Go get your baby.
Reena disappeared from the bathroom, leaving me alone with my reflection, which grinned sharply back at me.
The days passed more quickly after that. And then one afternoon, Amelia pulled me aside in the hallway to compliment my “fresh new look.” I was like a brand-new woman, she said, her eyes wide with approval. She stepped closer to me, close enough for me to smell the Chardonnay on her breath as she said, “Work like a charm, don’t they?”
“What do?”
“Oh,youknow.” She winked, or tried to wink; her facial expressions seemed to suffer from an extended stutter step of removal from her nerve signals. The result was that one eyelid closed very slowly and reopened, giving the effect of a malfunctioning animatronic doll. She leaned in and whispered, “Do you know what they called them in my day?”
I shrugged helplessly.
“Mother’s little helper.”
The awareness dawned uncomfortably on me. It had been weeks since she gave me that one pill. Did she honestly think, through some deranged thread of Pinot Grigio–soaked dream logic, that a single dose had kept me going for weeks?
“I’ll get you a prescription,” she slurred. “I have a doctor friend. A friend who’s a doctor.”
“Oh,” I said quickly, “I don’t want to put you out—”
“Oh, honey. I get them in bulk. And anyways—what do you think family is for?”
Then she stepped forward and gave me a strange, drapey hug.Standing there with her arms wrapped around me, I felt like I was in the embrace of a great stiff-winged bird, feathers fluttering with wind—no, not feathers, not wind, but then what was that shuddering movement?
I stiffened, and the arms wrapped tighter. She was sobbing, I realized. Sobbing hard into my neck. Mumbling something that sounded like—
Help.
“Amelia,” I said with shock. “Oh, there, there …”
Just as quickly she stepped back, and I swallowed a gasp. Her eyes were bloodshot and raccoon-rimmed with mascara, and she was smiling fiercely, even though she had started to hiccup a bit from the force of her sobs. “Oh, don’t pay attention to me.”Hiccup. “I’m just happy for you, that’s all!”
“Amelia—”
“Call me Mama,” she hissed, smiling wider. She gave my shoulder one last rub, emitting a gleeful little sob, and then said, “I’m going to freshen up before dinner.” Then she loped meanderingly down the hallway and turned in to the master bedroom, the door shutting behind her with a click.
21
I’m officially on house arrest.A humiliating blow to the last remaining ounce of dignity, not to mention mobility, that I had in this horror show of a world. A fabric rope made of three ragged towels is tied in an infinity loop around my ankles, right above my bandage, making it just barely possible for me to shuffle around the kitchen at a glacial pace. Even at a creep, it’s hard to keep my balance, even harder to use my walking stick properly, and so I keep nearly falling over or gasping at the pain of my bandage rubbing against the fabric as I follow Mary’s commands:Bring me the potato basket, go get the sharper knife, carry this crock to the fire, sweep up the crumbs from the floor.I can’t help but notice that she’s intentionally making me do as many trips back and forth to the kitchen as possible. I can’t help but think she’s desperate to see me trip and fall flat on my face.
“You know,” I say, on my tenth crawl toward the fire to retrieve a spoon that she magically forgot to ask for when I was there earlier to drop off the crock pot of venison stew, “thatyourlife would be much easier if you were just doing this without me. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do. But Papa said.”
Papa said.I roll my eyes and grab the spoon, then begin my pilgrimage back across the room.Papa sure did say.In fact Papa said specifically,If you cause anotherproblem—if you try to leave this ranch, oreven worse, try to take a child with you—I’ll tie you up by the horse and see how you do overnight, you exhausting wretch of a woman.
I hand her the spoon. “I can barely walk as it is, you know. Don’t you think this is a bit unnecessary?”
“This morning, I would’ve agreed with you,” she says breezily. “And then you tried to run away on one leg.” She reaches for a covered bowl of milk that has been sitting on the counter by the window since morning. She takes the cover off and begins to skim the cream off the top and into another bowl. Butter. She’s making butter. As she takes the bowl of cream and pours it into an old wooden churner, I think of my electric mixer and feel a rush of yearning.Afternoon, y’all! Today we’re making butter fromscratch—well, except for the fact that we’re using my good old KitchenAid to do the churning part, otherwise we’dbe at it all day, and no one wants that! Ha! Ha ha!
Ha. Ha ha ha.
Mary starts to churn, working the cream with the wooden ladle in effortful thrusts, putting her shoulder into the movement. Over the steady clunking, she says, “Why do you try to run away so much?”
She isn’t looking at me, which is perhaps why I’m able to tell the truth. Or maybe I’m just exhausted to the point of being incapable of thinking strategically. Or maybe I am a lunatic, stuck in a nightmare, and there is nothing left to lose. Or maybe I am dreaming. Or maybe this whole world is going to shit and I am a victim of my own motherfucking—
“Because I’m not supposed to be here. That’s why.”
She pauses mid-churn. Looks at me. “You’re not supposed to be here?”
