Mommies Don’t Stay
They’d finally come to Flora in her dreams — a twin boy and girl — each with long, tangled, dark hair and wiry fingers that intertwined in an unyielding grasp.
“Bring us home,” they’d whispered in perfect unison.
“Let me touch you.” She’d reached out to them in her sleep. “Let me hold you, my babies.”
They hovered in the air above her grasp, soiled socks dangling off their feet. The girl’s lips grinned and the boy’s puckered. Their small, black pupils were fixated on her.
“Mommy, mommy.”
She woke up and sprinted to the bathroom. Her graying hair was ratted where she’d thrashed on her pillow, trying to pull her babies down from the sky towards her bosom. Into the mirror she stared, smoothing her hair with one hand and straightening her nightgown with the other.
“This is it,” she asserted to herself. “It’s a sign. Today is the last day of your childless life. Tomorrow, you’ll be a mother.” She couldn’t help but grin at the word. “And you’ll have a family.” Both her hands now cleared tears from the pillow creases on her cheeks.
Knock, knock.
Her eyes looked at the apartment door. She waited for another knock. Muffled voices greeted one another from the apartment across the hall. No one had knocked on Flora’s door.
“That’s okay,” she said to herself, marching back into her bedroom. “When the babies are home everyone will want to visit.” She began to rummage through her makeup bag. “And I’ll say ‘no, sorry, my babies are sleeping’ and they’ll have to come back another day.” She found what she was looking for: a very old but still vibrant tube of lipstick in Don’t Blink Pink.
Flora’s venue of choice for the night’s copulation was the men’s restroom at Kenny’s Roadside Grille. The one other time she’d been to Kenny’s everyone was dirty dancing up on each other, so she assumed it had the perfect vibe for a one-minute-stand. Mike, Brad, Dwayne, or whoever would play their part (“Gawd dammit you’re so hot right now”) and then she’d scoot right out of the bar and hustle back to her apartment.
Kenny’s was noisy and so packed with people that it didn’t take long for someone to brush Flora’s backside, pretend it was an accident, then offer to buy her a drink. Griff was what she thought he said his name was. They parted the sea of bodies to get to the men’s room, but there was ketchup smeared into Griff’s beard and she hadn’t noticed it until they were locked into a stall together. She’d screamed when he tried to kiss her.
“Psycho bitch,” he’d spewed, heaving her out of the stall and into two other men at the urinals.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
“Ugly cow.” The man, not bothering to re-zip his jeans, walloped Flora across the jaw. She fell back onto the cold sink, her hands slipping on old soap residue, and fell to the floor. Griff and the other men left.
“Mommy, mommy,” she heard her babies say. She looked up from the grimy tile floor and saw her babies floating inside the stall. They looked so beautiful that she smiled even though her jaw throbbed.
The girl snapped her head to the left to look upon her brother. The boy’s lips, thin and purple like a black plum, spread open wide. His breath pervaded the already dour stench of the bathroom with smells of sour buttermilk and mildew. His teeth, a mix of baby and adult, parted and from his cavernous throat he coughed out lumps of partly digested leaves and pine needles, the once bright colors of fall foliage now the runny yellow and sinewy black of bile.
“Bring us home,” he sputtered with a line of thick mucus still suspended between his lips. Flora felt a stabbing pressure inside her guts.
“Bring us home.”
Despite decades of fantasy, pregnancy was not blissful for Flora. Even a miraculous one. She wrestled through intense fatigue at work each day, taking calls and keying orders with kielbasa-sized fingers and a peanut-sized bladder. Relief came in her dreams, when she’d dance in a circle with her floating children, then they’d topple down into a pile of laughter. One night, eight months into her pregnancy, Flora jumped in the air with her children but did not land on the soft dirt as before. She tumbled into a hole and watched the horrified faces of her children blur as she fell down, down, down.
Flora woke up on the floor with her abdomen wrenched in a contraction. The pressure ripped through her like a white-hot knife. She scrambled to sit up, then put her hand between her legs. No wetness — no blood. She let out a long breath of relief but was again interrupted by a contraction. She reached for her phone that sat charging on the bedside table and dialed 911.
“You’re experiencing premature contractions. They can be common with multiples, but at your age we don’t want to take any chances.”
The disheveled Emergency Room doctor looked over his shoulder and whispered to an obese nurse in tight purple scrubs. Flora fiddled with her hospital ID bracelet in an attempt to stay calm.
“I’m prescribing bed rest. Nurse Verna will monitor you overnight.”
