Mother of My Son

Mother of My Son

by Rachel Allord

Chapter One

June 10th, 1992

The solution might be as simple as a green utility dumpster. Then again, the metal device that stood before her glinting in the moonlight might send her to the very pit of hell.

A muffled whimper escaped from the bundled towel in Amber Swansen’s arms. She ignored the noise; shut her mind to its existence, just like she had denied all the telltale signs crying for her attention these past few months. Even now, the quivering lump she clutched seemed like an illusion. It couldn’t be real. This was only a setback, an accident that should’ve been taken care of months ago by walking into one of those clinics, signing a few papers, and poof- problem solved. Evaporated like a bad dream. But she had ignored everything and forged on with life as usual, attended classes, rationalized away the signs, hidden behind baggy clothes, and now was left with no other choice but to take matters into her own hands.

In the end, what difference did it make? Ending it in a clinic months ago or ending it now like this? A few months or days or hours didn’t matter when the outcome, the remedy, was the same.

Her biology professor last semester asserted that existence, in it’s most primal of states, boiled down to random chance. Cells and tissue haphazardly joining together resulting in life. Cells to fish to ape to man. Why did it all matter anyway? If life was just a lucky fluke and everything had come about by happenstance, then they were all nothing but walking mistakes. Unwanted life should be terminated.

Amber eyed the dumpster again, took a step closer.

Survival of the fittest. That’s what this was. She was only doing what needed to be done in order to survive. She’d fought too hard to escape the trappings of her small, stagnant town and toxic grip of her mother and this problem couldn’t ruin her now. She had vowed to not turn out like her mother.

Lurking behind an overgrown shrub, Amber peeked back at her apartment building. No one stirred. Except for the anemic security light mounted over the back door entrance, no light flickered in any of the evenly spaced apartment windows. She returned her attention to the back lot of On the House, a local bar and grill, back to the waiting dumpster.

The full moon hung above her like a watchful eye, illuminating the metal bin, causing the edges of the apparatus to quiver like fluid. Or maybe the wavering was just an illusion, a side effect from the Peppermint Schnapps she’d consumed some time ago to get her through the horrors of the night. Her mind felt frozen and numb, like she’d been swimming in cold water for too long. She felt outside of herself, detached from her movements, as if she were watching a character in a movie, wondering what she’d do next.

Amber zeroed in on the dumpster. A cool breeze lifted her blonde hair from her shoulders as another muffled whimper escaped the bundle. In a couple of hours, the light of impending dawn would expose her. If she was gong to do this, she had to do it now.

Don’t think. Just act. What other choice did she have?

Disregarding the pain and the faint, imploring voice in the deepest corner of her mind, Amber broke into a run, her bare feet slapping against the asphalt, a deafening sound in the otherwise silent June night. The sprint across the road left her breathless and dizzy but she couldn’t pass out now. Not yet. She approached the dumpster and with one violent tug, flung open the lid, disposed the bundle on top of the stack of broken down cardboard boxes, and dashed back to her apartment.

A fleeting sense of horror washed over to her. What was she doing? Who was this girl running in the darkness? From somewhere deep within her a voice pleaded with her to wake up, jolt free from this nightmare, snap out of the trancelike state.

Wake up. Turn around. Undo.

Yet she didn’t turn back. Didn’t even look back. It was done.

Amber tumbled back through the common door of the building, back to the life she fought for. A trickle of blood traveled down her thigh inside her sweat pants as she staggered down the hallway. A shower. That’s what she needed- a good, hot shower to wash away the filth and horror and memory of the night.

She watched her hand turn the doorknob, a trembling hand that seemed to belong to someone else. She stepped over the threshold, into her tiny kitchen, and the trance was shattered. Robin, her roommate, was there to meet her.

“Amber. What’s going on?”

She hoped she was hallucinating. “I thought you were at Caleb’s for the night.”“I was. We had a big fight and I just couldn’t stand the sight of him any longer.” Robin gave her the once over. “You look horrible. What’s the matter? What were you doing out there?”

The room took off in a spin. Raking her hand against the wall for support, Amber made her way to the bathroom. She was going to pass out. Or be sick.

Robin was close on her heels. “Something’s going on.”

Amber continued her trek. “Leave me alone. You shouldn’t be here.” She shut herself inside the bathroom, her body trembling and soaked in a cold sweat. Just in time, she hung her head over the toilet. She heard Robin trampling around. A thud of a knuckle on the bathroom door.

“Amber. I saw your room, I saw your bed! What have you done?”

Amber laid her cheek against the frigid, tile floor.

Robin had never voiced her suspicions outright but had, a few weeks ago, made a passing comment about her weight gain. Not everyone could be a beanpole, Amber retorted, and hadn’t she ever heard of the freshman fifteen? She’d never been a slim girl but was sturdy and voluptuous. Her steady diet of soda and fast food had caused her waistline to expand, she’d reasoned. Everything had a rationale. Anything could be explained away if you tried hard enough.

The bathroom door burst open. Robin stared at her with eyes as wide and manic as a marionette. “It is true, it is true. You were trying to hide it. You were…”

“No,” Amber roared then lowered her voice. “No. It’s taken care of.”

Robin froze. When she found her voice it was a mere whisper. “What do you mean it’s taken care of? What did you do?”

