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agdalene felt old. She had settled into a life alone with Melissa. They had sold off most of their land. They lived off of the money they had saved and the insurance money. Melissa handled all of the finances. Magdalene took care of the house and fixed the meals. She was Melissa’s mother.
John had died years ago. Since then, they had been two women alone, mother and daughter.
Melissa was as full of life and fire as she had ever been. Somehow, as time went by, Magdalene ceased to be herself and faded into the backdrop of Melissa’s life. Magdalene wasn’t sure where her life had gone. Her husband had died. Her younger daughter had died. Her parents had died. Her granddaughter had died. Her son-in-law had died. She and Melissa were an island in time, disconnected from the past and from the future. Somewhere in all of that death, Magdalene had died. She went through the motions, but her life was reduced to its minimum possibilities.
Magdalene was fast asleep at two forty-seven in the morning. Dead to the world, she was not even dreaming.
A cry awoke her at two forty-eight, a baby’s cry. Magdalene opened her eyes and lay in the bed.
A baby was crying.
She felt her body in the bed. She felt her toes under the weight of the blanket. She felt her own breath, in and out, in and out. She felt her heart beating, regularly, rhythmically. Her body was repetitively performing the necessities of life, the realities of living.
Magdalene thought that she was dreaming, but it did not feel like a dream. She did not dream much anymore, and her dreams were not vivid. They had faded away with everything else.
The longer that she lay in bed, listening to the crying, the more she realized that she was not asleep.
She rose out of the bed and wrapped a robe around her shoulders. Once she was standing, shivering in her nightclothes, Magdalene’s eyes did not seem to want to stay open. Her lids were heavy. Her body seemed slow to react to her mind’s whims. She realized that she had been standing in her bedroom for too long. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but the crying had stopped.
“How long has it been quiet?” she thought.
Then she wondered, “Was there really a sound? Did I really hear crying? Or was I just dreaming after all?”
She stood for another moment, wondering why she didn’t just go back to bed.
Then her feet started shuffling forward. She walked out of the room and down the hallway. The curtain still hung there, in front of the baby’s room, now a closet. It seemed that the curtain had hung there forever.
“Why did we never take down this curtain?” she said to herself.
She stood in front of it. The house was silent, except for the rhythmic, perpetual beating of her heart.
Magdalene reached out and touched the fabric of the curtain. It felt soft and worn between her fingers. This cubby stored linens now.
She whisked the curtain aside.
There was Melissa bending over the crib that was no longer there.
At first, Magdalene thought: “Oh, it’s just Melissa.” The sight was so familiar, so recognizable. But time had passed. There was no crib here anymore. There was no baby here anymore. Melissa was not this young woman anymore.
The young Melissa was holding something, pressing down in the crib. She was pushing her hands down on a baby, wrapped in blankets. She was smothering it. She was murdering it.
“Melissa,” said her mother, suddenly frightened.
“I’m dreaming,” she thought to herself at the same time. “Wake up.”
The Melissa who bent over the crib turned around. She held the infant in her arms. It was swathed in its blanket, a miniature wraith, and Melissa’s hand covered the baby’s face.
“You!” said Melissa. “You, Mother? You, Mother? What are you doing here?”
“The baby—” Magdalene gurgled.
“Are you trying to interfere? Are you here to help save my baby? You have no right to interfere. Where were you when I was a baby, Mother? Where were you when I needed someone to protect me? Churning butter? Churning butter on the back porch? Turn the handle on the butter churn, Mother! Turn the handle! You should have held a pillow over my face. Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you?”
“But—Melissa—”
“B-b-b-but, sh-sh-she st-st-stuttered.”
“M-m-m-melissa,” Magdalene said.
She had forgotten that she had stuttered as a girl. She hadn’t stuttered since she was twelve.
“P-p-p-please,” she said. “Wake up,” she thought to herself.
“You knew what was going on,” shouted Melissa. “You saw what was going on. You went and ch-ch-ch-churned b-b-b-butter.”
“What is it? Wh-what did I d-d-d-do?” her own voice sounded slurred and far away, but as the words rolled out of her mouth, she knew what Melissa was saying.
“I protected my daughter,” shouted Melissa, gesturing with the immobile form she held in her hand. “I protected her! You never protected me. You killed me. I’m not the killer! You’re the killer, Mother.”
“N-n-no,” said Magdalene. She tried to step backward, but her right leg wasn’t working. Her right arm wouldn’t move.
She fell on the floor. Melissa stood over her, shouting.
