Untitled Story Part 1 February 8, 2010

Like a fish out of water, Loretta’s body jerked uncontrollably, jolting her awake. She found herself wiggling out of the bed, careful not to disturb her little brother, Marlon, who was in still in a caught up in his own dreams. She glanced at the open window. The parts of Loretta’s body that weren’t covered in her yellowed cotton gown, were blue from the moon’s glow. Its light danced on her as she moved, her limbs working expertly now. She had been through this before.

She sauntered past her parents’ and her older brother Bobbie’s rooms towards the bathroom. With the flick of the light, the orange glow revealed her face wet and her dark brown eyes swollen in the mirror. The day before, Loretta’s mother had painstakingly tugged and twisted her kinky hair into a single French braid as she sat between her knees. The white ribbon was missing. She grew dismayed as she noticed the brown, crinkled mass of hair reflected through the glass. Her mother would certainly punish her in the morning, but she tried not to think about it as she turned the bathtub’s tap and let the warm water gush out, trying to let the sound soothe her as she as she removed her soiled nightdress. Her face grew hot as she tried to ignore how the urine and sweat made her body grow even colder as she stripped.

For the past week, she had had the same nightmare. In the beginning, she would wake up in this dream and see a beautiful, glowing man dressed in a white gown. Loretta believed that it had to be an angel, one of those the holy winged people she knew from the Biblical stories her family told. A Gabriel, a Michael, a Nathaniel, a descendant of heaven coming down to Earth to bear her good news. Or a warning. He would be standing over the lumpy spring mattress she and Marlon shared. Loretta would be startled, overwhelmed by his presence and radiance that seemed to emanate from him like ball of fire. He would part his lips into a smile that could dissolve very stars that could still be seen from her window and stretch his hand out. He would beckon her to take it, to follow him, out of the bedroom door, out of her family’s old one-story house.

And once they make it to the sidewalk, she was instantly enveloped in a darkness so black that the only thing drawing a source of light was the angel, himself. Suddenly the angel would let go of her hand and break into a run—leaving Loretta forced to chase him as quickly as her legs could allow her. She never felt so helpless, so alone. And just as the mysterious angel suddenly appeared, he faded away, folding into the dark until he was nothing more than an ominous, blinking light.

Loretta got out of the bathtub when she noticed that her hands were starting to wrinkle, taking care not to splash any water of the bathroom floor should her mother notice. She stealthily balled up the evidence of her habitual shame and buried it deeply into the basket her mother kept for the dirty laundry. Loretta then dressed quickly into another gown and threw away the wad of wet newspaper she kept in the bed. The first time it happened, out of panic she blamed Marlon. Since then Loretta found it hard to forgive herself, remembering how she had heard her sweet brother cry out in pain while he was being punished with the strap of their father’s thick leather belt, for a crime he didn’t commit. Marlon did not move an inch as she crawled into bed again, taking care to leave the blankets off. Just in case.

Mother by owlintree January 28, 2010

                                                                   

           Romona remembered her first baby doll—a cabbage patch doll she got for her sixth Christmas.  Like a natural mother, she knew the time had come when she saw the big box covered in snowmen wrapping paper underneath the tree. Ripping the paper apart, she held the lavender cardboard womb that enclosed her baby, behind the wall of clear plastic. She saw her baby’s big blue eyes nearly hidden underneath the pink nursery cap andinstantly fell in love with Rosemary Jane. That was what the birth certificate suggested she’d be called, right next to her birth date, January 10^th and a set of tiny footprints.  Rosemary Jane. She liked that.

            Romona could barely hold still as her father ripped open the box and out Rosemary came. She clapped as he untied the plastic twisties and watched as his calloused hands struggled with the tape that held her baby down. It was a complicated birth, yet Romona was willing to wait. No cries, her baby greeted Romona with that famous dimpled smile.

            Romona remembered her first baby doll, because her child would not—for the love of God –stop crying.  Twenty years later she sat defeated, baby cradled in her rocking chair, a real mother.  One who hadn’t had more than three hours of sleep during the weekly period, while her husband slept comfortably in padded mattress that they had bought for her pregnancy. He had to work, she thought over bitterly. Since when was having a three month old dragging me out of bed to tug on my breasts, sucking the very life out of me not work? She endured doctor’s appointments, bathing, baby shit, feeding, colicky screams that made her wish for the very pits of hell—while he sat in an air conditioned office, pressing buttons mindlessly all day.  

            Fuck you, Dereck.

            As she tried to quiet her baby in the dark nursery room, she wondered where on damn box it said that having a baby would make her so depressed. She wished that maybe there had been a practice post-partum of some kind.  Something that would yield aftermath after the womb of her infantile fantasy of motherhood had closed, some frustration for that synthetic child.  Before the real lonliness took root.  As silly as it was, Ramona had held on to that almost magical feeling of instinctual love when her father pulled Rosemary out of the box. Against her better judgement, she thought harnessing that old emotional response would be enough, although her head was screaming for her to reconsider. Didn’t she have a career to devote her life to? Why did she need a child in order to love something? Or to be loved in return, she later realized. Yet this was not a political revolution her concious was fighting anymore or a failed childhood dream for that matter. This was a chemical warfare she found herself ill prepared.          

          Ramona wrapped the nursery blanket closer to his tiny body. Andrew Allen Scott, that was his name. She had picked it out herself, peering laboriously over baby name books until she found one that was just right. Romona actually read a lot of baby books, listened to classical music and took enough Lamaze classes until she sure enough that her vagina could birth a baby the size of  a watermelon. Romona would see the smiles of strangers as she waddled, the growing extension of herself protruding out. Now she felt guilty, wishing that she could just leave him on some doorstep so that she would not feel so boxed in. Romona sighed. She knew that she loved him, but a cardboard box never seemed so damn deceiving.