Hex Life

by Rachel Deering

  “Thanks,” Esme whispered, her voice all gratitude as she drifted back to sleep, and the baby suckled. And along the blue sheet, milk and blood.

  * * *

  Wendy was gone when Esme woke. Her shift lasted from eight at night until five in the morning. At five-thirty, Nicky started mewing and Esme nursed him, then occupied Spencer in the den of their parlor-floor apartment, trying to keep them all quiet so Lucy and Mike could get a full rest. Around seven, she put Nicky on the kitchen floor in his boppy, held Spencer to her hip, made toast breakfast, then packed Spencer’s snack and Lucy’s lunch.

  Mike left for work at seven-thirty, which gave her forty-five minutes to brush Lucy’s hair and get everybody ready for the day. This involved a lot of running around and then running back to get the thing that had been forgotten, and then socks, always socks! No one could ever find, match, or put on their own socks! And then securing the double stroller, and Lucy would have to walk even though she didn’t want to, and somehow, even though Esme had promised she wouldn’t yell she was literally screaming and the children became frightened and cried, and then baby Nicky was crying, and they all sat on the couch and wept while Esme explained that mommy’s very sorry, and then it was off to school.

  Getting the kids to school was probably the worst part of Esme’s day, in part because she was still tired from the night before, and, having drunk three coffees to make up for it, was now irritable and likely to pee her pants, which happened from time to time.

  Also frustrating for Esme was the group of perfectly coiffed moms who materialized at drop-off before heading out to jobs like television producer and advertising copy writer and office manager. These occupations, which had once seemed mundane, were now like the tips of sailboats floating away from the horizon, Esme standing on the shore.

  The other group at drop-off was the home-maker wives, who wore Lululemon and complained about money, but spent the time their kids were at school in group yoga classes, training for half-marathons, or having Friday lunches with unlimited mimosas. They tended to have nice figures and their children tended to be the smartest and best adjusted. They supported each other, too, doling hugs and laughs when this child-rearing gig got just too darn hard! Some of them even watched each others’ kids and shared cooking obligations. Esme had tried to befriend these women, but they happened to be the same kinds of women who read Eat, Pray, Love, and considered Love, Actually the best movie of all time. They were lovely women who would raise lovely children and Esme had nothing in common with them.

  Also, now that she had three children she’d broken an unwritten rule of Brooklyn parenting. Everybody kept saying, “I don’t know how you do it! Are you moving to the suburbs?” Unspoken and more to the point, it’s hard to arrange playdates with a mom who has three kids. Nobody wants that many people in their tiny apartments.

  So, drop-off. First at PS11, then the preschool, and then home with baby Nicky, a two-mile walk round trip. By the time it was done, the cold had taken its bite. Though the baby was well wrapped, Esme’s hands were frozen too much to flex. But you can’t drive in Brooklyn, particularly not with three kids (you can double park, sure, but if you leave anybody in the car some asshole calls child services), so walking it had to be. This was also the problem with alternate-side-parking-street-cleaning days. Don’t even ask!

  Drinking more coffee, she tried to type while the baby slept. She was working on a story she thought was good, about the prison system in Riker’s Island. She thought maybe someone would publish it, like they used to publish her work back when she’d been able to make deadlines. As a favor, her old friend who now worked at the Huffington Post asked for a first look when she finished. But she didn’t finish that day, because Nicky started crying. And she knew she was supposed to go help him. All the baby books demanded this. If you did not help a baby when he cried, he didn’t properly attach, which led to personality disorders like narcissism and borderline and even psychosis. Yes, you had to answer babies when they cried or you were a BAD MOTHER.

  So she got up and held the baby. Offered her breast, which the baby bit, tearing up the scab that had just healed. “I don’t want you,” she cooed sweetly, because babies don’t know English.

  Pick-up happened two hours later. Nicky was napping so she had to wake him, because Spencer threw fits when she was late, which it turns out is normal for a two-year-old, but somehow unacceptable at a preschool for two-year-olds.

