Can I sleep? Rain outside. A smaller heap is already sleeping. Small Child next to me. Me heap and Small heap in the bed in the dark room with the rain outside. The world is dimly contoured. Hideous afternoon light sneaking in. Nap time. I can sleep, but not on time. I can’t stop thinking when I have time to think. I think one day, I will close my eyes and never know that I existed. No, I don’t think so. I know.
* * *
A skimming dream. I call them skimming dreams, because you’re not really asleep. You’re just skimming the surface. You get the imagery and the sensations and the significance, but somehow, you’re still awake. Aware.
A maiden is braving the edge of a cliff. Ground is sucking, slop, muddy. Maiden because she’s in vestal white. Rain soaked. Maiden because the bouquet of wilted wildflowers she is clutching is bloom-bright. Sharp angles of starved bone. Smiling, deranged. I feel tenderness for how feral she feels. How icy.
* * *
Little Child wails. Small Child sleeps. I’m awake. No more skimming. Always when I’m near, I’m yanked back. The wailing pierces my body in places I never knew existed, in places that have yet to exist. Fear or rage or sadness, but more like crawling or burning or pinching. Sometimes, I’m prey. Little Child is predator.
Awake. Big eyes in a dark room. Small Child still asleep. Cherubic in faint, sneaky light. Soft and round and silent. Small Child behaves better than Little Child. Why can’t Little Child behave?
* * *
Please understand: I am not Other Mother. Like all mothers, Other Mother only lives in me. Waiting. Anybody can live through Other Mother in their mind, but be careful. Some mothers become Other Mother.
It isn’t Small Child’s fault that Little Child summons Other Mother from where she’s hidden, waiting inside of me. When I’m watching Other Mother, I know she’s not me. I can’t think like me, see like me. I’m somewhere else. I watch Other Mother do things in my mind. She lives my life. I live hers. Other Mother is the rage and the sadness from that rage, is the crawling and burning that doesn’t know where else to go, what to do. Sometimes she hurts. Sometimes I think she’ll do something too terrible to watch. Still, I watch.
The wailing continues. Another room. Nearby. Other Mother can only take it for so long, before the burning and the crawling makes her burst alive. She only wanted to sleep. She only wanted a life. She wasn’t able to sleep. She isn’t able to have a life.
Other Mother sits up. I watch. She looks at Small Child. Little Child cries. Sky high crying like crashing cymbals, incessant. Wants attention. Non-emergent. We know all the different cries. Other Mother admires Small Child, envious they can sleep. Affection splits the corners of her eyes. Slowly, the hint of a loving smile. But love can’t withstand the burning, the crawling.
Like a pit viper, swift and mean, emotionless. Other Mother strikes with a cheap, bulky pillow that has cartoonish flowers. She holds it over Small Child’s face. Shoves down. Muffled noises. Muted panic. Small Child struggling. Other Mother smiling or crying or both. Other Mother looking placid and crazed. The pillow is taken away. Small Child is blinking blinking, nonplussed. A fancy word for frozen.
(Some people’s Other Mothers are murderers.)
The dim room. Shockingly quiet. Small Child looking looking blinking blinking.
Why? Like a marquee fanning across their pupils. Why?
As if Little Child knows, no more wailing. Then, wailing again.
Other Mother rises from the bed. Other Mother feels nothing. Other Mother has a plan. She leaves the room. She walks through the little, pathetic excuse for a hall, littered with the landmines of little feet-killing toys and clean or filthy or somewhere in-between pieces of little clothing. Wailing is louder now, forced and thin. She walks into the wailing room. Little Child has no more wails left, seeing Other Mother. Little Child loves to do this. Scream and summon Other Mother. They have no idea that Other Mother exists inside of mother. That they summon Other Mother with their screams.
Little Child stares. Smiles. Other Mother stares, serene. Smiles back. She knows this act. Shuts the door behind her.
(I can only see the door now.)
(Other Mother whispers, Why live? But then again, isn’t that all she wants to do?)
