Marrow

“Well la-ti-da, fancy pants. Didn’t know you were a health nut. Excuse me while I eat my orange-coated shit.”

I smile. All of a sudden I feel like Cheetos, because Judah makes me want things I have no place wanting.

“Judah, you suck.”

I hear him move away from the window, the clean squeak of his wheels on the linoleum. Then the door opens, and I feel something hit my arm. Judah leans out the door a little, and I catch sight of his wet hair.

Then the door closes, and he’s back at his post.

I reach down for what hit me. It’s a Ziploc bag of mini carrots. I smile as I open it. That’s more like it.

“We are both eating orange-colored food. I feel all close to you and shit.”

“And shit,” he says. And then,“Why you all sad and shit, Maggie?”

“Eh, just life. You know.”

“I know,” he agrees. “But sometimes it’s still beneficial to talk about it and shit.”

“And shit,” I say. “I met my dad tonight. He’s the worst kind of cracker jack loser lobster.”

“I’ve never met a cracker jack loser lobster. Is that like an asshole?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Exactly.”

“You know,” says Judah. “I know you’ve never met my dad, but he’s kind of a cracker jack loser lobster, too. He left my mom because he didn’t want kids. Didn’t even come see me at the hospital when I was born. Sent her the child support check every month though. The first time I met him was after my first surgery. He felt guilty and decided to start being a dad to his cripple son. Sometimes I wonder if he would have contacted me if I didn’t get the tumor. Sometimes I’m even grateful to the tumor for giving me my dad. It makes my mom’s life easier … the help. And he’s all right. But, I always feel like I’m disappointing him.”

“I don’t have anyone to disappoint,” I say. “That’s nice, I guess.”

“You couldn’t disappoint someone if you tried,” Judah says.

The silence that follows is a black hole. It sucks all of the air from the planet … or maybe just my lungs. I burst into tears. Girl tears. Foul, weak, stereotypical tears. I rub them away immediately, smearing them all over my palms, then rubbing my palms on the legs of my pants. I can feel Judah watching me through the screen that covers the window. I know that if it weren’t there, he’d reach down and touch me. That makes me feel better. Knowing that someone cares enough. Everyone should have someone who cares enough.

“Maggie,” he says. “People—our dads, our moms, our friends—they are so broken they don’t even know that most of what they do reflects that brokenness. They just hurt whoever is in their wake. They don’t sit and think about what their hurt is doing to us. Pain makes humans selfish. Blocked off. Focused inward instead of outward. “

What he’s saying makes sense. But the potency of it hurts nonetheless.

“Just tell me one thing,” he says. “Does your heart still beat … with the ache and pain there? Does it still beat?”

“Yes,” I say.

“That’s because humans are built to live with pain. Weak people let their pain choke them to a slow, emotional death. Strong people use that pain, Margo. They use it as fuel.”

When I go back to the eating house, I find his Rolex on the kitchen table. Tossed like the first day I found it in my mother’s bedroom.

“Fuck you,” I say, but I carry it to my room and hide it under the floorboards anyway.

I WAKE UP WITH MY PAJAMAS DAMP, and my hair stuck to my forehead. Before I have the chance to swing my feet over the side of the bed, my mother starts screaming. I run to her room, still disoriented, and fling open her door to find her standing at the foot of her bed, naked, her robe pooling around her feet. When she sees me, she points to the far side of the bedroom. I step around her, swiping at the hair falling in my face, almost tripping over the junk she has piled everywhere.

“What?! What is it?!” I ask.

My eyes search the darkness, seeing nothing, before I reach for her drapes and yank them open. Dust spirals in the air as light rushes into the room, hungry to devour the darkness. My mother lets out a little mewl of pain.

“Vampire,” I say under my breath. But then my breath is yanked from my lungs as I stare at the bloody mess in the corner of the room.

I look at my mother, who is clutching her swollen stomach, rocking back and forth. I now notice the bloodstains on her hands and legs that I hadn’t seen before. Shivering in the bright light, the blood on her pale skin looks garish and frightening.

“What is that?” I whisper.

She doesn’t answer me. I take a few steps closer. My hand flies to my mouth as my esophagus swells with vomit. “What have you done?!” My voice rumbles through the small space. I sound demonic as I drop to my knees in front of the baby. A baby. Can you call it that? Tinier than anything I have ever seen, its skin is purple, matted with blood and a foamy white substance. I touch it, pull back, touch it again. No pulse, no breathing. It’s too little. It—a girl. I groan and rock on my heels. How had she hidden it? How had I not seen? A billowing red robe. She no longer asked me to stay with her when she bathed. Had she done this on purpose? Rid herself of the baby. The answer is on her face, relief mixed with the pain. A baby, a little girl. I want to pick her up, carry her somewhere warm and safe.

My mother, gasping for breath and bleeding profusely, falls to the ground behind me. I take one last look at the little girl in the corner and walk out of the room.

I take my time walking to Judah’s house. Delaney has a phone. My mother has a cell phone; I’ve always assumed it’s how she makes her appointments with her various male clients, but there’s a passcode on it. I’m not sure if it will let me call the ambulance. And I want her to die. By the time I reach Judah’s gate, I am sobbing. Delaney opens the door. The smile falls from her face when she sees me. I’m sobbing so hard I can’t get her to understand what I’m saying. I point to the cordless, and she runs to get it.

“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

Suddenly, I am sober of the grief I was feeling. Sober enough to summon words, thick and clumsy.

“My mother,” I say. “She’s … had a miscarriage. I’m afraid she might bleed to death.” I hand the phone back to Delaney, who looks at me in shock, then repeats my address into the receiver. I walk home, soulless.