​TWELVE

Elena

I’ve been avoiding Ronnie. Her snotty-nosed daughter has been calling Sela out the past two weeks, taunting her with “Daddy doesn’t love you!” and “Little baby Sela!” because Sela made that vital mistake of trusting a mean girl with her fears. The other day she comes home, and she smells to high heaven, and I know it's happened again. I ask her why nobody called me, and she said because she went to the bathroom and cleaned herself up. She didn't want to be a baby.

I cried so hard that night that I threw up on my pillow and worried what Mitch would think. But he had left again when the crickets stopped chirping, and I only felt his body when he got up in the morning for work.

“Poor, Sela. I know it's not your thing Elena, but our women's group discusses this kind of stuff. I mean, Marjorie Hemphill—okay I know the group is a trust circle and whatnot, but I know that God forgives me saying this if it helps you—well, Marjorie recently found out she has an STD, and the good Lord knows that woman isn't the roaming type. Good Christian, solid soul, that one. So, she shares this, and we all just hug her. Just start hugging the poor woman who's sobbing, and then everyone starts sobbing, and it's just this powerful moment of knowing we're not alone, you know?” I look at Holy-rolling Pam's wonky eyebrow, the one she penciled in a bit too much so the question she asks me is permanently planted on her face.

“Mmm-hmm,” I say and hope it stops there. What's that word? Proselytizing. I heard it on Dr. Phil once and thought, Gosh darn it, that's what Holy-rolling Pam does.

“Just think about it. I know you don't like the Jesus talk.” Yes, Pam. That's it. I hate Jesus, being a born and raised Catholic and all. 

“Will do,” I say. I snap open the platter of cut veggies, pretending it’s Pam's skull. She invited me over to meet with her group because the power of prayer can heal anything, even a “wayward womb.” She's sincere, Pam. She has short blonde hair that fringes near her ears and her nostrils are always a light shade of pink during allergy season. And she's wearing this green smock dress with buttons down the front that makes her look like she's about to take my order. But that doesn't make me want to stab her in the throat any less.

“Pam. Pam, it hurts.” I look up from the sour cream I'm dumping into a bowl of ranch dressing mix, and there's “flu-infested” Jimmy who has his hand on his privates. See, this is why I really feel sorry for Pam. We both may be getting played by our husbands, but she's the one who's too stupid to notice. 

“Here, let me get the sink going again. Hot water, eucalyptus. God's own miracle cure,” Pam says, and Jimmy and I watch as she scoots out of the kitchen and to their bedroom.

Jimmy tries to not look at me, and I know I make him nervous. That kind of power is delicious, I guess. There's just something about a man who fears you more than you even do.

He squirms around for a minute and sticks his finger into the bowl of jello Pam was about to dress with a heaping spoon of whip cream. He sucks on it like a blonde toddler then notices me staring at him.

“Is he cheating on me?” I look for Pam who's still humming to herself in the back bathroom, and I know that Sela and the boys are upstairs. With each beat, I feel a rib crack and wouldn't be surprised if my heart plopped into Pam's tainted jello.

“Who? Wait, what?” Jimmy says, removing the finger. I study his face because it's something you can do in children, and really, Jimmy's just an overgrown version of one, so I look hard to see that first initial reaction, and his face is clear as day. Mitch may be keen on cracking my ribs open, but Jimmy has no clue about it.

“All ready for you, Mister,” Pam says and playfully swats Jimmy on the butt. He grabs at his pants again, but this time he's not whining about it. He's still looking at me funny.

“Watch it there,” Pam says when Jimmy turns to leave and hits the door frame.

She laughs a little, sticks a wooden spoon in the jello and says, “You know, for all our problems Elena, it's nice to know we landed two good Christian men to stand by us.”

And I only nod because Pam is planted square in front of the knife drawer.

#

“Oh, it's a terrible thing. Burns really, I mean when I, you know, peepee.” I can't really look at Marjorie, the one with the chlamydia because she has a tiny speck of ranch dip at her lip that no one's talking about. Which is weird really because we're discussing burning urine. We’re practically sisters now.