  She was in such a rush that she forgot her gloves, or maybe there just wasn’t time, but at least she’d remembered that tenth cup of coffee. Off they went, carrier and empty stroller, walking fast as waddling ducks.

  The preschool on Prospect Avenue had this cheesy awning of happy stick-figure kids. A bunch of moms were waiting outside—the happy moms who’d all gone out for coffee and talked about their feelings during the last two hours. They smiled when they saw Esme and she tried to smile back but she was sweating at her core and ice-cold on the outside. Like a cherry pie a la mode.

  The doors opened and Esme felt the familiar thrill. Her beloved, returned. Toddlers ran out from a large playroom with its indoor slide and bounce animals. They rushed for their mothers and that one overwhelmed, lonely dad. Playdates were arranged for the post-nap dead zone. The room emptied.

  Esme felt a hand on her shoulder. It was the director. A sixty-year-old woman named Meredith who taught the children about hatching chicken eggs and self-esteem. “He’s in the office,” she explained. The lagging-behind mothers heard this, and offered looks of schadenfreude wrapped in sympathy. She followed Meredith into the office where Spencer sat on one of the small training potties instead of an adult chair, which would have been too big. His put-upon teacher Natalie stood beside him, seeming concerned.

  It was always concern. Never anger, frustration, or annoyance. Just concern.

  “He ran out of the classroom. We have a stop sign so that doesn’t happen. We teach them to read that sign on day one. For safety. But he ran out into the big playroom anyway.”

  “Oh,” Esme said. Spencer came to her. Leaned in. Nicky yawned with closed eyes.

  “We planned a field trip for next week. Spencer will have to stay home with you. It’s not safe.”

  Esme felt all kinds of ashamed, which she always felt when this kind of thing happened, but also all kinds of confused. Because Spencer surely knew the difference between a classroom and a busy street full of cars.

  “Well, if that’s what you think,” she said.

  “It is. We’re so sorry. Maybe you could work with him at home.”

  She felt she should defend her kid, but she was so tired that she was afraid she’d start crying. “Okay. We’ll work on following rules more. Except it’s hard because he’s two years old.”

  “That might be the problem.”

  “Hm?”

  Meredith, the big gun, stepped in. “Have you been spending enough time with him? I think it might have to do with the new baby. He’s acting out.” She said this in front of Spencer, like he wasn’t just willful, but retarded.

  “Oh. Should I cram this baby I’m holding back into my vagina?” she asked.

  Everybody got all quiet and uncomfortable. Even Esme, who was not the kind of person to use the word vagina out loud.

  “Okay! Sorry about the stop sign,” she said, took Spencer’s hand, and walked out.

  * * *

  They got home with two hours to spare before kindergarten pickup. Her fingers weren’t numb this time, just really cold. She fed everybody and then napped everybody and then they had a half-hour. She drank another coffee and somehow peed her panties and jeans, and promised herself to stop having coffee, because she was a grown woman capable of impulse control. Right?

  Then she remembered the thing she kept forgetting, which was the ointment Wendy had brought to heal her sun damage. So kind! Because Esme was black, almost nobody ever noticed her sun damage. Her rich, drunk mom used to send her outside all summer long back in East Hampton. She�
�d felt this was good for Esme, as it had afforded them both more freedom. Esme was less sure. But now Esme’s face had all kinds of weird freckles and parts of her nose were scarred little spiderweb calluses from blisters over blisters over blisters, summer upon summer.

  She couldn’t remember where she’d put the ointment, and then she remembered Wendy saying to her really slowly, “I’ll put it in your med’cin cabinet ’cause it’s strong magic. I don’t want the children messing with it.”

  So, in her bathroom. She rubbed it on her face. It was a small jar, its contents reeking of frankincense and bergamot. The secret ingredient, Wendy had told her, was the blood and milk she’d collected from Esme’s nipples, which may or may not have been a joke.

