The Push, Ashley Audrain [popular novels TXT] 📗

Cecilia put out the cigarette on her knee.

Seb grinned. ‘Those painkillers must really be working.’ He turned her around to go back inside. ‘Come on. We have to pick a name.’

They took the baby home and put her in a bassinet on the kitchen table of his parents’ house. Cecilia’s milk never came in. The baby grew fat quickly on formula, and Cecilia thought she looked like Etta. She hardly cried at all, even at night like other babies did. Seb said to Cecilia nearly every day, ‘Aren’t we lucky.’

83

Her brush was tangled in my long, wet hair. My mother sat on the toilet and pulled strand after strand from the bristles. I told her again she could cut it out – I was eleven years old and I wasn’t concerned yet about how I looked. But she insisted I wouldn’t like my hair cut short. I wondered why she cared so much about this, but not much else. I was quiet while she yanked at my head. The radio played in the background and the static cut in every few seconds. I stared at the faded rainbows on my nightgown.

‘Your grandmother had short hair.’

‘Do you look like her?’

‘Not really. We were similar in some ways, but not in our looks.’

‘Will I be like you when I grow up?’

She stopped pulling at my hair for a moment. I reached up to feel the tangled brush, but she pushed my hand away.

‘I don’t know. I hope not.’

‘I want to be a mom, too, one day.’ My mother stopped again and was quiet. She put her hand on my shoulder and held it there. I arched my back – the gentleness of her touch felt strange.

‘You know, you don’t have to be. You don’t have to be a mother.’

‘Do you wish you weren’t a mother?’

‘Sometimes I wish I were a different kind of person.’

‘Who do you wish you were?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She started pulling at the knot again. Static filled the radio, but she let it hiss. ‘When I was young I dreamed of being a poet.’

‘Why aren’t you?’

‘I wasn’t any good.’ And then she added, ‘I haven’t written a word since I had you.’

That didn’t make any sense to me – that my existence in the world could have taken poetry away from her. ‘You could try again.’

She chuckled. ‘No. It’s all gone from me now.’

She paused, my hair still in her hand. I leaned back into her knees. ‘You know, there’s a lot about ourselves that we can’t change – it’s just the way we’re born. But some parts of us are shaped by what we see. And how we’re treated by other people. How we’re made to feel.’ She finally pulled the brush free and whisked it against a fistful of my hair until it was smooth. I cringed while she finished. She handed me the brush over my shoulder and I uncrossed my bony legs to stand.

‘Blythe?’

‘Yes?’ I turned around in the doorway.

‘I don’t want you learning to be like me. But I don’t know how to teach you to be anyone different.’

She left us the next day.

84

The morning after we visited Mrs Ellington, I heard Violet call Gemma from the bathroom while she ran the shower to muffle her words. I didn’t linger outside to eavesdrop – I went to the kitchen and made her breakfast. I sat across from her with a cup of coffee and watched her eat.

‘What?’ She lifted her spoon up, annoyed, dripping milk on the table. She hadn’t spoken to me since we were in the car. I noticed a thin bra strap on her shoulder peek out from the neck of her sweater.

‘I’m glad you have Gemma in your life. I brought you to meet Mrs Ellington so you could see that I understand. I want you to feel loved by someone you trust. Someone you can turn to. And that person doesn’t have to be me, if you don’t want it to be.’

She dropped the spoon in her cereal bowl and then shoved her chair out from the table, spilling my coffee. I caught her just as the front door was closing.

‘Wait. You forgot your coat. I’ll drive you,’ I said, trying to turn her around. I hadn’t expected her to react like this – I thought I’d extended an olive branch, a mutual understanding: I was not who she wanted and I had conceded.

‘Of course you’re happy to hand me over to Gemma. You wish you never had me, don’t you?’

‘You know that’s not true.’

‘You’re a liar. You hate me.’ She tried to pull her arm from me, but my grip was strong. I thought of Sam. Of his crushed body in the stroller. I could feel the pain of that day, and every day of missing him since. I could feel the years of crippling blame and terror and doubt. And then I could feel my mother. I yanked her closer, twisting her arm harder than I should have. Adrenaline shot up my legs and I jerked her hard again, pulling her closer to my face. I’d never experienced the physical rush of hurting her like this before. I promise you.

I realized then how satisfied she looked. The corner of her lips turned up slowly as she winced. Go ahead. Keep hurting me. Leave a mark. I let go of her. And then she ran.

She wasn’t there on the steps when I went to get her after school. I idled the car and went into the office to see where she was. They told me she’d gone home sick. That you had picked her up.

I texted you. I thought we had an agreement on the schedule.

You replied. I don’t think it’s going to work.

That night there was a soft knock on the front