“Come sit on Daddy’s lap, honey! Come sit on Daddy’s lap, baby!” The baby blanket dangled in Magdalene’s hair. It tickled the right side of her face. She felt numb.
“N-n-no,” she repeated.
She leaned over and vomited on the floor.
Her head hit the cold, hard wood of the floor. She saw the dangling baby blanket passing in front of her eyes. The world was blue and fuzzy. She smelled the rich smell of new butter, milk changing, milk fat turning into butter.
She heard the baby crying again.
“Angel?” she said. “Angel?”
The blue blanket lifted from Magdalene’s face, and there were Melissa’s feet in front of her on the floor.
“Mother, how could you?”
Magdalene stared at the feet, unable to move or speak.
“Mother! Mother! Mother!” she heard. “Mother? Mother? Mother, are you okay?”
Melissa was bending down over her. Melissa was picking her up.
When Melissa woke in the morning, she rose from her bed and walked into the hall. Her mother was sprawled on the floor in a pool of vomit. Her eyes were staring blankly, and at first, Melissa thought her mother was dead.
Melissa kneeled down beside the prostrate woman and saw that Magdalene was breathing roughly and shivering on the floor.
“Mother?” she asked. “Mother? Mother, are you okay?”
“N-n-no,” her mother said.
Melissa picked the older woman up off of the floor. Magdalene felt surprisingly light in Melissa’s arms, just a bag of bones. The older woman was shivering uncontrollably.
“S-s-s—” she tried to speak but could not.
“Don’t worry, Mom. Don’t try to speak.”
Melissa took off her mother’s robe and cleaned her face and hair. The daughter lay her mother in the bed and tucked the blanket around her.
Magdalene’s face was distorted. Her right eye had a permanently surprised look. The right side of her mouth frowned downward, grimly. “S-s-s—” she tried again to speak, but she could only sputter and gurgle.
Melissa went to the hallway with a bucket, brush, and towels. She wiped up the vomit and scrubbed the floor. She threw away the wash water and rinsed and cleaned the brush and bucket. She rinsed and wrung out the towels and set them with the wash.
She went back to the hallway and stood looking at the wet spot on the floor. The water made a dark stain across the floorboards. It crept to the curtain.
Melissa walked the width of the hallway. She skirted the edge of the dark stain, keeping her feet to the dry, sallow wood.
She placed her hand on the edge of the curtain and pulled it back.
She saw neatly stacked sheets and blankets, spare pillows, a threadbare quilt, and a box of her old dolls and toys.
Melissa stood in the hallway and began to cry.
The doctor came the next day. He was a pleasant, happy man. His patients’ illnesses did not bother him. Women gave birth. Their babies had colic and running noses. These babies grew. They broke their arms and legs. They got the measles and chicken pox. They had asthma and adenoids. They got colds and flus. They got older. They had problems with their nerves or livers. The women had female difficulties. The men had work injuries. They all had headaches. Their vision failed. They got pregnant. They grew old. They grew senile. They broke their hips. They had heart attacks. They died, but by that time, there were more children with measles and mumps and chicken pox.
He tracked the progress of life through its diseases. They came in waves and cycles. They were constant and, on the whole, predictable.
His visit to the mother and daughter was no different. The disease was just marking the passage of time.
“She’s had a stroke,” he said after a brief examination. “She is okay for now, but she will need help eating and getting around.” He spoke to Melissa out in the hall, away from the patient. “Your mother is getting old,” he said. “She could live for years and years, but she will need to have constant care. The stroke has hit her hard, and she’s pretty depressed. It’s going to be frustrating for her that she can’t speak. If she gets to feeling better, she’ll be fine. If she continues to be depressed, she might not eat, she might get weaker. She may have another stroke. She may not. If she has another stroke, it may kill her. Or, she may just be more debilitated.”
“What can I do for her?” asked Melissa.
The doctor shook his head a little bit. “Make her comfortable. Get her to eat. Try to keep her spirits up. Anything that she enjoys—if she can still do it, get her to do it.”
When the doctor left, the two women were alone in the house.
They lived alone there for sixteen days.
On the sixteenth day, Magdalene had another stroke.
Melissa found her on the floor in the hallway again. Melissa brought her mother back to her bed again.
Melissa took a pillow this time and pressed it down over her mother’s face. Magdalene was weak, partially paralyzed, and helpless. She gasped into the warm, soft fabric. Her breath made it warmer.
Magdalene tried to remain calm, to pass smoothly into the next life, but in the end, she gasped and struggled.
Melissa Peacock collected her mother’s life insurance.
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