The First Day of Spring

by Nancy Tucker

the noise of something’s insides coming out through its mouth.

Blood was frank—the oily sluice of it on skin, the smell of metal and butchers.

Surely that’s not what all people are like—not full of empty space like that. Is it because she’s my daughter?”

When you did bad things like that the keepers descended, one for each limb, held you so tight you couldn’t move. I did lots of bad things. It felt nice to be held. I liked going limp in their arms and hearing them say, “There. Well done for calming down. Good girl, Chrissie. Good girl.” It was almost like I wasn’t bad at all.

That was where the best bits of Molly lived—in the gaps between her and Chrissie, in her soft mouth and clear eyes.

We were bonded by something thicker than water, thicker than blood: a tar-dark soup of hate-want-need.

I couldn’t think how to articulate that food stopped being food when you didn’t have it, that it swelled and bloated as you shrank. It became the way you ticked off the hours, how you judged a good day from a bad one, something you stored when you had it and mourned when you didn’t.

Perhaps that was what felt biggest of all—having found Mam unrotted. She was smaller and quieter and better than before. She was clean. She was stable. She was earning money and stocking her cupboards. It was what had happened for me when I had found out I was pregnant with Molly, except it had happened in reverse. I had built myself up because Molly had arrived. Mam had done it because I had left.