* * *
Rain outside. Inside, my sleeping heap is awake. Next to me, smaller heap is still sleeping. Small Child. Me heap and Small heap. Dim contours in hideous afternoon light. Nap time. Wailing from the other room, from Little Child. Then silence. Did Little Child feel me summon Other Mother in my skull? No. Other Mother is a secret. Every mother’s secret.
* * *
Skimming dream. A maiden. Rain. A steep cliff. A bouquet of wildflowers. White clothes. Soaked and clinging. Smiling, deranged. Happily, maiden walks to the edge. Happily, maiden leaps from the cliff. Happily.
The piercing sound of a child’s wailing.
* * *
Awake. Crowded bed. Big eyes in a dark room. Maybe not so big. Never sleeping. No true rest. The eyes get smaller as the world gets bigger and farther away as my life gets smaller as everything gets farther away. Small eyes in a dark room. Once so big in a big world.
I look over. Small Child asleep in the faintness. Cherubic. A parted mouth. Tiny milk teeth. Baby fat face. Wailing continues elsewhere. Little Child. Sky high and insistent, clashing and crashing and smashing into me. Attention-seeking, non-emergent. Little Child could wail for hours. Little Child could test its best screams. Little Child doesn’t understand things like my hyperacusis. Wailing burning like a blade in my skull.
I admire Small Child. Sleeping Child. Small Heap. Still asleep. Affection that I feel guilty for. I don’t feel affection as deeply for Little Child. Some chemicals released from having Small Child placed on my chest. Little Child was not placed on my chest. Little Child was too little. Little Child had to go to the NICU. No costly skin-to-skin. Instead, to a cellblock with cozy cages for babies. Visiting mothers are always weeping, holding their knickknack-sized babies. Never knowing that someday, Other Mother will slither into their skulls, too.
I shift. Kiss Small Child on the cheek, soft and quiet. Lie back. Stare at the ceiling. Where are my chemicals for Little Child? Can’t I find them? Little Child makes my skin hurt. I want to love them. I do love them. But the love is different. Little Child never lets me sleep. Hurts my skull. A movie I watched long ago said that love is all a matter of timing. The timing is off with Little Child. Crying when I can finally rest. Awake when I can finally sleep. And me forced to be awake. Awake. Awake.
Can still hear the faint hum of the crying. And then, nothing. Open my eyes. Did Little Child stop crying? Shut my eyes. Yes. Thank you, Little Child. It’s fine to sleep. This is nap time. All of us deserve to sleep. You deserve to sleep. Me too. I deserve to drift. I can sleep now. I deserve that strange place between deep dreams and skimming. Uncanny imagery of bone soaked, starved maidens. Their wildflowers and cliffs.
Mom, Little Child says. Somewhere drifting, I hear it. It isn’t real. Is it?
Mom. Mom, Little Child says from the doorway.
Too loud, knifing into the room with the word mom. The word mom is like an incantation that cuts me each time it’s said.
Mom, Little Child says, The sun is nuclere fooshin.
I understand the jumbled pronunciation. Half awake. Eyes brimming with tears. It’s okay not to rest. It’s okay to leave the rain and the white. Open eyes.
Nuclear fusion, I correct politely. Proper pronunciation.
Little Child doesn’t attempt to repeat the correction. Only mouths them, practicing.
Do you have to wake up crying? I ask Little Child. Is that your entrance music? Like the Halloween, Michael Myers theme? Why not just get up, come in here, or play in your room? Quietly?
Small Child stirs, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS CRY, Small Child rages, GO AWAY.
Little Child whines in high pitch, gratingly, YOU GO AWAY.
Awake now. Awake.
* * *
The kitchen. Various sources of noise. Clatter. Clink. Boing. Laughter. Small Child and Little Child are playing, endlessly chattering, arguing. Overstimulating cutesy voices of cartoons. Clang. Boing. Clink. What’s it like to have a village? To not do this alone? To not feel so isolated, even though I’m surrounded by people when I leave the house? That’s the funny thing about isolation. You can be surrounded, swarmed, smothered by people when you go in public, but you’re still alone. You can’t talk. You lost your voice. Not used to talking.
(To not be stuck? To have time? To sleep? To be rich? To have a fridge full of food?)
