He holds me in place until the bear is nothing but a smoking, melted ruin.
Then Randall says, “You’re too old for stuffed animals.”
All the love I had inside of me is turned to hatred. I’d light this whole house on fire if I could. I’d burn them in their beds like they burned my bear.
I turn to my mother.
She’s pretending to be drunk again, eyes half-closed as she sways in place. Refusing to look at me.
Randall lets me return to my room.
I collapse on the bed. Crying so hard that I’m sick, that I’d puke all over this bed if I’d eaten any of that spaghetti.
After twenty minutes or so, I hear them having sex. My mother sounds like an excited chihuahua and Randall grunts like a buffalo.
I hold my pillow over my head, still sobbing.
Hours later, long after dark, my mother brings me a glass of milk.
I’m shaking so hard the bed frame is rattling.
“I need more medicine,” I croak.
I hate it, but when I don’t have it, the withdrawals are even worse.
“It ran out,” she says.
She keeps the bottle in her room. We both know there were thirty pills in it when we refilled the prescription earlier this week. She might have sold them to Leslie, but more likely she’s been taking them herself. She thinks they help her lose weight. Randall has been pinching her belly, telling her she’s getting fat.
“Call the doctor,” I beg. “I can’t wait two weeks.”
“I already called,” she says, the edge of frustration in her voice giving her away. “They won’t refill it early.”
I turn my face toward the wall, still shivering and shaking.
I can feel her sitting behind me, sullen and quiet. My mother knows what Buttons meant to me. But at the same time, she can’t ever be at fault. So it’s impossible that burning him was wrong.
“Randall was pretty mad,” she says at last.
That’s her version of an apology. Shifting the blame squarely on someone else’s shoulders.
“You could have hid him,” I hiss.
That’s not allowed. No one can be a victim except her.
“You know what he would have done to me!” she snaps. “But you don’t care about that, do you? You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You’re selfish. So fucking selfish. You’re the one that made him angry! You think I like coming home to that?”
She goes on in that vein for some time. I stay facing the wall, ignoring her.
She hates being ignored. When she can’t get a response out of me any other way, she falls silent to regroup.