Authors: Lindsay Hunter

Daddy's (14 page)

In the bathroom he stared at himself in the mirror. He imagined that his body was an elaborate empty coffin. Here lies Nothing. Here lies No One. He could smell the bagel burning in the toaster, heard his girlfriend hiss
Shit
. He masturbated with her mint green loofah and appletini body wash, crouching over the toilet so that when he came there’d be nothing to clean up, no trace of anything ever happening.

MARIE NOE

Talks to You about Her Kids

Always thought babies were dumb. Always did. Bald globey heads and gums dripping spit. Nothing behind the eyes but want. It made me belly-sick to see how they’d reach up for me, needing me to feed ‘em and change ’em and hold ‘em and hell sometimes just look at ’em. Babies want to be seen more than anything else on this earth. If they aren’t bein looked at they don’t exist.

Richard farted on his father within the first minute he was born. The whole room heard it, that loud angry gas, Richard announcing hisself in the ugliest of ways, then getting scared I guess and bursting into a cat’s wail, the doctor laughing, laughing, saying Well I guess there’s no doubt about air in those lungs. Art bent to kiss me and I could smell the baby, could smell the fart, and I turned my face so I could gag into the pillow. At one month Richard died. I told the doctor how I believed a fart got trapped and went back up the other way and into his heart where it all exploded. I cried but I don’t remember feeling the need.

Elizabeth was a sloppy eater. She slurped at the breast. And me and Art called her Grabbin Hands because any time she got anywhere near my chest she’d be tryin to latch, even if I had on a sweater, she’d be suckin away, coughin up threads and cat hairs. It disgusted me, how desperate she’d get to feed, but Art thought it was cute. Elizabeth died at five months. She was much stronger than Richard, I remember, but maybe she choked on a lint ball she thought was a nipple. Nobody’s fault.

I guess I should confess how I was always kinda scared of babies due to how selfish they were. That might help you to understand my thinkings. Babies would kill you to live.

Jacqueline screamed with her eyes wide open, looking straight at me. Like this. And when she slept she’d be chanting in a demon’s language. I planned on calling her Jackie, but she didn’t make it past ten days old.

Art says after Jacqueline we had a boy we named Arthur Jr., that he only lived five days. I suppose he’s right.

Constance was a moron. She never even opened her eyes, though Art swears she had one blue one and one brown one. By the time she was born I’d had a headache for two years straight, and the fact that she never made a sound, didn’t look at me, slept through the night, that weighed more on me than any kinda screaming she coulda done. Like her quiet was creating a noise louder than all the other babies combined. It split my ears. I’d pinch her till she’d cry to make up for it, and I guess that’s wrong. She was dead after 24 days. Art went downtown one night and got the word Constance tattooed on his upper arm and when he came home I told him what a idiot he was.

I knew Letitia was dead inside me for days before she was born, but I let her stay inside. That was one of the happiest times in my life, me and the baby sharing a death. When I think back on that time it’s all white, like I was livin in a white room with white curtains and the beach just the other side of the window. After the stillbirth I acted sad for Art’s sake. I pulled his head down over my heart and let him cry, and he promised to never reach for me in bed again, but I broke him down after a couple of years. I always liked being pregnant, it’s a woman’s duty.

The doctor asked me once, was there something about the dead children I wanted to confide. But I had disliked him ever since he ate a sandwich during one of my appointments, right there in the examining room, so I told him if I had anything to confide the only one who’d know was Art.

When I found out I was pregnant again, the doctor had me and Art come in for parenting classes, a bunch of nurses showing us how to hold the baby, how to burp the baby, how to make sure the baby isn’t being suffocated by something in its crib, how to keep the baby alive. Art was so serious, takin notes and askin questions. He was afraid of losin another child, but I don’t get afraid like that. Fear is for people who don’t take charge.

Mary Lee looked like my mother, and she cried all the time like my mother did too. I rubbed rum on my nipples at feeding time to calm her down because rum used to also settle my mother. Mary Lee died at nearly seven months. Then
Life
magazine did a story on Art’s and my bad luck at having kids, and everywhere we’d go people recognized us. Our favorite restaurant even gave us free dinners for a year. I had the steak every time we went, rare.