I open the fridge. Near empty. A few pathetic jars of unappetizing shit that nobody wants to eat. Doesn’t affect me as much anymore, bright sight of a near empty fridge. Common occurrence. First of the month, I’m the best mother that’s ever lived. A saint. The fridge is full. Other Mother barely makes an appearance in those first few weeks.
I close the fridge. Open it again. Full of food. A fantasy. That expensive, organic shit from Whole Foods. Ladies with cartloads who never calculate how much things cost fill their carts with this type of shit. But the pizza is cheap and greasy beneath the heat lamps at Whole Foods. Two fat slices for seven bucks.
I shut the door. Open it again. All gone. Nothing to cook. Something easy. Eggos it is.
* * *
Spartan living room. Cramped.
Children at the kiddie table by the TV. Eating Eggos and banana slices on gaudy paper plates, drinking water from little kiddie cups that have grins and eyes. Noise is rising, burning again. Getting to me. So many things to do. Places I could’ve been, seen. Is my heart beating too fast, too hard? Why can I hear it in my ear? When I move, sometimes my chest hurts. Should I have never been born? What’s it like to die? I don’t want to. I want to outlive emptiness. But sometimes, I don’t.
I’m wincing endlessly. Call it the triangle of tension. Neck, shoulders. Can never loosen the muscles. Not since I woke up in the world. Children fight over whose plate is whose. They get up out of their seats. Run. I remind them to eat. Sooner we eat, sooner we can go to the store.
Can we get a cake pop? Little Child asks.
No, I say. We don’t have the money.
I wanna cake pop too, Small Child says.
Can I get a cake pop? Little Child asks again. Dad gets cake pops.
He gets money from his parents. We don’t get free money, I say.
The vampiric, laughable cost of lawyers. Wonder if it was ever a good idea to reach an agreement about custody in order to avoid the ridiculous, unreachable fees of court orders. No co-parenting with a low-IQ-wrapped-in-red-pill incel. Never liked men, but life and circumstance and fear force us all to blend in, act normal. Low self-esteem. Childhood trauma is a hell of a thing. Embedded like shrapnel. Spend your whole life trying to find the pieces, pluck them out.
I don’t even care about cake pops, Little Child says.
Good. You’re not getting one anyway. Now eat, I say.
Children sit again, but they don’t eat. Entranced by the TV that on occasion makes them quiet. Make them eat. It isn’t working. They’re loud. They don’t eat.
* * *
Kitchen. Noise bouncing around in the living room. Small space. Noise bouncing everywhere, no matter where you are.
Few dishes in the sink. Milk cups. More things to do.
Pile of books. Some half-read, dog-eared, stacked on a pathetically painted over, glued, stained, ancient dining table. If only I had time to read. Each book a world a door a window I’m too tired to enter.
Window is above the sink. I gaze out. Beyond the backyard, a field. The rusty bones of a neglected playground. A small, gravel trail to jog on. I reach into the cupboard. Grab some earplugs. Stuff them in. Slowly, they expand. Slowly, the world is drowning. Slowly, the world is happier. Quieter.
I stare out at the field. Watch the jogger. A woman.
* * *
But then Other Mother backs up from the window. Back. Back. Back. Peeks at the kids. Other Mother can’t hear them, but they’re talking. Muted rumble of what they’re saying, what they’re screaming. Other Mother has an idea. Escape. See, Other Mother isn’t always ugly. Isn’t always violent. Some people’s Other Mothers are worse. Remember that one lady who became her Other Mother, killed her kids. She’d said, Something exploded in my mind.
Other Mother slips on her shoes. She is mindful. Makes sure the kids don’t see her.
Sneaks out the backdoor seamlessly as somebody sinking into water.
Outside. Fresh and cold and quiet. Soothing. Grass so verdant. Wildflowers. Almost supernaturally bright. Everything is perfect and calling and significant. Everything is free. Other Mother is free now, too. She yanks out the earplugs, tosses them. She walks down, then around the street. She’s by the blue skeletal rusty ugly neglected playground. By the field. On the gravel track. Smiling.
