Chapter Text
June 21, 1952
Dusk was seeping into the room like an oil spill and I felt the stitches in between my legs like a thousand burning suns. In my mind, I was everywhere and everything all at once. I was sixteen again, drinking cherry vodkas at Mrs. Hannigans’ New Years party, feeling like a girl worth a million bucks. I was five, getting baptized for the first time and I was eighteen too, after the kidnapping, after Hell iced over and joined me in the real world.
The baby was a girl. God had not answered my prayers just as He never really seemed to. I could feel the numbness in my body that came only from loving something so much that it would kill you to really feel it. This kid, this girl, she was already killing me.
Sweat clung to my sunkissed skin and my hair fell like wheat against the crisp hospital sheets. My husband was with the kids because apparently this room was No Man’s Land. Darrel could fight and start a million wars, drink twenty beers and drive home alright, skin and kill a rabbit, but he just couldn’t hold my hand through it all. He couldn’t do nothing but slowly break my heart just as he’d been doing ever since I was fourteen.
Desperately, I wished for my Mother who’d been dead for about ten years and never seemed like much when she was alive. I remembered one Summer when she’d thrown herself into the pool in just her robe, and Papa had to fish her out like she was some blue gilled catch. Mother had come out of the chlorine coughing and thrashing, begging them to just let her go. To just let her find God once more.
This was after the kidnapping, when I was no longer her Virgin Mary, when I was no longer her Holy, and therefore, worthy daughter. It was also the Summer I’d married Darrel and therefore ruined the high class Anderson family name. I never saw her again the day after I dressed in white. I never saw her again until the funeral, and even then I knew, I wasn’t really welcome there.
And yet I still missed her like a little kid.
I wondered what she would think of me now. I wonder if she was laughing at me, laughing at the fact I now had my own daughter to uphold, to keep safe from this terrible, horrible, cruel world. She would pity me, just as she always did, and say the same words she’d said my whole life.
“ When you meet God again, dearest, I hope you have a good explanation for all that you’ve done.”
The Nurse, the one with the pale skin and veiny hands, is holding the baby tight, looking at me expectantly, as if I wanted to take her into my care. I didn’t know how to tell her that I couldn’t bear it. I didn’t know how to tell her that I couldn’t hold something so breakable. It’d been different with boys, they had so much that could be given to them. They had so much that would be nurtured, that would be taken into consideration.
But a girl was porcelain.
“She’s crying for you,” the Nurse says with worried eyes, as if I didn’t know that myself. Isn’t that what all daughters did? Cry out for mothers who had no answer for them. Cry out for mothers who were still daughters themselves?
“She’ll stop.” My voice is made of tumbleweeds, dry and cracked and not prepared for use. I close my eyes against the pain in my tonsils, stare up at the popcorn ceiling wall and the artificial light.
“You won’t hurt her,” the Nurse, the stupid Nurse, says matter of factly.
“Everywhere,” I say placidly, “they hurt little girls.”
I suppose that shuts her up because with the baby in hand, she walks out of the room and out to where I figured the boys were waiting in anticipation. I’d told them the baby was going to be a boy. That his name would be Connor and that he’d be as stubborn as a bull contaminated by a heart of gold.
The baby will still be named Connor, I think. Her first line of defense could be a boy’s name. Connor to the Irish meant hunter, meant lover of wolves. That could be the girl. I lay in the bed for a while, my body like a crater, feeling the exhaustion I’ve felt since I was five bleed into me with false softness.
My body kept screaming one thing and one thing only. I want my mama. That’s all I could think of. It’s what I’d thought in the man’s basement too but then Mother had refused to touch me after being rescued. I was a let down. I was a shame. I was a newspaper headline with a black and white image of my face and wrists all scratched up.
Was Connor right now crying the same thing as I am? Was she calling for her Mama? Was she calling for me?
I wouldn’t be good for her. I’d be awful and terrible and poison her to her roots. I’d fuck her up the way all mothers and daughters fuck each other up in their own special and unique ways. But maybe, despite that all, despite everything, she would still love me.
I turn my head to the last Nurse in the room, croak out the words that felt like sharp glass leaving my tongue.
“ I want my baby,” I mumble, reaching my arm out, reaching for her, reaching for the life we could live. I would tuck her in every night, I would keep her pretty, I would teach her all the things to look out for so no man could hurt her the way they hurt me. I’d make sure the boys kept her safe and I’d make sure she’d do the name Connor right. Her skin would be porcelain, unlike the steel of my own, and she wouldn’t ever know what it means to break.
The Nurse nods her head and leaves the room, goes to my girl. I wonder if this is a mistake. I think it is. But my heart is racing with longing, for my mother or daughter I’m unsure, and something must satiate its cries.
It’s Darry who comes in, dressed in his overalls with his messy hair and a bruise he got on his cheek from playing baseball at school. He didn’t like it as much as football, apparently. In his arms is the baby, and she’s not crying so much anymore. In fact, she wasn’t making any noise at all.
Did she not want me anymore?
Darry gives me a look like he knows what I’m thinking. “She stopped crying when Dad put her in my arms,” he says proudly, big goofy smile on his face. He holds her like she is the most precious thing on the planet, as he’d done with all the kids that came after him. I loved him so much it hurt. I loved him so much I could die from it.
“Can I see her?” I ask, almost childishly. Darry nods his proud little head, and as gentle as he can be, places her tiny body into my arms. I feel my heart pound against my ribcage, I feel the warmth of her like a cocoon around my soul. I’d carried this girl inside of me for nine months. I’d prayed to God every night, forced my family to church every Sunday.
She was my answer and she was my curse. When I look into her big brown, alien-like eyes, I see myself at her age. I see my Mama at her age. I see everyone I’ve ever known in her. She is a mosaic of everyone who has ever loved in this family.
“Don’t you love her?” Darry asks, giving me some space. The Nurse had told him to back away a little when he was getting close to my shoulder, letting him know I needed some breathing room. I was grateful. Everything hurt so very badly.
Did I love her? A million other questions flooded my mind. Why do we eat? So we do not starve. Why do we breathe air? Because we do not want to suffocate.
“Of course,” I sputter out, feeling the tears pinprick my eyes, feeling too much and nothing all at once.
“How do you know?” Darry asks me. He’s always been a curious kid and Pony was sure to follow him in his footsteps in that regard.
“Because I feel like I can finally sleep now that I’ve seen her,” I reply back, holding my girl close. Holding her so tight no one else could ever steal her from me. It was true, everywhere in the world they hurt little girls.
But not mine. I would be here to fuck her up all on my own and I would love her three times as much as all those fuck ups and everything is going to be okay. Because I’ll be here. I’ll be here for everything.
“I promise,” I whisper, kissing her tiny forehead, kissing her tiny nose.
I’ll be here for everything .