Theresa never even left the hospital. I don’t recall what she looked like. Art says she had a full head of hair, but I don’t remember seeing any baby like that come out of me. Anyway. She was alive for less time than it took for me to push her out.

The doctor got on me to stop procreating, to refuse Art in bed, but the doctor had it backwards. I wanted it more than the doctor knew, so bad it scared Art. One night he asked Is this normal? But if it wasn’t I didn’t care.

They kept Catherine at the hospital for a number of weeks, to make sure she wasn’t going to pass like the others I guess. Me and Art visited her once during that time but the drive was such a chore. When we picked her up the doctor held his hand over her forehead like a blessing and told me to call day or night. When I was a child my mother held my hand to the hot stove to teach me not to touch it ever again, and Catherine was such a willful child that I had to teach her the same lesson when she was just a year. I guess I held it there for too long because she lost some skin, and then she quit breathing so me and Art drove her to the hospital and left her there a few days. My headaches were back for the first time since my time with Letitia, and Catherine talked so much, all of it gibberish, that I felt anger towards her, my own child. She was dead a few months after her first birthday, choked on one of Art’s dry cleaning bags, or it was crib death again, I don’t know.

The last child was Arthur Jr. Guess Art really wanted a Jr. I got to calling him Arty. I lost my uterus because of Arty. He was a fat baby, his eyes like dull buttons about to pop, and maybe that’s why my uterus ruptured, and maybe that’s why his heart failed him at six months, because it was already clogged with fat, useless. He made noises when he fed, moans of satisfaction, and even now I shudder to think about that.

I had ten children with Art, and ten children died. That’s nobody’s fault. Dead is dead. It was years ago. We have a rose garden. We have cats. Our staircase has seventeen steps. I have my hair washed and set every Tuesday. Those babies are in a graveyard Art and I drive by on the way to the grocery store. Tonight we’ll have meatloaf and corn on the cob. Richard Elizabeth Jacqueline. Arthur Jr. Constance Letitia. Mary Lee Theresa Catherine Arthur Jr. Two Arthur Jrs. See I think Art agrees with me. They weren’t any of em different from the others.

We were walking the backyard. Pacing it out. One, we said. Two. And on and on. It’s true, we told our brothers, this backyard’s a grave. In the window our mother’s face fell. She waved a hand at the ax. We took turns and soon the tree slumped against the fence. Our brothers carried it on their backs and offered its heart to our mother. We’re hungry, they said. We’re starved. Our mother’s eyes didn’t meet ours and our brothers put the tree back on its stump. We watched it fall again. Again, our brothers said, and we said, One. Two. Our brothers axed a hole in the ground and jumped in. We pushed the dirt over them. The neighbor’s swingset creaked and moaned next door and we heard a child’s voice say Never ever. We planted the ax in the mound over our brothers. The ax blade was bloody with dirt. We tried to see ourselves in it. In the window our mother forked stars into a piecrust, said See, this is also a grave.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Sam Axelrod, Megan Baker, Allison Burque, Landry Miller, Audrey Niffenegger, and Brandon Will.

Further thanks to the editors of the following journals in which some of the stories in
Daddy’s
appeared, including:

“The Fence” appeared in
Nerve
.

“Unpreparing” appeared in
Hobart
.

“Scales” appeared in
Night Train
.

“Tuesday” appeared in
Smokelong Quarterly
.

“It All Go By” appeared in
Thieves Jargon
.

“We” appeared in
elimae
.

“Peggy’s Brother” appeared in
Knee-Jerk
.

“Finding There” appeared in
Cricket Online Review
.

“We Was” appeared in
Somnambulist Quarterly
.

“Loofah” appeared in
Fiction at Work
.

“Food Luck” appeared in
ACM
.

“Marie Noe Talks to You about Her Kids” appeared in
Proximity
and was performed at the Encyclopedia Show on serial killers.

“That Baby” appeared in
Everyday Genius
. Special thanks to guest editor and bloodeater Blake Butler.

“My Brother” appeared as a featherproof mini-book, which maybe started this whole book thing. Billowing thanks and love to Zach Dodson and Jonathan Messinger.

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