Someone is jogging. A woman. Other Mother begins to jog, but then she begins to run. Other Mother thinks of the great alone times of her life. The gorgeous emptiness of before. Before and before and before. Waking up to silence. Watching shows about true detectives and time being a flat circle. No dishes in the sink. Running. Running. Run. No fear of explosions in her mind or becoming Other Mother forever or fear in general, because to have children is to fear for the first time.
She stops by a set of benches. Out of breath. A pack of cigarettes on the bench. Red lighter on top of the pack. Should she? Could be laced. A setup. Pissed on. Been so long since Other Mother has smoked. Other Mother doesn’t give a fuck. Other Mother is out of breath, breathing hard, her throat closing, burning. She wants it to burn more.
Lights a cigarette. Sits on the benches table. Coughs. Kinda dizzy already. Smoke worming through blood vessels, beneath the skin. Burning, but pleasant. She yanks as much smoke as she can into her lungs. Deep deeper deepest. She doesn’t cough. The sight of the smoke is nice. She’s an assassin or a spinster or a changeling or a completely brand new dream. The world goes dim. Other Mother sees the little window she was once gazing out of. Sees someone staring back from it. A sad aberration.
A funhouse reflection.
* * *
Kitchen. Noise bouncing around. Small space. Noise bounces everywhere, no matter where you are.
I reach into the cupboard. Grab some earplugs. Stuff them in. Slowly, they expand. Slowly, the world is drowning. A sip of peace.
I watch the jogger. A woman. Someone else out there, too. Smoking on the bench.
Begrudgingly wash the dishes. Hands so dry. Skin tight. Nothing helps. Zombie hands. Hands like the dead. Hands like the damned. More dishes tossed into the sink. Spoons. Children smile. I smile back. Sometimes, I wonder where my real smile went. Buried beneath all the smiles I had to fake. Had to use like punctuation.
Water’s shut off. Unnerving silence. Nothing through the earplugs. Some trickle of knowing. Something amiss. I loosen the earplugs. Fingers still wet. Back up. Back. Back. Back. Peek into the living room.
No kids.
Sound of water. Faucet running. Little feet splashing. Laughing.
Through the small living room, stepping on a small, hard plastic landmine dinosaur. Sound of my own shrieking is confined to the inside of my mouth, my skull. Small opening to the hall, into the pathetic excuse for a hall. Bathroom. Threshold of the bathroom.
A swollen pool of water on an already shoddy floor. Wasted squiggles of liquid soap. Wasted snaking lines of shampoo. Imagine a cart full of groceries full of shampoo full of liquid soap. Imagine not having to calculate everything, look at everything for what it is: an expense. What an expensive world.
My iPhone. My old, but expensive to replace, iPhone. In a wet hand. My no-money-to-replace iPhone. My iPhone with text and internet and social media and books and the things that keep my mind away away away when here and here and here is crawling and burning.
My iPhone. Held safely in a wet hand. Ready to plummet into the puddle. Some sacrificial metal and glass and plastic maiden.
* * *
In my mind, Other Mother can’t control herself. She snaps. Explosion. She grabs the phone. She grabs the nearest child. Is it Small Child or Little Child? It’s hard to tell. All children look the same in a snap, in an explosion. All children in the shape of everything that has ever gone wrong or goes wrong or will go wrong. In the shape of all bad. Other Mother goes blind. Forgets. And yet somehow, remembers everything so acutely, that her mind can’t focus on anything. Only reflect every painful thing. On and on and on and on.
(Other Mother wasn’t always easily summoned. Other Mother had time to germinate, to grow. To find roots and life with every little thing that fed her, you see.)
She grabs, shakes Whichever Child. Shrieks like something keening. Like a feral animal. No words. Just a shriek. Over and over until her throat quits. She pushes the child into the puddle. Crying.
My Other Mother is broken, but not as broken as other Other Mothers. Not always. Today, my Other Mother isn’t behaving as badly in the safety of my skull. She grabs both children. Other Mother knows other people have friends and family and help and money and health and ways to feel better. Ways to feel. She flings them into their room. Slams the door. Bangs against the door with her fists. Keening.
You could’ve ruined my phone. We don’t have money! Why? Why!
Always, Other Mother wants to know why, but she never will.