She only wanted to sleep, drift off into nothingness and never wake up.

“Where’s the baby? What did you do with the baby?”

Amber wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “There is no baby.”

“Don’t play stupid with me. Tell me what you’ve done with the baby?”

“There is no baby!”

Amber closed her eyes and heard Robin shuffle out of the apartment.

Pulling her knees up to her chest, she gave voice to the words that had sustained her the past several months and wished with her entire being that it were true. “There is no baby, there is no baby, there is no baby…”

The soreness pulled Amber out of her exhausted sleep. Oblivious as to how long she’d been out, she pushed herself from the bathroom floor and rummaged through the medicine cabinet until she spotted an orange cylinder of leftover prescription painkillers. Grasping the bottle, she hobbled to her bedroom.

From behind her, Robin’s voice stopped her cold. “I called the cops.”

She clutched the wall for support. Maybe she had heard wrong. She was so dizzy and nauseated, like she’d stepped off a tilt-a-whirl. She managed to turn around and face her roommate. “What?”

“I know what happened. I know what you did.” Robin ran a shaky hand through her cropped, brown hair. “So I called the cops. From a pay phone three blocks away.”

“What did you tell them, Robin?”

“I heard crying, in the parking lot by On the House. That’s what I told them. When they asked for my name I hung up.” Her voice caught and she choked back a sob. “Amber… how could you… what were you thinking?”

Amber made her way to the bedroom.

Robin followed her cautiously, allowing a safe distance between them, as if she were approaching a mongrel dog that may attack any minute. “You need help. You need a doctor.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Amber, you need help!”

“I said I’ll be fine!” Easing herself onto the side of the bed, Amber opened the prescription bottle and swallowed four dry. “I just need to lie down. Just let me sleep.”

Robin stood in the doorway of the bedroom, her arms wrapped around her stomach as if in pain, her eyes red from crying. “What am I supposed to do? Turn you in? Is that what you want? I’m scared, Amber. I don’t want you here!”

She didn’t care anymore; she was too tired to care. She stripped off the sheets and balled them in the corner, grabbed an afghan and sank onto the bed.

Maybe Robin should report her. Maybe it was for the best. Robin could report her and the police would lock her up in jail where she belonged. What difference did it make now?

“You’d better be out of here by tomorrow. Just take your things and get out of here.”

Amber pulled the blanket up to her chin, hoping its warmth would alleviate the chill that had consumed her whole body. She couldn’t stop shaking.

“Don’t you even want to know what happened?” Robin asked in a strained whisper. “To the baby?”

Amber wrapped the top of the afghan around her ears, refusing to listen, refusing to let the words penetrate her mind.

“They found the baby. I watched from the inside of my car. The police got it out and an ambulance was there but I don’t know...” Her voice broke and she gulped down a sob. “I don’t think it was alive.”

Amber was silent, a new mantra filling her head. It never happened… it never happened…

“I want you out. Tomorrow. And don’t you ever, ever come back.”

Her eyelids heavy with sleep, Amber let them drop as she heard Robin emit a sob and leave the room. She hoped the painkillers would kick in soon so her body could feel as numb as her mind.

_______________________

Amber gripped the phone and studied the script she’d scrawled out on a page in her sketchbook. Her mind raced for another option, but nothing came to her. If she didn’t read the words she’d written she’d turn into a blabbering idiot and she had nowhere else to go. She punched in the number and waited.

“Hi Mom, It’s Amber.”

Her mother sighed as if she’d been interrupted from an all-important task. Like watching her soap opera. “What do you need now?”

She concentrated on keeping her tone casual, indifferent. “My summer job fell through so I thought maybe I’d come home for awhile.”

“You thought so, eh? I thought you were staying close to campus for the summer, working as a waitress.”

She retrieved the pencil and sketched out her nerves along the edges of the page. “Plans changed.”

“I guess so. How long do you think you’re going to stay?”

“Just a couple of months, for the summer maybe.”

“Until you go back to school?’

“Until I find a place of my own.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not going back to school in the fall.”

Her mother was quiet for a moment then a low rumble that turned into laughter escaped from the phone and knifed into Amber’s heart. “Well, well. Aren’t you the little scholar? What about that scholarship? What happened with all of that?”

Anger boiled in her like a tempest. She was good in art. At least that’s what her high school teacher had said, even backed up his belief in her by her helping her fill out the scholarship application. And her drawing professor from last semester once commented that she had a discriminating eye, a fresh way of looking at things. They had believed in her. They spotted the talent, recognized her passion.

But not her mother. Nothing she ever did, good or bad, ever seemed to matter. Yet she couldn’t risk her mother’s anger now. As much as she hated it, she needed her right now. “I guess college just isn’t for me.”

“Quitting already, huh? Quitting and coming back home. What a surprise.”

She fought against tears. “I’m not planning on staying long, just until I find a place of my own. So I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Margaret burst into laughter. “I’ll be sure to roll out the red carpet!”

Amber set down the phone, curled up in a ball, and burrowed underneath the covers. Art scholarship or not, who was she to think she could break free from her past and carve out a better life? She had tried. She had failed. Tomorrow she’d be right back where she had started.

And this time there was no way out.