Nurse Verna gripped Flora’s stretcher and rolled her out of the Emergency Room. The nurse hovered over Flora’s head, panting as she pushed. Flora could feel the twins inside of her, thrashing about in their amniotic fluid. She put her hands on her stomach, feeling their feet pushing out. She tried to press the feet back inside her.
“They’re ripping you apart, ain’t they?” asked the nurse, wheeling her into a dark room. “Little brats take everything from you, believe me. They suck the calcium from your bones like vampires and then suck your boobs dry into ugly little raisins. Nobody tells you the truth about having babies.” Nurse Verna turned on the cold fluorescent lights, revealing a run-down hospital room. “Let’s get you into this bed now honey.”
The kicking subsided. Flora slowly sat upright and inched off the stretcher. “Does bed rest mean that I literally have to stay in bed?” she asked, wobbling on her swollen feet.
Nurse Verna snorted. “Yep. In bed, all day and all night. You ain’t doing nothing, not even going to work. I hope you saved some vacation days. Told you, they’ll ruin everything.” Nurse Verna crept closer. “Some ladies in your shoes take advantage of a complication like this. I’ve seen it before. Nobody would judge you if you lost ’em, you’re at high risk already. You know what I’m talking about? You don’t hafta follow the doctor’s orders.”
Flora didn’t answer. A heaviness had fallen upon the space and the lights dimmed as if their electric current was being drained by something else in the room. The twins strode into the room. Something was wrong.
“You okay?” asked the nurse, adjusting the blankets over Flora’s enormous belly. Nurse Verna followed Flora’s gaze with curiosity, only to glance behind her and see an empty corner of the room.
“If you need me, just press that red button.” Nurse Verna then rolled the stretcher past the twins, who let out hollow hissing sounds.
Flora felt for wetness between her legs and once more, there was no blood. This relief was only temporary, as the oppressive energy in the room seemed to flatten every atom in her body.
“What’s wrong?” she asked the twins, stumbling over her words like a toddler trying to walk.
“Bring us home. Bring us home.”
“I’m trying! I’m trying! Don’t you see that?” Flora’s forehead broke out in a sweat. Maybe they did want to suck her dry.
The sister held the long pointer finger of her right hand in the air. With her left, she held her brother’s arm. With a brittle nail she cut into his flesh, slashing a red line across his wrist. The blood took a moment to gush from the wound, but when it did the sister dipped her finger deep into the gash. Flora looked on in horror, her hands gripping the metal supports on the hospital bed.
“No, no. You don’t have to do this,” she cried, not knowing whether to comfort the babies still inside of her or the bloody apparitions standing in the corner. The sister took her blood stained finger and began to write on the yellow hospital wall: 5560. Her fingers crafted the numbers with the swirls and flourishes of a young girl. She continued: Hemmswick Lane Beaufort.
“Bring us home. Bring us home.”
Upon release, a cab dropped her at the apartment where she packed a small bag of clothes and two stuffed rabbits, one pink and one blue, that she’d purchased in the hospital gift shop. A quick internet search printed her a turn-by-turn map of her route to Beaufort, South Carolina. It would take her over ten hours on 95 South to travel from her apartment in southern New Jersey to Beaufort, a Low Country town on the Beaufort River.
She had never before driven further south than Washington D.C.; she had no idea who or what would be at 5560 Hemmswick Lane; she had no out-of-network health insurance that would cover a South Carolina hospital for the birth of her twins; but she sat in the driver’s seat and they sat in the backseat, staring at her through the rear-view mirror.
“Bring us home. Bring us home.”
She would. What was she losing by leaving behind her tiny, lifeless apartment and a ceaseless line of telemarketing calls? Nothing. There was nothing in her life except her babies.
Flora drove the entire day and into the night, trying hard to avoid stopping at every rest stop to use the bathroom. Her window was down and the air fresh and warming as she journeyed farther and farther south through Richmond, Fayetteville, and Florence. The sister and brother let their long black hair flutter wildly in the night wind like the spiky palmetto trees that began to line the highway.
“Bring us home. Bring us home.”
Together they watched the sun rise over the tree line as Flora pulled onto King Street, the main thoroughfare in still slumbering Beaufort. The sidewalks were deserted but the town was far from silent. The old oaks were infested with cicadas whose rhythmic humming threatened to lull Flora to sleep. As her eyelids fluttered, a small hand squeezed her shoulder. The brother was pointing to a street sign: Hemmswick Lane, and then to a boxy mansion squeezed in on all four sides be a wrap-around porch.