(Mostly, all of life’s Whys are rhetorical.)
The children are scared. Crying, screaming.
Other Mother runs into the living room. Grabs her car keys. Leaves the house. Door left wide open. Wide open cage. She drives away.
* * *
7-Eleven. Other Mother buys cigarettes. Walks out of the store. Door almost hits her. Somebody was holding it open, neglected to look back when they let go. Other Mother is sedate and sound and silent, so calm now. Notices nothing. Running is nice. Free is nice.
In the car, she sits and smokes and smokes and dreams of highways and constellations over Los Cerrillos. She’s forgetting something, but she doesn’t remember what it is. Maybe she had a home where she loved someone or something or someones or somethings, but when love makes you ill, it’s better to forget.
* * *
Threshold of the bathroom. Ridiculous pool of water on the already shitty floor. Wasted liquid soap. Wasted shampoo. My iPhone in a wet hand. Ready to plummet into the puddle. A sacrificial metal and glass and plastic maiden.
Clean it up! I scream.
(It’s fine to scream. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Sometimes all you’ve got is a scream. Sometimes the best you can do is scream.)
I snatch the phone before it can be sacrificed.
Go into my own room, which isn’t really my own room. Always visited. Slept in. I lie down on the floor, curl up, drying the phone off with my shirt. Phone still works. Can I ever think or breathe or live or dream or sleep, without the guilt of what I see Other Mother doing in my mind? I want what she wants, but I can’t do what she does to get it. I test the phone out. Googling, Mother goes crazy, kills kids.
Hate that I can almost understand. Almost. I know what can lead mothers to turn into their Other Mother, do things only their Other Mothers would do. One moment you’re a screamer. The next you’re a murderer. Something exploded in my mind. I heard once that the moment you can fully understand why someone would do something terrible, you become that terrible thing, that person. I can almost understand, but I just can’t understand. And nobody, nobody talks about it. That’s why my Other Mother stays in my skull.
Safe here. Curled on the ground. Fetal curled on the floor. Wishing I could remember the watery red of pulsing safety. The womb. My last moments of happiness.
Hurry, clean it! Small Child says.
No! Little Child says.
Just clean it, okay?
You do it!
Earplugs back in. Sound drains away. Children become only a light murmur.
I’m not the only one who lives through the fantasies of Other Mother. Some become Other Mother. They tangle with Other Mother. Live as Other Mother. Maybe they were always Other Mother. So many Other Mothers.
It’s okay to cry. You have to let yourself cry.
Soon, Small Child is peeking in. They walk over, lie down next to me. Cuddle up.
A pile of towels tower on the bathroom floor.
Muffled through the earplugs.
I’m sorry, and then Small Child begins to cry.
Little Child is an immaculate mimic. They repeat Small Child in the same exact tone. They think anything Small Child does is what they’re supposed to be doing, I’m sorry.
They’re both lying down now. One on each side.
I’m sorry.
Cat noses in. Probably wonders, What’re all these idiots doing? Leaves. Licks up some water from the bathroom floor.
* * *
Later on. Living room. Getting ready.
Get your shoes on, I say.
My room. Sniff the armpits of t-shirts. The crotches of pants. I put on whatever seems clean. No motivation. I like being invisible. Don’t like being invisible to myself. Sometimes, I can see myself in the mirror. Smile. Same cheekbones. Strong skeleton. Sometimes, I can’t see myself at all. Sometimes, I’m not even there anymore. Where’d I go? I’m right here.
Buy makeup and perfume and nice outfits and only imagine yourself with them on, in them. Living. Imagination will eventually be enough. In those moments, no Other Mother.
Nobody else is ready. No shoes. Whining, fighting instead. Terrible fights lately. Pulling each other’s hair. Dragging each other to the ground. Where’d they learn that? I ask them. They answer, My mind.
Put on their shoes for them. Someday, I will wake up and I will be alone. There will be no shoes but my own. You’ll miss it, they say. But I won’t. Not missing something doesn’t mean you never cared. Not missing something means you were ready to let it go. Not missing something means that you knew it well enough, while it lasted. The burning. The wanting. Slithering. Emerging.
