Chapter Nineteen
Okay. Now I really don’t understand. If you aren’t a selfish bitch who thought a baby would just inconvenience her, hold her back, drag her down while she was so keen on climbing whatever corporate ladder she found herself on — then was it me? Something you saw in me, or saw in the man who fathered me, some kind of hovering vice, circling around and waiting to manifest? Were you ashamed? Did you think that I was going to turn out a bastard, a user; some carefree prick who thought of women as his own personal playground and fuck the consequences? Or was there something else . . . ?
Because my daughter . . . your granddaughter . . . she made a mistake, got pregnant by some fly-by-night dickhead whose attitude to parenthood was pretty much as a hit and run. But she had something you didn’t. Courage. And now she’s lying there with her babies in her arms and the best fucking future that I can give her, to make up for what you did to me.
Y’know how I said I could see when she was born how much giving birth must have cost you? Well, I saw in her face today how much it would cost to give up those babies. Could hardly even get them off her for a cuddle, she was hanging in there as though I was going to commit murder . . . And I come back to it. Either you didn’t care, pushed me out and left me to whatever fate came along, or you cared and gave me away anyway . . . And what could make any mother do that? What happened to you?
I’ve done well, all these years, on my own. Never needing anyone. Because that’s my control. If they don’t know who I really am, they can’t hurt me, y’see. All they can do is drag their nails down the outside of that wooden statue that they think is the real me, that hollow man with no heart to touch, no soul to steal. And all the while the real me is . . . where? Hiding, untouched where they can’t see. And now I’ve met someone. Someone like me, who’s built herself a shell to keep the world from hurting her. Oh, she thinks it’s just words but . . . I know how it goes. I understand. And I wanted to be there for her, to help her to see that the way she chose to live her life has damaged her, made her into someone hard, someone who thinks they shouldn’t care. And I wanted to be there when she finds out who she really is, underneath it all, when she finds her heart and soul, when she stops hiding. I thought . . . I really thought it was something good, something to build on. A new base to create a new life on, something solid and real. But she pulled, bailed on me. Guess she saw through to the far side, to the man that I am deep, deep within, the monster that I’m afraid is the real me now. And maybe it’s better that way.
And now, what? What’s in it for me, digging it all up, all those things I’ve buried good and deep, all the thumpings and the dark cupboards, the taunting and the nights spent with the Bible weighing me down so I couldn’t sleep to try to force the Devil out of me . . . when what they should have asked was — if they forced the Devil out, what did they force in instead?