Carpet growing up trees. Logs furred with moss. Leaves furled on the edges, burned brown by the sun. Most importantly there are flowers growing everywhere. Why don’t I come here more often?
I walk for a long time. I’m heading west toward the water. If I keep walking, I’ll come to the place where they found Nevaeh’s body. I don’t want to do that, so I head east. A little over a mile later I walk right into a wooden shack. It’s a storage shack, just large enough for a lawnmower and some tools. What it’s doing out here, I don’t know. The door is unhinged, and it’s mostly covered in moss. I step inside, brushing away cobwebs and the egg sacs that insects have left behind. It’s empty, aside from a rusted shovel and a box of generic, unopened garbage bags that sit on a stool in the center. The box is so faded I can barely make out the writing. It’s a place you could come to do secret things. It’s a wonder the high schoolers haven’t found it. They are always looking for a new place to smoke pot in peace. I pull the door closed and head back home, mentally making note of the fastest way to get to the shack. You never know when you’ll need to use something like that.
MY FAT IS GONE AND NONE OF MY CLOTHES FIT. I don’t care because they suck anyway, but you have to have shit to cover your flesh, because people will stare if you walk around fat and naked. My mother keeps a box of her fat clothes in the attic. I don’t know when my mother was ever fat, but I go scrounging around up there for something to wear. She wore a lot of high-waisted, cut-off jean shorts, with the edges fraying and tangled, cut so short the pockets peek out the bottom. There are half a dozen flannel shirts in there, too, and a pair of bright blue Doc Martens. She said that after she had me her feet grew a full size, and she had to throw away all of her old shoes. I carry my spoils back to my bedroom and spread them out on my mattress.
“What were you doing up there?” My mother stands in my doorway, arms folded across her chest like she’s cold.
“Up where?” I shake out the clothes and hold them up to get a good look. I’m shaken by the fact that she’s talking to me, but I don’t let it show. I don’t hate her presence, just her lack of it.
“I heard you,” she says. “In the attic…”
I ignore her, spreading, holding things up to my chest to check the size. If she looked closely, she’d be able to see the tremor in my hands.
“What is that?” She steps around me and looks down at the pile. Shock registers on her face, the lines that tell her age cut deeper as she frowns.
“Put that back,” she says.
I spin around.
“Then give me money to buy clothes…” I hold out my hand like I expect her to palm me a fifty, but she’s looking at the Docs like they’re a ghost.
“You shouldn’t wear things like that,” she says, pulling her robe tighter around her shoulders. “Men will get the wrong idea. Even if you’re not pretty, they’ll think…”
“What are you talking about?” I’m holding up a T-shirt to get a good look at it. Nirvana. It still has the knot tied into the bottom. I glance over at her face and put down the shirt. My mother is the type who is always looking for a reason to be angry. She tsssked and huffed and stomped around the eating house over the slightest thing. Now she is angry I pulled her old clothes out of retirement. Like she could wear them anyway. She is a toothpick human, all bone and sharp edges, always buried beneath that robe.
“I was … my daddy, he—”
I lay the shirt down.
“He what?”
She shakes her head. “You shouldn’t wear clothes like that,” she reiterates. But I don’t want to let it go. She was going to tell me something before she decided against it, and I want to know what.
“Did he do something to you?” I press. I try not to look intense; I don’t want to scare her off. But my eyes are drilling into her.
She bites the corner of her lip, the most normal thing I’ve seen her do in years. It triggers memories of long ago—chilly nights under a blanket as we sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, it was her turn to tell a story; she bites the corner of her lip then starts. Helping me with my first grade homework at the kitchen table, biting the corner of her lip as she thinks of the answer. She snaps out of it, her old self.
“That’s none of your business,” she says.
“Who is my father?” I swear to God, this is the first time I’ve verbalized the question that plagues every child who has no memories of a father. The first time I care to know.
“That’s none of your business,” she says again, but this time she’s slowly backing out of the room.
“It’s my business,” I say urgently. “It is. Because I have a right to know who he is…” I follow her—a step for a step. She shakes her head. I’m becoming more panicky. I feel my palms grow damp, the increased lub-dub of my heart. This is my one chance to get answers. I am eighteen. There are but a few breaths left in our relationship.
“Tell me, goddammit!” I grit between my teeth. I don’t want to yell, but I’m not above it. My mother hates loud noises.
“Don’t speak to me like that. I’m your moth—”
“You aren’t a mother,” I say quickly. “You hung my childhood by a noose. You don’t even care, do you? Of course not. You don’t care that I graduated from high school with honors, or that I got a job, or that the best kind of man likes to spend time with me. You’re just an ugly, self-involved, guilt-ridden whore who refuses to even speak to the child you brought into this world. I can’t even find the strength to hate you, because I don’t even care anymore.”