Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories (10 page)

“Well, sure—but I didn’t just let it
bleed
. I had tissues in my backpack and some girls brought me toilet paper, I just pressed it against the cut. After a while it stopped bleeding. Scotti had some kind of disinfectant, we went to her house after school, and she put it on the cut with an eyedropper.” Kimi smiled, recalling. A guarded look came into her face. “Scotti’s going to be a doctor, she thinks. Neurosurgeon.”

“Is she! I wouldn’t doubt, that girl could do it . . .”

But Candace doesn’t want to get sidetracked into talking about Scotia Perry, whom Kimi hero-worships. Not right now.

Staring at the dark wound in her daughter’s scalp, that had existed for how many days, without Candace knowing, or in any way suspecting, beneath the feathery child’s-hair, Candace feels a sensation of utter chill futility—emptiness: the way she’d felt, just for a moment, in the women’s restroom where she’d seen the poster with the photo of the bruised and battered girl—
ARE YOU A VICTIM OF VIOLENCE, ABUSE, THREAT OF BODILY HARM? ARE YOU FRIGHTENED
?

How awful the world is. No joke can neutralize it.

She has failed as a mother. She has not even begun to
qualify as a mother.

Maybe just, oh Christ—cash in your chips. Tune out.

Suicide:
off-self.
Candace has always wondered why more people don’t do it.

Candace is stammering—not sure what Candace is stammering—drawing a forefinger gingerly along the scabby cut in her daughter’s scalp—“Not to have a doctor look at it, Kimi—it should have had stitches—I should have known . . .”

Not even begun to
qualify as a mother.

Kimi pushes Candace’s hands away. Kimi is flush-faced as if her soft smooth cheeks have been slapped.

“Mom, I told you—it’s
just nothing.
If there’d been stitches—they’d have shaved my head, think how ugly that would be.” Kimi makes a fastidious little face, in unconscious mimicry of her mother.

“But, Kimi—not to tell me about it, even . . .”

Kimi scuttles away drawing her knees to her chest. Candace is surprised as always by the fleshiness of her daughter’s thighs, hips—the swell of her breasts. And now the hostility in Kimi’s eyes, that are red-rimmed, thin-lashed as if she has been rubbing at them irritably with a fist.

You don’t know this child. This is not your child.

See the hate in her eyes! For you.

“That really bothers you, Mom—doesn’t it? That you were not
told
.”

“Yes of course. Of course—it bothers me. I was summoned to this terrible woman’s office—in your school—‘Lee W. Weedle, Ph.D.’ It was an occasion for your school psychologist to terrify and humiliate me—and to threaten me.”

“Threaten you? How?”

“She might report your ‘injuries’ to—some authority. ‘Abuse hotline’—something like that.”

“But—I told them—my ‘injuries’ are
accidental.
They can’t make me testify to anyone hurting me because
no one did
.”

“This cut in your scalp—does it hurt now? Does it throb?”

“No, Mom. It does not
throb
.”

“It could become infected . . .”

“It
could not
become infected. I told you—Scotti swabbed disinfectant on it. And anyway it doesn’t hurt. I’ve forgotten about it, actually.”

Candace lunges—clumsily—
this is what a mom would do, impulsively—
to hug Kimi and to kiss the top of Kimi’s head, the ugly zipper-scab hidden beneath the feathery hair as Kimi stiffens in alarm, then giggles, embarrassed—“Jeez, Mom! I’m OK.”

Candace shuts her eyes, presses her warm face against Kimi’s warm scalp, disheveled hair. She is fearful of what comes next and would like to clutch at Kimi for a little longer but the girl is restless, perspiring—resisting.

“Mom, hey? OK please? I need to work now, Mom—I have homework.”

“Yes, but—it can wait for a minute more. Please show me your shoulders now, and your upper arms. Dr. Weedle said—you’re bruised there . . .”

“What? Show you—
what
? No!”

Now Kimi shrinks away, furious. Now Kimi raises her knees to her chest, prepares to use her elbows against Mom.

Candace is trembling. Is this abuse?—
this
? Asking her fourteen-year-old daughter to partly disrobe for her, to submit to an examination?

Candace is in terror, for maybe she is to blame. In her sleep, in an alcoholic-drug blackout, abusing her own daughter and forgetting it?

Kimi is more fiercely protective of her body beneath her clothes than she was of the wound in her scalp. Panting, crying—“Leave me alone! Don’t touch me! You’re crazy! I hate you!”

