“No,” Dora said, her tone rising, then dropping again to almost a whisper.“And don’t you dare swear at me in my own house, child.Yourerratic behaviouris what makes you an unfit mother.Your taste in men.Your constant lies and manipulation make you an unfit caregiver for Rachel or any other child.”
“Mama, stop—”
“Why you don’t take steps to prevent yourself from falling pregnant in the first place is beyond my comprehension.You’re just one crisis after another.Do you think you could manage to be responsibleone dayout of your life?Ever?”
Mary was quiet for a while.“I could get settled, though, before this one comes.Get my own place.I could—”
“It may not even come,” Dora said.“You lost the last one.”
“But if it sticks—”
“If it sticks, you would be wise to get rid of it.”
“I don’t want to get rid of it.Maybe it’s what I need, Mama.Maybe it could set me straight.”
“Like Rachel set you straight?Or the one before her?”Dora’s tone was ice now, and Rachel froze at the mention of her name.She thought of the other girls in her class, the ones whose mothers dropped them off in the morning and picked them up in the afternoon with promises of freshly baked cookies waiting at home.She never heard those mothers use swear words.They turned up for school concerts and track meets and cheered on their kids.They were like a whole different breed of mother to Rachel, so disparate from her own experience that she couldn’t even compare them.They were like daisies and roses; one simple and pure and bright, the other thorny and particular and quick to wilt.She wished her mother could just be like the others, wondered why she wasn’t.But her grandmother had just said it was all Rachel’s fault, and she felt something wither inside.
“I could take her with me this time,” Mary said, and Rachel’s heart began to race.
No.Please no!
“She could help with the baby—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dora snapped.“Sheisa baby, Mary.She’s still a child, not a nanny!And you know you are not allowed to take her anywhere.”
“But what if you said it was all right?”
“I will never do such a thing.For Christ’s sake, listen to yourself.”
Rachel blanched.She’d never heard her grandmother take the Lord’s name in vain before.And the thought of having to leave with her mother terrified her.The first time Mary had left, Dora said, Rachel was three.She came back again, a couple of years later, and stayed for nine months, until Rachel started preschool.And then she was gone again.She’d never moved back in in any real sense, and Dora always referred to the time Mary did spend there as “visits.”Some were longer, a few months here and there, and some were shorter.But it always ended in arguments, slammed doors and bitterness.
Mary didn’t stay long this time, either.Only a few weeks.She didn’t even stay for Christmas.She slept a lot of the time, mostly during the day.She seemed to prefer the dark.Her exchanges with Rachel werelimited and awkward, Mary only paying her daughter any attention when she had nothing else to do.When she did, it was as though her mind were darting around from thought to thought, as unsettled and transitory as a hummingbird.
The night before her mother slammed the screen door behind her with a clap and sped off down the street in her rusting white Falcon, Rachel had woken up to the sound of sobbing from the bathroom on the other side of the wall.She lay awake for several minutes, wondering what to do.She knew the cries were Mary’s, not Dora’s.She had never seen Dora cry, not even when her eighteen-year-old cat Gracie had died the previous spring.
Pushing back the covers, she crept from her bed out into the dim hallway.A strip of yellow light illuminated the crack beneath the bathroom door.She hesitated, then knocked quietly.The door opened a second later and there was her mother, kneeling on the white-and-black-tiled floor, which was smeared with blood.Rachel recoiled.It was all over her legs and hands, and the light from the bathroom shone on the dark tracks down the hall from Mary’s bedroom, too.
Rachel gasped.“What happened?Are you okay?”
Mary’s face crumpled as she swiped at the blood with a bath towel.She shook her head.
Rachel knew something about periods.She’d read the library’s copy ofAre You There God?It’s Me, Margaret.A swooping fear overtook her as she wondered whether this was what it would look like when her time finally came.
“Come here,” Mary said, reaching her blood-streaked hands out to her daughter.Rachel didn’t want to, but she stepped over and Mary wrapped her arms tightly around her.Rachel stiffened.Her mother had never hugged her before.Not that she could recall, anyway.
After a moment, Mary let go, sniffling and breathing hard.“Oh,” she said, looking at Rachel.“You’ve got blood on you.”
“What happened?”Rachel asked again.“Is it your period?”
Her mother looked at her with swollen eyes.“Something like that.The baby’s gone.We need to clean up.”
“I should get Gran,” Rachel said.
She turned to leave, but Mary reached over and shut the door, boxing Rachel inside.She was truly frightened now.
Mary shoved the shower curtain aside with a swish and turned on the water, then took Rachel’s hand and led her over.“Get in.”
“But my pyjamas—”
