Die Your Daughter
+++
Blood is pouring down the walls. The white linoleum now saturated with the sticky red substance, leaking down in long, thick drops. I scramble to look for anything to clean it off the counters—paper towels? No dumbass, this looks like the setting of Carrie. Right, ok, new plan. I stand frozen, looking for anything I could use. My apron! Before I can react, Amy taps me on the shoulder. “Maddie, you good? You have customers.”
I can’t respond, staring at my shaking hands. I snap the hair tie against my wrist, turning to speak but she interrupts my thoughts. “I’ll handle this, just- do your job, for once this week.” Amy quickly grabs a towel, wiping up the remains of the strawberry syrup I dropped on the counter only seconds ago. It looked so real. I shake my head, feeling the blur of the false trauma leave my brain. Customers. Right. Turning towards the cash register, I’m met with the face of the oldest woman I have ever seen. She sways with the energy of someone who lived through both world wars.
“Coffee” she coughs, “and none of that woke shit, I want it plain and black.” She slams her phone into the keypad like it personally offended her, and I struggle to hold back a sigh. “We’ll have it right out for you.” I finish brewing her coffee, almost dropping it to avoid tripping over Amy who is now scrubbing the floor. I hand the woman her coffee, prepared for a lecture about how long it took, but her face softens and she grabs my hand, holding frightfully intense eye contact. “Get some rest tonight, you look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”
“Uh, will do ma’am, have a good day.” I take a deep breath, glancing back at Amy who is still attempting to de-escalate the crime scene. It really does look like the setting of Carrie.
+++
The car behind me honks and I quickly step on the gas, noticing the severe lack of cars in front of me. The sickly green traffic light glares past my mirrors as I turn right, the opposite way to my house. It is the fifth day in a row this week that I am staying with my girlfriend, Alyssa, though she doesn’t seem to mind. We were already talking about moving in together, so staying with her makes the most sense, especially after everything.
“Did you come straight here from work again?” Alyssa shuts the door behind me as I take my shoes off, breathing in the warm aroma of whatever vanilla scented Bath & Body Works candle she bought this week, to add to the collection, she always says.
“You’re closer to work than my house, it was easier.” I kiss her on the cheek, padding across the shag carpet into the kitchen to wash my hands as she trails behind like a puppy.
“By three minutes.”
“Most of my clothes are here anyways. What? You trying to tell me something?”
Alyssa laughs, hitting me with the towel. “Of course not, you know I’ve been offering for you to make this more permanent. Just making sure you’re doing okay.”
“Why has everyone been saying that to me today? I’m doing fine.”
She walks back into the living room, sitting on the couch and watching me with a skeptical look. “It’s okay if you’re not, you know. Just because she was horrible to you doesn’t make it easier.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine, okay? Now can we please talk about something else?” I throw the towel back at her and sit on the opposite end of the couch, my legs in her lap. “How about you tell me about the new candle you got.”
+++
Walking out of work, I’m half expecting to see her standing by my car. Her stern, condescending gaze scrutinizing something new about my appearance. I don’t, of course. Just another thing I need to get used to. Alyssa says that it’s normal for someone with this kind of trauma to still think about it. I wish my brain would hurry up with that part. I walk through the parking lot, dimly lit with the pale glow of the streetlights, and make my way to my tiny Subaru. It has been 2 weeks since I have been staying at Alyssa’s, and I’m worried she is getting sick of me. I put my car into drive, beginning the trek to my house instead. I need fresh clothes anyways.
I’m going to do it this time. I’m going to go inside.
I pull up in front of my house, the pristine white steps leading up to my mother’s bungalow sending an involuntary shiver down my spine. If I look hard enough, I can still see the red-brown stain at the bottom from when I “fell” in fourth grade. Snapping the hair tie against my wrist, I walk up to the front door. The small window at the top gazes back at me, hollow and empty as if waiting for life to return to its cold interior.
It's just a house. I’m fine.
My hand finds my key and before I know it, I’m slipping into the shadows of my childhood home. Light fills the room, and I follow suit. Pictures and diplomas scatter the walls, my eyes flitting across them in a wave of nostalgia. I was planning on telling her about moving to Alyssa’s before everything happened, I guess that was one way to get out of an awkward conversation, though I guess telling her I wanted to sell the house was more than enough for her. I step on a loose floorboard and immediately shut my eyes, listening for any sudden movements. The only thing that follows is the sound of my own heavy breathing. One, two, three, four, five… I open my eyes, making a beeline for my bedroom. The door across from mine glares angrily at me. I can still see the carpet, can still hear the sloshing of the bucket of water I poured onto it, can still feel the warm liquid on my hands and the way I scrubbed them hundreds of times before they felt clean again.
I shut my door while I feel around for my clothes, staring at her bedroom door the entire time.
+++
“Did you ever hire that carpet cleaner I recommended to you?” Alyssa rubs one hand up and down my shin mindlessly, flipping through the channels on her TV with the other. I blink quickly, jolting from my previous thoughts.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said did you hire the cleaner?”
“Oh. Yeah. I did.” I don’t look her way.
