Abducted a Novel By Atticus Blake
From the novel I've been working on while I'm in school to keep working on my writing skills.
Chapter One: The Big Black Phone
Mom called on the family phone. A land line she insisted I need for in case of emergencies. All black and foreboding, the thing is stuck out of time with its wall hanging carriage and corded receiver. Rang like a stab in the ear. She was in the middle of saying it again. One of those memorable mother lines that had razor sharp claws and teeth to boot.
She says, “Now dear, I understand in today’s society I girl finds herself before she finds a man. Sometimes she doesn’t find a man at all…”
I miss a lot cause I’m not listening.
She says, “…you know by the age of 35 a woman’s eggs start to rot.”
I say, “Ma that’s not exactly true,” like any kid tired of the same boring lecture.
In nothing but my nightgown and bunny fuzzy slippers, I traipse the length of the cord around my kitchen with a hot cup of tea. It twists around my ankles. To distract myself I lean over the kitchen sink. Through the window my garden is plump with ripened tomatoes, eggplants, ears of corn, cucumbers, and even my lemon tree is bearing little green buds. That thing about a 10 to 1 dilution of urine with water and miracle grow is true. Thank you, Pinterest. ‘Cept for the browning leaves on the pumpkin plants, this year I did a splendid job if I do say so myself. Like a regular… shit I don’t know any famous gardeners. Will google later. On my real phone I tell Siri to remind me.
Mom says, “and don’t go thinking you’ll find a twenty something with newer sperm to split the difference. First of all it doesn’t work that way and second you’re not pretty enough.”
I huff into the phone but don’t reply. She’d had me at 45 and was occasioned to tell friends and party goers, even people at the grocery store how she knew it’d been her old eggs that made me so short, slow, fat, so undeniably ugly. Though how I’m expected to find a man when I’m such a freak is beyond me. She’s one of those mothers who had children because she thought it was her duty. Now it’s my duty to give her grandchildren.
Mom says, “deary I know how hard it is to find someone worthwhile these days, but at the very least you could find anyone. You don’t have to be attracted to him at all. God knows he won’t be attracted to you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut tight enough to see stars behind the lids. Opening them my garden is awash in bright summer morning light. If you don’t have the money for an irrigation system, those plastic bottles you needlessly recycle every week will do just fine. No really, alls you have to do is put holes in the sides and bottoms, stuff a clean sock through the hole, bury it halfway into the ground, pour in the water and voila! A little irrigation tank.
“I know you’re not listening,” mom continues, “so I did something to get your attention.”
I ask, “what now?” Last time, she’d bought me frozen sperm from a clinic. Sent right to my door in a Styrofoam box with dry ice and all. I’d hung up on her then too. Threw away the spooge. Used the dry ice in a bowl to quick chill some Glenlivet. Drank it in the tub and almost drowned.
She sighs first, knowing it’s hard, what she’s gonna say, then, “I got you a date.”
Before she’s half done, I say, “Mother!” Like she’d thrown away all my fruit snacks again. Like when she’d tossed all the ding dongs, ho-ho’s, snowballs, and peeps. At 15 and 5’3” and 100 pounds my BMI was 17.7. I was underweight. Gods! She’d said, “let’s keep it that way.”
She says, “it’s with Jeffrey Ketchum.”
I Groan, “Who’s that?”
While she rattles off his good qualities, I root through my snack cupboard and put a Pop-Tart in the microwave for 10 seconds. Eat it without a plate. To be as ugly as possible without her knowing I pick my nose and wipe it on one of my decorative towels. I scratch my asshole and do a sniff-check like kindergartener. My nails are already thick with soil from the garden so that’s all I smell. I’ve a new wart on my right pinky knuckle and it itches like hell.
“You’ve seen him before. The legal aide who works on the third floor at the firm?”
Whether I had or not it’d slipped my mind. A lot of people work for dad’s company. Tucking the phone under my chin, I rifle through a kitchen drawer for my lemon shaver. Use it to sand off the crusty end of the wart until it’s just a nub. You can get HPV from the dirt if you’re not careful. Not that it would have prevented it, but you can use a 1 tablespoon dilution of castile soap to 1 quart of water dilution to make a great insecticide.
Mom says how Jeff’s never been married, probably a virgin for all we know. Just like she thinks I am. How he’s got a good job at The Firm, meaning the law firm My parents had co-founded. It’s what made us all the money. I’m the only heir cause my brother, Bradford died sometime back. We never talk about him. He’s just a bedroom in the big old house we don’t enter anymore.
The way mom describes Jeff it’s like one of those police sketches drawn from the memory of a liar. Jeff’s tallish, with a face, and hair. Got teeth too and their not too crooked. Under all this is the subtext; he’s a man with a penis and balls that make sperm that can be shot into me to make a goddamn grandchild. Mom prattles about how she got us a reservation at a fancy restaurant at 9:00PM on Friday.
I ask, “this Friday?” Mom says nothing, so I say, “I’ve got to stay in and masturbate on camera.”
Chuckling, mom says, “who’d watch you do that?”
I lie, “my tubes are tied.”
She says, “why you never. I know a fertile woman when I see one. Plus I have all your medical records.”
Still sanding with the lemon shaver I’ve reached the wart seed. The Cronenberg eye in the center of the wound is raised and wet. Around it oozes serous fluid then a little blood. Setting down the shaver I sting the finger under cold water, towel it with the booger towel.
