Rosalind (3 page)

She
didn't know. She knew that he showed her affection, but she didn't understand what it meant. She answered the only way she could, and shook her head.

Rosalind choked back the tears until she could do it no more. Her eyes became little levees that had broken under the pressure and the tears poured over her cheeks. She heaved and cried. Henrietta had never seen her daughter express such emotion, or any at all for that matter. She held her tight and rocked her back and forth.

When Rosalind finally quit crying, she looked Henrietta in the eyes. "Please don't make daddy go away. I promise I'll be good!" she screamed. Henrietta was startled and confused. She hugged her daughter and consoled her for the first time in her entire life.

"Honey,
your father's not going nowhere. Why would he—"

She stopped.

Henrietta was never the smartest woman in the world and even she knew that. It may take her a few minutes to figure out what it takes others only seconds, but eventually, Henrietta Stump would figure it out. And in that moment, that instant where time stopped and the past and everything in it came rushing into her head (her daughter's silence and constant sorrow; his constant excuses for why he was too tired to touch her, the woman he vowed to love for the rest of his life; his insistence on getting high every night—getting
her
high—so she'd fall asleep) it was all there. It was all there and she was too stupid to see it.

She
guided Rosalind to her feet and looked up at her.

"Honey, you listen to mama now. I'm gonna look at something and it's mighty private, but I need to look, okay?
You be a big girl and help mama? Just hold my hand and lift up your skirt."

Rosalind did as she said, but she turned her head and her face turned as red as the skirt. Once Rosalind had lifted it high enough, Henrietta slowly pulled her underw
ear down, and when she saw the how red and bruised her area was, she closed her eyes and her lips began to shake.

She
slipped her underwear back up and Rosalind let her skirt down. She gripped Rosalind's right arm and stood up. Henrietta then went into the bathroom, ran the hot water, and closed the door. She cried so loud that it startled Rosalind in the living room, causing her to jerk.

When she was a little girl, Henrietta
had wanted what every little girl her age had dreamed of—a perfect husband, a house on a lush hill, a garden to toil over, and three children who would play in the yard until their father came home to tell them the wonderful stories of his day. The sad irony is that she had gotten most of what she wanted, but her dream was twisted and deformed like Rosalind's innocence.

How did she
let herself get here?

How did she not see the destruction of her own
daughter by her own husband? It was her fault. She thought back to the cornfield; the night she had gotten pregnant with Rosalind. In her moment of clarity, she took the blame for everything. All of this was her fault. All of this was the product of complacency that had plagued her since she'd met Paul. She should have broken up with him when he talked about starting a family and ditching college. She knew better! But he had said that he loved her. She looked in the mirror and felt remorse for a dream, no, for a life she had forsaken. She felt pity for herself, and remorse for Rosalind.

And the shame?

It was only a small scratch on the soul of a half-dead woman. She took the scalding hot water and poured it over her face. She wiped the mist from the mirror and thought about Rosalind when she'd been born. She thought about the times where she hadn't been a terrible mother—a time when she loved Rosalind with all of her heart—and while those years were long gone, it wasn't too late. It wasn't too late to save her baby. She smiled at the mirror as the water trickled from her chin and cheeks.

When she finished drying he
r eyes and face, she went back to the living room. Rosalind was still sitting on the couch, holding her head in her hands. Henrietta sat down next to her, and started rubbing her back again.

"
I want you to look at me." Rosalind lifted her head. "I never meant for any of this to happen. This ain't the life I wanted for myself, and it sure ain't the life I wanted for you." She was still fighting the marijuana in her head, trying to articulate her words. "I want you to know that I love you with all of my heart. I remembered, baby. I remembered when I was in the bathroom just now about the day you were born, and that just might be the happiest day of my life." Rosalind had never heard these words and she didn't know what to do with them, so she sobbed into her mother's shoulder. Henrietta let her cry has hard as she wanted. She wanted to cry with her, but she had things to do, plans to make.

"Hey
, I know what. You make Jared a bottle while momma looks for something. Does that sound like a plan?" She'd also never heard her mother speak with such optimism. She loved her momma and for the first time, she knew that her momma loved her.

That evening, when her husband
had settled on the couch with a beer in one hand and the metal pipe in the other, Henrietta fixed the biggest dinner she had ever cooked. She used the last of the roast from the freezer, potatoes shaped like French fries (she had Rosalind cut slice them), and cottage cheese that was a day away from expiration. When dinner was ready, she brought the beast a plate, doted on him about how hard he had been working lately and that she wanted to personally cook him a dinner. When Henrietta refused to smoke with him, he should have known that something was wrong, but he dismissed it as Henrietta just being a crazy cunt and, what did he care? As long as dinner was on time, he could smoke his shit and pop his pills.

Rosalind sat on the floor, flipping
through the pages in a new catalog that her father had brought home. It was another one from J.C. Penny and she was damned sure she would look through all of it before it made its way into the wood-stove as kindling. She came to a full spread with the same model she had hidden under her bed and contemplated, plotted really, about when she would have a chance to rip it out and replace the old one.

When she was satisfied that she
had seen it all, she got up to make herself a plate, but when she tried to grab some milk from the glass container, her mother placed her hand over it and said it was for her father.

That was okay
, she thought.
Anything to keep him happy
. Instead, she settled for a glass of cold water, which is usually what she drank anyway.

When dinner was over and her mother had collected the plates, Rosalind got up and went to make her brother a bottle, but again met resistance from her mother, saying that she would take care of it.
She didn't know what to do with herself, so she went to bed early and grabbed the picture from underneath her bed and lay on her back, getting ready for the inevitable. She had to move the red suitcase on her bed that she was sure belonged to her mother, so she set it out in the hallway next to the bathroom. Her mother would know what to do with it.

