Andrew Sullivan - Waste

“Two down in one night,” Al said. “Let’s go check on the bear before the sun hits.”

The body tried to speak, a single tongue probing for some teeth. It wanted to ask why.

They didn’t always scream at each other.

“Holly Condon has recently come forward with her own campaign for an inquest into her nephew’s death, calling for increased pressure to be placed on local investigators. Mrs. Condon has asked the media to refrain from rampant speculation about her alleged history of substance abuse…”

Most of it happened quietly. A few socks bundled up in the corners. Laundry left unfolded. A broken dish swept under the fridge. Small signs of neglect that neither of them acknowledged. They lingered in the corners like ammunition. Kansas sat through it all, her eyes a constant witness to the petty negligence shoved under the couch beside her Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bears. At four years old, she did not speak, but her small ears noticed the television volume was a little too loud when Mom was trying to sleep. Her fingers found hairs stuck to the soap in the bathroom after Dad’s shower. Kansas would stare at the tomato sauce left to dry on the stovetop till it was hard and black. Her lips remained closed. The house filled with future fuel for the coming confrontation, but Kansas didn’t say a thing.

“Despite last year’s corruption charges within the Larkhill Police Department, Sergeant Harold Klemp has vowed to follow up on new developments concerning the Condon incident. Local residents complain their safety is still at risk…”

Blood clung to Jamie after work, and Alisha’s hands were covered in tiny paper cuts. Her skin seethed each time she ran water in the sink. Each small incision hid from her eyes, but the nerves felt everything. Jamie brought a smell into the house she couldn’t wash out of the sheets, and her skin chapped with the detergent.

Jamie knew Alisha would run the dryer late into the night while he tried to sleep, reading her horoscope from outdated magazines in the basement. Alisha was a Gemini, so she practiced another face in the warm laundry room. The yellowed pages always told her something was split inside her, cracked like a bad mirror. It wasn’t her fault, though; it was the stars and the moon, foreign planets that whirled on some axis she could not control. The schism sliced through her neural matter was not a choice; it was a fate handed down to her by something cosmic, unknowable. The new face was for her mother. It was flat and did not show any pain. The eyes looked past the hospital bed and the lips shunted any ill will back down into her stomach.

Alisha Wugg didn’t really believe in twelve human variations cast down from the heavens. She didn’t avoid Scorpios at work. Astrology wasn’t real, but it made things easier.

“Even with the recent discovery of two more bodies in the south end, Larkhill police refuse to speculate about connections with the Athabasca remains, while acknowledging the growing anxiety displayed by residents at rallies in Foxe Park this weekend…”

Jamie wouldn’t even drive her to the hospital. He sat at home and waited. She wasn’t a human, she wasn’t her mother; she was a person who sought to dismantle Alisha every time she walked through the door. Every motion was open to critique, Kansas just another target she tracked with deadly accuracy.

The child was a mistake, a mute that would only haunt them until they died, according to Alisha’s mother. Her mother’s teeth were rotting because she refused to brush — who would look at her any way; her hair was still long, but growing white in the dark; blind in her hatred like a fish that only knows the salty depths of its own cave, she snapped at anything that moved. Her teeth were well worn with age, but sharpened by the fresh offering her daughter made every Thursday, baring her heart for another bite that would refuse to heal.

“Now we’ll move to the phones to find out what you have to say. The number to dial is 1-800-KRS-CALL. Again, that number…”

Jamie never said this aloud; he said it with wet laundry piled on the floor. He said it with an empty tank of gas in her Corolla and rings of water on the coffee table. Little neglected pieces grew into a barrier neither of them could breach, accumulated spite packed densely beneath their feet. The carpet wore down under the weight until floorboards poked out. Small incisions invisible to the naked eye spread from Alisha’s hands across both their backs; they chaffed and burned under the bed sheets every time someone moved in their sleep.

Alisha said her mother was a Gemini too — two-faced, shattered, corrupted deep down into her brain stem. It was easier to believe in floating planets spinning fates instead of what the doctors said. The nun’s tires had unleashed this second half Alisha faced in the damp visitors’ room. She brought her daughter sometimes to try and break through to that other face her mother refused to show, the one that had raised her and sewn together all those awful ice-skating outfits.

Kansas became a shield to deflect some of the blows, soundless and unmoving. She was four. Half of the old lady’s words could barely penetrate her mind. Alisha’s mother ranted about children who sucked sustenance from their mothers. She was a sacrifice, a fresher piece of meat to toss into the flame. Kansas bore it all until the orderlies arrived and wheeled Mrs. Wugg away, her lips still funneling hate down the hallway. She could hear it in the parking lot and on the long drive home, bouncing over the airwaves and polluting every song.

When Kansas finally spoke, it was at the dinner table. Her food was organized by color in a half rainbow across her plate. Methodically, her head counted each piece in silence.

“Bitch.”

When a child speaks its first word, the parents are supposed to celebrate.

“Did she just…”

Kansas whispered to her food, “Sloppy, rutting bitch…”

All the barriers collapsed in a sad pile of wet thermal underwear and ceramic teacups. Jamie’s voice rose and cracked against the ceiling fan. A horrible, vicious thing. A fucking monster that needed to stay locked in its cage. That’s what she was, that woman. She was all bile and it burned Alisha, it left her ragged and weeping in the bathroom at 5 a.m., you think he couldn’t hear it through the door? He could hear everything; it was like an animal in a pit whimpering to be put out of its misery. Did she want to feel this way? Did she get off on it? And then to bring your own daughter, to expose her to such a poisonous, vicious thing. What did she think she was doing? Did she want Kansas to grow up like that? To have it injected into her? No one deserved that shit. No one should be born into it.

Kansas sat in the kitchen, her mouth closed once again. The fight swirled through the living room and toward the massive television that kept Alisha Wugg awake at night with dreams of soap operas where the comas ended and the dead came back from the Amazon with treasures in hand. In that world, the world she watched some mornings when the rain was too heavy outside and her head felt like it would explode, she knew it would all pass. The plot must go on, new hopes built from mysterious cures and identical twins. And here was Jamie, and he was smashing each of those hopes on the floor, crunching the pieces under heavy black boots that woke her up in the middle of the night. The plot was snapped. It was all in shambles. He wasn’t listening. She tried to warn the girl about what she could become. A fist shot out in her direction. It cracked the television and spluttered. The splintered screen watched them but didn’t say a thing.

Another fist — through a painting this time.

Another fist, but it was hers. It whacked against the top of the television and Alisha’s screaming realigned itself. Her screaming found a single focus and bore down. Out. Get out. Take your fucking mouth out of this house. I will not let you talk about her, I won’t let you say it. Just get out. Out. Out. Kansas ate her food in the kitchen while they screamed back and forth.