Tessie D

I didn’t go to college last year like I’d planned. After everything that happened, I decided to take a year off to work and save some money. And caring about college seemed a waste of time. It’s been well over a year now.

A couple months ago, I decided to work. I found something to do outside, with my hands, using my entire body. I needed to move my body. I was caged up in it, and I remembered how it felt in the restaurant, gliding between tables, walking back and forth until my legs ached. After months of numb indifference, I wanted to feel my body again. 

I took a job picking watermelons. I work alongside the migrants, first we walked of the tractor, moving the vines that had wandered into the path back into their rows so that the tractors would still drive down the lane, careful not to drop the green gords. A few months later we walked behind the tractor, moving through the field, pulling the ripe fruit from their prickly vines and depositing them into a trailer. Despite my hat and sleeves, skin still darkened and my auburn hair lightened in the sun. 

Every afternoon, Annie drives out in the truck to bring me lunch and brings Baby with her. I sit in the cab, roll the windows down while she nurses. The men in the field sit beneath the shade of the tractor and look away while eating their lunches. Except Charlie, who I caught staring a few times. 

Annie and I would talk sometimes, but mostly we just sat, staring out into the pasture, listening to the radio playing in the background. 

Annie is leaving for college this weekend. She applied to a junior college in Kilgore — cheap enough to live on campus, far enough to be away from us. I don’t blame her. I want to leave, too. I jealously watched all my friends move away to college while I was still here. I was nineteen, too.

But, I am tied down and trapped in a house that all I ever wanted to do was escape from. The weight of it all leaves me restless. My legs move at night so much — aching from work and wanting to run — that I can’t go to sleep and when I finally do, Baby wakes me up. 

Baby Despare.

I couldn’t think of a name for her in the hospital. Everyone kept calling her Baby Despare so that’s what I wrote down on the card. 

Momma says that I’ll start to feel better about her eventually. I try to. I try so hard. I know I’m supposed to love her, but most of the time I feel indifferent about her. Nothing.

I go through the motions of taking care of her, but I never feel the love that am supposed to. Not in the hospital when she was born, not later when we were home. I feel nothing for her except obligation. How could I feel anything? She takes and demands and wants. All the time. The ceaseless crying, feeding, changing. She doesn’t sleep, even when I beg.

Even when I’m so tired that I’m sobbing in the bathtub, staring at my disfigured body, she still cries. 

I’m afraid of her, too. I’m afraid that I’ll accidentally on purpose hurt her. I’m afraid to even say it out loud. A girl on television last year was on trial for child abuse. I saw it when I was up late at night feeding Baby. There isn’t anything else to watch in the middle of the night except World News Now on Channel 8 with Anderson Cooper. They kept showing this doctor’s nanny who shook a baby. The nanny said that she didn’t but the baby was still hurt. Everyone kept asking why the doctor mom wasn’t at home with her baby and why was the baby being taken care of by a nanny?

If the doctor mom had been home, the baby would have been safe. What f the nanny was mad that she was there in the first place? What if the nanny accidentally picked up the baby and accidentally shook it? What if she accidentally on purpose hurt it?

What if I do the same thing? What if I accidentally on purpose hurt Baby?

I’m afraid to tell anyone this. These thoughts play in a loop all day and night in my brain. I’m afraid that they’ll say I’m crazy and put me in jail or the hospital. A girl from the metroplex went to prison this year — she’s a little bit older than me. She and her boyfriend killed a girl at the lake. She’s going to prison for the rest of her life. It’s been all over the news this year.

And, a couple years ago, a boy from my school strangled his girlfriend and he was sent to prison for the rest of his life. They said that they didn’t mean to kill anyone — that it was an accident. But, they still did it. They are still going to jail for the rest of their lives. I’m terrified that I’ll do something accidentally and I’ll go to prison for the rest of my life.

So, I pretend. I pretend to be a good mom. To love her. That I’m making the best of it. That this was not a mistake or an accident. I pretend that I’m not a whore and that this was God’s plan and that while I don’t know or understand the purpose of any of this, it is all okay because I wouldn’t have it any other way. She is a blessing in disguise, and I’m so happy with how it all turned out. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Except I would change everything.

I’d never taken that job.

Never gone to that party.

I would have fought back. Fought harder. Yelled, screamed, scratched, clawed. I would have done something other than just lay there.

Isn’t that what whores do, after all? They just lay there?