Work Text:
When your two-year-old daughter crawls into your bed in the middle of the night, she doesn’t do it for her own comfort.
She was a really happy, smiley baby, and that made you happy too. Babies are just super cute. Especially the smiley ones. You daughter used to be like that, but then she just sort of grew out of it. All these parents complain that their kids grow up too fast. Your daughter stopped smiling as much when she learned how to walk. She traded childlike wonder for astute awareness of her surroundings. So that when she gets into your bed, it isn’t because of her nightmares—which you know she has, you just know, she’s your daughter so of course she has nightmares. She gets in bed with you because she has this innate sense to know when you’re having a rough time, and she comes to hold your face in her tiny, chubby hands and curl up against you chest.
You feel like a terrible parent; you cry in front of your young child. That isn’t how you raise a kid, you’re pretty sure. But you don’t know how to raise a kid. You have nothing to go off of, no examples. So you cry during the night because you just can’t stop and you let her ask you what’s wrong.
“Nothing, nothing, honey.” You tell her. She’s two years old and she already knows you are lying.
*
She’s three when she first promises that she’ll help to fix you. That one really hurts. Partly because it assures you that you are shitty at concealing your feelings, partly because you know it can’t be done.
You’ve tried it yourself.
You really have.
You went out and socialized and tried to make friends with other young mothers, but were instantly alienated because you weren’t married, you never gave a straightforward answer about what you did for a living, and when you let slip about your drinking, you were immediately eschewed. You get involved with your daughter’s preschool. You know she’s smart, that she likes learning, that she likes school. You don’t see any problem with starting her so early. It isn’t like she’ll even get to high school anyways; let her read books while she has the time. But the teachers are wary of you. You’re too loud when you laugh, too inappropriate; your necklines go down too low. And, again, with the drinking. They don’t like you dropping your daughter off at eight in the morning when you already smell like sweet wine.
You have, even, briefly, reluctantly, sought ‘professional help’. A psychiatrist, very expensive, who’s office was decorated with such class that it made you uncomfortable. What sort of money does it take to casually house a complete, antique set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in your workspace? Why would a psychiatrist even need it in the first place? It was just for show, you were sure.
It didn’t work out. You only saw him twice, after which you realized that if you told the truth, then you would be branded as unstable. If you lied, then you wouldn’t get anywhere because important things wouldn’t be addressed. You decide that all you need is your lab, you daughter, and your liquor cabinet.
You know you only have nine years left. That should be enough to get you through.
*
Only when she starts going to kindergarten do you really make the transition between calling her your daughter to thinking of her as Rose Lalonde. On the first day of school, you brush her hair, slightly wavy. You tie her shoes and kiss her between the eyes. She’s excited and happy, smiles so you can see where she’s already lost one of her canine teeth. She’s a little more severe than most children her age. You claim she’s just developing a superb sense of humor.
She comes home that afternoon stony-faced. Oh dear.
“What is it, hun? What happened?”
“Everybody’s an idiot.” She lets you know and slides into her room. You sigh, pour yourself a drink, and sit on the kitchen table.
At least she’s perceptive.
*
Rose visits you in the night less and less, only making the trip when things are really bad. When you start to remember things. Now, though, instead of curling up by you, she sits on the side of your bed, holding your head in her lap. Then, as more time progresses, she only strokes your hair. Finally, at eight years old, she only watches you. She has stopped smiling. She doesn’t even complain about the world’s idiocy anymore.
She’s started reading so much. All of her spare time goes to furthering her knowledge, a new Amazon order each week. It’s all psychology and wizards, and when her first book came in the mail, she took your hands and stared you right in the eye before opening the package. A package she had impatiently awaited ever since the order was placed, that you assumed would be ripped open the moment it arrived so she could see the book in her hands before she got in the door. But she holds off so she can tell you, once again, “I’m going to fix you, mom.”
The book is the DSM-IV.
God, she knows that there’s something wrong, so wrong, with you. But she is thinking completely opposite of how she should. It breaks your heart.
*
She doesn’t make friends with the other children that you know of. You know she’s lonely but you know that any day now, she’ll have friends. It’s nearing the time.
When she starts spending more time on the laptop that you bought specifically for this reason, you know that it has happened. She’s a purist; would never read online if she can help it, craves holding the physical book in her hands. Beside the Harry Potter fanfiction, which, despite her best attempts, you totally know about, she barely ventures online. Being a purist, you know she is also very uneasy about writing on a computer, and so all of her stories are in journals and notepads she keeps squirreled away. You easily find them anyways, but out of respect, don’t read them. And so when you hear her typing away for hours at a time, you smile in relief.
It has started, and you are so happy. She doesn’t make any sign that things have changed, but you know they have. You can practically see the text: orange, blue, green. Oh, they’ll be different shades than what you were used to, but they’re still there. Everything has been initiated.
You are the happiest you have been since you carried her home, a baby wrapped in your pink scarf.
