The First Conception_Rise of Eris

by Nesly Clerge

  “For good reason, don’t you think?” At my puzzled expression, he said, “He’s an Irish setter.”

  Irish dropped the ball onto the sand and stuck his rear in the air again, tail going like a windshield wiper on high speed. He’d bared his teeth, but not in a mean way. I hadn’t been around dogs before, so didn’t know they could smile.

  I tossed the ball and watched Irish bound into the water, snap up the ball then paddle and scamper back to me. I did this for I don’t know how long, while Mama talked with the man. Only time I stopped was when Mama laughed. It was a sound she hadn’t made in awhile and deserved a moment to be observed. Like something sacred.

  The moment didn’t last.

  Anthony joined us, with our towels and things packed up. “It’s time to go,” he said. “Katherine, get out of the water.”

  Mama gestured to the dog’s owner and said, “Anthony, this is—”

  “I said it’s time to go. Katherine, get out. Now.”

  We trudged to the car in silence. Halfway home, Mama said, “Katherine was having fun. You coulda let her be a few more minutes.”

  Anthony gripped the steering wheel. “You spoiled it for her.”

  “I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “You unbuttoned your shirt while you talked to that man.”

  “I was hot.”

  “Yeah, and I saw for who.”

  “I unbuttoned it long time before he show up.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Don’t know him. Was just bein’ polite while Katherine played with his dog.”

  “Nothin’ but a bitch in heat.”

  “Why you gotta be like that? I ain’t give you no reason.”

  They argued all the way home, up the stairs, and after the door was closed. There wasn’t a room they didn’t shout at each other in. Then Mama told him she was tired of his bossy shit.

  That’s when Anthony revealed just how much of a fuse looking for a match he was.

  That’s when he backhanded her.

  I expected her to cower and apologize, as she’d always done before, but she hit him back. And it wasn’t any half-hearted slap either.

  His fist smacked into her jaw and she went down. I ran at him, jumped on his back. Screamed and pulled his hair. Anthony scooped me around to the front of him. I kicked and howled as he hauled me to the sofa and threw me down. Gave me a smack across my face that made me go cross-eyed.

  Mama ran at him like a yowling banshee. But he was bigger. Stronger. Tables and chairs got shoved out of place, toppled over. Fragile things crashed to the floor. Mama’s face and clothes were spattered with her blood. She told him to get out. He slugged her abdomen. Hard. Then her jaw again, even harder.

  Mama crumpled to the floor and didn’t get up.

  Anthony stood over her, puffing out breaths, fists balled and ready. He kicked her thigh with his foot and she didn’t move or moan or anything.

  “Clean up this mess, Katherine. When I come back, I want to see everything straightened up and shining.”

  As soon as I heard his car engine start, I ran to the window to make sure he left. I rushed to Mama and called and called her name, but she didn’t answer me. I dialed nine-one-one.

  “What is your emergency?”

  “My mama’s boyfriend just beat her bad. She’s not moving. I can’t get her to move or answer me or anything.”

  “Is your mother’s boyfriend still in the house with you?”

  “He left. But he said he’s coming back.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Katherine Barnes.”

  “Okay, Katherine. I’m going to stay on the line with you. Tell me your address so I can send an ambulance to help you and your mother.”

  The woman on the phone kept me busy checking vital signs as best I could and asking me questions like how old I was and what grade was I in—things like that—while I waited for help. The ambulance arrived about a minute after two policemen did.

  I rode in the ambulance with Mama, more scared than I’d ever been in my life. More scared than when Buster had bothered me. The EMT tending to Mama handed me an ice pack for my face. I held Mama’s limp hand and watched everything he did to her. Watched her eyelids. Willed them to open. They didn’t.

  The police followed us because they had more questions, and I was the only one who could answer them. They also took pictures of me and Mama. It took a lot of fussing and crying and explaining that Mama was all I had and I wasn’t going to leave her side, no matter what, and that I was sick and damn tired of people ordering me around. I figured using a curse word would let them know I meant business. The doctor tending Mama finally told everybody they were doing more harm than helping.

  I had to use everything I knew to convince them to let me stay at the hospital rather than put me in a children’s shelter. I didn’t care if Mama was still unconscious, I Was Not Leaving Her.

  And I was right to do that. Because I was the first person Mama saw when she opened her eyes three days later. I sobbed like a baby when the doctor told me Mama was going to be okay. No permanent damage, he told us.

  The doctor must have called the police because they showed up to talk to Mama about an hour later. They’d had other officers go to the apartment the day it had happened, who’d arrested Anthony when he returned. They told us they had him “cooling off” in jail. Said they’d left him there until they knew if Mama wanted to press charges.

  Maybe it was my still-swollen face, lips, and black eye. Or maybe it was her learning three days she’d never get back had gone by that caused her to say yes.

  After everyone cleared the room, I climbed onto the bed and curled up next to Mama. She put her arm without the I.V. around me, and we lay there in silence for a while.

  She sighed. “Guess I’m single again.”

  “We do all right when it’s just us. Don’t we, Mama?”

  “Guess we’ll have to.”

