Mothered

by Zoje Stage

What made a human being turn monstrous? An error in prenatal development, a misalignment of chemicals, an insufficient ability to adapt to misfortune, too much of one thing and too little of something else?

Could Jackie possibly be implying that the problems they’d had while Grace was growing up were due to her age? Some inexcusable lack of maturity that ignored the reality of her having been an honest-to-god child? Jackie had always hated being a mother, at least that’s how Grace remembered it.

The smell was strongest in her mother’s tidy, perfectly decorated room.

There were advantages to not catching—or spreading—every bug and cold that wafted through the air. If only everyone had done it sooner.

In spite of her preference for living alone, she required people the way a drug addict needed a fix—but she liked her socializing to happen within controllable situations, with easy exit strategies.

She enjoyed people, yes, but more so when they fulfilled her in some essential way.

It’s good to get out of your comfort zone—that’s how you find out who you really are.

Everyone who saw Hope in photos remarked on how happy she looked. She appeared to be grinning almost all the time, though Grace knew the darker side of her sister’s personality. The smile on Hope’s face was an unavoidable contortion, not constant happiness. And when her glee was intentional, it had usually meant trouble.

Many times Grace had heard her mom mutter—to relatives, to gawking strangers at the park—“Is it my fault my vagina got the one out too quickly and the other too slowly?”

If the pandemic had taught her nothing else, she knew that life—a life, or even normal existence—could disappear with little warning.

Everything Hope did was special. Nothing Grace did was special enough.

Grace fear that her mother might’ve thought she’d been holed up in her room masturbating all day. No, wait . . . Jackie wouldn’t think about masturbating. Oh God, Grace was thinking about her mother thinking about masturbating.