Left for Garbage

Time to say ‘Goodnight’, Deeley

    June 2008

    She didn’t want to make it any harder than it had to be - she only wanted her child to not be there anymore. Killing was necessary because none of her other alternatives had worked out, none of this was her fault. Her mother had made her have the baby, and keep the baby, and then she’d promised to help her, but she never helped her, not once. All she did was hang around when she was home and attack her for every single thing she did with her child.

    “You’re holding her wrong.”

    “Her diaper needs to be changed.”

    “Don’t let her do this.”

    “You should let her do that.”

    Almost three years had passed and now it seemed to her all she could ever hear anymore was her mother’s carping voice and her child’s thin piping one. Her own voice was lost somewhere beneath the relentless, never-ending waves of sound from the two of them.
    She was drowning. And it wasn’t supposed to have been like this - her mother had promised.
    “Dad and I understand how young you are, Sweetheart. We know you’re still going to want to live your life. I’l l be here every step of the way. I’ll always take care of her and you don’t need to worry … it’s going to be fine … you’ll be fine, I promise.”

    Liar, liar pants on fire, first liar worst liar .

    Her mother was a liar. Her mother said she was the liar and it was true, but her mother started it with that first lie, the one that made all of hers unavoidable.
    Old fights played out drearily in her head.
    “Denise, where are you going tonight?”

    “Denise, I’m not going to raise Deeley for you.”

    “Come home, Denise, the baby needs you … Come home this minute … You’re a mother now, Denise.”

    A mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, smother, smother, smother, smother, liar, liar.

    Well, it couldn’t go on anymore because she couldn’t go on anymore. Her mother would never fully take care of the baby she’d made her have, and she would never let go of her because of the baby, so her mother was going to have to learn, just like she had learned, that bad things happen to people who break their promises.
    She stood up and walked into the kitchen and pulled out the bottle of Seven Up she’d hidden at the back of the refrigerator. Homemade chloroform, one of the few things Denise could cook in her sleep - a pinch of shock powder from the pool supplies, a drop of acetone from the garage, add ice and water, serve shaken not stirred.
    The chloroform was supposed to be kept in glass but her mother would have noticed a glass container and have asked her questions.
    Sometimes over the past months when she’d started to make chloroform to help her daughter sleep , she had worried that her mother or her father - soda hound that he was - would drink it by accident, but she hadn’t worried very much. If it had happened then things might have been better. Maybe she could have even become a better mother without her own mother there to remind her how bad she was a hundred times a day and her father there too … well, he was just there too much, always watching her.
    Or maybe , with her parents gone, she could have found a nice family for her little girl and what could they have done to stop her then? Too late, too late. Her parents were alive - her stupid weak father who lost all their money and followed her every move with his sad eyes, and her bully-voiced mother - they weren’t going anywhere. And as long as Deeley was still here, neither was she.
    So she would have to finish this, and maybe it was for the best for everyone, even for Deeley, because she loved her daughter, she really , really did. Even though she was so tired of her, she still loved her and she didn’t want to leave her behind to be raised as she had been raised by her parents in this nightmare family. Deeley would be an angel soon and when she was in heaven she would understand everything better.
    Better, yes, it will all be better soon.
    She tore off a paper towel and poured a little of the sweet-smelling chloroform, not too much. Deeley was little and she had done this before - a little was all it took onto the paper - and called for Deeley to come to her in the kitchen.
    Oh, this was hard , hard and bad, bad and goddamn her mother for a trillion years for making her do it, because Deeley is so beautiful and happy and it’s not right to have to make her go away like this, and if she’d been left with one single