*
After several months, Rose tells you that she has made friends online. You pretend its news to you, and tell her you’re so excited for her. You run your mouth for a few minutes, completely incomprehensible, and eventually move in for a hug. She blanches physically.
The next day when she’s at school, you sneak into her room, sick and angry at either her or what you’re doing or maybe both. You flip her laptop open, click the Pesterchum icon, and see three names. Red, not orange, but the blue and green are there as well. You close everything carefully and look at her vast selection of books.
There are books on every possible psychiatric disorder, anomaly, happenstance, and theory, but you notice that all the ones on passive-aggression are spread out neatly, with many bookmarks. You pick one up, flip through it. Yellow highlighter is smeared throughout passages, across choice sentences. So that’s what’s been going on. Okay. You can handle this. This is probably a thing that all pre-teens do. This is her rebellious stage. You’ll just give her space and wait for her to realize that you’d never be anything less than sincere to her. What kind of person does she think you are?
That night is your worst in a long while. Rose stays in her room.
*
You realize that things aren’t going to change, as you had hoped. Rose is so wary of everything you do. She gives you these abhorrent, tight-lipped smiles when you do something nice for her.
I know. They seem to say. You want to grab her up in your arms and hold her as tight as you can and kiss her hair and her face and tell her that there is nothing to know. You’re being genuine.
She starts reading books about many-tentacled things, and it seems ominous to you. You can’t tell why. She never speaks of school. You’re too afraid to ask. She will occasionally tell you about a conversation she’s had with one of her friends—Dave, Jade, and John, you learn. You think you’ll die of nostalgia, or pity.
*
The closer it gets to April 13th, the worse you feel. You know what’s going to happen, and you know what you’ll have to do. You start drinking way too much. Rose notices. Rose notices everything. She gives you these falsely sweet little remarks about how she heard you throwing up last night, how you should brush your teeth, how she’ll walk to the store—forty five minutes both ways, largely uphill—to get some new aspirin if you’d like.
You start picking at your skin, chewing on your tongue. You can’t stand still and you don’t know what to do. It feels like you’re fifteen all over again. You know what you did at fifteen to feel better. But you can’t do that now because the Game wouldn’t abide by it. It’d be too easy to mess everything up…
You tell yourself this for months, ever since Rose turns thirteen. Finally, one week before everything goes to shit, you break and dial a number that you have memorized, despite never having used before.
Somewhere in Texas, a phone is ringing.
*
“No.” Is the first thing he says when he picks up.
“You don’t understand, I can’t do this anymore, I just…it’s almost done, I know, but,” you are practically wailing at him, scrabbling at the phone, shaking all over.
“I know it’s hard. We only have one more week. You’ve gotten this far.” He sounds bored and slightly annoyed. You wish you still knew him well enough to find the fear in his voice, because it has to be there.
You cry to him over the phone for five solid minutes. You tell him all these things about Rose, how being a mom completely fucked your life up but that it’s also been sort of nice. You tell him you still have her very first dried macaroni portrait from years ago hanging in your bedroom, and how she thinks it’s because you’re a passive-aggressive bitch.
“Listen. Listen, Rox, you just need to calm down.” He finally snaps at you.
“But I can’t!” You blubber.
“But you need to. Shit, I don’t feel any better about this than you do.”
Then he tells you that you should hang up. You agree, but you don’t do it.
“Come on. We’re cutting things close as is.” He says. You sigh shakily, swallow.
“I still love you, you know.”
He puts the receiver down.
*
On the morning of the thirteenth, you get up very early, before Rose. You tiptoe into her bedroom, trying to stay completely silent. She’s still in bed, nose scrunched up and fingers digging into her wrists. Yeah. You knew there were nightmares.
Under her exquisite down comforter, she looks even small than she is. She always used to complain that she was cold. She also used to complain that she was so tiny. You told her that being short is what high heels are for and is a fine thing to be, but to keep an eye on her coldness. Don’t let it get a hook in you, you had warned her. She didn’t understand.
There is something about a painfully young girl who doesn’t know that she’ll have to wake up in an hour or two ready to become a god that is strangely pitiable.
“Poor thing.” You tell her. You pat her hair smooth; you’re not used to it being so short. You were dismayed when she told you she was going in to town to have it cut. Fourteen inches, gone, just like that. You don’t really mind it, though. It looks nice short. It gives her one less thing to hide behind.
*
It’s the end of the world. What the hell are you supposed to do?
You drink a little, push your bangs out of your eyes, and guess you should do some tidying up. The house should look good while it gets annihilated, right?
Right.
*
God. Rose’s land is so pretty. You don’t stop to admire it, but keep on walking. The rain smells so nice, looks so gorgeous as it drips off your eyelashes.
You heft your gun; you have a denizen to slay, and a handful of prophesies to fulfill.
*
As you die, you realize that you never told your daughter your first name. She never asked.