Short story by Kevin D. Woodall
Let Me Love and Steal
I can hear my Culture Club mix CD playing from somewhere nearby, barely audible over a child’s screams and a hissing sound. I made that CD myself, you know. It plays "Karma Chameleon" and "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" over and over again, which is exactly what I like to hear. Did I mention that I made it myself? I must have.
I raise my head up and see my car turned upside down and fifteen feet away from me. I’m laying on the ground off the edge of the empty highway. The sky is orangey and the sun is setting and the heat is almost unbearable. My lip is wet, and I can feel something warm and thick trickle down over my mouth. I can taste the copper and I'm guessing that I’ve got a bloody nose. So that's great.
"Kaaarma karma karma karma karmachameeeeleeeonnnn," sings my car stereo, somehow still working in spite of the crash.
I’m not even sure exactly what happened. I don’t remember how I wound up over here while my car’s over there, probably wrecked. But it’s not my fault; that much I do remember.
We were heading east through the desert, me and our two adopted daughters.
Well, John’s daughters. From before.
Before she left.
Before I came in and stepped into her vacant role as Mother. I took John’s daughters as my own children.
Anyway.
Mary, the five-year old, was asking me where we were going. I turned around and slapped her for distracting me while I was driving, like a good mother should do, and when I looked back we were off the road and tumbling into a ditch. We hit a boulder and rolled and somehow I got away.
And it’s all that little bitch’s fault.
I mean, I guess I could have punished her later. Maybe even should have punished her later. But she’s always talking to me while I drive, and she should know better by now, so it’s really her fault any way you look at it.
John says I try to multitask too much while I drive, but John is full of shit anyway. He lied to me about her, so that’s why I was bringing the girls out here in the first place. They all needed to be punished, the whole family.
Of course, I hadn’t planned to punish them all here specifically, as in on-the-side-of-the-road here, but I guess it’s as good as any place. And, actually, maybe the car crash did the work for me better than I ever could have.
"Sharon! Sharon, help me! Mary’s bleeding everywhere!"
Guess not.
That’ll be the other one. The oldest. Claire. Seventeen. Stuck up little slut. If I hadn’t doped her up and dragged her out to the car in the first place, she wouldn’t have come along for this "camping trip for the girls."
She’s an ingrate and a whore.
Dressing in ripped up jeans and black t-shirts and piercing her ears and nose like street trash and never wearing anything I buy her with my money.
"Sharon! Oh god, oh god..."
Claire’s yells trail off into an anguished mumbling. I look up and I can see that her head is bleeding and one of her arms is twisting in a way that I want to laugh at. She’s trying to pull Mary out from the car but it’s going to be hard with that broken arm. Claire is bending over and I can see her underwear sticking out from her jeans like some stupid whore.
She doesn’t know how much I’ve given—no, how much I’ve sacrificed—just to make her happy. I work my ass off for four hours a day, three days a week to pay for my beauty treatments so John won’t have to pay for them. And then I go shopping and pick out cute outfits for all us girls. I do what any good mother would, and should do.
I come home tired and Claire has the audacity to ask me to take over watching Mary so she can do her homework. She doesn’t understand how exhausting it is arranging window displays. She doesn’t know how much walking I do to find deals on cute outfits. She’s just a selfish little whore. John never saw it, but I did from the very beginning.
"Oh no, Mary, please don’t let it be too bad, please..."
I move myself into a sitting position and watch Claire trying to pull Mary out. There’s a lot of bleeding going on over there between the two of them.
Claire can’t even be bothered to call me "Mother." She still only calls John’s ex "Mother," even though I buy her and Mary so many cute clothes. It’s still "Sharon" this, "Sharon" that. She always says, "No Sharon, I can’t get you a bowl of ice-cream even though you’re so exhausted from working and shopping and buying me clothes. Our Mother, the whore I look up to and model my life on, is here to take us 'home.'"
I don’t understand why they can’t love me, or call me "Mother." That’s all I ever wanted. Well that and for John to think I was beautiful. Which I thought he did.
Why won’t they love me?
I shop for them!
Claire is crying and sweating and bleeding. She looks at me and yells again—she’s surprised to see that I’m okay, I think. I get up and test my legs. I feel fine. That’s fantastic.
I walk as calmly as I can over to the wrecked car. It looks like Mary’s arm and leg have long, deep gashes in them. Claire’s bent arm looks even funnier up close.
"Thank Jesus—are you okay, Sharon?"
"Oh, so now you care about me?"
Claire looks at me. Her face is horrified. I want to giggle. "Right now? Are you fucking serious? My sister is dying! We have more important things to do than deal with your crazy shit right now!"
