GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2022/23
MARTA PALANDRI
‘Sacred Hearts’
MOTHER IS A THING FROM THE WOODS. Not literally. We just live by the woods, and she looks like a piece of it has one day detached from tree bark or a spittle of moss and has made its way into the house and has morphed into Mother. She was the first to arrive, naturally, and then there was I, and then Carly, and the Baby arrived last, tumbling onto the floor. We children are not made of the woods. I think Mother knows this. Sometimes she shows us her teeth like she doesn’t recognize us. She has small fangs that look a little like a dog’s. We also had them at some point, were born with them, poking from our baby gums. But they fell, inevitably, like milk teeth, leaping from newborndom. She has collected them all and keeps them in a jar in the kitchen. Mother licks our faces with her tongue flat and large, nuzzles us to bed and blows lightly on our closed eyelids, like a gentle breeze from the forest outside.
It’s hard to know what Mother is thinking of us, whether we are her pups or impostors.
At night, Mother stands in the living room and peers at the thing that made her: the black outside the windows, the treeline that winds around our yard like the spikes of a fence. She is an owl when she hunches in front of the open fridge door, the blue light painting the shape of her nose. She sticks in her hand and picks up an egg, swallows it without chewing or peeling, the whole thing, right down her throat. I watch the bulge of the egg slide down slowly like an unfortunate goat in a boa’s lock. She cracks open jars of pickles and gulps down the brine, leaving the naked pickles on the counter overnight to dry out or rot. She is a mother on the porch, pressing a mouse to her chest, sometimes a squirrel. She brings the creature up to her face and murmurs into its little ear. The animal squirms and wriggles itself out of her embrace, rushes back into the dark brush around our clearing, vanishes in a dart. I don’t know what she says to them. I guess it’s messages.
*
I would write messages to Mother if I could, but she doesn’t like to read, and in front of her I lose the words. She tells us little, but when she does, it comes down on us like lightning on flatland. Recently, I found out something new about Mother. We are not the first children she has had. I found this out when she screamed at me, her yell a gust of wind pierced by trees. Shut your mouth, she yelled. Shut your mouth or you are going right back there with the others.
She had left the car door open. Her car is black and shines like a beetle. I climbed in the driver’s seat and grabbed the steering wheel with two hands. I didn’t mean to drive, but I have watched Mother do it so many times, on our way to school, to the park to meet the other mothers and children. I could have, had I wished to. Mother loves this car. It is a gift from the Baby’s father. Not that he knows he is the Baby’s father. His name was Roger. He smelled like soap and thick red wine. He left her and did not take the car; it was a gift, after all. When Mother walks back outside, she sees me with the hand on the ignition, one foot barely reaching the gas pedal, as I pretend to be her. She thinks I am trying to drive her car away, or something. Drive it right into the house. I open my mouth to tell her that no, it’s just fun, just practice.
Shut your mouth. Get out this instant. The clearing around the house shrinks and bloats in the booming sound of her, and all I can see is Mother’s boa-like throat, her finger pointing at her belly. Back in there with the others, you heard me.
What others?, I ask, and she bares her teeth at me, not hearing me. What others? My voice is a sigh in the echoing clearing. The birds that have been chatting perched on the tree branches take flight. She leaves before I can hop off the car seat, my knees weakened by the discovery.
*
I don’t know who the others are, but the jealousy claws at my throat. We are three already: there is me, and I am the oldest; and then there is Carly, who looks a bit like a raccoon, with big black circles around his eyes; and then there is the Baby. It is the three of us and it is already a crowd to me, Carly soiling his clothes in the dirt near the treeline and the Baby kicking its legs and not doing much more than that, to be honest.
Mother loves the Baby very much. She tickles it and coos, and picks it up and makes it fly around the room, holding it by his chubby middle, as it kicks some more and spreads its buttery arms like wings and cackles. She laughs, her teeth bare but not in the way she does with Carly and me; more like a smile. Mother is not herself when she plays with the Baby, or feeds it, or changes its diapers. When she is with the Baby, she looks like all the other mothers we see at the park in the afternoon, with good hair and apricot smells and big bags overflowing with toys and handkerchiefs for runny noses, and prams that can morph into something else in seconds, like transformers. She smiles and says Hello in that high note that other mothers make. When she has had a good day around the Baby, she doesn’t eat eggs whole nor drinks from pickle jars in the middle of the night, but picks daintily at lucid slices of pressed rye bread slathered with low-cal cottage cheese. This lasts a few days at a time; then one night I get up to get water and find her sitting on the floor, salty brine running down her chin.
*
Some mothers from the park come over with their children. Mother has patted down her hair with water, brushed it, and made a cake which reminds me a little of Carly’s mud cakes, but I don’t tell. The mothers take in our house with raised eyebrows, and I think how much higher the eyebrows would go if they had seen it before we all, except for the Baby, spent the morning sweeping and dusting and scrubbing the caked dirt on the porch floor. The pillows have been picked up, the stained ones turned over, and the carpets have been vacuumed. The sticks and twigs and foliage that normally pepper the living room have been swept up by me.