Candace kneels on the bed, in the twisted comforter, straddling the resisting daughter. Kimi is shrieking, furious—Candace is trying to pull Kimi’s sweatshirt up—has to pull it partly over her head so that she can see the girl’s shoulders and upper arms—oh this is shocking! frightening!—the bruises Weedle described, on Kimi’s pale soft shoulders—ugly rotted-purple, yellow. In order to see Kimi’s upper arms, Candace has to tug the sweatshirt off Kimi’s head as the girl kicks, curses—“I hate you! I hate
you
!” Kimi’s fine soft hair crackles with static electricity—Kimi’s eyes are widened, dilated—like a furious snorting animal Kimi brings a knee against Candace’s chest, knocking the breath out of her. Candace is disbelieving—how can this be happening? She, who loves her daughter so much, and Kimi who has always been so sweet, docile . . . “You fat cunt! I hate you.”

Candace stares at the bruises on her daughter’s shoulders and upper arms—beneath her arms, reddened welts—and on the tops of her breasts which are smallish hard girl-breasts, waxy-pale, with pinprick nipples just visible through the cotton fabric of her bra—(Junior Miss 34B: Candace knows because Candace purchased the bra for Kimi). For several seconds Candace is unable to speak—her heart is pounding so violently. It does look as if someone with strong hands—strong fingers—had grabbed hold of Kimi and shook, shook, shook her.

“Your f-father? Did he—is this—? And you’re protecting him?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mom! You know Dad would never touch me,” Kimi says scornfully. “I mean, Dad never even
kisses
me! How’d he get close enough to ‘abuse’ me?” Kimi’s laughter is awful, like something being strangled.

“Then—who? Who did this?”

“Nobody
did anything
, Mom. Whatever it was, I
did to myself
. I’m a klutz—you always said so. Always falling down and hurting myself, breaking things—my own damn fault.”

Kimi’s eyes shine with tears.
Damn
is out of character, jarring.

Klutz.
Such words as
klutz,
wimp, dork, nerd
are just slightly more palatable than the cruder more primitive and unambiguous
asshole, fuckup, fuckhead, cunt.
Or maybe the equivalent would be
stupid cunt.

So to call your daughter a
klutz,
or to conspire with others, including the daughter herself, in calling her
klutz,
however tenderly, fondly, is to participate in a kind of child molestation.

This seems clear to Candace, like a struck match shoved into her face.

“Kimi, you are not a ‘klutz.’ Don’t say that about yourself.”

“Mom, I am! You know I am! Falling, tripping, spilling things, ripping my clothes—banging my damn head, my legs”—with furious jocosity Kimi speaks, striking her ample thighs with her fists. “And a
fat cow-klutz
on top of it.”

Family joke was that Kimi was a little butterball, chubby legs and arms, fatty-creased face like a moon-pie, and so
eager
—spilling her milk glass, toppling out of a high chair, spraining wrist, ankle in falls off tricycle, bicycle, down a flight of stairs.

Philip! Our baby daughter is a piglet. Cutest little piglet. With red eyes, red snub nose like a miniature snout, funny little pig-ears but—too bad!—no sweet little tail.

Young mother high on Demerol, entranced with her baby.
Oh Jesus it is a—baby! But—mine? Not mine!

The horror washing over her, even as she felt love for the little piglet so powerful, could scarcely breathe and even now—fourteen years later—a muscle constricts in her chest, in the region of her heart—
Can’t breathe can’t breathe love comes too strong.

And it was so—nursing started off so wonderfully—
Peak experience of my life
—then something went wrong. Little Kimberly ceased nursing as a baby is supposed to nurse, spat out precious milk, tugged at Candace’s sensitive nipples and the nipples became chafed and cracked and bled and now, not so much fun. More, like—ordeal, obligation. More, like—who needs this. Milk turned rancid, baby puked a lot, cried and kicked at the wrong times. Young mother
freaking God-damned depressed.

Fourteen years later not that much has changed. Except the baby’s father is out of the picture even more than he was then.

That day returning home from Weedle and yes, Candace took another thirty-milligram lorazepam reasoning that she will not be engaged in
operating heavy machinery
for the remainder of the day and yes, Candace washed down the capsule with a (only two-thirds full) glass of tart red wine but no, Candace did not sleep but spent headachy hours at her computer clicking onto
abuse, girls
drawn to read of
abuse, rape, female cutting, slaughter
in Africa until she became faint thinking, where were the girls’ mothers? how do they bear living? Thinking, jokes cease when little girls are raped, strangled, left to die in the bush.

