Mommy

By Amethyst Turner

Shrouded figure in dark corners

Smell like ashes and splashes of smoke

Little and limp, a tortured mourner

Sound like the punchline of a sick sort of joke

Beautiful woman destroyed into shambles

Look like the shell of the person you were

Lit hot and weak as a flickering candle

Feel wicked and weak and never quite sure

XXX

 "Come here," said Libby. Her voice sounded gravelly and strange. "Come here, child. I know it hurts. I can help."

The girl whimpered over her new scars, chin wobbling. Tears stained her cheeks like claw marks. She held her face in her hands, mouth open as if in shock. She trembled with pain, unable to speak. Libby took her by the wrist and the girl, too weak to resist her, followed her into the kitchen.

"Here we go," she said in the most soothing voice she could remember how to make. "This will make the pain go away. Go on, have some. Put it on the burn." Libby knelt down in front of the girl, a little hill of salt sitting in her palm. She held it out like candy. The girl dipped her fingertips in it, still shaking, but Libby clicked her tongue. "More," she said. "More."

Her daughter smelled like sweat and grime and garbage, but also something innately childish, sort of like baby powder or cotton. Libby had to marvel at how close she could get without anyone knowing. She had the girl right here in her grasp, close enough to strangle, close enough to shred.

She smiled, showing the crying girl her graying teeth. "Good," she said. "Go ahead, put it on. It won't hurt anymore after that."

The girl lifted her fingers to her cheek, shuddering with cold and agony. Libby grinned and watched the salt go into the wound, burrowing like fire into the girl's veins.

XXX

A week, Richard had promised. Just a week, and then the girl was all hers.

Owl had not felt this alive since she said goodbye to Amaya. Now, thoughts of her lost lover still made her heart burn with sorrow and regret, but there was a new hope budding underneath that, one that said Amaya would want Owl to be happy again, even if it would be without her.

She went shopping that day but wasn't sure exactly what she needed. What did little girls need to have? Rather, what did Amethyst need to have? Not much, she knew. The girl slept on a bed without a mattress and ate out of the trash.

Aimee would sleep on Amaya's bed, Owl had decided, but she would buy her a new bedspread, something bright and pretty. She'd get new stuffed animals and new clothes, new notebooks and pencils and pens.

Owl smiled and rolled her cart into the store. They were going to be happy together. They were.

XXX

Amethyst couldn't feel her hands. The pain blinded her, making her mind move too slowly to stop her body from dragging her feet up the stairs after her mother.

Mommy was prettier than Aimee remembered her being. She had sharp bones and pink lips and long, curly eyelashes. Amethyst liked the wrinkles on her face, the brackets around her mouth and on her cheeks. They made her seem old, sweet, safe, even though Aimee knew she was none of those things.

The burns on her face throbbed, each pulse of pain throwing bright splotches of color into her eyes. Amethyst pulled her feet over the steps, squeaking with pain at every movement. "Come on," her mother kept saying, just a step ahead. "Come along, faster, faster. I know what will make it stop hurting."

All she heard was stop. She wanted, needed this to stop. The answer, her mother said, was at the top of the stairs and if that was where she had to go, then she would, even if it meant pain and cold and blurry, unseeing eyes.

When they reached the top of the staircase, Amethyst didn't notice. She tripped over the last step, coarse carpet hitting the wounds on her face with all the sharpness of a blade. Amethyst screamed, paralyzed with pain.

"Oh, don't do that," said her mother, looming above. Amethyst could smell her close, yeast and dust and something zincy like blood. Then, under it, that familiar scent she had recognized so often as a baby, her nose identifying the origin of her existence. It was almost sour, a tart scent like milk and dead skin. "You wouldn't want me to get angry, would you?" her mother crooned. "If you keep lying on the floor, I'll be angry."

Amethyst didn't want that. She pushed up onto her palms, looking around as if in a dream. Her head felt light and sight blinked in and out. Aimee stumbled forward, following the swishing fabric of her mother's skirt.

She felt the air change, becoming denser and hotter, wetter. This, she realized, was a room she had never liked at all: the upstairs bathroom.

Amethyst sank down onto the moldy bath mat, tucking her head in between her knees. She felt like throwing up, but she told herself, don't, don't, don't. It would make Mommy angry. Dimly, she was aware of a sound in the background, a loud whooshing, familiar but hard to place with her thoughts so misconstrued.

A hand gripped the back of her shirt, knuckles grazing her back. "Come here," the woman whispered. "Come to me, darling."

Inside her, something warm and sweet burst, coursing through her veins like a drug. Never had her mother called her darling or anything close to it. Hearing her say the word made her feel as though a new light had been illuminated inside her. She raised her head and gritted her teeth through the pain. She crawled toward the kind, coaxing voice, forcing herself not to whimper.

The noise stopped. Quiet, and the thin wheeze of her mother's breathing. Then a hand, all the way around her neck this time.