The women pat us on the head, and they coo at the Baby with silly voices.
… so big! And how old? How many teeth?
Mother lifts the Baby’s lip and reveals a small fang poking from its candy gums. Soon it will fall, and it will be replaced by a flat, regular molar, like ours. I know she hopes that this one will stay, that it will be a real fang to grow in its place. We let her dream. The Baby is also not made of the woods. We know it and she knows it, but she doesn’t like to think about it.
The park mothers’ children run around, poke at our things and at us. They want to play and we let them, like Mother has told us to do. Carly shows them the spot on the porch where he makes his mud cakes, and they crouch next to him to make some together. I watch them as they plunge their small hands in-between the floorboards to get the juiciest bits of dirt, like Carly tells them to, one finger raised in wisdom.
Have you been inside your mothers' bellies?, I ask the park children. The tall lanky one giggles. Duh! You too. I scoff, shake my head. No, not before I was born. I mean recently. They shrug and keep digging, following the directions given by Carly, who now eyes me wearily.
Don’t worry, she’s crazy, he reassures them, worried I will scare his park friends away from his mud bakery, chewing on the dirt under his fingernails.
*
The Baby has managed to make Mother angry. This is unprecedented, and Carly and I look with big eyes as Mother pulls on her hair and hisses at it.
We don’t know what the Baby has done. It sits on the floor on his fat behind, as usual, grabbing at his paw feet and babbling.
Is Baby hurt?, tries Carly. Mother growls in our general direction. In her hand is a wet thing: the remains of something of hers that is shapeless to us, gnawed on, something gray.
We only know that the Baby has done it, and it has now been demoted. I think that maybe its fang will save the Baby, bring it back to glory in her eyes, once Mother has calmed down.
She keeps muttering; inaudible words trickle down her chin like poisonous goo. The Baby holds onto its feet, looks at her, and emits a joyful, high-pitched scream. The hole of its mouth is smooth and pink with gums, not a tooth in sight.
*
It’s a hot Saturday afternoon and we are at one of the park children’s birthday party. There are long white tables lined with plastic cups of all colors. Each cup carries a child’s name. Mother grabs two cups in between her fingers and with a marker writes our names. The letters have chubby wriggly limbs that make them look like spiders.
We drink orange juice out of the cups; we play on the trampoline and in the inflatable castle. I jump and jump, trying to get as high as I can. Carly tires soon and sits in the castle's corner, pinching the plastic bulging walls, scratching it, as if digging. The Baby has been left inside, surrounded by toys the hosts have squished into an old playpen. I look at Mother, who sits across the lawn at one round table lined in baby blue. She is wearing lipstick, and her red lips stand against the white of her linen shirt. She never wears white, or shirts. It is stiff and crinkled. Other children run around the lawn, torpedoing around the table. The other mothers hold thin-stemmed glasses as if they were picked flowers and giggle together, smile amiably at the children as they rush by, fix collars and wipe mouths with pastel-colored handkerchiefs. Mother doesn’t look our way. I see her head bob, nodding, as another mother raises a bottle and cocks her head at her.
The sky is becoming orange with sun when we hear a big crash coming from inside the house. It is so loud that many in the garden stop whatever they are doing, and many among mothers and fathers and children follow the sound inside. The adults walk quickly, still maintaining decorum; the children run ahead, push each other, pull each other back by the collars, wanting to be the first ones to find out what has happened. I run, too, and stand on the tip of my toes to glimpse what is going on. I see the playpen on the carpet, overturned.
One of its hard plastic corners is on the floor, lying amidst shattered glass. The baby lies on its stomach, its belly and chubby knees covered in small cuts. My breath catches in my throat, until I realize it is laughing, shrieking even, amused by the overall attention. Its joyful screeches stand out against the thick silence that now hangs in the living room. One mother screams, and this is not joyful, but is terror-laden. While our own Mother sweeps down, bird-like, and picks up the Baby, who is cackling madly, and holds it close to her chest.
Outside with you.
Flowers of blood bloom on her white shirt as she carries the clueless Baby to the garden, followed by a small group of other mothers holding their hands close to their faces and making high-pitched noises, a flock of birds. The remaining adults cordon off the glass-covered carpet with their bodies to keep away the children, who push and crane their necks to see the shards and the bloodstains. Some children cry, wide-mouthed. I find Carly, kneeling close to one of the adult’s feet and reaching for a reddened piece of glass. Don’t touch that, I say, but he has already grabbed it, unbeknownst to the adult towering above, and has slipped it in his pocket. I grab him by the hand and pull him outside, screaming for Mother. The remaining sun glares into our eyes. Another mother interjects us on the lawn and tells us to be good children, and I know that with this she means for us to shut up. Behind her, Mother is holding the Baby to her chest, and it laughs, pointlessly, reaching for her breast with its chubby hand. Mother’s eyes are flat and black. I think about the children who had gone back up into her belly. Have they made a mess? Have they cried? Have they been good children? Inadvertently, the Baby kicks Mother’s belly, and she, unseen by all but me, brings it up close to her face and gives it a shake, hissing words through teeth.