* * *
The mailbox. A community one.
Watch for cars, I say. But the area is rural and bleak and rarely does a car come violently fast enough to endanger anybody not watching.
Small Child and Little Child don’t watch for cars. They run laughing across the street. Wonder what it’s like to be free. Or what it could’ve been like. Can’t remember being free. Tried to be when I was small, but was reminded with butterfly blade words that there’s no being free. Not your own version of it. Just everyone else’s. They didn’t get to be free. They have to pass it on. I won’t pass it on. Hands and fists and hairbrushes and curtain rods and I won’t pass it on. Other Mothers.
Place is desolate. Community mailbox rusted, dilapidated. I open ours. Small Child and Little Child are excited.
Did we get money? Small Child asks, but then pushes Little Child out of the way. Little Child begins the high note routine. Whining that pinches my nerves.
The envelope. Two distant relatives, not bound by blood, who care more than most blood ever does. Far, far away from them. Still, they send envelopes. Wouldn’t be here if I had a choice. Would be closer. Inside is a card. Disney. Thirty dollars. A note at the bottom: Buy something nice for yourself. Happy Birthday!
Birthday. Never had a surprise birthday party. A room full of faces. I know enough people to possibly fit into a room, but they’ve never been all in one place. Oh wow! I’d say. Thank you so much! And I’d have no idea what else to say. So I’d cry instead. Seen.
* * *
Store. Children making constant noise, asking and asking and asking. Wish I could give give give. Getting essentials. Eggs, milk. Bread. Free food place at the church isn’t until Wednesday. First time I went there and they put food boxes into my trunk, I cried when I drove away.
Wine aisle. Top shelf. A red blend. Something nice. Happy Birthday. Maybe rosé. Used to be such a big problem. Made everything better. Sometimes, problems make things better, but only for a little while.
* * *
Later on. At home. Other Mother has drunk the entire bottle of wine. She is sobbing and laughing and kissing the children. See? Other Mother is for everything. Every wish. Not just ugly wishes. The children are eating dinner at the kiddie table, including Other Mother. Other Mother sits on the floor.
See. Other Mother isn’t always feral.
I wish I had more to give. I give you everything I can. I’m a horrible mother. I’m alone. I’ve always done every fucking thing alone. No help. We’re lucky. I was supposed to be someone else. It’s too late to be myself by the time I can be myself again. I can’t. Find a new mother. A nicer mother. A mother with money and family and friends. A mother with more to give.
Children aren’t listening. Too busy being loud chaotic young. Going pee in their plastic potty. Leaving it there for her to clean.
You’ll be fine. You’ll live, Other Mother says. She stands up. She looks down at Small Child. Small Child is easier. Quieter. Her favorite. Everyone has a favorite. Even when they’re not Other Mother. It’s harder to say goodbye to Small Child, and so she doesn’t say goodbye to either child. Goodbye is in the way she cries and wishes and wishes.
Where you going? Small Child asks.
Front door is already shut. Other Mother has already left. Same thing. Other Mother at 7-Eleven. Buying cigarettes. Sitting in her car smoking. It can’t be that hard to run, remake your life. Mothers have been running away ever since they learned how to run. They just don’t talk about it.
There’s Other Mother far away. On a highway. Always dreaming of highways and darkness and gas stations and shitty coffee and aloneness. A sky smeared with shivering stars. The middle of the desert on a highway. The middle of nowhere, where there’s room to think. So much room. Emptiness. Nothing but room.
* * *
Store. Children and their constant noise, misbehaving, asking and asking and asking. Other children are so quiet. Mine are loud and free and laughing.
Getting essentials. Eggs, milk. Bread. Free food place at the church isn’t until Wednesday. Might not go anymore. Lots of rot. Last time, new slippery looking snake oil man asked if I’d spoken with him before. A bible in his hands. I said, No. He asked if I wanted a bible. I said, No thanks.
Wine aisle. Top shelf. A red blend. Maybe a rosé. It used to be a big problem, but it made everything better. If only things could be better like that again. One day, I’ll wake up and I won’t be me. I’ll be whoever I was before I became.
