Cutting Teeth(7)
“Language.”
“Sorry.” She takes a closer look and counts. There are six separate puncture wounds. “Did you … did you bite Mommy, Noelle?” There it is, that absurd third person, which, for whatever reason, has come to sound completely natural to her ear, as though that Mary Beth—Mommy Mary Beth—is her own person. As though she lost the I of it all once she became somebody’s mother. If witness protection really wants to know the quickest way to make a woman disappear, just make her a mom.
Noelle gives a wide-eyed nod. Tears are welling in her little-girl eyes. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I—”
Mary Beth scoots her bare ass off the end of the bed and, in a few quick strides, wraps herself in her plush, white robe.
“It was probably just a reaction to—well—to what we were doing.” Pink blotches have erupted at the tops of her husband’s cheeks. “She’s traumatized.”
Mary Beth sinks to her daughter’s level. “Did we scare you?” Noelle shakes her head. “Were you not able to get our attention? Was that it?” Noelle shrugs.
“Oh my god,” Doug says, but there’s a hint of a chuckle in his voice. At least bewilderment. “Should I phone the child psychologist now or wait till morning?”
“Shhh. She doesn’t know. She’s too young.” Then to Noelle—“Mommy and Daddy were just play wrestling, that’s all. We’re so silly, aren’t we?”
Come to think of it, Mary Beth herself feels a tiny bit traumatized.
She uses toilet paper to blot the spot on her heel, which continues to ooze. What on earth got into Noelle? That hurt.
She feels sorry now for her discarded playsuit and its truncated spin around the block—so much for adult time. What’s the etiquette of wearing it again, anyway?
As she leads her daughter back to her bedroom, Mary Beth wonders if, given everything, it still might be perfectly honest to successfully check off day number 6 in her challenge. She’s not one to bend the rules, but just this once it might be harmless. They can always do better tomorrow.
THREE
Darby hit her child. Hit her. The things you say you’ll never do as a parent, and yet. Is a “bop” a hit?
Griff screamed, “You can’t hit her!”
That was all her husband did, though.
All he did as she shrieked bloody murder. “She’s got me! Let go! You’re hurting Mommy!” Bop, bop, bop. Panic climbing her rib cage like a ladder.
Her wrist now has a visible heartbeat. The surface puddles of eight wounds—a top row and a bottom—ooze in rhythm with her pulse. The two holes where the little incisors pierced remind her of natural hot springs, their depths ominously unknown, mystically terrifying.
What was she thinking moments earlier? What was it? She feels like her earth has been scorched, razed in the rush of searing pain, shocking and distressing as her daughter bit the shit out of her.
Moments before the bite, Griff was rubbing his whole face with his palms, ruffling the boyish mop of chestnut hair that hangs down over his forehead. “This just—this can’t be normal! What if there is something wrong with her? Like, psychologically? But we don’t know! Because you’re so against the idea of asking the school to do a workup with the counselor for no reason! Except that it wasn’t your idea, probably.”
Lola’s cartoonishly red face dripped with snot and tears, lubricating her cheek as she slid it over the hardwood floor like a wonder mop, knees tucked underneath her, tiny bottom spiked in the air, knuckles wrapping around her hair as she screamed and sobbed, then screamed some more.
And Darby shouted back, “It is normal. Four-year-olds have tantrums. Normally.”
But the violence of Lola’s fits has been getting incrementally worse lately.
Griff went for the stern-dad voice. “Lola, if you don’t stop crying in five seconds. One … two…” The volume of her cries only increased.
“No! No! No! No! Noooooo!” she shrieked.
“Three … four … five.” Griff finished the pointless exercise.
“And?” Darby looked at him, expectantly. “If she doesn’t stop crying in five seconds then … what?”
He rolled his eyes. She and Griff are as bad as the kids.
“That was the entire plan? That was it? That’s as far as you got?”
At which point, she consigned herself to carrying Lola to her room, where her daughter could remain until her soul returned to her body. She reached for Lola’s armpits to scoop her up like a kicking, screaming rag doll and that’s when she got bitten, bitten so deeply Darby felt the scrape of bone on bone, and tasted iron on her tongue.
Her own mouth contorted into an ugly, silent scream as she pressed her thumb in the spot between Lola’s eyebrows and slowly, painfully pushed—with the excruciating care of one pulling a nail from her foot. Chin tipped back, her daughter’s bangs, which are cut straight across and styled into a short, 1920s flapper bob, swept from her darling forehead. Her tiny jaw released and Darby thought: Every year, every month, every day; it’s supposed to be getting easier! And then Lola’s tongue, washed bright red, slipped out and licked the cupid’s bow of her precious, heart-shaped mouth.
* * *