Slug
That morning in May was really the only time I can remember Mia taking BeDe out of the basement on Charles Street—that was in the good times, before the forever sleeps and the pill bottles. It was that morning, right after I’d gotten the job as a line cook, that BeDe named where I work—the Green Tile Diner. She’s two and a half and had just gotten old enough to know what things are. I tell you, that girl has got a memory like a donkey; she remembers everything.
She came into the place and asked, “Mama, what’s on floor?” I searched and searched but couldn’t see what she was pointing at because Toni the cook had just finished mopping (she’s obsessive like that.). But then I realized BeDe was pointing at all the tiny pieces of stone that together made this pattern that was just like stars. I said, “Oh, honey, that’s tile.” Since then, she’s been calling it “Green Tile Diner.” It’s funny, I never realized how beautiful it was until then, a floor, something I walk over every day. But that’s what it’s like with BeDe. Her eyes are like big telescopes that make me see the world different.
I’m thinking about that when I wake up in the summertime heat, and I feel her hand in mine. She’s wiggling in the bed next to me, and I squeeze her body that is just like I imagine a little bird would feel, her ribs filling up with breath like a balloon. She is so, so tiny, and I’m afraid to break her, scared my hands will crush her bones to powder, that if I squeeze too hard she’ll become just a pile of dust on the sheet. Her eyes are so much like her momma’s, almond-shaped and shiny, and she has this way of staring long and hard at me. Her skin almost matches the olive color of mine, but there’s something about it, tinged gray and thin as tissue paper. Probably cause she never sees the sun, but her momma tells me to hush, that she’d rather have her safe inside than out on the nasty streets of Baltimore. When BeDe looks at me this way, I want to tell her so much, but I don’t know if she’ll understand. My brain starts whirring, and I want her to know about the hamster named Myrtle that I had at St. Elizabeth’s Home for Girls, how I thought a witch lived next door to that one foster home where I was when I was five, and how much I wish she was mine, just mine, that I’d carried BeDe in my tummy and felt her move like a fish under my ribs.
We hop out of bed and I carry her to the kitchen to dance. I plug my phone into the speaker, and she is swiping her finger on the screen to find what she likes. Katy Perry, and I giggle, because “I Kissed a Girl” reminds me of me and her momma, and she giggles right along with me, even though she doesn’t know what’s funny. She loves to turn up the stereo, and I twirl her around and around, and then there is Mia, her momma, standing in the doorway. Her face is scrunched up in this really awful way, just like I imagined the witch next door, and when Mia looks at me that way, I want to shrink up into a ball, all 300 pounds of my flesh, just roll up like one of those bugs with all the legs they tuck up inside them. But if I did that, my dreads would still be trailing on the floor and Mia would stomp on them.
“Turn that down!” she bellows. “I can’t sleep with all this fucking noise.”
I look at little BeDe and each second her eyes get wider and wider, saucers that are about to overflow.
“You’re all crazy to be dancing this way. And what the fuck is this shit?
I hate it when she says things like that. I reach over for my phone, but she grabs my wrist. I see BeDe out of the corner of my eye shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller like in Alice in Wonderland when she takes the small pills. I wrench my arm free.
It wasn’t always like this. A few months ago, Mia and I were so in love, happy like babies in a wading pool, giddy as crushes. We bought each other those roses the crazy man on the corner sells and smoked joints in the back alley, giggling ourselves silly. And the sex, man, the sex was on fire, all hot and intense, and it was the one time I didn’t mind how big I was, didn’t think about my flesh rolling in folds, even when Mia grabbed fistfuls of my stomach when she was coming. My heart beat even faster when I met BeDe. I’d always wanted a family and this was it. But the blues crept back into Mia’s head and her body started hurting her, and she started talking about how she needed the pills, to make it easier, it was just a bit, she’d say, just a little bit—but a little turned into a lot real fast. I told her I loved her, I wanted her to be happy, I’d take care of BeDe, give her money from my job so it wouldn’t just be child support. But Mia just lays there all day, numb and not feeling, and it bubbles like lava in my stomach, burning my insides.
Mia glares at me, then turns and lumbers down the hall. I change into my work shirt, and put BeDe in this pretty dress that’s all frilly and white and lacy makes her look like a princess but it also makes me sad because no one will see her like this.
“Mama J, pet?” She asks me this almost every day. She remembered about the hamster, and she’s been talking about it ever since.
“No pet yet, BeDe Bell. Someday.” Her face is always asking me questions and I know I can’t tell her all the answers. I put on the TV and make sure she has goldfish crackers in a bowl and a sippy cup of juice, and then I hear her Tinkerbell voice.
“Mama Jess, no TV.”
Fucking Mia, not paying the bill. I grab a bunch of BeDe’s stuffed animals from her room and put them around her like she’s some kind of queen on a throne. “See, here’s Baby Blue and Puppy Luppy,” I say, fleckin off the dried-up juice before I hand her the stuffed horse and dog. Their fur is a little gray, but other than that, you can’t tell that we got them at the Salvation Army store. She looks at me like a confused rabbit, and she reaches for me, and I want to pick her up and carry her on my back out of the basement into the sunlight.