  Two days later, we returned to our apartment. Mama went from room to room, looking at the damage. She marched into the kitchen and ripped Anthony’s schedule from the refrigerator. Ripped that poster into shreds and tossed the scraps into the garbage pail.

  “Katherine, you straighten things up just enough.” She said this as she walked toward the bedroom.

  “Are you going to take a nap, Mama?”

  “Been asleep too long as it is.”

  I started righting furniture and stopped when I heard her grunting and cursing. “What are you doing? The doctor said to take it easy for a few days.”

  “This is easy. Gettin’ everything ever belong to Anthony outta here.”

  It sounded good to me.

  Had it been winter, the blaze in the barrel out back, where we turned Anthony’s clothes and other possessions into ash, would have been great to warm our hands by. Maybe even roast marshmallows. I’d read how people did that.

  One day, maybe I’d even taste one.

  CHAPTER 16

  A few months later, while I was at school, Mama was in the county courtroom, testifying well enough to get Anthony sentenced to prison for five years. It seems it isn’t only bad to do what he did to my mama, but also to me.

  She picked me up after school that day. We went to the beach and ate spaghetti and meatballs from a plastic container, until our bellies bulged and we couldn’t move.

  A dog barked. We looked to our left. Irish and his owner were down the shoreline, playing with the tennis ball.

  I glanced at Mama.

  She watched him a moment then faced the water and said, “Hmph.”

  I exhaled in relief. The man seemed nice enough and all, but I’d learned that’s no guarantee about anything.

  Maybe Mama was going to stay single, at least for a while.

  Maybe I wasn’t the only one getting an education.

  ***

  The next day we had a history test. The day after that we got them back. I earned an A+. Even though I detest history, I can memorize well enough. T
hat subject wasn’t ever going to come close to being as thrilling as geometry or my health studies, but I wanted good grades. I had plans for my life, plans where grades mattered.

  Abigail Wright sits to my left in history class. She’s whiter than white, except for the freckles competing for space, and has red hair and green eyes. I heard her sniffling and peeked over at her. She ran a hand under her leaky nose and sniffed some more. I glanced at her score marked in red at the top of her test. She’d gotten a D-.

  The bell rang. Lunchtime. I usually sat alone. So did Abigail. Seems some people get weird about red hair almost as much as some do about skin color. I got my tray and asked if I could sit with her, and did from that day on.

  You can’t sit at the same table, and next to someone during class, and not start talking. One thing led to the next, and soon I was helping Abigail with her studies. She didn’t seem to mind at all that I was a couple years younger. Or that I didn’t have breasts yet. Or my period. We had something that bridged that age and physical-differences gap: Friendship. My first ever.

  It wasn’t until she told me her father, also divorced from her mother and mostly out of her life, had been in and out of jail that I confessed that, as far as I knew, mine was still locked up. That brought us even closer together. She told me her mother goes in and out of relationships with men who abuse her, either with their fists, with their words, or both. Yet another way we bonded. I’d traveled this many miles to finally have a friend, one whose life was so like mine, I very nearly found it uncanny.

  She lived on the next block from mine. But we usually visited and studied at my apartment, since it was less chaotic.

  The one thing Abigail didn’t seem to need to confess about her life was the one thing I didn’t admit to her about mine. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep a secret so important from her. It was that I was afraid she’d see me as tainted. Or just as awful, would pity me.

  Abigail asked lots of questions about our history teacher, Mrs. Peterson, who was pregnant. I’d seen pregnant women, of course, but never so close that I could watch them expand over time right before my eyes. After class one day, I was talking with Mrs. Peterson when her baby stretched inside her. She had on a thin knit dress, and I clearly saw a foot stick out toward me. I was fascinated. She smiled at my response, but boy, did she blush.

  I checked out the best book in the library about pregnancy, which caused the librarian to look at me askance. But only for a moment. She’d gotten used to the headier books I preferred to read.

  Abigail and I poured over the pages. She frequently went even paler than usual over the facts and photographs, but I was intrigued. I also had a long list of questions to ask Mrs. Peterson on Monday.

  Only, she wasn’t there. Some tall, skinny man with dark curly hair and a thick black mustache stood behind her desk instead. My first substitute teacher ever. Mr. Stevens.

  My hand shot up.

  “Name, please.”

  “Katherine Barnes.”

  “Ah. The so-said prodigy. What’s your question?”

  “What’s wrong with Mrs. Peterson?”

  “I already stated it was a complication with her pregnancy.”

  “Yes, but, specifically, what kind of complication?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I might.”

  He snorted and said, “Okay. It’s pre-eclampsia. As I said, you won’t understand.”

  I tilted my head to the left, as though that would help me recall facts better. “It is her first pregnancy, but what a shame. I noticed Friday that she was swollen. Since edema frequently occurs during pregnancy, I didn’t think anything of it. And, perhaps what I took to be embarrassment actually indicated high blood pressure. I hope they began treatment in time, so she doesn’t have seizures, or any organs begin to dysfunction. It could lead to death. I’m certain one of the first things they did was check protein levels in her urine. Then gave her aspirin and calcium, and any other medications she might need.”

