33

33

F lora is seven. She walks with her father down an outdoor deck flanked with tiny shops. In the near distance, she can see the water and docks full of waiting boats.

She slips her tiny hand into her father's, feeling his large knuckles and protruding veins. She likes to push on them and move them around under his skin. His large hand is strong, covering hers two times over. And yet, the palm is soft.

Flora watches a seagull arc high in the air and return along a similar path, lazily drawing patterns in the sky. She hears a loud thump as another seagull drops an oyster onto the dock from a great height in an attempt to crack it open.

"Daddy," she says, her eyes still trained on the birds, "why doesn't Mommy like me?"

Her father stops walking. He looks down at her, mouth open slightly. She thinks he looks sad, but she doesn't know why. Maybe she's not understanding.

"Oh, bunny," he says, "Mommy does like you. Of course she does. She loves you."

"I know she loves me," Flora says matter-of-factly, "but that's different."

Her father guides her to a nearby bench, where he sits so that they are at eye level. He places his hands on Flora's shoulders and turns her toward him, holding her with a kind firmness.

"Your mom is a person just like anyone else. She's complicated. She has a past. And sometimes that past bubbles up…" He pauses, looks away toward the water again, blinks hard. "Sometimes she feels sad. Really, really sad."

"So does that mean…" Flora scrambles his words in her brain, trying to piece them together in a way that makes sense. "Does that mean— I make her sad?"

Her father lets out a long breath. "No, bunny. You don't." Then, looking back toward the water, he says, "Your mother's sadness is all her own. That's the only way she'll let it be."

Flora is twelve. She sits crouched on the floor of her bathroom, crying giant tears into her lap. Her brownish-red-stained underwear and jeans hang over the tub's edge, and the open box of tampons rests at her side.

"You don't have to wear them," her mother's voice says from behind the door. Flora has locked her out. She wants to be alone. "You can wear pads."

"No, I can't!" Flora wails. Joey's birthday party is this weekend, and two very important factors dictate that Flora must learn how to use a tampon. One: it's a pool party. Two: Flora is in love with Joey.

She hears her mother sigh and sit with her back against the door.

Flora bought the tampons on her short walk home from school. She detoured to the strip mall Rite Aid, hightailed it to the feminine hygiene section, and grabbed the first box she saw. She didn't sigh with relief until the tampons were paid for and safely hidden in her shopping bag.

"Can I come in?" Flora's mother asks after a moment of silence.

"No!" Flora shouts back immediately, horrified at the thought.

"Okay, I'll talk you through it from here, then."

It takes Flora a minute to get herself amped enough to stick a giant cotton wad up some hidden hole between her legs, but she finally does. Her mother talks her through each step, but after three attempts, Flora just can't shove it in there. Is she deformed? Is her vagina unnaturally small? Will she ever be able to enjoy the modern conveniences offered to women, or will she be stuck in ancient times and have to wear rags like diapers and hide in a hut every few weeks while her uterus bleeds?

"Please, Flora, just let me in," her mother begs, and Flora acquiesces. It can't get more embarrassing than this, anyway.

She opens the door and flops onto the closed toilet seat in defeat. "My vagina is broken," she says.

Her mother chuckles—then gasps loudly.

"Flora!" she says, reaching down to the ground. She bends back up, the tampon box in her hand, her mouth open wide. "You bought ultra size!"

Flora doesn't know what this means, but her mother breaks out into the heartiest laugh Flora has ever heard. And it's contagious.

The two laugh and laugh, both ending up on the floor, neither able to stop long enough to attempt standing. Whenever a break does come, and they finally catch their breath, one of them snorts and sends the other howling again, starting the whole process over.

Flora is seventeen. She punches the code for the garage door opener and winces as the giant door creaks open. She hopes her parents can't hear it from their bedroom. She is forty-three minutes past curfew, and not even for some scandalous or exciting reason. It's only because her friend Eddie got a flat tire and instead of calling roadside assistance, he felt it absolutely necessary to prove that he could change it on his own. Three hours later, he finally gave up and agreed to ask for help. They didn't even make it to the party.

Still, though, it would be easier to not have to explain any of this, especially because her mother doesn't particularly like Eddie. So Flora pads quietly through the garage and opens the door to the house as slowly as possible. This particular hinge makes a loud squeak when the door is about three-quarters open, so she slips herself through before ever needing to get to that point.