******
At work, my brain floats above me, and I almost slice the fuck out of my finger with one of the big knives when I’m cutting up onions, and Toni says, “Damn, girl, you better check yourself.” When it’s time for my break, I don’t bum a joint like I usually do, and instead I find my feet carrying me back towards Charles Street, towards the basement apartment. All her juice and crackers are gone, her diaper is so full it’s almost dripping, and her eyes are so wide. “Hey BeDe babydoll,” I croon to her, stroking her head.
In the bedroom, Mia doesn’t even move, and I check the orange pill bottle by her bed and it’s got two more in there. It’s like I’m floating as I carry BeDe out the door with me, wrapped in a blanket, even though the summer air is stifling. I can’t stop from picturing tissue paper on fire, and how fast the flames lick it all up.
“Well, hi there cutie,” Toni says when she sees BeDe, and I’ve never heard her say something that nice. BeDe hides in my stomach.
“She’s a little shy,” I explain. I can feel BeDe’s heart flipping like a fish and her lips are so white. She starts to cry when I pull her hands off me and tell her to sit in the corner with her toys.
Toni is looking at me when I go back to chopping up the onions. “She all right? She looks kind of …. different. How old is she? She ain’t walking yet?”
“Mind your own business,” I growl.
“Just sayin,” she says, shrugging, turning back to the fryer.
It’s going ok, but then I have to leave BeDe for a sec to go pick up a tray of potatoes. Before I get back I hear a crash, and then a wail. I come back and there is blood on the floor and a big gash in BeDe’s arm, and shards of glass. Toni is holding BeDe and BeDe’s giving me a look that’s like I killed her.
“She tried to stand up… It ain’t that bad, sister, but you better take her,” Toni says.
I don’t care what that means because BeDe’s cries are slicing me open. I hold napkins on her arm, running through the streets of Baltimore, dodging trash cans and bicycles, pouring sweat and tasting fire. When I get to the basement, Mia is awake, and when she sees us, she screams and screams that it’s my fault, how could I take her out, look how bad this cut is.
I stand in the living room, trying to ignore her words that rain down like nails, and my head feels like it’s inside a balloon. BeDe’ s arm has stopped bleeding, but Mia doesn’t notice. I hold BeDe tight because this could be the last time ever, and I carry her to the bedroom and put her on the bed. She whimpers and pulls at me. I stand there for a minute, not wanting her to let go, but then I wiggle out of her tiny arms, and kiss my hand and hold it to her bud of a mouth. But it’s boiling up inside me then and my fingers are rolling up into themselves, my own powerful bug. I stomp down the hallway to where Mia is screaming, and I can feel all the big weighted force of me with every booming step, crashing down mountains in my path, ready for the lava to pour out.
******
I lug my stuff outside in black trash bags thudding against my leg, my knuckles stinging and bloody and raw. I head to the Centre Street Motel that smells like a fart. They don’t ask me why my hand is all wrapped up.
I go for days without seeing BeDe. I feel like someone’s carved out my heart with a spoon. I wander by a pet store on my break one day, consider buying a fish, but then I’d have to buy the aquarium and the rocky bottom, and clean the water and all that. My dreads start to fall out, one by one, like loose slugs slipping their way out of my scalp.
In between the haze of joints and chopping onions at the Green Tile Diner, I wonder what will happen if I just leave, man, really leave, somewhere like New Mexico. Mia probably won’t call the cops, but it freaks me out enough picturing her going to the hospital and the doctor’s eyes with all the questions. I grab an old receipt and the motel’s pen to write a list, but I stop at “get driver’s license.”
My weed guy, Rocco, lives two blocks down, and I’m there more and more after work. “Hey, ma darlin,” he says, the dank smoke heavy around our faces and I want to tell him that nobody calls me darlin except my bio momma when she was drunk, and how would he know that, and what’s he calling me darlin for, he knows I’m gay. But my head feels like cotton has crept into all the cracks, absorbing all my thoughts like sound waves, and when I open my mouth to say all that nothing comes out. Plus, I don’t want to be a bitch to Rocco. Deep down, beneath all his hustlin, I know he’s a good guy, too sweet to be working the streets.
The Centre Street Motel kicks me out after I don’t pay for two weeks. Toni lets me crash with her on the pull-out sofa, so small I have to pull my knees into my chest, and I can feel my stomach, this big, round Jello glob jiggling with each breath. And then one night I’ve had enough and I grab it with both of my hands, pulling at it, my nails piercing it like knives. I look at my thighs big, thick, oozing bubbles, and I scratch and tear at them, wanting to peel away all the layers until there’s nothing but bone.
After that, I know I have to see her. It ain’t so hot outside now, and the bench across from the basement on Charles Street becomes my fort. It’s real close and I wonder what I will do if I see Mia, and then I know that I won’t see her, that she’s probably still under that haze of blankets, and that scares me for BeDe even more.
