Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter Page B

was Jake. They’d gone out once, to a frat party, and had ended up making out with two girls who’d been standing by the keg all night. He’d done too many shots of tequila and at the end of it all he’d pushed Jake up against a dumpster on campus somewhere and sucked at his neck. He remembered Jake grabbing his ass and biting his ear, and it turned him on until Jake punched him in the solar plexus and he realized he was getting his ass kicked. He threw up on Jake’s shoes and fell asleep on someone’s discarded bag of McDonald’s. He stopped going to trig and flunked out and had to take an extra semester.
     
    Bagels? his girlfriend asked. Butter? Cream cheese? He’d met his girlfriend at a bar and they’d ended up dry humping against a jukebox playing “Freebird,” had been together ever since. I’m not hungry, he said. It thundered loudly and he yelled over it, I gotta take a dump.
     
    In the bathroom he stared at himself in the mirror. He imagined that his body was an elaborate empty coffin. Here lies Nothing. Here lies No One. He could smell the bagel burning in the toaster, heard his girlfriend hiss Shit . He masturbated with her mint green loofah and appletini body wash, crouching over the toilet so that when he came there’d be nothing to clean up, no trace of anything ever happening.
     

MARIE NOE
     
    Talks to You about Her Kids
     

    Always thought babies were dumb. Always did. Bald globey heads and gums dripping spit. Nothing behind the eyes but want. It made me belly-sick to see how they’d reach up for me, needing me to feed ‘em and change ’em and hold ‘em and hell sometimes just look at ’em. Babies want to be seen more than anything else on this earth. If they aren’t bein looked at they don’t exist.
     
    Richard farted on his father within the first minute he was born. The whole room heard it, that loud angry gas, Richard announcing hisself in the ugliest of ways, then getting scared I guess and bursting into a cat’s wail, the doctor laughing, laughing, saying Well I guess there’s no doubt about air in those lungs. Art bent to kiss me and I could smell the baby, could smell the fart, and I turned my face so I could gag into the pillow. At one month Richard died. I told the doctor how I believed a fart got trapped and went back up the other way and into his heart where it all exploded. I cried but I don’t remember feeling the need.
     
    Elizabeth was a sloppy eater. She slurped at the breast. And me and Art called her Grabbin Hands because any time she got anywhere near my chest she’d be tryin to latch, even if I had on a sweater, she’d be suckin away, coughin up threads and cat hairs. It disgusted me, how desperate she’d get to feed, but Art thought it was cute. Elizabeth died at five months. She was much stronger than Richard, I remember, but maybe she choked on a lint ball she thought was a nipple. Nobody’s fault.
     
    I guess I should confess how I was always kinda scared of babies due to how selfish they were. That might help you to understand my thinkings. Babies would kill you to live.
     
    Jacqueline screamed with her eyes wide open, looking straight at me. Like this. And when she slept she’d be chanting in a demon’s language. I planned on calling her Jackie, but she didn’t make it past ten days old.
     
    Art says after Jacqueline we had a boy we named Arthur Jr., that he only lived five days. I suppose he’s right.
     
    Constance was a moron. She never even opened her eyes, though Art swears she had one blue one and one brown one. By the time she was born I’d had a headache for two years straight, and the fact that she never made a sound, didn’t look at me, slept through the night, that weighed more on me than any kinda screaming she coulda done. Like her quiet was creating a noise louder than all the other babies combined. It split my ears. I’d pinch her till she’d cry to make up for it, and I guess that’s wrong. She was dead after 24 days. Art