  You could have heard an army of ants tromp across the room.

  I glanced around. Classmates stared at me with their mouths hanging open. All except Abigail, who was grinning.

  Mr. Stevens stared at me for a couple of seconds as well, though it seemed like a lot longer.

  “Yes, well, that was informative. Perhaps a little more than the class needed to know, but informative.”

  My cheeks grew hot. I aimed my eyes at my closed history book centered on my desk.

  Mr. Stevens droned on about a lot of long-dead people and events I didn’t give a hoot about. I guess he realized how disinterested I was because he said my name loudly. I snapped to attention.

  “Is it the subject or me you find less than enthralling?”

  “Your presentation is fine, Mr. Stevens. It’s the subject. I don’t see how what happened all that time ago has anything to do with me right now.”

  He gave me a mini-lecture, which I pretended to listen to. But it was the last thing he said, just before the bell rang, that gnawed at me:

  “Katherine, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

  I let him get away with that because he was partly right. But my experience with my mother, and Abigail’s experience with hers, demonstrated what was wrong with his statement. A person’s past may leave scars on their skin or bones, and they may remember every second of how the scars got there, but that’s no guarantee the person won’t repeat mistakes.

  No need to forget the past in order to repeat it. Just a lack of will not to.

  CHAPTER 17

  As Mr. Stevens’ comment stayed with me, I decided to check out the history section in the library. It was bigger than I thought it should be. That indicated there must be something to it. Otherwise, why would so many authors spend so much time getting degrees in history and writing so many books about it? Maybe some people felt about history the way I did about geometry and health.

  Still, I found history books as dry as an old sponge. It wasn’t until I moved a few feet to the right, to the Greek mythology section, that my interest got tweaked.

  I thought Abigail’s mama and mine caused problems. But they were nothing compared to Pandora, who opened a jar and released evil into the world. And the silly woman didn’t put the lid back until the only thing left inside was Hope. What was she thinking? After all that mischief, why leave Hope bottled up?

  Okay, so maybe it was a myth. But it was pretty obvious to me what the inventor of that story thought about women. Considering what I’d seen men do, the myth’s author should have looked in the mirror. Or gotten out more. All he had to do was look around to see who caused most, if not all, of the world’s troubles.

  This didn’t dissuade me from reading about Roman law. That bunch considered and treated women the same as children. Inferior to men. Hunh. Not in my experience, limited as it may be. I kept reading to see if any of those men ever woke up and got some sense.

  Facts I read were intriguing but sometimes led to disappointment. Like Plato, for instance. I’d always admired him so much. But I came across something he said, that if I could bump into him in a public square, you can bet I’d set him straight about it. He said that “knowledge under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.” He was dead wrong. I’d gained knowledge under compulsion, and repulsion, from Buster, Karl, and Anthony, and it darn sure had a hold on my mind.

  And what about that Saint Jerome? “Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word, a perilous object.” Dog poop! Buster, Karl, and Anthony had proven him wrong about that.

  I told Abigail what Saint Jerome said. I expected her to agree with my opinion about the statement and him. You’ll never guess what she said instead.

  She got serious and whispered, “When I started having my periods, my grandmother told me tampons are the devil’s fingers.”

  That made me stop breathing for a moment. I’d never thought to stick the label of Satan on Buster, but it fi
t. At least the other bozos in my mama’s life had never gone as far as he’d dared.

  Abigail tilted her head and stared at me. “What?”

  Shrugging, I said, “Just pondering what your grandmother said.”

  My interest in this cultural stuff grew. I read about cultures that made women obedient to men. Made women walk behind them. Like I’d want to watch some guy’s buttocks all the time. Pul-lease.

  Women couldn’t own property. How stupid is that? In some cultures, a widow couldn’t remarry. I have to say, after a little over a decade with my mother, I sort of agreed with that one.

  Then I read about this guy named Thomas Aquinas who said woman was “created to be man’s helpmeet, but her unique role is in conception.” What made all these guys so backward in their thinking?

  Abigail has cramps with her period. She always looks like she’s going to puke the first day. She holds her stomach and moans and tells me how much it hurts.

  The first time she had a period after we became friends, I told her, “I don’t ever want mine.”

  “You have to have them if you want a baby.”

  “I know. But still …”

  “Besides, it’s practice.”

  “For what?”

  “Having a baby hurts like a thousand times more.” In response to my expression of disbelief, she added, “My mom told me. She said I hurt her so bad it nearly killed her.”

  “I knew there were contractions, but I never associated that level of pain with them.”

  “Didn’t your mom ever tell you about when you were born?”

  “Everything I know about that comes from books.”

  “Your mother never talks about this stuff?”

  I shook my head.

  “My mom talks about it all the time. Never lets me forget it.”

  No way would I tell Abigail that my mama was the last person I wanted to discuss any of this with. Not after all I’d witnessed her doing with Buster.

  As for that Aquinas guy, let him conceive and have contractions just once, and I bet he’d change his opinion. He wouldn’t be so eager to make women go through that, like a baby-machine or something. That is, if he had any sense.