Before she could breathe again, shocking cold hit Amethyst square in the face and swallowed her up, clenching her head between its massive teeth. Her lungs cried out for air, her insides writhing in her stomach. She tried to call out and say stop, but water only flooded into her mouth and then, when she tried to spit it out, her nose. A sensation more terrible than any other she'd ever felt, worse, than falling down the stairs and breaking her legs, worse than the burns on her face and the salt, worse than being dropped on the floor, slammed into the wall, a feeling worse than all of those together took hold of her and tore her from the insides out.

When it was finally over, she threw up and cried until there was no food left in her stomach and no water left in her veins.

XXX

Daniel sniffed the cigarette, frowning at the way it seemed aloof to him. The tobacco did not welcome him into its world and show him its ways; rather, it sat and waited.

But he felt powerful holding it. It felt the way he thought holding a knife might feel, or a gun. He could ruin things with this. He could kill with this or, rather, he could die from this.

His mother told Cassandra all the time that their grandfather had died from emphysema when he was fifty-five, too young to even meet Daniel before he passed. And, as she said, all because of those evil death sticks.

Death sticks. Daniel twirled the cigarette between his finger, tapping the hollowness of it. He held it to his lips, pretending to take a drag. He pressed the cylinder into his tongue, feeling the tiny, perfect circle of it imprinted there.

He sighed and looked out his window. He could never put a light to this cigarette. In the window of the Turner house, he watched the flame of a lonely smoker flicker. Whoever it was that lived up there, Daniel knew this, at least: he did not want to be like them.

XXX

Ashley squeezed Sue's hand, flashing a meaningful smile her way. Her lover returned the smile, but on wobbling lips.

Ashley paused with her hand on the doorknob. "Are you alright?" she asked. "You're shaking."

"I'm sorry." Sue took her hand back, wrapping her arms around herself. She looked so lovely tonight in that skin-tight black dress. Ashley wanted to run her fingers over the curves of her, just to make sure they were true and not just a ruse carved out of silk and light. Sue gave her a shy smile. "I'm just a little nervous, I guess."

"Can't say I blame you." Ashley let out a long breath. She was a little nervous, too. What would Melissa say when she met Sue? Would she be warm and inviting, or cold and passive-aggressive? Ashley had a feeling the latter would be the case. "Don't worry about it," she said. "If it doesn't go well, you never have to see her again."

Sue took her hands and looked into her eyes with a bemused sort of smile. Her palms felt silky under Ashley's rough skin. She examined Sue's face in the moonlight: the soft slope of her button nose, the little brackets around her mouth, the scarlet slash of her lips and the glowing red apples of her cheeks. She reached up to touch Sue's soft black hair, short enough that it didn't touch her shoulders.

"I don't want that," Sue said. "If I'm going to be part of your life, I want to get along with your family."

Part of your life. Ashley grinned and rang the doorbell. "Of course," she said. "Of course."

XXX

Richard collapsed onto the couch, letting out a deep sigh. His muscles ached from standing all day, waiting. He covered his face with his hand. Tomorrow night, he wouldn't be home. He would be in his car, waiting for a traffic light to change in another state.

He had to do it, though. If they wanted the heat back on before the harrowing breath of February came upon them, then he had to take this job. It was dangerous, sure, but how else could collect such a large sum of money in so little time? He needed this.

Amethyst's feet peeked out from behind the bureau. Richard realized with alarm that her toes were tinged with blue. "Amethyst?" he called. "You back there?"

A set of tiny fingers appeared around the bureau, knuckles pressed white with tension. Her face came into view, white except for the unhealthy red of her nose and cheeks. Her lips looked purple and her hair seemed limp. She looked over at him with an almost wary eye.

"Do you want to come sit with me?" he asked. She looked so cold. He wanted to zip her up in his jacket and hold her until her toes turned pink again. She wouldn't let him do that, though. The closest he could get was to put his arm around her and tuck his head into the cold, smooth space between her shoulder and her neck.

Amethyst shook her head and ducked back behind the bureau.

Richard felt a burning disappointment in his chest, an emotion that almost amounted to anger. "What's the matter, baby?" he asked. "Come here. I need to tell you something."

Aimee whimpered. "I don't want you to see," she whispered.

"See? See what?"

"My face."

"What are you talking about Amethyst? I already saw your face." Richard almost laughed at the absurdity of her ideas, but he figured that would only make her more upset. "Just come over here. I have important news."

He heard the mattress-less bed creak. Amethyst appeared, thin and bony, her sharp thighs visible as she held the collar of her shirt up over her jaw like a shield. She stumbled over to him, eyes averted.

Richard put his hands on either side of her ribs and lifted her onto the couch with him. "What's the matter with you?" he asked. "Why are you doing that?"

"I don't want you to see."

Richard sighed and wrapped his arms around her shivering body. At least she still let him touch her. He knew he shouldn't push it. 

XXX

I'm hungry 
I'm dirty 
I'm losing my mind 
Everything's fine 

I'm freezing
I'm starving
I'm bleeding to death
Everything's fine 

-Mother Mother by Tracy Bonham