Just Like Mother

Chapter 2

7

‘Happy birthday to you…’ Mother with the long blond hair and upturned nose, the one who looks like us, places a cake in front of me. She is beaming. She kisses me on the forehead. Andrea claps, but I can see Mother with the lazy eye frown. She discourages displays of affection. She thinks it promotes favoritism. Andrea is the oldest, but the Mothers want us to think they love all six of us daughters the same, even if it’s not true.

Boy nuzzles my leg. He wraps his arms around my calf and presses his cheek to my knee. He’s tiny still, newly walking. I wrap my ankle around the wooden leg of the chair in which I sit, nudging it away from him. It wouldn’t do for him to be seen loving me, for me to be seen letting him. He isn’t even supposed to be here. Boy was supposed to be a girl. I can’t help but love him anyway, or something that feels like love. An urgent compulsion to protect him, no matter how much I ought not to care.

‘Eight,’ Andrea says in a whisper, her face flushed with happiness. ‘My little cousin, growing up.’

I bend to blow out my candles, making the wish of a traitor. My wish about Boy flashes through my mind before I can stop myself, and once it’s done, it’s done. There is nothing I can do to take it back. I seize up, wait for something to go wrong. For Mother Superior to lash out. For my heart to stop beating. None of it happens. Andrea laughs, then kisses my cheek. Soon, she tells me, she will let me know all the secrets she’s begun to learn about becoming a woman. And then – when I am a woman too, and there are no more secrets between us – we will be best friends again.

Andrea has known what it is to be a woman for nearly two months now. When she turns thirteen in a couple more years, she will receive the ritual and become a Mother. It is the greatest privilege, the only way to know love, says Mother with the red hair. It is the fundamental reason for life.

Andrea doesn’t know she isn’t the only one with secrets.

I have a secret too. A secret about the locked room. A secret so horrible I half wonder if I dreamed it.

The cousins huddle around me, eager for a slice. Boy watches as Susie, Beth, Frances, and Gloria eat cake, crumbling it in their fists and shoving it into their tiny mouths with abandon. He looks at the ground, eager for a crumb to fall. When no one is looking, I slip him a wedge. Just a few bites. He gobbles it down gratefully, his face rapturous with pleasure. Sweet Boy.

He reaches his sticky fists up for more. Everyone else is distracted now, Boy forgotten. Mother with the red hair is scraping dishes at the sink and the cousins are playing a game in the corner. Andrea is busily gathering my gifts: a knitted sweater, pristine other than a pulled thread at the cuff; a pair of shoes a size too big, lightly scuffed on the soles.

‘Shh.’ I place my finger against my lips, willing Boy to be quiet. But he’s fallen under the spell of the sugar. He throws himself to the floor, squirming, writhing and red-faced, the way he was when he came out of Mother’s womb.

‘Boy!’ I try to quiet him. I give him my finger to suck on, but he swats it away. He lets out a bellow, as though he’s been holding it in all his life. The activity in the kitchen stops. Mother carefully places a dish towel on the counter, then straightens, turning slowly to the source of the shrieking. Mother pushes her chair from the table and stands, her eye rolling wildly. Mother comes in from the next room, her mouth set in a hard line. Mother looks worried, twining her blond hair in both fists. She nibbles her bottom lip and avoids my eyes.

Mother moves to stand next to Boy, peering over him while he’s thrashing on the floor.

Mother stands over Boy.

Mother stands over Boy.

Mother surrounds him.

It is then that I spot the telltale streak of blue frosting – smeared by his tears – that’s been transferred from his fists to his cheeks. My heart stops beating. I know what happens when boys disobey. Mother says boys will never become important or powerful. But they have other purposes when they grow older. They make themselves useful in small ways, despite their inadequacies. Despite Boy’s limitations, I feel tender toward him in a way I know I should not.

Boy sees Mother surrounding him. He reaches his chubby baby arms out, hopeful. His sobs begin to quiet. He hiccups and keens for their love.

Mother stares down at him.

Mother’s neck jolts up as if on a marionette string. She looks at me.

Mother’s eyelids flutter as they do when she is very angry. She places one palm atop the knife we used to cut the cake.

Mother is vacant, looking beyond it all, as if to ignore what comes next.

Before I can think, I act. I reach down for Boy. I lift him, cradling him to me. I right myself, gathering his energy into me, until it propels us both from the house, through the yard, weeds twisting at my ankles and rocks nipping the soles of my feet. Andrea’s cries follow me all the way down the hill. My cousin’s feet pound the ground behind me, but I’m flying with more than just my own energy. Something bigger, more powerful, is carrying me. I wonder if it is the same thing that might strike me down.