*
Mother is out long in the woods one afternoon while we are busy with homework at the kitchen table, pools of sunlight on our yellowing notebooks. She hasn't done it since the Baby was born on the patio floor and all the birds have lifted in flight hearing their joint scream of new life, like a knife held against the morning sky. When the other mothers ask Mother what hospital were her children born in, she lies and says Sacred Heart, winks at us. You are my sacred hearts, she tells us in the car, but I think her sacred hearts are the other children in there, the ones that have gone up, all snug inside her close to her organs.
When Mother comes back from her runs, she likes to go to bed for a while, sometimes until late at night, or the next morning. She climbs through her bedroom window, and we hear her toenails claw at the floorboards. Then she crawls into bed, and all we hear is a low growl that makes the house hum. Carly and I call these days the Stray Days, because we can act like stray puppies. We hate Stray Days but we also love them; when we are done with our homework, we go about barefoot and missing pieces of clothing, just like Mother. We run into the garden, lap the water from the hose, track mud across the whole living room. We crouch close to the floor, touch foreheads, and exchange secret words. We are not the first children, I confess to Carly. He giggles and turns away.
We are outside plucking moss when we hear the high-pitched cry of the Baby. It's like a needle piercing the milky afternoon. It goes on and on, desperate for an audience. Carly covers his ears. When we get to it in its crib, we can see a bunch of small teeth poke through its red gums like tiny knives, making them bleed a little, a watery blood. They are squared, flat, tame teeth. We feed the Baby with the bottle of milk from the fridge, reserved for Stray Days, but the Baby unlatches from the teat and resumes its wailing. Shhh, says Carly. I pick it up and rock it back and forth, but Mother has heard. The low growl that comes from her room grows, then becomes a trembling thing, follows the Baby’s wailing. It changes and dances with it, traveling from the floor up to our feet. It turns into a sentence, becomes words. Stop it. Stop it. The Baby cries louder, as if offended. Carly bites on his nails as I press the bottle against the Baby’s small flaring mouth and the voice rises and distorts and becomes a wave, it says stop it. Stop it! Make it stop!
When she stalks into the room, her eyes are like the smallest burning coals. Little branches and twigs spring from her hair, reminding me of a video I saw of a deer with moss wrapped around its antlers smashing its face into a rock. She looks at Carly and Carly squirms, holds onto my shirt. Then she looks at me, and then at the Baby, kicking and fussing, its screams now filling up the entire room like a red flash.
*
The Baby is the one to go up back in there, and the jealousy is like a cat scratching my stern. When it happens, Carly is taking a nap in front of the TV, the sizzling static enveloping him tight, and I watch the thing take place in the garden. Mother’s eyes are red and weary, like the eyes of sailors in movies; she is wearing a tank top and no shoes. The Baby sits on the grass, babbling as usual. She unhinges her jaw and flops on top of the Baby, who seems not to notice what is happenings around it. It is quick: Mother’s lips wrap around the Baby’s large head and he goes up; I watch it roll down Mother’s throat, like a boa eating a goat, except it’s fast, like when she eats the eggs; I hear the high-pitched cooing even from inside of her monstrously enlarged neck. Then her shape shrinks, her forms go back to what they regularly are, and she strides back inside. I turn away, so she won’t think I have seen. There is no need: the Baby laughs and babbles from inside her belly, and everyone around can hear it.
*
When I tell the park children, they briefly look up from their coloring books and glimpse at me in mild confusion.
Where?, asks the tall lanky one. Back in there, I respond. Up in there.
I tell them so I do not have to face Carly, and Carly knows anyway. He has put up a strange face ever since the Baby has started cackling from inside Mother. He eyes her belly, flat as ever, and I can see him tense his ears like a pup. It must be weird for the Baby back in there, where it had been only shortly ago. It must be what it thinks the world is truly like. I wonder if it met the others yet, but it matters only a little, because I am seeing them soon.
And Carly; I watch his raccoon face and I think with the right set of circumstances, he might be joining us. Or maybe Mother will want to keep one outside, so that she can still join the other mothers at the park. I don’t know. I cannot care.
It is an electric blue morning when I grab the car keys from the key dish and climb in the driver’s seat. I stick the keys in the ignition, push my foot all the way down; the car roars at the house, which sits quietly like an animal about to be gnawed. When I drive the beetle car into its side, I bleed from my forehead. My head pulses as I watch Mother climb through the broken wall. I know that to reach the guttural love I must first go through the guts. The spilling teeth, the rage. She tears her way towards me, her face not crumpled in a frown but snout-like, two slits for eyes and a black tongue. For the second time in a month, Mother eats a sacred heart.
MARTA PALANDRI is a writer born in Italy in 1990, now living in Vienna, Austria. Her work has been published on Soundings East, Poetry Ireland, The White Wall Review and more publications. Her poetry was longlisted for Primers in 2021, and her fiction has been published with Crone Girls Press in 2021.