She’s staring at me now; hands stilled on my leg.
I don’t want to talk about this. “No, I didn’t check if it’s still there.”
Alyssa sighs, opening her mouth to speak again, before seemingly deciding against it, turning back to the TV. I don’t chance looking at her now. I already know what she’s thinking. A solid thirty seconds pass before I hear her again.
“You know you’ll have to go back in there. Whether or not you choose to actually sell the house, you need to see if you should call them back again and have them clean it.”
“Lyss, that is the least of my worries.”
“No, as a matter of fact I think it is your main worry.”
I look at her now. She doesn’t break eye contact. I snap the hair tie again. Alyssa grabs my wrist. “Hey. I love you. More than anything, okay? I just want you to be able to feel some relief again.”
I’m starting to think she might have a point.
+++
I grab a third hair tie out of my bag, slipping it onto my wrist and walking back to the floor to finish closing. I know this is supposed to help, “temporary pain over permanent solutions” or whatever, but I am getting really tired of stretching out every single one. Amy is leaning against the counter, counting through the register again and whispering to herself. I tap her on the shoulder, nodding my head to the exit in a silent question, and she distractedly gives me a thumbs up. It’s early enough in the evening that the cemetery might still be open. I take the opportunity from Amy and quickly drive in the direction of Ficklemore Cemetery.
I don’t bring anything, having just come from work. Instead, I quietly approach the small plot next to the mausoleum. I can barely even look at my own mother’s name. I open my mouth to speak and…
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. My brain immediately fills with 110 reasons why I failed her, or how she failed me, how I hate that she’s the reason my eyes are filling with tears. I reach for my phone, blindly tapping Alyssa’s contact, before sitting onto the ground in front of my mother’s plot. My phone rings, and rings, until finally I hear a warm voice on the other end.
“Maddie? What’s going on, why haven’t you come home yet?”
I can barely get a sentence out, my body doubles over itself as I try to breathe enough to address her. “I need you to-” I gasp in a breath, “I need you to come get me. I wanted to- to get closure.” One, two, three, four, five.
The line goes silent for a minute, long enough that I pull the phone away to check if she’s still there.
“I’m on my way.”
+++
The drive back is slow, and my eyes feel weighed with sleep as I lean against the passenger window. The houses fly by in a Stepford line, each one polished and trimmed to perfection. I wonder if they look the same on the inside.
“Can you drive to my house?”
Alyssa glances at me. “Hun, I just watched you have a panic attack in front of her grave. I’m all for you ‘getting closure’ but we do not have to do this now if you don’t want to.”
I shift in my seat. “I don’t want to, but-” I take a deep breath. “But I hate that she still lives in me. I want it gone. The house, everything.”
She turns left.
“Okay.”
+++
We pull up to my house, the dull roar of the engine running acting as the only proof of life. Alyssa shuts the car off. “You want me to come in with you?”
I shake my head. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
I step out of the car and cool breeze brushes past me. It’s almost fall. Stepping up to the door, I look through the same empty eyes. They don’t say a word. I open the door.
Turning on the light, I take my shoes off, leaving them at the entrance. I walk past the kitchen. The cold, lifeless tile counter has a light layer of dust on it. I try not to think of the ringing in my ears from the last time a plate was thrown there. Move on, Maddie.
I make my way past the kitchen towards the hall. The same photos stare back at me, my mother’s eyes burning holes in me as I pass her. The cold hardwood freezing me in place for a moment as my eyes lock onto the photo next to her door. I’m 8 years old, and she has her arm around my shoulders, squeezing me just tight enough for me to feel it still today. She surprised me with ice cream after school, a reward for getting all A’s. It took 10 minutes before she was screaming at me again, but her smile reaches her eyes in this one. It’s the only time I have seen her smile, one of the few times in my childhood where the memories of her were good. I wonder what she was like when she was my age.
I wrap my hand around the handle of her door, half expecting to see her slumped against the floor, never removed, as if she were fused with the home. I open the door, peeking in to see that it’s… spotless. Like nothing ever happened here. I walk across the cream-colored carpet, staring at the foot of her bed. I can still remember the heavy smell of copper, the way my hands shook as I tried to bandage her arms, shock overpowering any sympathy I could have felt for her.
She never did leave a note. I’m glad she didn’t.
I do a quick once over of her room, double checking each light is off and every window is closed, flinching once when I accidentally knock over a book. Once her room has been thoroughly secured, I take a seat on her bed, noting the significant lack of pain in my body as I breathe in through my nose, and out through my mouth. Standing up, I make my way towards the door.
The room looks, actually nice, now that she isn’t here to pollute it with darkness. I remember once when I was 11, a week after the incident on our front steps, I had just got home from the hospital. It was the first time I saw her truly afraid for me. She had held me in my room, brushing my hair out of my face and kissing my head, only stopping once I was safe and asleep. It never lasted long, but that was the last time I forgave her for hurting me like that. Her room still looks the same as it did, everything untouched and void of destruction. I grab the hair tie off of my wrist, and put my hair into a bun, walking out of the room and shutting the door behind me.