Exactly as Weedle said: you can see the imprints of fingers in Kimi’s skin.

“I’m asking you again, Kimi—who did this to you?”

Kimi grabs her sweatshirt back from Candace and pulls it furiously over her head.

“Please tell me, was it a boy? I hope not a—teacher?”

Candace hears herself beg. Candace wants to gather Kimi in her arms for another hug but knows that the girl will elbow her impatiently away.

“Mom, for God’s sake cool it.”

“But honey—I want to protect you. I want to be a good mother. It isn’t too late—is it? Don’t push me away.”

Kimi yanks the sweatshirt down over her breasts, as far as it will go. Kimi is exasperated and embarrassed but seeing the expression in Candace’s face, Kimi says: “Well, see—what happened wasn’t primary. It was, like, a secondary factor.”

“What do you mean—‘secondary’?”

“The cut in my head wasn’t on purpose. Nobody actually hit me. I was slow doing something and she pushed me from behind and I stumbled and hit my own damn head myself on something sharp—not a locker door but a chrome table edge. And she stopped the bleeding, and put disinfectant on it, and kissed it, and was sorry. So—it’s OK. It’s, like, nothing.”

“Who did this? She?”

“Scotti. Who’ve we been talking about?”

“Scotia? Scotia did this to you? What do you mean?”

“Oh, Mom. Jeez! Just forget it.”

“But—what did Scotia do to you? Pushed you? So you fell, and hit your head? Why?”

Kimi shrugs. Kimi’s eyes shine with a sort of defiant merriment but her skin is flushed-red, smarting.

“Why would Scotia do such a thing? What were the circumstances?”

“Probably some stupid thing I said. Or didn’t answer fast enough. Scotti has a problem with
slow
. Half the kids in our class, Scotti says, are
retards.
”

“That terrible cut in your scalp—Scotia caused? But why are you protecting her?”

“Yes, my scalp. Mom. And my damn arms—you’re so excited about—Scotti was helping me on the bars. Gymnastics.”

“Scotia did that, too? ‘Gymnastics’?”

“We were fooling around at her house. She’s got all this Nautilus equipment her dad bought for her. You’re always telling me to lose weight so I’m doing exercises at Scotti’s. There’re these, like, bars you hang on—Scotti was showing me how. No big deal, Mom—will you stop staring at me? I hate it.”

“I’ll call Scotia’s mother. This has got to stop.”

“It’s
stopped,
Mom. I told you—it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“It was Scotia’s fault. And it isn’t going to happen again.”

“No! Don’t you dare call Mrs. Perry! Scotti is the only thing in my life that means anything—the only person who gives a damn about me. If you take Scotti from me, I will kill myself.”

Kimi begins crying, sobbing. Her swollen face seems to be melting. When Candace moves to embrace her, Kimi shoves her away as Candace expected—which doesn’t make the hurt less painful.

Candace stumbles downstairs. Rapidly her mind is working—thoughts fly at her, through her, like neutrinos—can’t quite comprehend the significance of these thoughts or what they are urging her to do—for a mom must
do
, a mom must more than simply
be
—until she’s in the kitchen peering into the refrigerator: no Odwalla smoothies?
None?

But there are ingredients for smoothies, Candace can make her own for Kimi, and for herself; strawberries and raspberries, banana, a dollop of orange juice, the remains of a container of yogurt blended together in Candace’s shiny, rarely used twelve-speed blender. She is thrilled to be preparing something
homemade
for Kimi which she knows Kimi will love, and she knows that Kimi is hungry for Kimi is always hungry at this time of day, after school and before dinner which isn’t always on the table until—well, after 8
P.M
. Or then. The blender yields two tall glasses of strawberry-tinged smoothies, rich with nutrients, and delicious. Candace thinks
But more
. She goes to a kitchen drawer where there’s an old stash of pills, pre-lorazepam, a handful of anti-anxiety meds, with tremulous fingers she empties one of the tall brimming glasses into the blender, tosses in a pill or two—or three—and whips the liquid again, grinds the pills to a froth, repours into the glass; then, who knows why, a neutrino-thought has pierced her brain with the cunning of desperation, she empties the other glass into the blender, tosses in a pill or two—or three—and whips the liquid again into a strawberry-hued froth.