“Camille, I’m your mother, and you’re in my house.” Glassy pink eyes. I turned away from her and hit another streak of panic. Something bad. Something I’d done.
“Camille. Open.” Soothing voice, coaxing. Nurse began throbbing near my left armpit.
I remember being a kid, rejecting all those tablets and medicines, and losing her by doing so. She reminded me of Amma and her Ecstasy, wheedling, needing me to take what she was offering. To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting. My skin was on fire from where she’d cleaned me, and it felt like that satisfying heat after a cut. I thought of Amma and how content she’d seemed, wrapped in my mother’s arms, fragile and sweaty.
I turned back over, let my mother put the pill on my tongue, pour the thick milk into my throat, and kiss me.
Within a few minutes I was asleep, the stink of my breath floating into my dreams like a sour fog. My mother came to me in my bedroom and told me I was ill. She lay on top of me and put her mouth on mine. I could feel her breath in my throat. Then she began pecking at me. When she pulled away, she smiled at me and smoothed my hair back. Then she spit my teeth into her hands.
Dizzy and hot, I woke up at dusk, drool dried in a crusty line down my neck. Weak. I wrapped a thin robe around myself and began crying again when I remembered the circle at the back of my head. You’re just coming down from the X, I whispered to myself, patting my cheek with my hand. A bad haircut is not the end of the world. So you wear a ponytail.
I shuffled down the hallway, my joints clicking in and out of place, my knuckles swollen for no reason I could think of. Downstairs my mother was singing. I knocked on Amma’s door and heard a whimper of welcome.
She sat naked on the floor in front of her huge dollhouse, a thumb in her mouth. The circles beneath her eyes were almost purple, and my mother had pasted bandages to her forehead and chest. Amma had wrapped her favorite doll in tissue paper, dotted all over with red Magic Marker, and propped her up in bed.
“What’d she do to you?” she said sleepily, half smiling.
I turned around so she could see my crop circle.
“And she gave me something that made me feel really groggy and sick,” I said.
“Blue?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, she likes that one,” Amma mumbled. “You fall asleep all hot and drooly, and then she can bring her friends in to look at you.”
“She’s done this before?” My body went cold under the sweat. I was right: Something horrible was about to happen.
She shrugged. “I don’t mind. Sometimes I don’t take it—just pretend. Then we’re both happy. I play with my dolls or I read, and when I hear her coming I pretend to be asleep.”
“Amma?” I sat down on the floor next to her and stroked her hair. I needed to be gentle. “Does she give you pills and stuff a lot?”
“Only when I’m about to be sick.”
“What happens then?”
“Sometimes I get all hot and crazy and she has to give me cold baths. Sometimes I need to throw up. Sometimes I get all shivery and weak and tired and I just want to sleep.”
It was happening again. Just like Marian. I could feel the bile in the back of my throat, the tightening. I began weeping again, stood up, sat back down. My stomach was churning. I put my head in my hands. Amma and I were sick just like Marian. It had to be made that obvious to me before I finally understood—nearly twenty years too late. I wanted to scream in shame.
“Play dolls with me, Camille.” She either didn’t notice or ignored my tears.
“I can’t, Amma. I have to work. Remember to be asleep when Momma comes back.”
I dragged on clothes over my aching skin and looked at myself in the mirror. You are thinking crazy thoughts. You are being un reasonable. But I’m not. My mother killed Marian. My mother killed those little girls.
I stumbled to the toilet and threw up a stream of salty, hot water, the backsplashes from the toilet freckling my cheeks as I kneeled. When my stomach unclenched, I realized I wasn’t alone. My mother was standing behind me.
“Poor sweetness,” she murmured. I started, scrambled away from her on all fours. Propped myself against the wall and looked up at her.
“Why are you dressed, darling?” she said. “You can’t go anywhere.”
“I need to go out. I need to do some work. Fresh air will be good.”
“Camille, get back in bed.” Her voice was urgent and shrill. She marched to my bed, pulled down the covers, and patted it. “Come on sweetness, you need to be smart about your health.”
I stumbled to my feet, grabbed my car keys from the table, and darted past her.