My mother douses my teddy bear in lighter fluid. She seems strangely sober as she does it, her drunkenness evaporated, her eyes fixed intently on the bear.
I’m still hoping in some desperate part of my brain that this is all theater. The punishment is scaring me, making me cry.
But I know better than that.
She lights the match, the flame flaring into life with the bitter smell of sulfur. Only then does she hesitate, just for a moment. Probably because of how loud I’m screaming, like I’m being tortured, like I’ll die.
“NOOOOOO! PLEASE PLEASE NOOOOOO!”
“Do it,” Randall says.
She drops the match.
Buttons ignites.
I watch him burn and I burn too, howling with pain that feels physical, like I’ve truly been lit on fire right next to him.
His fur singes away, his cotton ignites. His glass eye cracks.
I’ve never known agony like this. I never knew how much I loved him till this moment.
Randall holds my arms, knowing that I would still lunge away from him and snatch Buttons out of the fire with my bare hands.
He holds me in place until the bear is nothing but a smoking, melted ruin.
Then Randall says, “You’re too old for stuffed animals.”
All the love I had inside of me is turned to hatred. I’d light this whole house on fire if I could. I’d burn them in their beds like they burned my bear.
I turn to my mother.
She’s pretending to be drunk again, eyes half-closed as she sways in place. Refusing to look at me.
Randall lets me return to my room.
I collapse on the bed. Crying so hard that I’m sick, that I’d puke all over this bed if I’d eaten any of that spaghetti.
After twenty minutes or so, I hear them having sex. My mother sounds like an excited chihuahua and Randall grunts like a buffalo.
I hold my pillow over my head, still sobbing.
Hours later, long after dark, my mother brings me a glass of milk.
I’m shaking so hard the bed frame is rattling.
“I need more medicine,” I croak.
I hate it, but when I don’t have it, the withdrawals are even worse.
“It ran out,” she says.
She keeps the bottle in her room. We both know there were thirty pills in it when we refilled the prescription earlier this week. She might have sold them to Leslie, but more likely she’s been taking them herself. She thinks they help her lose weight. Randall has been pinching her belly, telling her she’s getting fat.
“Call the doctor,” I beg. “I can’t wait two weeks.”
“I already called,” she says, the edge of frustration in her voice giving her away. “They won’t refill it early.”
I turn my face toward the wall, still shivering and shaking.
I can feel her sitting behind me, sullen and quiet. My mother knows what Buttons meant to me. But at the same time, she can’t ever be at fault. So it’s impossible that burning him was wrong.
“Randall was pretty mad,” she says at last.
That’s her version of an apology. Shifting the blame squarely on someone else’s shoulders.
“You could have hid him,” I hiss.
That’s not allowed. No one can be a victim except her.
“You know what he would have done to me!” she snaps. “But you don’t care about that, do you? You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You’re selfish. So fucking selfish. You’re the one that made him angry! You think I like coming home to that?”
She goes on in that vein for some time. I stay facing the wall, ignoring her.
She hates being ignored. When she can’t get a response out of me any other way, she falls silent to regroup.
Then, her voice low and soft and entirely sober, she says, “It was just an old bear.”
Now I do turn and face her. She’s wearing a Sailor Moon nightshirt that belongs to me. Her bare legs are tucked under her, below the short hem. In the dim light, she looks young again. Like my earliest memories of her: more beautiful than the prettiest princess in a fairy tale.
Her beauty has no effect on me anymore.
“That was all I had from my father,” I accuse her.
Her snort jolts me.
“That bear wasn’t from your father.”
I stare at her, too numb to understand.
She nods slowly, the edge of her mouth quirking up. “It’s true. I told you that so you’d shut up about him. He didn’t leave you any bear—why would he? He didn’t give a fuck about you.”
I turn back to the wall, waiting for her to leave.
Late in the night, when I know they’re both sleeping, I creep out of bed and rescue the ruins of Buttons from the fireplace. I want to bury him, but not in Randall’s garden. Instead, I walk the six blocks to Percy Park and dig a hole under the rose bushes with my hands.