Merritt Tierce - Love Me Back

Eating scrambled eggs or toast in the kitchen I was afraid for her. I cried and moved slowly all day long. I thought it must be bad for her to have that as her mother. So far away. She was like her dad. The same peachy complexion and disposition, the same red hair, the same feet.

I didn’t talk to her. I was a silent mother. Touching was talking. I smelled her a lot, especially her breath, which smelled like butter.

I don’t remember much about working there. I remember the to-go girl was incredibly good at her job and that was the first time I had ever seen anyone work smart and hard like that. The phone on her shoulder, the competent look on her face, how she shaved a fraction of a second off her process by not letting the cash drawer open all the way. The tough way she stapled the order chit to the bag. I wanted to be like her and not like Barrett. It wasn’t that I liked waiting tables so much then — it was that I had somewhere to be. Some function in life. I didn’t understand how to be a wife or mother. But there were rules to being a waitress. The main one was don’t fuck up. Another was whatever you skip in your prep will be the one thing you need when you’re buried. If you look at the stack of kids’ cups while you’re tying on your apron in the afternoon and decide there will probably be enough for the night because you really don’t want to go out to the shed and dig around for the new sleeve, eight soccer teams will come in at nine, and you’ll have to go out to the shed anyway, and by the time you get back you’ll have killed your tips on all your other tables. That incessant fulfillment of Murphy’s Law taught me to be superstitious. I never said It looks like it’s going to be a slow night and we’ll get out early because that would suddenly make the smoking section fill up. The smokers took forever. You could never turn those tables because they just weren’t in a hurry. They smoked before they ordered. They always had appetizers and drinks. They smoked after the appetizers. They always had dessert. Their tabs were inevitably more, but they undid it by staying there for so long you could have had three $25 tables instead of one $40, even though the smokers tipped better. And I never said I think we’re going to be busy tonight because then it would be dead and they wouldn’t cut anyone and you’d stand around for six $2.13 hours. If I knocked over a saltshaker while I was refilling it or wiping down a table I always threw a pinch over my left shoulder.

I got chlamydia from John Smith. That was actually his name. John Fucking Smith, said my husband. You cheated on me with John Fucking Smith?

Yes, I said. Do you have to call it cheating?

What the fuck does it matter what I call it, Marie. Is there anyone else? he said.

Yes, I said.

What? he said. His eyes went hard then and he crossed his arms. We were standing in the ugly galley kitchen of our apartment. It was right next to a highway. It never got dark at night and I pretended the constant sound of the traffic was the ocean. It was an all bills paid one-bedroom and the rent was $397. We stood in the kitchen under the fluorescent lights. His face was so white and his eyes were so black. He was still and I heard a semi downshift and I could hear the lightbulbs buzzing and a moth flicking around inside the fixture. Then he lunged away from the counter and I covered my head even though he was the most gentle person I’d ever known. He started kicking the oven. Kicking kicking kicking. Stop! I yelled. Stop! The baby cried from our bed.

He stopped kicking the oven. Did you even make it a year? Tell me, he said.

Yes, I said.

Chlamydia, he said. Fuck you, Marie, he said. The baby was crying louder. He took his keys off the counter and went to the door. He put on one boot and lost his balance while he was putting on the other and dropped his keys and then he said Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! and jammed his foot into the boot and stood up and punched the wall next to the door. It made a hole in the sheetrock and he bent over and held his hand between his legs. He picked up his keys and slammed the door behind him. The baby was crying so hard she was losing her breath between screams. I went into our bedroom to get her and the neighbor above us stomped on the ceiling and shouted Shut up, man!

I lay down on the bed with the baby and shushed her. She smelled so sweet and she was so soft and warm. She made the most urgent little sounds as she latched on to my nipple. Shh, I said. She stopped crying and nursed until she fell asleep again.

Business had been so sluggish the night before Thanksgiving that Damon, the assistant manager, cut down to just me by eight thirty, and I walked out with $32, twenty of which was given to me by a man who had a cup of tortilla soup and a Shiner and said he was sorry I had to work the night before a holiday. When I got out I went to the Albertsons next door and bought bananas, brown rice, black beans, a yellow onion, a can of Ro*Tel, and everything to bake a pumpkin pie. I never baked so I didn’t have any of the spices or sugar or flour at home, or a pie pan. I had eight dollars left after checking out so I stopped for gas on the way home.

The next day I made the pie using the recipe on the back of the can. We were still getting WIC cereal and milk so breakfast was Kix and bananas. Thanksgiving dinner was the rice and beans with the onion and Ro*Tel added for flavor, which is what we usually ate, and the pie. He said the pie was the best thing he had ever eaten in his life. I let the baby eat some of the filling off my fingers and she went nuts for it too, flapping her short baby arms. Then we all fell asleep at about five and he got up to pee a couple hours later. When he came back he said For some reason it hurts when I piss. I said Really? but I didn’t say anything else, even though I knew that I had given Damon chlamydia and I knew I’d slept with my husband since then. Damon said it felt like he was pissing glass, and when he went to his doctor they stuck a Q-tip up his dick and he said it made him cry it hurt so bad. I went to the health department because we didn’t have health insurance. They said I did have it, even though I didn’t have symptoms. They gave me the medication to get rid of it. Damon asked me who else I’d been with because there was no way he’d given it to me. I said John and Luke and he said John gave it to you. I didn’t ask how he knew but I knew he was right. Luke had just broken up with a girlfriend he’d been with for six years and he’d told me he had never cheated on her. I had to tell John and Luke and I never saw them except at work so I had to tell them at work. John didn’t act surprised. That again, he said. Luke said You’re kidding and then he said I knew it was a bad idea. A few days after that there was an awkward moment when Damon was voiding something for John at a computer screen and Luke and I walked up at the same time to ring. I had told John about Damon and Luke but I hadn’t told Luke about the other two because I knew he would have cared. Damon caught my eye and fumbled his manager card. I could feel Luke looking at me so I walked away like I had forgotten something.

I had thought about telling my husband but I kept putting it off. The day I decided I had to tell him I went to the apartment complex’s laundry center to wash a load of whites. His undershirts, the baby’s burp cloths and diapers and onesies, and our bath towels and dishrags. Our apartment was right across the parking lot from the laundry center so I started the washer and then checked on the baby who was asleep in her swing. I took a book outside and sat on the stairs in front of our door but I couldn’t read. I watched ants carry off pieces of a Cheeto. Half an hour later I went to put the clothes in the dryer and the laundry room smelled awful, like shit. I opened the lid of the washer to take out our clothes and there was shit all over the stuff at the top. The smell made me gag and I let the lid fall and backed away from the washer. I didn’t know what it meant but I didn’t want to touch the clothes. On my way out the door I had to walk past a wooden bench and there was a foot-long turd on it. Only a human could have made it. When my husband got home I told him someone had wiped their ass with our laundry. He couldn’t believe it either so he went to look. We left all our things in the washer because I said I wasn’t going to let any of it touch the baby even if we washed it again and he agreed. But then I didn’t want to tell him about the chlamydia.