Chapter 9 #2
Maggie had learned long ago it was better not to argue.
She’d learned the hard way, the bruised and bleeding way, not to challenge either of her parents.
It was better to let them go until they stopped.
Each one seemed to be existing as the hero or martyr in their own reality that just barely meshed with the real one.
Maggie knew she hadn’t flaunted herself in front of those men, but she hadn’t gone straight to her room; her mom was right about that. And now Jeffrey had seen her, and he’d locked onto her like she imagined a shark did on fresh blood.
“You listening?” her mother said as she snatched up Maggie’s face in her hand and forced her to look her in her wild brown eyes. Maggie realized then that her mom had also been drinking.
“Yes, Mom,” Maggie said quietly, the way she’d learned from a young age.
Her mom stared at her, holding her jaw, her thin hands digging into her skin so hard Maggie wondered if this time she’d leave a visible bruise. She would certainly be sore tomorrow. Then her mom clicked her teeth, dropped her hand and pulled Maggie into a hug.
“Listen I’m sorry, I’m just scared for you.
You have this chance to live a better life, one with a loving husband and beautiful babies, and not this shitty existence I fell into when I got pregnant with you,” her mom said, running slow circles across her back as she hugged her.
Maggie had heard it so many times, how her mother had gotten pregnant and had been forced to marry her dad when they were in high school.
She doubted her parents ever loved each other.
They spent most of the time carefully orbiting each other until one of them needed an outlet for sex or violence or both.
Maggie had heard it all. Grown up hearing it.
It was the reason she, to her mother’s dismay, hadn’t tried to date.
Dating led to sex, and sex sounded not great.
Plus, every time her mother had pointed out “the right kind of boy to knock you up,” she never felt anything towards them.
She assumed it was because she and her mother didn’t share the same interest in men.
Her mom stopped her circles and then pulled away from her and smiled before tucking Maggie’s hair behind her ears.
“Listen, you know what I told you, men only want one thing, and you just need to find the right one to give it to. The fact that this Blake girl could be bringing you into different circles with rich boys, I mean that’s huge, that's a big opportunity for you. Even for us, right? You’ll need me around to help raise your babies and you can’t leave me here either,” her mother said, desperate and pleading.
Despite everything, Maggie agreed with that last part. If she ever made it out of this trailer, she would not leave her mother behind. For all her flaws, her mother loved her, had protected her. Her mother had taken full on beatings for her. Maggie saw her mom as just as trapped as she was.
“Yes Mom, of course,” she said, and her mother’s smile spread across her face, cracking through the drunk and desperate woman, giving her a glimpse of who she thought her mom was, before her and before Carl. The person she deserved to be.
Once her mother left her room, Maggie went to her small dresser and opened the top drawer, pulling out two door stoppers she’d stolen from school.
She placed them under her door, and then, after making sure her window was locked, she turned off her light and crawled underneath her bed, just in case.
She grabbed the flashlight she kept under there, as well as the issue of Home Digest she’d taken from the nurse’s office when she was in middle school.
It was long worn and the pages were wrinkled, but it still brought her comfort on nights like tonight.
She sat under the bed, holding the flashlight and looking through the pictures of gorgeous homes, full of warmth and brightness, complete with the whole white picket fence and all.
She wondered what her fellow cheerleaders would think of her if they knew how she lived.
If they could see her right now under a bed, clutching the old pages of a magazine like a safety blanket.
Her thoughts went to where they’d been going just about every night recently, to Diana.
Diana with her orchard and pretty bedroom and functioning family.
What would Diana say if she knew how Maggie lived?
If she knew she had been spending time with trailer trash after school, inviting it into her home.
Maggie didn’t want to think about the sympathetic looks Diana would give her, how Diana probably couldn’t even imagine a world in which Maggie’s existed.
And yet, it was the thought of Diana, her warm touch and easy energy, that always soothed Maggie in these moments.
She wasn’t sure if it was Diana or the idea of what it would be like to be Diana, or perhaps it was both.
The only part that troubled her was the idea of Diana’s lips and the realization that Maggie was increasingly wanting to know what they felt like, tasted like.
Would they taste of the apples Diana always seemed to smell like?
And when she got to that line of thinking, the worry ebbed and gave way and she was once again soothed at the thought of that scent, of apples and Diana.
Maggie knew that there were girls who liked girls, she’d never really met one, and she certainly didn’t think she was one.
But then again, Maggie had never truly liked anyone the way she found herself fixated on Diana.
The idea felt absurd and she was terrified at what her mother might think.
But beyond those two feelings, there was something there, maybe curiosity?
It was like a path was unfolding in front of her, one only she currently knew about. And that was just as intriguing.
Still, she knew her mother would kill her if she thought for a second her daughter was different in that way.
Maggie didn’t need to think about all of the things her mother would say.
No, once her eyelids were heavy, her mind wandered back to Diana.
Normally she pulled out the magazine and fantasized about a new spacious and safe home.
One so different from the one she was currently in.
But tonight, safety came in the form of remembering Diana’s touch and her laugh.
Holding onto the memory, she clicked off the flashlight and went to sleep, hoping the attempts to open her door wouldn’t wake her later.
She didn’t think she could stand the terror a second time.