Well, now that’s unacceptable. I can’t have the whore-princess talk to me like that.
So I kick her broken arm and watch her crumple with a scream to the ground.
And then I kick her again and again and she screams again and again.
"I’ve told you too many times to respect your mother and you never listen!"
She sobs in response.
"Now hush, and don’t worry; Mother is going to take care of everything."
I wipe the blood away from my nose and wipe my now-bloody hand on Claire’s ugly t-shirt. She rocks back and forth, her mouth moving noiselessly. I walk around to where Mary is lying, stuck under the seat. Her eyes are wide and she’s wailing. What a stupid fucking baby.
"Sh-sh-sh-arry, hep me, I’m hurty!"
"Muh muh muh, 'hep me,' 'hurty'—why can’t you talk right you idiot child?"
She cries harder. I thought that they were supposed to be able to talk by now. Leave it to John’s ex to produce a defective.
He thought I didn’t see what was happening over the last few months, but I can see everything. He was cheating on me—with her. He said he wasn’t. He said it was "her turn for the kids" because they had "shared custody."
But I know he was lying.
Why else would she keep intruding on our lives? She was trying to worm her way back in and ruin my happy family. Taking our children away—and the children! Don’t you even get me started on the children! They willingly go with her. Practically spitting in my face every other weekend.
If she loved them so much, she wouldn’t have left in the first place.
I’m the one that stepped in. I’m the Mother.
And I’ll be goddamned if they don’t all know it.
But now I’m hearing Claire’s voice coming from the other side of the car. I can’t understand her through her blubbering. It sounds like she’s saying "Ay-ay-ay kint fel myarmdad—"
Wait. "Dad."
That little slut. I knew I should’ve taken away her cell phone.
Mary isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and I’m sure as hell not pulling her out now. No way. As I run back to Claire I can hear Mary’s wailing grow louder.
Claire sees me come around the car and tries to crawl away while saying in a voice that’s suddenly much calmer, "Dad I think we’re in the—"
She screams as I stomp down on her broken arm. She tries to keep her phone away from me, but I grab it out of her hand easily enough. I can hear John yelling before I even have the phone up to my ear.
"—t’s happening, Claire, CLAIRE!?"
"Hi darling. Everything is—"
"Sharon, what’s going on, what have you done with my daughters!?"
"—fine, everything is fine."
"Everything is not fine! Your note said you took my daughters—"
"Actually, I think you’ll find that it’s 'our' daughters, not "my" daughters. You inconsiderate asshole."
"Sharon, we’ve only been dating for seven months, and I know things have been moving fast, but—"
"Daddy, help me..." moans Claire at my feet.
"Shut up, you filthy little whore! Sorry darling—Claire is misbehaving! You know how she is. I think she gets it from that other one—you know, the one you’re cheating on me with."
"Sharon, please, listen, I don’t know what’s happened, or why you’ve taken my daughters, but please, just come home. We can talk about it together, just please, bring my daughters back."
"Oh I can’t do that. My car’s totaled and our daughters will be dead soon anyway."
I take a moment to revel in the silence of everything except for my CD and Mary’s constant crying.
I start to sing along. "You come and gooooo, you come and gooooooooo."
Static comes through the phone speaker, and Claire seems to have forgotten her mangled arm. I can hear John speak again.
"What did you say?"
"It was going to look like an accident, but the slut just had to tip my hand early. I guess you might as well hear the truth from me."
"Sharon—Sharon, no one has to die."
"Yes they do. You wanted to ruin this family by letting her take our daughters."
"Sharon—they’re Jackie’s daughters too, she has a legal right—"
"DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK THAT FILTH TO ME YOU FUCKING BASTARD I HATE YOU I HATE YOU! I KNOW YOUR MIND! YOU WANT HER BACK! ALL THE WORK I DO ONLY FOR YOU TO GO BACK TO THAT WHORE! I’M THE MOTHER, I AM I AM I AM—"
I’m kicking Claire’s arm with each word. I assume John can hear her screams clearly, as his voice is cracking.
"Sharon! Sharon, please, you—you need help, an—and I want to help and make it better, just come home and—"
"There’s nothing more for you to say, you backstabber. You’re trying to kill this family. I’ve worked far too hard at being a good mother to stand by and watch you destroy everything we’ve built together. Our daughters are no better. An idiot child and a slut. I’m going to do my motherly duty and punish all of this awful behavior."
I can hear him screaming as I end the call. I look down on Claire, and she stares silently back, her mouth agape. The phone rings again and I ignore the call as I stuff the phone into my pocket. I grab Claire by her good arm and drag her over to the car.