  Her skin tingled in a good way. The ointment pressed through her pores and went deep. She could even feel her bones. She worried briefly that Wendy had actually given her a whitener, since hillbillies from Kentucky probably thought blackness was a thing that needed curing. But then she looked into the mirror, and yeah, she could even see it. Her spots softened, the pigment turning uniformly dark. The scars on her nose looked smaller. She glowed.

  “I’m still pretty,” she whispered with total surprise.

  It felt so good she put it on her hands. The cracks merged together to heal. Heat sank deep, into her bones. The chapped red softened into muted brown. She was about to put it on her raw nipples when she looked at the clock. Time to go!

  They went out again, this time straight to PS11. Lucy and her best friend Ritah came whizzing out the side, kindergarten exit. Ritah’s mom was this angry twenty-something from Massachusetts who was training to be a doula. She was always asking Esme to look after Ritah, which was actually pretty easy because Ritah was an easy kid, but it also kind of sucked. Today both moms took all the kids to the park. Lucy and Ritah played on monkey bars and sang their best-friend song and practiced their best-friend handshake. Ritah’s mom complained about how hard her life was because her ex-husband had a trashy girlfriend, and then something about how she wished she had some OxyContin. As Esme surveyed the situation, nodding politely at this woman’s litany of mistreatment, Nicky and Spencer stuck to her like extra appendages, Esme decided that private school would have been a better bet. They’d have met a higher class of family, whose kids used more normal cuss words. For example: what the heck is a douche-slut? Does she cheat on one douche with another? Do they even make douches anymore?

  Esme, Lucy, Spencer, and Nicky got home at four in the afternoon. Everybody collapsed on the couch. Lucy cried because she missed Ritah and Spencer cried because two-year-olds cry in the afternoons, sometimes for as long as an hour, and Nicky cried because he heard other humans crying and wanted to be in on the fun, so then Esme cried, and then the kids all got really upset because mom was crying, so Esme turned the television to Animaniacs, which they streamed for an hour while she ordered groceries from Amazon, thank god for earth-scorching, minimum-wage-slavery Amazon, because no way she was getting these kids out of the house one more fucking time, just for Hamburger Helper.

  She got the text from Mike that he’d be coming home late. He had this pattern since they’d started having kids. He stayed away until they were sleep-trained. Over the years, she had vocally protested and threatened and at last begged for his help, but her pleas had fallen on deaf ears.

  She was not a moron—she’d done the math. But divorced people had to do stupid things, like splitting the kids between apartments three days a week. This sounded fantastic (three nights on her own, her husband stuck taking the kids! A fantasia! She’d brush her teeth and take baths and get real writing done!), but then you consider the practicalities. The kids were attached to their home, which they’d have to leave for something cheaper. Mike would certainly not take care of the kids. He’d have his mom do it. His mom was competent and loving but also a bully, which explained Mike, who never met a confrontation he didn’t avoid by either working the longest hours possible or just drinking his feelings into itches. You know how people with hammers are always looking for nails? His mom was an iron, always looking for something to flatten.

  The stuff you have to manage—playdates and emotional well-being and simply asking the kids about their lives—this would not happen unless they were with Esme, nor would the doctor appointments and sick days. While she’d not been able to work for years, Mike was finally earning real coin. If she put a wrench in those gears, then they’d all be struggling. And while this situation wasn’t working for her—this was, in fact, terrible—she indeed loved these people. Even Mike.

  She’d planned to revisit the notion of divorce, or at least couples’ therapy, once Spencer started kindergarten. Two kids in school full time, she’d have been able to work and make decisions with a clear head. But then she got pregnant again. The pill that was supposed to solve the problem didn’t take. And then the second pill didn’t take, either. She never got around to making an appointment for an abortion. She’d known it was specious thinking, but with the kid having survived so much, she’d gotten the idea that he’d had more of a right to her body than she did.

  * * *

  When Wendy arrived that night, she wore this red cloak with a black underside and she hugged Esme, hard, like she could guess just by looking how tough the day had been. Esme cried. She wished her mom, or even her husband’s mom, had done this after any one of the babies had been born. Just once. She would have cherished it.

