Amy Gustine - You Should Pity Us Instead

Yes, Joanne thinks, climbing the stairs, let him take some of the heat. He brought it on himself.

Lou takes the baby outside. Moles have turned the yard into a treacherous expanse of lumps and divots. From the spare bedroom Joanne watches her mother plod, an anvil with legs, over the uneven grass. She bounces the crying baby roughly on one hip, her face turned away from his in a look of oblique disgust. By the garage she inspects the roses — in need of a trim — then marches over to the shade garden and scowls at the hosta riddled with slug holes. Coming back toward the patio, Lou steps on a mole tunnel, buckling her left knee. As the baby pitches backward, she brings the other arm around and before Joanne can even turn to run downstairs, she’s anchored him on her hip and her face, stiffened with rage, pivots to the window. Quickly, Joanne steps out of sight.

After the fastest shower of her life, she goes down and pokes her head outside. “He okay?”

“Jesus, what the hell is wrong with your yard? I nearly broke my leg.” Lou toes some limp annuals. “And these plants need water.”

“That’s Ryan’s thing.”

“Of course. God forbid you get off your ass.”

“You can go,” Joanne says, reaching for the baby.

“I’ve got him. Dry your hair, for God’s sake. Go.” Her mother pats the baby’s back and he stops crying a moment, his loose eyes focused for a second on some bug or flower.

On her bed, Joanne curls into the fetal position, though the house is fast becoming too warm. Sweat runs between her breasts. She should change into something lighter, but doesn’t move. A shout erupts, then another. Kids’ shouts. Bicycle-speed, they pass the house.

Tina usually rode her bike everywhere, but Megan didn’t have a bike and Joanne’s bike had a flat tire, so after their soap opera ended, the girls walked to the corner of Caid’s block and sat on the hill. While they waited, hoping he would come out and play basketball, they plucked tufts of grass and threw them into the street. In a while, a girl with bright red hair rode by on a yellow bike. Tina muttered something about Raggedy Ann. Joanne let it go by and circled back to the boyfriend. “You think he might move in?”

“I don’t know!”

“Tina,” Megan warned.

Tina flapped a hand at her. “Just shut up.”

The red-haired girl rode by again, staring at them. Tina threw a clump of grass at her, its soil still clinging to the roots. “What are you looking at, you ugly little shit?”

“Whoa,” Joanne said. “Don’t let your mother hear you say that.”

Lou comes back inside. The baby’s cry has taken a sudden upswing, its pitch sharper, more like a bird’s shriek. What is she doing? Joanne gets up and goes out in the hallway, leaning over the stair rail.

What’s the matter? You don’t like your swing? Your mother doesn’t make you stay in it, does she? She’s always hauling you around. There’s the snap of the safety bar locking in place. Just try it, the voice directs, low and quiet, like a secret. The broken-sounding click-grind of the mechanism starts up. Joanne returns to bed and presses a pillow against her ear.

After Tina yelled at her, the girl on the yellow bike rode down the street and went into a dingy gray house five doors down from Caid’s. There were big American cars parked half on the front lawn, their long rusty hoods and broken taillights suggesting shipwreck. She came back out with five older kids, three boys in dirty T-shirts and two girls in black tank tops. As they neared, Joanne could see a flamingo tattooed on one of the girl’s arms. It had the name “Rick” in blue-black along its neck.

“You been throwing dirt at my sister?” the girl asked.

Tina tried to wiggle out of the accusation, but the older kids weren’t fooled. One of the boys smirked. “Maybe we oughta teach these bitches a lesson.”

The other girl said something Joanne couldn’t catch and nodded toward Megan.

Tina said, “Megan could whip her ass.”

Megan looked both doubtful and thrilled. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll fight her.”

As Megan stepped into the street, Joanne noticed the same stain on the seat of her shorts from yesterday and the day before. She put it together then — Tina’s letting Megan tag along, the tall grass, the girls’ unreasonable hunger, Megan’s unwashed hair. The boyfriend wasn’t moving in. Their mother had moved out.

•

Joanne takes four Tylenol knowing they won’t help, then strips down to her underwear. Crawling back in bed, she freezes at the sound of Lou’s voice.

“Joanne!”

“What?”

“Where’s his cups? These cupboards are a mess.”

“Upper, right of the sink.”

A few seconds pass. The baby continues to cry. Joanne puts the pillow back over her ear.

“Joanne!”

“What?”

“Get down here!”

In the kitchen Lou stands in front of the open fridge, the baby propped on her hip, howling, his back arched against her iron grip. She eyes Joanne in her bra and underwear as if they were in public. “What the hell do you feed this kid? Your fridge is empty.”

“I tried to feed him earlier. He wasn’t hungry.”

“Well, he’s hungry now.”

“He can have baby food.”

Lou bangs baby food jars on the counter. “All you’ve got is pudding. He can’t live on pudding.”

“He won’t eat anything green.”

“You’ve got to make him. You’re his mother.” Lou slams the cupboard doors one after another. “Jesus, Joanne, when was the last time you went shopping?”

“There’s plenty to eat.” Joanne opens the cupboard above the stove. A box of old saltines, some granola bars, Oreos, and a can of Cheez Whiz. She thrusts the crackers at her mother. “Here, he likes these,” she lies. Let Lou try to teach this kid something.

“Do you have any real cheese at least?”

Joanne checks, finds a hunk of cheddar hiding in the crisper drawer. “Here. Cut it small.”

Back in bed Joanne hits upon a solution. Poke a hole in each eardrum. How has she not thought of this before? Instead of removing her larynx, she could remove all sound. And the pain right along with it.

Having decided this is what she’ll do, she drifts between sleep and waking, remembering how the little girls fought — pulling rather than punching, each of them grasping for a hold on bare flesh, loose hair. Megan’s barrette snapped free and fell into the storm drain. She took the redhead by the hair then, shook her like a doll. “Let go!” the girl shrieked. Megan did. Wound through her fingers was a large clump of bright orange. The girl was crying and one of the boys muttered what sounded to Joanne like “tons,” but Tina told her later was “cunts,” and started toward them.

Joanne sits up to Lou yelling. For a moment she curls her face into repulsion. What have I done now? Then the words begin to line up.

She tears downstairs and finds her mother hitting the baby on the back. His mouth hangs open, eyes wide, color gone. Joanne shoves Lou away and fumbles with the high chair’s strap.

“God damn it! What did you do? What did you do to him?”

“Just a cracker. I gave him the cracker!”

Joanne pulls at the strap, screaming, “I can’t get him, I can’t get him!”

“Push!” Lou hollers. “Push the button, for Christ’s sake!”

Joanne pushes and the straps pop free.

“On his back!” Lou keeps screaming. “Hit him on the back!”

Joanne hits him hard, slung over her left arm, praying for the first time in years— please God, please —but she can tell by the silence she hasn’t dislodged the cracker.

She puts him back in his high chair and sticks her finger down his throat, probing, afraid she will lacerate his windpipe, the panic closing out all time, all sound, all smells. She feels it way down, almost out of reach, the mush of Nabisco that will kill her.