"You know, I was just going to punish you and your sister by leaving you here in the desert. And I was going to make it look like an accident. A camping trip, some time with just us girls, gone horribly wrong. I had some drugs to make it look natural. You would’ve just gone in your sleep and I would’ve tragically survived instead of the children. It would have been punishment enough for John. But you’ve forced my hand, you little tramp. You shouldn’t have called your father. You should have left this all to your mother."
"...not m-m-my mother..."
"SHUT UP!"
I open the passenger door and stuff her inside. I wrap the seat belt around her so she can’t move her good arm. Then I reach over, pop the trunk, and hear a thud from the back. That’ll be the gasoline can falling to the ground. Mary sobs and bleeds and Claire tries to reach back to her. She can’t. I laugh in her face as I crawl out, stand up, and grab the gas.
The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. I guess I could turn it off, but I want John to keep trying, keep thinking that maybe, maybe I’ll pick it up this time. All the while, I hum along to Culture Club while I pour gasoline over and in and around the overturned car.
"'Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry?' Well, I guess you all did! No one really thought about how I felt!"
After the gas can is empty, and the phone is still ringing, I press the answer button. John’s yelling, something about the police and satellites and finding me and the children. I talk over him into the phone.
"You made a mistake. Now it’s time for you to accept your punishment like a big boy."
With that, I toss the phone into the car, where it lands next to Claire. I can hear John yelling still, tinny through the speaker. Claire, bound to the seat, stares at me, saying something quietly.
"What do you want, slut?"
"...i-insane..."
I smile back at her and pull a lighter free from the glove compartment. "Insane." Please. This family has fallen so far. I’m going to make it right.
Claire keeps mumbling, "...d-don’t know, how...what happened...what made..."
"I’m just trying to protect our family, you ignorant whore."
John is still yelling through the speaker. Claire falls silent. Mary is still crying. I climb into the car on the driver’s side.
"Now hush, children. Don’t worry. Mother is only doing what’s best for the family. I want you to understand that. This is all for our family. I sacrificed so much for you, and you never even tried to understand. And I’m going to keep on sacrificing even now. For our family."
I light the lighter.
"I love you both, even if you never loved me."
Even if they won’t have me as their mother, and even if John wants to betray me, I’ll still do my motherly duties. It’s a mother’s duty to discipline, after all.
And I’ll stay with them until the end, as any good mother would do.
With that, I drop the burning lighter into the gasoline.
And I do my best to calm the screaming children by singing along to the music.
"'Do you really want to maaaake me crryyyyyyyyy...?'"
I can hear my Culture Club mix CD playing from somewhere nearby, barely audible over a child’s screams and a hissing sound. I made that CD myself, you know. It plays "Karma Chameleon" and "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" over and over again, which is exactly what I like to hear. Did I mention that I made it myself? I must have.
I raise my head up and see my car turned upside down and fifteen feet away from me. I’m laying on the ground off the edge of the empty highway. The sky is orangey and the sun is setting and the heat is almost unbearable. My lip is wet, and I can feel something warm and thick trickle down over my mouth. I can taste the copper and I'm guessing that I’ve got a bloody nose. So that's great.
"Kaaarma karma karma karma karmachameeeeleeeonnnn," sings my car stereo, somehow still working in spite of the crash.
I’m not even sure exactly what happened. I don’t remember how I wound up over here while my car’s over there, probably wrecked. But it’s not my fault; that much I do remember.
We were heading east through the desert, me and our two adopted daughters.
Well, John’s daughters. From before.
Before she left.
Before I came in and stepped into her vacant role as Mother. I took John’s daughters as my own children.
Anyway.
Mary, the five-year old, was asking me where we were going. I turned around and slapped her for distracting me while I was driving, like a good mother should do, and when I looked back we were off the road and tumbling into a ditch. We hit a boulder and rolled and somehow I got away.
And it’s all that little bitch’s fault.
I mean, I guess I could have punished her later. Maybe even should have punished her later. But she’s always talking to me while I drive, and she should know better by now, so it’s really her fault any way you look at it.
John says I try to multitask too much while I drive, but John is full of shit anyway. He lied to me about her, so that’s why I was bringing the girls out here in the first place. They all needed to be punished, the whole family.
Of course, I hadn’t planned to punish them all here specifically, as in on-the-side-of-the-road here, but I guess it’s as good as any place. And, actually, maybe the car crash did the work for me better than I ever could have.
"Sharon! Sharon, help me! Mary’s bleeding everywhere!"
Guess not.