When Toni isn’t home, I practice walking up to the door and knocking. The best scenarios in my head are where Mia cowers in fear, doesn’t say anything, and hands me BeDe in her white dress. In others, she’s a boulder that grows larger and larger, crushing through the ceiling and the floors of the building, dwarfing my big ass. In still others, no one’s there at all, and the apartment’s empty, like no one’s ever been there, and it was all in my head.
One day I wake up and I’m a giant slug, can’t move, my body oozing slime all over the couch cushions. Toni isn’t there, and I pull out my pipe and it’s black and hollow, nothing but charcoal inside. I slide off the couch to go see Rocco, and I stink like rotting mushrooms and I really want someone to pour salt on me, put me out of my misery. It’s even worse than all those times with their teasing, “Hey big fat bitch,” “Thunder thighs,” “Earthquake ass,” when I wished I would grow smaller and smaller and smaller, a bug that could be squished. I slither down the stairs, each step a shot to my ribs.
My slime is like sticky, clear icing on the street and when I get to Rocco’s I don’t know how to use my slug mouth. But he doesn’t ask questions, just steps to the side.
“Hey ma darlin,” he says. I want to cry because all I’ve been hearing is “Nasty fat cunt” on repeat in my head. I hit his bong over and over again, and I’m swimming in my own slime then, but it isn’t bad, it’s soft, like being in a big pool, and I’m sleeping, and I can feel BeDe’s little bird body next to me, her ribs rising up and down.
Then somehow, she’s standing over me. She’s grown so tall, and instead of white, she’s wearing a sweatshirt. And she’s grown stubble. No, no, it’s Rocco over top of me, but maybe he loves me enough to understand, and my arms come free from the sides of my body. I reach them up, all their mighty strength and pull him to me— I want my slime to make him stick to me. But his body is rigid; he is pulling at my hands, using my chest like a big board, pushing himself up, like he can’t even tell that I’m human, that I am who I am, that I need him to show me it’s all right. I look up at him, but he doesn’t say anything, just kind of shakes his head, and looks down at the ground.
I know I have to leave, and I can feel my legs kicking me off the couch down the stairs. I need to feel her little heart, her hand in mine.
******
The door on Charles Street is closed, but I know just how to jiggle the lock. When it opens with a pop, the lights are on and so is the TV, and I hear the sing-song voice before I see her. There she is, in the living room, her toys all around her, and when she sees me, she yells, “Mama Jess!” She’s so much bigger and yet so much littler and then she stands and starts to stagger towards me. My eyes are wet, she’s gotten so big, she’s such a big girl. I catch her in my arms, and hold her to me, feel her heart beating up against my ribs.
The door screeches. I know she’s there before I see her.
“BeDe?” Mia calls.
I hear her steps, and then she rounds the corner. I expect screaming, but instead her silence screams in my ears.
“Jess, put my baby down,” she says quietly, firmly.
I turn and see the shadow bruise around her eye, the missing spot where her tooth was. I shiver, knowing that was me.
“Jess, please,” she says when I don’t do anything. BeDe has gone still in my arms. “I don’t want to call the police.”
And then I run. I bawl up my fist and stick it in Mia’s stomach as I dash by and we’re off. We’re flying up the stars, floating down Charles like feathers, the wind carrying us through the cool fall air, the lights in the windows guide my way. BeDe is quiet. I don’t want to look at her arm, but I do, there’s a shadow of a scratch, and I want to squeeze her so tight, but it still feels like I could crush her. I smile at her, pull out my phone and find a Katy Perry song. I know that Toni will let me take her in. She’ll sleep on the couch with me she’ll come to work with us, she’ll be happy.
“Mama Jess, where we go?” BeDe asks. “To Green Tile Diner?”
“No honey. Somewhere special.” I point to the sign at the pet store. “See BeDe? Pet. Like you wanted.”
A white and brown puppy runs over to the window, yapping its head off, tail wagging, but BeDe is looking somewhere else and I follow her eyes to the cages with the fancy cockteels and bright birdies with candy-colored beaks.
“Mama Jess, they sing?”
“Yes baby.”
“Outside?”
“They’re inside now.” She looks confused. “Do you want one baby? I’ll buy whichever one you want.”
Her eyes are still wide and I squeeze her close, but she kind of wiggles like she’s never done before. I look at her and there’s something in her eyes that I’ve never seen, and I can’t put her down. I might be dreaming, but I hear the screech of a siren.
“Come on BeDe, do you want to go inside? We either go inside or we go home. Well, not home, but another home . . .” my voice trails off.
I hear more sirens wailing, and BeDe’s eyes are all wet. We have to run again. She’s moving her arms, fluttering like wings, and I cup my hands around them, feel their motion on my palms. I try to move, but my legs are stuck in tar, I’m dragging everything behind us as I lurch forward. They’re going to catch up to us and I look up at the stars, all over the sky—not together like the tiles— they’re scattered far apart.