She enters the main house, proud of herself for not disturbing the peace, when she is met with the image of her mother sitting in silence at the kitchen table. Flora braces herself for whatever is coming, ready to prove that this was all because of a flat tire—she forced Eddie to let her keep a page of the receipt in case this very scenario played out—but her mother doesn't say a word. She just takes a sip from a large glass of red wine.

"Mom?" Flora asks, more scared of her mother's calm than she would be of anger.

But her mom looks as if she hadn't even noticed Flora entering. She lifts her gaze and says in a voice barely louder than a whisper, "I don't think your father and I are going to make it."

Flora sits at the table. The room is dark. She imagines her mother sitting here since dinnertime, staring at her wineglass through the sunset, the oncoming dark, the impending blackout. Did she even notice that it was almost midnight?

As shocking as it is for her to hear the words out loud, Flora is not surprised by the news. Probably none of them are, really. Her mother and father had never quite seemed to fit, and Flora felt more and more that they would be happier living separate lives. But she senses a sadness in her mother now. Not knowing what else to do, she tops off her mother's wineglass.

"I'm so sorry, Mom," she says.

Her mother smiles a little, then looks Flora square in the eye. She becomes suddenly serious, her voice firmer now, more emphatic.

"Happiness is a privilege," she says. "And I do not deserve it."

Flora is thirty-two. When she wakes up, her mouth is so dry that the insides of her cheeks are stuck to her teeth. She carefully opens her jaw— POP! —and the hinge releases with a jolt of pain to her left ear. Her legs and torso are heavy, weighed down.

blankets

these are blankets

Flora is in bed. Her own bed.

She lies still, eyes darting for answers on the ceiling, and wills her brain to catch up to the present moment. When she tries to sit, her left shoulder screams a pulsing protest. She rolls onto her right side and pushes herself up with her palms. The room twirls, and she closes her eyes to avoid hurling, though it might be inevitable given the hangover-like headache that pounds at her temples and tugs at her raw throat.

How did she get in this bed? She tries to remember. Needs to remember.

water

so much water

She was in the bathroom. She had desperately needed a bath. Desperately needed to get clean. She was so dirty and so, so tired.

Crying. There was crying. She remembers pulling baby Iris into the bath with her.

Iris where is Iris

Flora jerks her head toward the other side of the bed and sees that the bassinet is empty. The house is quiet, the surrounding silence oppressive, shoving the walls and ceiling and floor into one another, trapping Flora like a trash compactor.

oh God what have I done to my baby

And then the door creaks, and Flora's veins whoosh with rage as she expects to see her mother—her mother who she now remembers tried to kill her, tried to kill her baby. Her mother whom she stabbed through the eye and brain and who still stood with enough strength to knock Flora out and do who the hell knows what to Iris.

But it's not her mother.

Flora blinks, the brief confusion rendering her speechless, and then, for the first time in weeks, she feels her muscles relax. Truly relax.

Connor. It's Connor.

"You're awake," he says.

"Connor," she replies, relishing his name on her lips, and then he is with her on the bed, holding her hands and cradling her head. She drinks in his bright eyes. She wants to stuff herself full of him, like a bear preparing for hibernation. But first: "Iris?" she asks. "Where is Iris?" Her eyes ravage his face, searching for clues.

"She's downstairs," he says. "Asleep in the swing."

Flora shakes her head. "No, she's not supposed to sleep there unattended, her airway could get blocked, she—"

"Flo," Connor says, taking her hands strongly in his, "she's fine. She's not alone."

"Who's with her? Oh God, not my mother—" Flora tries to stand from the bed, but she winces in pain at her swollen shoulder, the hurt radiating to her elbow.

His eyes widen and then narrow. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Flora stares at him. Her mother's words itch at the back of her brain. They want to take your baby away.

Connor leans in closer. "I found you passed out in the bathtub. You could have…" His eyes glisten with held-back tears momentarily before he catches himself, a small break in his deep voice. "You could have drowned, Flo. Iris could have drowned. She was in your lap, crying, and you were just sleeping through it. Have things been this bad the whole time?"

Her lips open and close a few times like a dying fish.

they want to take your baby away

She chooses her words methodically. "No. I was just so tired."

Thoughts and doubts swim in Flora's head, and she almost thinks she can see them, just in front of her eyes like floaters in the space between what is real and what is seen. She wants to tell him what happened in the bathroom, what her mother tried to do, but

don't tell him

you know what he'll think

And then a deep understanding bubbles underneath her consciousness, like a dead body that works its way up through the dirt and finally surfaces after a long rain.

Her mother wasn't in that bathroom. Her mother was never even here.

Because her mother killed herself two years ago.