  Spencer and Nicky were already sleeping. Lucy wasn’t keen on Wendy. She thought she smelled bad and was weird, which Esme couldn’t actually refute. So it was Esme who put her to bed, this time with three chapters of Junie B Jones and a back scratch. When she came back out to say goodnight to Wendy, the woman was waiting at the kitchen table.

  It felt weird, another woman at her kitchen table, telling her what to do. Even if the woman in question happened to be her savior. “Why?”

  “Trust me.”

  Esme sat. Wendy put Nicky in the bassinet, then pulled a boar bristle brush and a spray bottle from her mammoth, old-lady sack of a purse.

  “My hair’s tricky,” Esme said.

  “No, it’s not.” She sprayed something oil-based along Esme’s scalp. It smelled like a field of spearmint, and it felt much better that that. Her scalp tingled, drinking thirstily. She felt this wave of freshness wash over her, all the way inside her ears and sinuses and even her bones. Then came Wendy’s hands, sure through every snarl. She didn’t braid. She let it loose.

  Wendy showed her what she looked like in a mirror. Her skin was dewy. Her hair soft and full. She’d never pulled this look off before, always afraid it would appear like a failed afro. But this was something different. Something just her own.

  “My mom could never get this right,” she whispered.

  Wendy handed her the oil. A blue bottle, small. She opened and saw that the contents were clotted white marbled with red. She was too grateful to ask the obvious question: is this my blood?

  Wendy leaned in, her breath like bergamot, and kissed her on the cheek. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. More like the third.

  Mike walked in, mid-cheek kiss. He stopped where he was standing, like he’d just caught them fucking a double-ended dildo while smoking crystal meth. “Who’s got the baby?” he asked.

  Esme looked away, ashamed.

  “Is he lost? We thought you had him,” Wendy answered. Then she said to Esme, “Go to bed. You’re exhausted. And put that ointment on your nipples and vagina. It’ll help.”

  Blushing at the words nipples and vagina, Esme got up fast and went to her room. From there, she turned on the monitor, where she heard Wendy and Mike talking low so as not to wake the kids. This was new. He didn’t usually talk to Wendy. Just came in super late and walked past her, collapsing next to Esme on the bed.

  “Did we ever get a résumé or references from you?” Esme died a little bit. Not literally. Or maybe literally. The part of her that loved her husband died a little bit.


  “Do you need them?” Wendy asked.

  “You know, now that you bring it up, that’d be great!” Mike said.

  “I’ll give them to your wife,” Wendy answered, just as cheerful.

  “I can take them,” he said, and he said this curtly, like it meant nothing. He was doing her a favor. She recognized the tone. But she heard it with new ears, now that he was employing it on someone else. It occurred to her that Mike, so cowed by conflict, so meek toward the outside world, might also, like his mother, be a bully.

  “Actually, I’m so sorry!” Wendy said, with the same tone a person might use when explaining that all the gum in the pack is gone. There’s no more Doublemint! I’m so sorry! “You can’t have my references because you’re not my employer.”

  “You can bet I’ll be the one paying you,” he said, and now he’d switched from charming to paternal, like he was clearing something up for poor, confused Wendy, the sixty-five-year-old hillbilly whose day job was selling ant colonies at the Children’s Museum. Which, you know, they’d never ordered the ants for. The ants had involved an online code from the inside of the box. So all they had was an empty ant house in the middle of the living room.

  “I’ll waive my fee, maybe,” she answered.

  Nicky started crying, which stopped the conversation. Esme heard shuffling, and then, “Oh, don’t be such a piggy,” Wendy whispered. “Let your momma relax.” Then a beer can cracked open, which would be Mike.

  In the dark, Esme rubbed the ointment on her nipples and then her vagina. These, too, went deep. She felt the ointment all through her, vibrant and healing and startlingly alive. The healing felt like a window opening. A mountain moving, just slightly, proving that such things were possible.

  It wasn’t so surprising, then, when Mike came in an hour later, and kissed her neck and felt between her legs, that she went along with it, and even came, her sore body throbbing with confused joy.