Mothered (11)

Grace gaped at her sister. How was this happening? How could her sister demand such a thing? It didn’t make sense. Sure, Hope could be a little naughty sometimes, but she was never cruel to Grace.

“No.” Grace jumped to her feet, ready to flee.

“Mona needs the perfect purse!”

“No! And I’m not going to play with you anymore if—”

“Grace.” A monster swept through the fabric, setting loose a whisper of tangy incense. Grace looked at Mommy, almost glad she’d come to the rescue. “Why are you arguing with your sister?”

“She told me to cut—”

“Just do what she says.” Mommy never seemed to understand just how bossy Hope was; then again, Grace was the person Hope liked to boss around the most.

“What?” Something throbbed in Grace’s head. Mommy looked bigger than usual, like a balloon that had been inflated just a bit beyond its regular shape. Hope was growing too—or maybe Grace was shrinking? She looked from her mom to her sister, unsure what to do and on the verge of tears. Until a minute ago, she’d had a sense of déjà vu—Grace had made these same dresses with her sister once, at another time. But this part was new. New and wrong.

“Why are you dillydallying?” Mommy roared. “Every minute is precious. Give your sister what she wants!”

“Mona needs a calfskin bag.”

“I’m not a calf,” Grace pleaded.

“No, you’re a selfish brat.” Mommy snatched the scissors from the floor and held them out for Grace to take. “A teeny-tiny purse, it’s the least you can do.”



That’s when Grace had awakened. The dream had been bothering her all day, making her slightly nauseated every time she thought about it.

It was Saturday, and Grace had stayed in her room, glued to her phone and laptop. For several hours she juggled five messaged conversations using five different aliases. She maintained a color-coded notebook for each of her personas—and the women they were interacting with—and having them in front of her was the only way she could chat with multiple damsels at once. She needed to stay on top of the important particulars: the exploits of Alyssa215’s baby daddy; ShyShaina’s ever-worsening home situation; the names of TaurusGirl’s three children; HoneyEyed’s latest weird symptoms, which she feared were early-onset Alzheimer’s (HoneyEyed was a hypochondriac who’d driven all her friends away). Last but not least, IsabelZ, a food addict nearly homebound by obesity, never failed to report on the day’s scheduled food deliveries, believing that with accountability, she was consuming less. For many of the damsels, their prince was the only person they trusted with the dark secrets of their lives.

For marathons like this, Grace made updates as she went along, moving from notebook to notebook, also jotting down whatever LuckyJamison, Malcolm, SunSoakedSergei, Preston, and River shared in return. Her gentlemen didn’t need to be all that different from each other, but Grace prided herself on her organizational ability to keep her relationships separate and, to the degree applicable, personal. In among the broad strokes of her lies were finely rendered details of truth, lessons and experiences from her own life.

Her phone chimed, only this time it wasn’t a notification from an app. It was a text from Miguel, asking if he could bring anything. They’d planned a get-together a week earlier, eager to resume in-home social visits and anticipating Grace’s need for emotional support after the Mother Home Invasion. Grace hadn’t forgotten, exactly, but the day had gotten away from her nonetheless.

She texted back:

Wine?

Miguel couldn’t type as quickly as her fleet-fingered damsels, but his reply finally arrived:

You got it. See u later.

One by one, Grace signed out of her conversations. She needed to take a shower. Cut off an earlobe. She shuddered. Usually her dreams dematerialized within fifteen minutes of waking up, but last night’s wouldn’t go away. Give your sister what she wants! It clung to her like a sticky film of sweat on a stifling, humid day. Maybe she should’ve hopped in the shower right after she got up; maybe that would’ve made it dissolve.

Almost worse than the horror of the dream was how familiar the rest of it felt. She and Hope had spent hours—years—creating and playing with their paper dolls, and maybe they hadn’t said the exact words that they’d spoken in the dream but close enough. Mona needs a calfskin bag.

The familiarity of it scared her, the tolling dread that it had all happened, and it was Grace’s memory that was defective. But she touched her left earlobe, and then the right. They were both there, but she did faintly recall donating a lock of hair to the cause of Mona’s accessories.

Without the distraction of the internet, the slimy sensation was getting worse by the second. She hurried to the bathroom, desperate to rub it off.





8


Grace put on black leggings and a loose blush-colored T-shirt that perfectly fell off one shoulder. Her sports bra—for style not sport—felt tighter than it once had, and she tugged it down to her ribs. She estimated she’d gained about ten pandemic pounds, due to insufficient activity and too much snacking. Oh well, she’d lose the weight when she was working full time again. She slipped into her flip-flops and returned to the bathroom to straighten her hair. The one flaw in Freya’s handiwork was the pink tips looked like a teenager’s blunder if she let her hair air-dry in its usual disheveled waves.