“Okay, so Lynette, your turn.” Pam bites her lip when she says it, so I look to Lynette, shoulder length hair and a stretch of brown bangs that hang too close to her eyes. She's wearing a turtleneck that's the same shade as her hair, and I'd imagine she's burning up in that ugly thing except for the fact that her wrist bones pop through her skin. And she's shaking.

“Oh, I don't know,” Lynette says. She takes a sip from her water glass that's etched with marching ducks, the one that Pam swears is a collector's item. I can hear glass hit teeth.

“It's okay. We're all here for you.” I look around the small circle, at Holy-rolling Pam and her Holy-rolling friends. And I have a sharp stab of guilt, that born and bred Catholic feeling that I can never shake loose from my bones. They have each other at least.

“It's in me. Inside me? That's a weird way to explain it.”

“No, it's not. You're doing great,” Pam says. She's hunched over and the material of her smock buckles and her right breast is there in its blinding white bra, and I almost want to laugh because the air is so tight. Lynette starts to cry.

“It's inside of me, his eyes, I can see them. And his fear. Oh God, Jesus, if I could have swallowed it for him, if I could have swallowed it—” Her body is its own earthquake, her limbs loose, and she hunches over in the recliner. Her shoulder blades look dangerous stretched against her turtleneck.

Pam goes to hug Lynette, and Lynette starts breathing again, a short breath, then two long ones with her eyes closed. She opens them again, and I'm close enough to see the color. A light shade of violet.

“His friend. Um, they were friends, you know. And maybe there was more there, I don't know. But that doesn't mean he had to suffer.” Another gasp, a hard rub at her nose. Her face is inflamed, swollen with pain, and I'm so close I could touch her.

“I know it's wrong. Being gay, I know, in my mind. My heart even. But how could I let something like that push me away from him? He was my son. And then those bastards, oh God forgive me. Those kids, they think it's okay to take him from me? To beat him, oh, no, no, no...” She whispers it, and my face is warm. I place my fingertips to my cheek and stroke away tears. She's hunched completely now, and Pam is rocking her softly back and forth. One of the women whimpers. Another blows her nose.

“I loved him,” is muffled by Pam's shoulder, but we all hear it.

There's quiet until Pam suggests a prayer. She's sitting on the recliner's armrest, Lynette's broken body attached to her side, and we all join hands to say the Our Father. I say the words, and they link us, chain us to each other's pain. I think of Sela, her small face. How big she'll be one day and how that bigness will in no way protect her from this world.

After the prayer and the quiet reemerges, Pam asks if I'll help her refresh everyone's drinks.

“Sure,” I say and take glasses from the other six women who are shelled versions of their previous selves.

“What's going on?” she asks, and she's frantic about it. I think she's referring to Lynette, but then she starts dumping red solo cups into the sink with such force that two ice cubes pop out onto the counter.

“What do you mean?” I drop the ice down the garbage disposal, and that's when I see she's clamped her fist around the cross at her neck.

“Jimmy told me when I brought his soup to him earlier. That you think Mitch...” she trails off, and her face is pained like she's the one with a wounded child, a wounded gut, a secret job. Like she's the one who loves a man who's kissed her scars and who has now taken to making them.

I look around, and I know I'm going to see the pig even though I hate that beyond awful thing. But there it is, dressed in its chef's getup, waving a whisk in one hand, spatula in the other. Its mouth is so wide it gives off a frenzied kind of happiness that could only be managed if you were ceramic yard sale swine and nothing else was real. But everything is real, and right now I'm too sober to deal with it. Lynette has shattered me.

“I have to go,” I tell Pam. She wants to ask more, prod with her fingers and shake religion into my wounds, but now my own hands are shaking, and I hate that this happens sometimes because it's like they're saying, “Look at you, you crazy mess. Go get the whiskey. Go make this worse.”

She hugs me and rubs her raw nose into my cheek until it's wet. Pam calls for Sela, and she comes downstairs, her face shocked from her rough and tumble cousins who were once caught trying to feed a lit firecracker to their next-door neighbor's cat.

“Ready?” Sela shakes her head “yes,” and I grab my purse that's hanging on the banister. “Tell them...something,” I say, nodding at the women in the living room, still nursing on quiet prayers.

“I will,” she says. As we head out, I grab Sela's hand, feel her pulse in my palm.