Mothered (34)
Grace wanted out—out of the room, out of the dream. She knew that’s what it was, but recognizing the reality of it wasn’t enough to end the scene. Half expecting a crack to form in the room somewhere, fracturing the nightmare enough so she could leave it, she gazed frantically around.
“Wake up!” she yelled.
Bethany laughed. It was an annoying, braying, too-loud sound. Grace tried to cover her ears, but her arms wouldn’t move. And now that she was ready to run, her legs were frozen too.
“Wake up!” she screamed again. Her jaw still worked, and her eyes were able to dart around. She felt like an animal at a slaughterhouse, aware of a terrible danger but unable to escape it. The warm wetness between her legs spread. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she looked to her mother. “Please. Help me.”
“Oh Grace.” Jackie sounded so weary and defeated. “The way out is so easy. Just open your eyes.”
22
Grace woke up kicking, bursting free from paralysis. Her throat was full of the profanity she wanted to spew at Jackie and Bethany, at their horrid interpretation of the very reasonable advice she’d once offered a teenager in trouble. Of course it wasn’t lost on her that the nightmare could have been her own subconscious guilt. As with many things, offering the words was easier than following the actions. Would she have been able to go through with an abortion had she gotten pregnant as a teen? Like Bethany, she wouldn’t have viewed her mother as a safe place to land.
Then it hit her. The wetness between her legs was real. She started to turn the curses on herself, disgusted that she could lose control of her bladder while dreaming. But when she pushed aside the sheet, it was blood between her legs.
“Fuck.”
Her skin ignited with goose bumps and she shivered, overcome by paranoia. What if, instead of subconscious guilt, the dream had been an act of revenge? From who? Aside from worrying about where she stood with Miguel, the possibility of being pregnant hadn’t been a bad thing exactly. Unexpected and confusing, but thrilling in its own fortuitous way. She knew this was simply her period coming on—staining the sheets in a way that hadn’t happened since she was a teen—but it felt like . . . a termination. The place inside her where the blood had been felt empty.
What if the dream meant she’d never be able to have a baby, because of the counsel she’d once given while pretending to be someone else?
She rolled out of bed and stripped the mattress, stuffing the sheets into her mesh laundry tote. She left the tote just outside her bedroom so she wouldn’t forget to take it downstairs, but before washing the bedding, she wanted to wash herself. The shower fogged with steam as she turned the water as hot as she could stand it, painful but not injurious. How much would it hurt to be burned alive? That was how they killed people during the Inquisition. She remembered feeling helpless as her mother, in the dream, made accusations. Grace felt dirty, grimy all the way through to her soul. She squeezed more bodywash onto her shower puff and scrubbed as hard as she could.
The shower helped a little, until she was back in her room, where her laptop sat in judgment—a big open eye, a big open mouth—reminding her that clean skin couldn’t mask a sullied heart. For the first time in decades, the last thing Grace wanted to do was get online. She quickly put on clean clothes and pulled up her blinds. The sky was the one from her dream, a soft lilac with a blanket of clouds. Was she still asleep, trapped in a time loop? Would she go downstairs and find . . .
She hugged her arms, determined not to think about it. Without evidence to the contrary, she had to accept that it was evening and rain was coming, and she hadn’t yet brought in the table and chairs.
As she turned away from the window, an odd sound made her go still. It had the wrong depth to be thunder, yet it had a repetitive thumping. A moment later Jackie cried out.
“Grace?” Her voice wasn’t stern, but pitiful. And Grace felt a swell of panic, certain now of what she’d heard: her mother had fallen down the stairs.
Grace sprang for her door and whipped it open. The first thing she saw was her mom in a jumble of twisted fabric on the floor a flight below. The second thing she saw was her laundry tote, a tumbled heap at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m so sorry!” She flew down the steps. For another instant the dreamworld invaded and she saw in Jackie’s pose the disjointed limbs of the dead baby. She fell to her knees beside her mother. “Is anything broken? Are you okay? Do you need me to call nine one one?”
“No need to panic, hon.”
“I’m so sorry, I’m just used to leaving my laundry in the hall so I—”
Jackie waved away the rest of her words. “That had nothing to do with it. I was bringing it down and my eyes played a trick on me. Missed a step. I need help getting up though.”
Grace didn’t quite believe that her mother was okay, but Jackie extended her hands, and Grace helped pull her to her feet. Jackie winced.
“Might’ve twisted my ankle.”
With one arm around her mother’s waist, Grace supported Jackie as she hobbled into the living room. The second Jackie was seated on the couch, Grace gently lifted her feet so she could lie down.
“Are you sure you’re okay? I have this bad habit of forgetting to do my laundry unless I leave it out somewhere where I can see it, but I didn’t mean for you to carry—”