Generational Traumas
A very short story about what we pass down.
Lorraine pulled her still-damp fitted sheet off the line in the front yard of her row home. Fabric adopted a baseline moisture in the thick August air that made everyone crabby, shifting in their clothes. She folded the sheet half-heartedly; this was her only set, she’d place it directly onto her bed. She unhooked the clothespins from the top sheet and tugged it down.
She gasped and stumbled backward. Behind the sheet stood her youngest child, who she had not lain eyes on in over a year.
“Katrina! You jumped up on me. What are you…?” She glanced down at what her offspring had placed on the ground before her. “What’s this?”
“Kent,” said Kent. “Please, my name is Kent now.” He’d told his mother before, but this time, there was no prideful insistence. Rather, his voice pleaded in a way that tugged at her deepest maternal instincts, like his little voice did when he used to flee to her bed in the middle of the night after a nightmare.
“Okay, Kent,” she said. “But this baby. Whose baby is this?”
The newborn, who couldn’t be older than a month tops, slept silent and still in the car seat. “I need you to take him,” Kent said. “Please, Mom.”
Lorraine fumbled to respond. “Take him? I can’t just take…” Her knees cracked as she knelt to examine the child. His heart-shaped lips puckered, suckling the air, like Kent’s used to. “Is this your baby? I never knew you to — ” she couldn’t say the words “ — with a man.”
“It wasn’t my choice!” Kent cut in, razor-sharp.
That knocked the air out of her. “Oh, honey,” Lorraine said.
Of course she blamed herself. If only she’d left their father the first time he’d hit her, rather than only earning release when he finally died drinking, her youngest might have grown into a strong woman. If she’d worked harder to encourage him to play with dolls instead of letting him run around shirtless in the yard with the neighborhood boys, shooting finger guns. If she’d let him stay, called him Kent, not kicked him out for trying to transition into something she refused to believe he was.
“Please, Mom. I can’t take care of him. I can’t even look at him.” He thrust a tote bag of bottles, formula, and diapers at her. “I need to go,” he said, backing off toward his parked car. “I’m sorry.”
“Wait! When’ll you be back?” Lorraine called after him, but his tires screeched out of the parking spot.
The child stirred and blinked up at her. She unbuckled his straps and held him aloft. Adorable. A golden glow seemed to halo him.
“Hello, baby,” she cooed and hugged him to her breast, sniffing his head. Its delicate perfume reminded her of her own children when they’d been new. His long-sleeved pajamas were damp with heat. She peeled them off and nuzzled his soft, doughy belly.
She’d protect this child. He’d lucked out, she thought, to have been born male.
Melissa Balick is a writer in Oakland, California. Click this link to easily access all her other fiction and flash fiction.