Mom says, “it’s just dinner, baby. Please?”
I ask, “has he even seen me?”
I rifle through the drawer again for my paring knife and begin to dig at the root. Thing is, you have to get all of it or it’ll just come back. Same goes with gardening. All over my hands are little healed dots from where I’ve removed other warts. Like I just got over chicken pox. Painful as it is, I’d rather dig out warts than meet some dumpling of a man my mother set me up with.
Rather than answering, mom says, “why do you insist on doing everything but what’s needed. Why everything but what I want?”
I say, “because you’re a terrible mother,” bleeding copiously into the sink, I say, “not just that, but you’re a terrible mother and you have no intention of changing it. Of being better.”
Glad the wart is on my right hand rather than my left as that’s my more dexterous, I do the careful surgery, I needle the little root out plucking delicately until I reach the gross center, then with my fingernails I pluck it out with a sharp pain like when you strike a nerve.
Mom says, “if ensuring you never have to work, pay a mortgage, or any other bill for that matter, if worrying about your safety night and day, if getting you dates you ruin, if loving you though you’re a miserable child means I’m a terrible mother than I’ll consider it a badge of honor.”
With the hole dribbling blood, I say, “so you’re saying I owe you?”
“No,” she says, “I’m saying I want you to be considerate.”
With the booger towel, I blanket the finger and squeeze it to death until the bleeding stops, then search above my fridge for the first aid kit. In the box are several crumpled band-aids, cut lengths of gauze, bacitracin, and I find my South East Asian bought birth control pills. Imagine where your subconscious will take you. Thirteen of them are missing. Probably they’re all old. do they go bad, I don’t know. I’ll tell Siri later to refill it.
I say, “it’s not the job of a child to fulfill the dreams of a parent.”
Mom says, “it’s not about fulfilling my dreams, it’s about fulfilling yours.”
Maybe when I was five and cradling some baby doll to my bosom, I’d said I wanted an infant, but that’s it. I’d upset mother then too; cause I’d chose a black baby doll with darling textured hair and smooth brown skin. As I dump out the first aid kit on the counter and spread the contents like magician’s cards, the fate of dear little Winona runs through my brain. Went missing after I’d cropped her hair with fabric scissors and was promptly replaced with a goo-goo eyed white baby doll with shimmering blonde curls and bright blue eyes. Mom’d said it fit better. Never assuming one of my class or stature would adopt a child from a third world country. I’ve brown hair, and brown eyes, I told her then, those are dominant genes so she still got it wrong. The head of that doll, Maleficent, hair mohawked, and dirty with one eye that won’t open, was severed, and used as a scarecrow who guards my garden to this day.
I say, “Mom, I’ve never wanted a baby.”
Out the window, Maleficent stares in at me with the phone tucked under my chin rummaging for super glue. Once found, I crack open the old glue from the cap and squeeze the contents into the open wound with a sharp pain that makes me wince and grind my teeth.
I say, “love is for suckers, mom.”
I allow this once or twice monthly ritual call on the big black phone for one reason alone. A persistent feeling underneath a thin veneer of fear and disgust that if I didn’t go through the motions of rejecting her wants and desires, I wasn’t at the very least an attentive daughter. Probably even I’ll go on the date, I’ll get drunk enough to embarrass myself, mom will be satisfied I tried, and on to the next month. Might even, I’ll sleep with the guy if he looks past my ugliness, and he doesn’t smell too bad. Even if he’s got a small peen buried in a forest of pubic hair, I’ll try it.
Snorting, Mom says, “of course love is for suckers, did I ever say otherwise?”
She hadn’t. With this one statement she gave me pause. Had to give her some credit for her honesty. In case it wasn’t obvious, since forever and ever she’s been pestering me to get married, have babies. To bear male heirs who could take over cause dad’s dead. All these things, Bradford was supposed to do, and was more than willing to take the pressure off me so I could live my life of boring gardenetude. Alls I wanted was to see tulips flourish in March, tomatoes plump red in April. To use cinnamon as a pesticide. To compost cardboard, eggshells, coffee grounds, leftover salad clippings, tea bags, grass clippings and leaves stinking in the backyard until I could use them to grow pumpkins and squash.
Mom says, “I’ve never cared about what you wanted. This is for the good of the family, dear.”
With the bleeding stopped, and the skin pinched together like a pie crust, I’m satisfied the wart is gone. In turning my hand over, I spy another wart on the same finger. Small and inconsequential for now, it stood out in the bend of the knuckle. Pretty soon it’d be painful to clench a fist. Something I needed to be able to do during these calls. Rather than using my home surgery or go to the family doctor who’s bound to tell my mother everything, I resign to buy some muriatic acid, and burn it off. Perhaps I could give myself a liquid hysterectomy and be done with all this baby nonsense .
Mom asks, “did I ever say I loved you?”
Putting the phone to my chest, I scream silently. I’ve no neighbors for acres and acres and have privacy enough to yodel and dance naked in my yard if I want, but I don’t want her to know she’s like those voices people say they hear in psychosis. For evidential reasons I hold out the black receiver to my face, to ensure it’s there, and listen at the speaker to guarantee she is indeed real and still talking like a shrill troll. I put the phone face down on the counter. Her little voice buzzes along like a mosquito when you’re trying to sleep. She’d never ever said she loved me. Gods, help families with this kind of honesty.