This house, however, was not the most massive structure on the property. Positioned directly in front of the house was an enormous live oak with branches so thick and heavy that the lowest touched the ground. Its position was a rude one, as if the house was first in line and the tree had barged in front.
Upon this branch sat eight figures. They descended in size, with the largest two sitting closest to the oak’s substantial trunk. As Flora’s car rolled onto a dirt driveway, crunching stones and small branches with its tires, they scattered; taking various zigzag routes to the rear of the house. She stopped, her red break lights flaring against the sliver of orange in the early morning sky. She turned to look at the twins in the backseat and listened for their response. They were gone.
A screen door slammed. A woman wearing loose jeans and drying her hands with a ragged kitchen towel appeared on the porch.
“Can I help you?” she yelled towards the idling car.
The voice startled Flora. She turned her body quickly and banged her swollen belly against the steering wheel. The babies inside kicked wildly in protest. She steadied herself, put the car in park, removed the keys from the ignition, and opened the car door.
“I’m sorry to disturb you so early. This is going to sound so crazy, but I think I’m supposed to be here.” Flora shut the car door, revealing her pregnant belly. The woman’s eyes widened.
“You having a baby?” asked the woman, coming one step closer.
“Yes. Twins actually.”
“Twins, huh? Is that right. Well. Looks like you better come inside. You have bags?” Flora nodded yes and the woman approached. “I’m Hildy. I take care of Mr. Barney and the house and…such.” She spoke with a firmness that mirrored her hard, angular face and square shoulders. “I’ll take these bags here and let Mr. Barney know you’ve arrived.” Hildy shouldered the bags and huffed as she ascended the fleet of steps leading to the porch.
“I’m sorry to be a bother,” Flora said as she lumbered behind Hildy, wincing each time her stiff legs took a step. She stepped into a large entryway that stretched from the front of the house to the back. At either end were sets of enormous black doors that could open to send a breeze sweeping through the entire house on an oppressive summer day. The scent of these summers was still present as a moldy perfume that clung to the slate blue wallpaper which wrapped the room like a bandage.
Hildy pointed immediately to Flora’s right. “Wait in the parlor and I’ll rouse Mr. Barney. He’s a simple man and won’t take but a moment to get ready to receive you. Then we’ll get you some biscuits and butter, or maybe you prefer grits?”
Both options sounded delicious to Flora — she could almost taste the buttery grits. “Yes, all of that sounds amazing but you don’t have to go to any trouble. I don’t really know how long I’ll be staying.”
“Better let Mr. Barney explain that.” Hildy did an about face and exited.
Now alone, Flora sunk into a white and gold upholstered arm chair adjacent to a cold fireplace. A matching chair sat across from her, empty. She sunk down heavy into the seat with a sudden sleepiness.
As her head lolled against the chair’s tall and stately back she spied the twins standing on the fireplace mantel. Brother and sister were holding hands, their gaze fixed, their chests still. Were they not breathing, she thought, grabbing her stomach with one hand and reaching towards the mantel with the other. She panicked. Her eyes refocused. The twins, still unmoving on the mantel, became two-dimensional. They were not her usual visions, but a painting wrapped in a thick gold frame.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” spoke a gentle voice. The end of each word quivered a bit on the speaker’s tongue, as if poorly balanced on the edge of a cliff.
“Robert and Sylvia Barney were their names. They were my precious children, you see. They’ve been gone for almost thirty years now.”
Flora turned to see an old man hunched over in the entryway. His neck and face were deeply creased with wave upon wave of wrinkles and his head was almost devoid of hair; even his eyebrows were but two white wisps. His legs trembled as he labored to stand upright.
“Thirty years dead hasn’t stopped them though.” Mr. Barney chuckled and motioned for someone else to enter the room. “Thank you for bringing them home again.”
Eight figures slunk into the parlor from the hallway. The smaller ones wrapped themselves around his legs, their plump fingers clutching at the loose fabric of his suit pants. The taller ones flanked him on either side, each finding a spot upon his person to seize. Their faces were identical: blueberry eyes and thin purple lips framed by long black hair. Some were very young, rounded bodies sitting on the floor in sullied diapers while others appeared to be in their mid-teens, their bodies stretched and awkward with evolving maturity. Two were fully grown adults, each cradling a newborn in their arms. Yet all were the children from her dreams; her precious children.
Flora could not blink, her eyes now as dry as her open mouth. Mr. Barney continued to speak but she couldn’t hear his new words as her ears rung with only three: “My precious children.” They were not his. They were not his precious anything!
