Mothered (85)

“TELL ME!” her mother demanded.

“You’re the last straw! You are the last fucking straw!”

Grace watched her physical self seize the knife from Jackie’s cutting board.

She watched that other self plunge the knife into her mother’s deflated gut.

For an instant she was in her body again, horrified by her hand on the knife as the blade disappeared into her mother’s flesh. But then Jackie started laughing. Cackling, like the moment was the funniest she’d ever experienced.

“This, Grace! This is who you really are!” Laughing. And laughing. “It took a while, but we finally got there. Your true self, Grace.”

Grace watched from the ceiling, a sliver of herself. Below her, her corpulent form stabbed her mother again. And again. And again.

“Here you are, Grace!” Jackie drooled blood as she cackled. “We did it, my girl! Truth wins in the end!”

The knife broke, and still Jackie stood, demented in her laughter, deranged in her pride. Grace watched as the earthbound part of her grabbed another knife and kept trying, desperate for her mother to shut up.

It was taking longer than Grace’s conscience could bear. She allowed herself to float away, out of the room, out of the house, toward the perfect blue of a faraway sky.





54


The phone rang. Grace jolted into a sitting position. She didn’t remember lying down on her bed. What time was it? She must have fallen asleep but perhaps not for long—it was still sunny outside. Her head ached. She reached for her phone and saw a collage of Band-Aids on her hand. How had she gotten hurt?

By the time she could stay upright without feeling dizzy, the phone had stopped ringing. Someone left a message. Grace massaged her scalp. She couldn’t remember what day it was or what she’d been doing before she came upstairs to her room.

Holding the phone in her left, uninjured hand, she checked her voice mail. It was from the hospital. Her body stiffened, bracing for bad news, as the message started to play. A moment later she shot to her feet as if she’d been zapped off the bed by a cattle prod. What she was hearing couldn’t be true. Her heart throbbed, and her mouth went dry. She needed a drink of water but not until she’d played the message again.

“. . . we were able to remove his breathing tube a couple of hours ago, and he’s been breathing okay on his own. We’ll keep monitoring him, but if he’s still doing this well in the morning we’ll transfer him back to a regular room.”

Grace screamed, jumping up and down. “Halle-fucking-lujah! Oh my God!” She did a crazy dance, throwing her arms around, squealing. “Yes yes yes yes!”

Coco slunk through the doorway, eyeing Grace with cautious curiosity.

She scooped the cat into her arms. “Your daddy’s getting better! He’s getting better!”

After more than enough hugs and kisses, Coco twisted her body away, ready to jump down. That’s when Grace noticed her dirty paws.

“What have you been getting into?” Coco fled down the stairs. Grace knew she needed to pursue her, see what mess the cat had made. But she sat on the edge of her bed, taking a moment to fully process the nurse’s message.

The last thing she clearly remembered was confessing to all of her damsels, and then uttering the admission aloud to her mother. A chill danced across her skin.

“Oh my God.” She’d had a dream. When? Her sister had told her to do the right thing. And now Grace had. And now Miguel was off the ventilator.

She clamped a hand over her mouth, her throat heaving with sobs. After weeks of crushing self-doubt, she’d done something right. And maybe, in the cosmic process, helped to save her best friend.



“Coco?” Grace followed muddy cat prints down the steps. She racked her brain, trying to figure out what Coco could’ve gotten into. It looked like the cat had waded through a puddle of ketchup, but that wasn’t possible. Though even as she thought it, she pictured her mother in a frenzied act of revenge, tossing Grace’s food out of the refrigerator. With the way things had been recently, it was a little too easy to imagine unhinged Jackie laughing as she squirted ketchup onto the floor.

Grace tracked the little footprints to the dining room, where they headed into the kitchen.

Full stop.

Her pulse skipped a beat or three. Her flesh contracted around her bones.

There was no mistaking what she saw. Blood. Her mother. Dead.

Brutally dead. Don’t-bother-checking-for-a-pulse dead.

Coco meowed. Brushed against Grace’s leg. Sashayed into the living room, indifferent to the catastrophe.

Grace understood now: it was blood on the cat’s feet. From where she stood mid–dining room, she could see the pattern of thicker paw prints around her mother’s body. Coco must have checked it out, sniffed around. Did cats have a taste for blood?

Gagging, Grace bolted upstairs, reaching the toilet just in time. There wasn’t much in her stomach, but it all came up. Her throat burned. The residue in her mouth tasted sulfuric.

She crawled to the top step and huddled there, face in her hands. Her heart couldn’t find its rhythm; it jittered in her chest. The air smelled entirely of her mother—the floral rot, oxidized blood, and . . . bad breath.

She remembered Jackie yelling in her face. Spitting in her face. Laughing. Laughing and laughing. Grace shut her eyes but couldn’t stop seeing. Everything.