"Martha! What are you doing? Calm down!"
Martha struggled to shake her off, but her mouth never stopped. "Let me beat this shameless thing to death! She's a whore! Rotten to the core, just like her dead-beat father! The worst mistake I ever made was giving birth to her!"
I leaned against the wall, holding my burning cheek and throbbing head, not remembering when I'd started crying.
My body could take the slaps. Could take being shoved around.But I couldn't accept that these soul-shaking words came from my own mother.
I was so stupid. I never should've come back. I thought time would've changed Martha, thought she'd think of me sometimes the way I sometimes thought of her.
Nothing had changed.
The neighbor coaxed and pulled until she finally got Martha into the bedroom. But her curses still leaked through the door, filthy and cruel.
I stood alone in the living room, staring at the shattered crucifix and crooked picture frames on the floor, tears still wet on my face while new ones fell. Chloe, congratulations. You just proved again that your mother doesn't love you. She hates you.
I wiped my eyes, bent down, picked up the crucifix, and hung it back on the nail. Then I walked down the basement stairs to my room.
Calling it a room was generous. It was a converted storage space. Single bed, old wardrobe, dim lamp. Nail holes still visible in the walls from old shelving. Martha made me stay down here. The upstairs guest room had to stay empty—church sisters sometimes came to visit.
I sat on the bed. Suddenly felt exhausted.
Honestly, in that moment, I almost wished the diagnosis had been real. I couldn't find a reason to keep living. If only, like Martha said, she'd never given birth to me at all.
I don't know how long I lay there. Ten minutes, an hour. Until I shifted and saw my stomach. A thought yanked me back.
There was a life growing inside me.
My hand slowly covered my belly. Through the thin T-shirt, warm skin underneath, flat enough that nothing showed yet. But it was there. A two-month-old thing that didn't know anything. Didn't know what a failure its mother was. Didn't know what kind of wreckage it was about to be born into.
But it chose me. Out of all the possible times and all the possible wombs, it came to me.
I couldn't just lie here waiting to die. Besides, I didn't even have a fucking disease. What right did I have to give up? Martha didn't want to be my mother? Fine.
But I could be a mother. A good mother. A completely different kind of mother than her.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes. First step to being a good mother—get some sleep.
Three seconds later, my eyes popped open. Closed them again. Opened. Tossed and turned several times. Still couldn't sleep.
My head was a mess. Misdiagnosis, pregnancy, Martha's slap, Enzo's face, New York, money, work. All of it churning like a pot of stew, bubbling away in my skull.
I had to talk to Martha. I needed a place to stay, even temporarily. I needed to save up money for the baby. Needed to find Dad's grave. I could endure her cold violence, endure her verbal abuse—just like I had for two months. I just needed to hold on a little longer.
I was working out how to approach her when I heard Martha's bedroom door open upstairs. Light footsteps moved across the ceiling. Then the front door opened. Heavy footsteps followed. More than one person.
Why? Who would come over at this hour?
I sat up, pressed my ear against the wall by my pillow, trying to hear what was happening upstairs.
But the sounds headed toward the basement. The doorknob turned.
I sprang off the bed, backed up two steps, spine pressed against the cold concrete wall, eyes locked on the door.
It swung open. Not Martha. Two men I'd never seen before. Dark clothes, built like tanks, faces blank. One held a black cloth. The other walked toward me, and I caught a sharp chemical smell.
"Who are you?" My voice came out high and unrecognizable. "What do you want?"
The first man didn't stop. His partner circled around, cutting off my path to the door. The first one reached out.