Her body revolted against these thoughts physically and pain sliced across the top of her forehead as neural pathways fought to extinguish themselves. The anguish awakened a primal throb. She could pounce on the man, crack his brittle bones with her hands, snap his neck. His naked head would fall over limp like a dead bird’s. Mommies must do these things for their children, she thought. Mommies must protect their babies. MY babies. MY babies. She poised her bloated body on the edge of her seat to strike.
Before she could spring forward her belly seized, twisted and constricted. She was a worm being ripped in half, simple guts leaking out onto the sidewalk as two curious children laughed from up high. Orange dots blotted out her vision but her ears sharpened. She heard them coming. The hurried footfalls of the children were moving towards her; the knees of the youngest ones beating against the hard wood floor as they crawled. As Flora felt the first hand capture her, everything went dark.
There were no dreams. Only an abrupt awakening to her body in labor. Flora had no sense of how long she’d been unconscious. Her eyes snapped open to see her feet in the air, resting in cold metal stirrups. Mr. Barney stood shining a light and staring between her legs. He wore white scrubs and blue latex surgical gloves that were already covered in blood.
Did he reach inside of me, she thought with alarm. Did he do something to my babies?
She struggled to sit up but her sweaty hands slipped on the plastic sheeting covering the stretcher and her head fell back with a thud.
“Don’t touch my babies! No, no,” she shrieked. The stirrups rattled as she struggled between contractions.
Mr. Barney motioned for the oldest twins to hold down her feet in the stirrups. They obeyed quickly, cracking her toes with their grips. He then signaled for two other sets of twins to gather around her. One of the sisters, long black hair tied back with a blue ribbon, tenderly placed a cool, wet washcloth on her head. Another sister took her right hand and stroked it with a brother stroking the left. Another sister poured a sip of water in her dry mouth.
“It’s okay Mommy,” the little girl whispered into Flora’s ear. “It’ll be over soon. You’re so brave.”
Mommy, mommy. She heard them all sing it as a chorus in her head, the sweet and syrupy voices of her babies.
“We love you Mommy.”
We love you. We love you. The chanting in her head filled her entire body with warmth. She considered the possibility: raising all these children, her children, in this enormous mansion. She could wash all of their beautiful bodies in the bath and make their skin smell like warm cake just out of the oven. She could trim their fingernails and file them down to smooth half moons. She would love them all and they would love her.
“Push,” yelled Mr. Barney, his hands poised to catch the first baby.
Mr. Barney! Oh, she could get rid of him. He appeared very, very old and could easily die soon or be brought to death by swift means. Maybe while he slept? Perhaps something he ate? Elderly people could even die from the flu, couldn’t they?
She felt intense pressure low in her pelvis.
“Push!”
Flora pushed with all of her might. She pushed until it felt like each hair on her body had been shoved out of her skin by the root. As she writhed the children continued to stroke and pacify her. She could hear them, all of them, beating forth a rhythm in her head: Mommy. I love you. Mommy. Mommy. She pushed and screamed to the rhythm over and over again.
“We have a head and shoulders!”
Mommy. We love you. Mommy. Mommy.
She could smell the hot blood now. She was dull and sharp, exhausted yet strong, in the middle of this battle with her own body. A great pressure lifted when the first baby, a girl, was raised up by Mr. Barney and handed to one of the oldest sets of twins. A tiny brother followed his sister and was also liberated from the birth canal a few seconds later.
Flora couldn’t help but laugh. She had done it — she had her very own babies. She released laughter like electric sparks into the air, for her entire body felt energized, like she was plugged directly into the earth itself. Mr. Barney, huffing and puffing from this recent exertion, was quickly led out of the room by one of the brothers. Flora was happy to see him leave. She wanted this time to be just between her and all of her children.
“Let me see them,” she asked, lolling her head to look upon their flailing arms as the older twins washed them in a nearby sink. All of the children smiled.
“Let me hold them,” she asked, as the older twins swaddled the babies in blankets. All of the children smiled.
“Let me feed them,” she asked, as the older twins guided bottles of formula into the baby’s tiny seeking mouths. All of the children smiled.
A small sister stroked locks of sweat-soaked hair on Flora’s forehead. “No, no,” the child said, her sing-song voice high and on the verge of giggling. “Mommies don’t stay.”
An older brother inserted a needle into Flora’s left arm. As her vision failed she could still feel all of the children smiling.
For more stories visit Spooky Cupcake, Shanna’s home on the web.
Originally published in Cemetery Moon, Issue 12.