She unbuttoned her blouse and pulled her skirt
and underwear down and stared at the picture. The sun had already gone down and there was a little light left in the day, and she knew that what was left of the moon would soon be visible through her window. She folded the picture and held it close to her heart. She lay there and waited. Waited to be transported away to some magical city where everyone loved her.

"I feel like shit," he said, slurring his words. "Why didn't you let Rosa cook?"

"I thought I'd do something nice for you," she said, finishing up in the kitchen. She opened the drawer as carefully as she could and pull
ed a steak knife from it. She put it handle first into the pocket of her robe, never taking her right hand from it, and walked seductively across the kitchen floor and into the living room. He looked up at her from hazy eyes.

"What the fuck
?"

She straddled him and started kissing his neck. He tried to push her away, but he was too tired. He felt like shit. What did this bitch cook, anyway?

"You never touch me anymore," she said.

His eyes rolled in the back of his head and then came back. He tried to focus on her face. "Look at…you…fat bi—" He struggled to remain conscious, his head flailing around.

She grabbed the back of his hair and pulled the knife from her pocket. Henrietta, with one last jerk of his head to keep him awake, put the tip of the knife to his throat. She laughed at him and licked his nose.

"How about I go in the bedroom, put on a nice white blouse and a pretty red skirt, and then I come in here and let you fuck me on the floor?"

"What? Woman…what—what the fuck did you feed me?"

"No? See, I thought that if I prettied myself up to look like our daughter, you'd finally give me the fuckin' that I need so bad. You know what I'm tellin' you, right?"

"Rosalind," he said with a dreamy smile.

"Yeah that'd be just fine, wouldn't it?" she whispered in his ear. He smiled.

"But there's just one thing you need to know." She leaned in closer, her lips touching his ear. He managed to put his hands around her and smiled even wider. "Rosalind's pregnant. You fu—" she cried, but then collected herself. "You motherfucker. You fucked your own daughter," she whispered into his ear. "And you made her pregnant!"

She pulled her head back and looked him in his guilty eyes—eyes too drugged up to lie.

He reached for the tomato crate in the corner of the room. "Jared…my boy, my precious boy," he said through the tears. The more he tried to move, the less he could. He was slipping into something cold and dark and there was no more feeling in his legs.

"I poisoned
you, rapist. I poisoned you and, well, you won't be needin' to worry about that little shit-turd neither, 'cause I poisoned him too. No son of yours is ever gonna do to his daughter what you did to mine 'cause I poisoned him too!"

He mustered as much scream as he could
but only managed to exhale. How could she do this to him? After all he had done for her and the children? Evil bitch! he thought, still trying to gain control of his thoughts, his body. Just then, his arms went numb and fell to his side.

"
Rosa…please," he whispered. They were his last words. The paralysis had now taken full effect, and the only thing he could do was move his eyes back and forth at the spinning room. She spit in his face, the saliva slowly trickling down his cheek.

"But I'm gonna do one kind thing, the last Christian thing I can do for a maggot like you." She gripped the knife tight and shoved it into his throat.
There was not as much blood as she thought there would be, but what did come out squirted on her face and her shirt. She looked down and put her fingers in it, smearing it all over her hands. When they were covered in red, she smeared it on his face and with her thumbs she pushed his eyeballs as far as she could into their sockets. He gulped as the coppery flow streamed into his lungs, and after a few labored breaths, his eyes stopped moving. He was dead.

Henrietta hopped up and grabbed some wood from the bin and placed them around her dead husband. She searched frantically through the cabinets for matches, but couldn't find any.

His pockets!

She reached into his right pocket, but it was empty. She reached into his lef
t pocket and there it was: his Zippo. She stood up and smiled at him—her face a contorted mixture of happy and crazy—and then lit it.

Something's missing!
she thought.

She closed the
Zippo and ran outside, trying to find the gas can.
Where'd that fucker put it?
she asked herself. Henrietta jumped off of the porch and ran to the shed. She flung the door open and the smell of stale grass and gasoline rushed into her lungs. She rummaged blindly through the contents on the right-hand side, and found it; the can was full.

She raced inside, careful not to fall or spill it on the way. If she was going to do this right, she would need all she could get. When she got back to his body, she
had stopped laughing. Her husband lay there with blood spilling into a pool that collected in his undershirt below his neck. She had killed her husband. Her body went numb.

Rosalind, who'd become concerned that her father had not come t
o her room when he normally did—he had never once been late—walked out of her room, buttoning her blouse. Henrietta turned to the hallway and saw her fixing her skirt at her waist. Henrietta turned back to her dead husband with rage. She took the gas can and started pouring it over his body and the wood that she had stacked haphazardly around him. Rosalind screamed.

"Momma no,
don't hurt daddy!"

When Henrietta had poured the entire contents of the can over him, she
looked at Rosalind. "Suitcase…the red suitcase. I packed it for you. There's twenty-three dollars in there and that should get you away from here. Are you listening to me?" Rosalind was hysterical. Henrietta threw down the gas can and ran over to Rosalind. She grabbed her by the arms and shook her until she stopped screaming. "You listen to me," Henrietta yelled. "You take that money and you get out of here." Henrietta started crying. "I did wrong by you, Rosa. You were always my angel and I did wrong by you. I never did nothing for you and I'm sorry. But now I'm doing you right. Take the suitcase and run and don't you ever look back." Rosalind started crying again and walked over to her mother. She tried to hug her, but Henrietta grabbed her by the hair and threw her down. "Go! Take the suitcase and go. Don't you dare look back, baby. Just go!"