I get them a cake pop. Happy Birthday.
Woman eyes the coven of girl-children, riled in the cart. Older. Pretty. Looks rich.
Are they twins? Woman asks.
Unfortunately, I say. (My joke that nobody likes.)
It goes by so fast! Woman says. (Heard this before.)
Not fast enough, I say. Did you have twins?
No, Woman says. Such a blessing!
Yes, such a blessing.
(Such a fucking blessing.)
* * *
Kitchen later. Making sandwiches. Chewing the crust off. Spitting the crust into the sink.
Can we listen to a song? Little Child asks.
Sure, I say.
The Dream On song, Small Child says.
You got to lose to know how to win, but sometimes, you just lose and lose so much that where you should be winning gets further and further and further away.
I play the song from my phone. Children spin and dance around and I dance too and Small Child and Little Child try to dance like me.
DREAM ON.
D R E A M O N.
DREAMON.
* * *
Chaos in the bathroom later. Loudness. I brush the children’s teeth. We go into the pathetic excuse for a hall. I take out Small Child’s hair band.
Go put it in the silver cup, I tell them.
No! It’s dark! Small Child with wide eyes, shaky.
You can do it. It’s not that dark, I say.
The silver cup is on the kitchen table. Illuminated by the hall light.
Little Child imitates the shakes, the big eyes. Small Child is doing these things, so Little Child must do these things.
Stop copying, I say to Little Child.
Small Child whines. The sound of it is so much less irritating than when Little Child whines. Small child rarely whines.
I can’t, Small Child says. It’s too dark. Please!
You’re creating a fake boundary, I tell Small Child. A boundary of what you can see, and what you think you can’t see, and in the daytime you aren’t afraid of this boundary, because you can see everything. You’re only scared of what you think is in the dark, because you think you don’t know what’s there, inside of it. But you do. You saw it all day.
When I’m older, Small Child says.
(I’m not sure what they mean.)
Every decade of your life there will be a lie you tell yourself, I say to Small Child. When you get into the next decade, you finally see what the lie was, but only after the decade where you believed the lie. I used to think the dark had monsters in my first decade, too. And then in my second decade, I knew nothing was there. That in this world, the real monsters are—
Mom, it’s too dark, Small Child says.
I wish I could finish thinking. Thinking is the problem. Wanting to think. A long stretch of me thinks, thinking.
The silver cup. I can see it from here. It’s on the kitchen table. Next to the window—worlds of books.
If you go, I say, I’ll give you the red badge of courage.
Both children perk like meerkats. Alert and alive and curious. The what? Their expressions beg. Mouths agape.
What’s the red badge of courage? Small Child asks.
You’ll see if you go put the hair tie in the silver cup, I say.
Small Child and Little Child hold hands. They creep through the living room. The kitchen. Cautious and watchful. Small Child runs to the silver cup, throws the hair tie in. They both run back.
I bend to hug them both.
See? Good job, I say.
Now I can have the red badge of courage, Small Child says.
Now I can have the red badge of courage, Little Child says. Near exact mimic.
Stop repeating her, I say. She was more scared than you. She deserves the red badge, but you went with her. You helped. Helping people takes courage.
Where’s the red badge? Small Child asks.
The spare room, I say.
They gasp.
We go into the spare room. They aren’t allowed in the spare room. Boxes and broken things, castaways. Things to throw away. When there’s time. When there’s money for junk haul. For now these things live in the spare room. I get a small box from inside the closet. Take out a brand new red lipliner.
What is it? Small Child asks. Makeup?
Cap off, I kneel down. Where’s your heart? I ask.
Here, Small Child points.
Shirt is pulled down, just enough. I draw a heart on their upper chest. I draw one on Little Child, too. They’re happy. Proud.
But it’ll wash off, Small Child says.
Then you’ll have to earn it again, I say.
Small Child reaches over to Little Child’s heart, smears it.
River Lucero was raised in a superstitious household, which might explain the lifelong interest in stories and poetry that flirt with realism and tiptoe into horror. Always juggling a handful of creative projects, the current task is to unleash a novel into the world. And to make sure it has plenty of other work to keep it company.