Page 3 of Her Dreadful Will
Mya Childers was already having a bad day.
Leon and Henry had nearly missed their ride to day camp and had forgotten their swim trunks—she found them under a stack of graphic novels by the Lego box. Just as well—the swim trunks probably wouldn’t have fit the boys anyway. Both of them were shooting up so fast she couldn’t keep them in pants, or shirts. And thanks to Jefferson’s latest spending spree, there wasn’t much space in the budget for clothes shopping. Not that they had much of a budget. Last time she’d suggested making one, Jefferson smiled and said, “Hey now, don’t I take good care of you? Why you worryin’ about things like that?”
He’d kissed her firmly, and when she opened her mouth to say more, he kissed her again, an emphatic end to the conversation.
He’d done the same thing when she suggested he get a little snip-snip to avoid any more baby-shaped surprises.
“But we make such beautiful babies.” A hard kiss. “We got a responsibility to populate the earth!” Another kiss. “Mm! Yeah, you still got it, girl!”
Mya had smiled helplessly because who wouldn’t want to hear that? And who would care that after the last two babies she felt as if she were suffocating in a pit of diapers and breast pads, her eyes smeared with Lanolin and her mouth stuffed with tiny socks?
Speaking of socks—she stared at the laundry closet off the kitchen, barely able to see the washing machine over the mound of soiled clothes. For one second she fought the impulse to crawl into those clothes, under them—maybe there would be a rabbit hole there and she could disappear into the deep dark where no one could ever squeal “Mama” at her again.
“Mamaaa!” Small fingers yanked at Mya’s shirt. “Mama, I have to go pee.”
Mya whirled, seizing the toddler and whisking her off to the crusted potty seat—gotta clean that soon—just in time.
The baby screamed from his highchair as Mya was rinsing the potty seat. She darted back to the kitchen to find that he’d painted his chubby cheeks with the remains of his oatmeal. She was reaching for a rag when her cell rang. She seized the phone gratefully.
“Chloe! Hey girl!” She forced brightness into her tone, but it was too much, too strained, and Chloe, who had known her since middle school, said, “What’s wrong? Rough start today?”
Mya pressed a hand to her forehead. “You could say that. Yeah.” She didn’t dare say more because her throat was swelling, tightening with tears that could turn into sobs that might never, never stop.
“You gotta get out of that house, okay?” said Chloe. “Go out shopping or something.”
“Can’t. Van’s in the shop.”
“Go for a walk, girl! Coupla blocks of walking and you’re downtown anyway.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Even in a tiny town like Wonderland, houses were pricey this close to Main Street, but Jefferson had insisted on the location because living downtown fit the image he had of himself and his family—who they should be, their place in this community. The purchase of this house had been the first giant scoop in the excavation of a debt-hole so deep Mya despaired of ever crawling out.
“I’ll take a walk,” she conceded.
“Good. And go visit the new secondhand shop on South Main. You’ll love it. Great prices, and the girl who owns it is—”
Chloe’s voice cut off, and for a second Mya thought she’d dropped the call. “Hello?”
“I’m here. Just trying to think of the right words to describe the owner. Anyway, you’ve got to meet her.”
“I don’t know if I’m up for meeting new people today. You wanna come with me?”
“Girl, you know I gotta work! But you go. You’ll love it. Great prices, and the girl who works there—”
Mya frowned. “You just said that. I get it already.”
“Right. You’ll tell me how it went?”
“Sure. Bye.”
With breakfast done and Dylani cleaned and changed, Mya crammed a few last-minute necessities into the swollen diaper bag and forced herself, the toddler, and the baby out the door into the open air.
Stepping out of the house felt like coming back to life.
She gripped the bar of the double stroller—a huge, high-end monstrosity Jefferson had insisted on buying—and shoved it forward down the bricked front path, sucking in a lungful of air. The burden of the house fell away, a weight off her shoulders, but a new weight replaced it—the stress of being out, where people could notice, and watch, and judge. Where they could see every little thing she did wrong, and the insane state of her hair, and her saggy, faded outfit, and the baby weight she hadn’t had time to lose between pregnancies.
Why is this so hard? It shouldn’t be this hard. Something is wrong with me. I’m just not good at this. I suck at being a mother.
