Girls on Fire

THEM

LACEY’S MOTHER THOUGHT THINGS WERE supposed to be different this time. Of course, they were supposed to be different last time. Supposed to be. That was pregnancy; that was motherhood; that was the motherfucking joy and promise of bringing a child into this godforsaken world, a lifetime of supposed-to-bes.

You were supposed to be healthy; you were supposed to be good. You were supposed to be a person who did not drink, did not smoke, did not snort or shoot up or, God forbid, eat some fucking unpasteurized cheese. You were supposed to be a whale, but not too big a whale. You were supposed to rest your hands on your belly and wait for a kick; you were supposed to have sex, but not too much sex, not so much or so dirty that junior would sense his mother is a whore. You were, above all, supposed to be happy. About the hemorrhoids, the swollen feet, the pineapple-sized lump of screaming flesh tearing its way through your vagina like a fist through pearl-pink tissue paper. You were supposed to be glowing with the fucking ecstasy of giving your body over to someone else — not the baby, no, that you could maybe accept, in all its nipple-sucking, spitting, burping, shitting glory, but to anyone and everyone with an opinion on what you were supposed to do and who you were supposed to be. You, who had been no one of consequence, became someone whose every choice counted, whose every mistake verged on crime against the public interest. You became a mother, and mothers were supposed to be. You were somehow supposed to be happy about even that.

Sometimes, especially at the beginning, Lacey’s mother sort of was.

Those nights in the dark, feeling the blast of music from the stage, feeling it inside, where the baby wriggled and kicked, like it wanted to be part of the action, to sweat and spin and scream alongside her — that was when she’d felt it most, the euphoric yes, that same yes she’d felt when she walked out of the clinic and then, after the date of no return, rarely again. She went to as many concerts as she could in those months — Springsteen, Kiss, Quiet Riot — teased her bangs, pulled her shirt over her swollen belly or, toward the end, let it rise up, the flesh glowing with sweat, because fuck it, she was a married woman now, she was practically of the Lord, be fruitful and multiply, and standing there in the dark, with the beat banging away at her, with the lights flashing and the floor shaking, the thing inside her felt alive, made them both powerful. There was magic there, in the hot blood of those nights, and that was something Lacey would never understand, much less thank her for. Those were the nights, the bands, the songs that made her. Fuck the sperm and the egg, fuck biology, fuck the fucking, she’d been conceived in a dark mass of writhing bodies and wild music, a child of black magic forged from heat and noise and lust. Of course she turned out the way she did; she couldn’t have been any other way.

If only they could have stayed like that, tethered together, everything would have been fine. She was so easy to love, the tiny package tucked neatly in its ready-made carrying case. Lacey’s mother would have freely given of nutrients and blood if Lacey had only stayed inside and let her have more of those black magic nights.

But no.

But then.

You couldn’t bring a baby to Madison Square Garden. You couldn’t even listen to an album in the comfort of your own home — not all the way through, not without waking the baby. The screaming baby. The shit-stained baby. The puking baby. The baby that your husband, who was only your husband because of the baby, couldn’t bring himself to love. The baby who left that gaping hole inside you, who had left you like everyone else, so that even when you dumped her on someone else, when you finally snuck away, back to the music, it wasn’t the same. Once you’d heard it with her inside you, it never sounded the same again. There was a hollow space that the music couldn’t fill, and it wasn’t your fault if you had to look elsewhere for something that did.

The baby was supposed to be enough.

There must be something wrong with her, Lacey’s mother thought, because after the baby came, nothing was ever enough.

She loved Lacey. She couldn’t help it. That was biology, beyond her control.

You could love something and still understand it had ruined your life. You could love something, something small and pink and helpless and nestled ever so gently in your arms, and still want to ugly-cry and give it back, or press its helpless little lips together and hold its nostrils tight until it stopped struggling. You could love something and still feel that pillow-snuffing impulse so powerfully that you would have to guard yourself against it for the rest of your life, even after the helpless thing was big enough to help itself. You could love something and still hate it for turning you into a person who could feel those things, because you weren’t supposed to be a monster.

This time was supposed to be different. This time, she longed for supposed to be. James was the living personification of supposed to be, and he was supposed to help her be the same.

She would be a magazine cutout, commercial ready. She would wear aprons and wash dishes and say her prayers. She would not take another drink. She would love this man, with his flattop and his polyester pants. She would love him for knowing what was right and teaching her to do it. She would find the serenity to accept the things she could not change. She would not expose this fetus to wild music, nor dance in the dark beneath flashing lights and angry skies. She would not enjoy sex, but would perform it as duty required. She would clip coupons. She would dress for church. She would not drink. She would not drink. She would not drink.

She made these promises, and James ensured she would follow them, and she was supposed to be happy.

She did not drink or smoke or dance. She did place her hands on her belly and beam, and still, when the baby came out, his fingers and toes and little penis so perfectly intact, she hated him for splitting her open and wanted to give him back. She loved him too much and hated him for it, and he was just as angry and shitty and pukey and boring as Lacey had been, and this time she’d done it to herself on purpose. She had no one else to blame.

Lacey’s mother was, perhaps, not supposed to be a mother. Some people probably weren’t. It was too late to get that kind of clue. Bad mothers abandoned their children, and she was supposed to be a good mother, and so she stayed. And if sometimes she yelled and sometimes she drank and sometimes she fantasized about castrating her husband in his sleep and stuffing the testicles in the baby’s mouth until he stopped crying and fellated himself into a silent eternity, then that was the price of her mothering. That was the best she had to give. Some days, she woke up and swore, I will be better. Some days, she was.