That’ll be the other one. The oldest. Claire. Seventeen. Stuck up little slut. If I hadn’t doped her up and dragged her out to the car in the first place, she wouldn’t have come along for this "camping trip for the girls."
She’s an ingrate and a whore.
Dressing in ripped up jeans and black t-shirts and piercing her ears and nose like street trash and never wearing anything I buy her with my money.
"Sharon! Oh god, oh god..."
Claire’s yells trail off into an anguished mumbling. I look up and I can see that her head is bleeding and one of her arms is twisting in a way that I want to laugh at. She’s trying to pull Mary out from the car but it’s going to be hard with that broken arm. Claire is bending over and I can see her underwear sticking out from her jeans like some stupid whore.
She doesn’t know how much I’ve given—no, how much I’ve sacrificed—just to make her happy. I work my ass off for four hours a day, three days a week to pay for my beauty treatments so John won’t have to pay for them. And then I go shopping and pick out cute outfits for all us girls. I do what any good mother would, and should do.
I come home tired and Claire has the audacity to ask me to take over watching Mary so she can do her homework. She doesn’t understand how exhausting it is arranging window displays. She doesn’t know how much walking I do to find deals on cute outfits. She’s just a selfish little whore. John never saw it, but I did from the very beginning.
"Oh no, Mary, please don’t let it be too bad, please..."
I move myself into a sitting position and watch Claire trying to pull Mary out. There’s a lot of bleeding going on over there between the two of them.
Claire can’t even be bothered to call me "Mother." She still only calls John’s ex "Mother," even though I buy her and Mary so many cute clothes. It’s still "Sharon" this, "Sharon" that. She always says, "No Sharon, I can’t get you a bowl of ice-cream even though you’re so exhausted from working and shopping and buying me clothes. Our Mother, the whore I look up to and model my life on, is here to take us 'home.'"
I don’t understand why they can’t love me, or call me "Mother." That’s all I ever wanted. Well that and for John to think I was beautiful. Which I thought he did.
Why won’t they love me?
I shop for them!
Claire is crying and sweating and bleeding. She looks at me and yells again—she’s surprised to see that I’m okay, I think. I get up and test my legs. I feel fine. That’s fantastic.
I walk as calmly as I can over to the wrecked car. It looks like Mary’s arm and leg have long, deep gashes in them. Claire’s bent arm looks even funnier up close.
"Thank Jesus—are you okay, Sharon?"
"Oh, so now you care about me?"
Claire looks at me. Her face is horrified. I want to giggle. "Right now? Are you fucking serious? My sister is dying! We have more important things to do than deal with your crazy shit right now!"
Well, now that’s unacceptable. I can’t have the whore-princess talk to me like that.
So I kick her broken arm and watch her crumple with a scream to the ground.
And then I kick her again and again and she screams again and again.
"I’ve told you too many times to respect your mother and you never listen!"
She sobs in response.
"Now hush, and don’t worry; Mother is going to take care of everything."
I wipe the blood away from my nose and wipe my now-bloody hand on Claire’s ugly t-shirt. She rocks back and forth, her mouth moving noiselessly. I walk around to where Mary is lying, stuck under the seat. Her eyes are wide and she’s wailing. What a stupid fucking baby.
"Sh-sh-sh-arry, hep me, I’m hurty!"
"Muh muh muh, 'hep me,' 'hurty'—why can’t you talk right you idiot child?"
She cries harder. I thought that they were supposed to be able to talk by now. Leave it to John’s ex to produce a defective.
He thought I didn’t see what was happening over the last few months, but I can see everything. He was cheating on me—with her. He said he wasn’t. He said it was "her turn for the kids" because they had "shared custody."
But I know he was lying.
Why else would she keep intruding on our lives? She was trying to worm her way back in and ruin my happy family. Taking our children away—and the children! Don’t you even get me started on the children! They willingly go with her. Practically spitting in my face every other weekend.
If she loved them so much, she wouldn’t have left in the first place.
I’m the one that stepped in. I’m the Mother.
And I’ll be goddamned if they don’t all know it.
But now I’m hearing Claire’s voice coming from the other side of the car. I can’t understand her through her blubbering. It sounds like she’s saying "Ay-ay-ay kint fel myarmdad—"
Wait. "Dad."
That little slut. I knew I should’ve taken away her cell phone.
Mary isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and I’m sure as hell not pulling her out now. No way. As I run back to Claire I can hear Mary’s wailing grow louder.
Claire sees me come around the car and tries to crawl away while saying in a voice that’s suddenly much calmer, "Dad I think we’re in the—"
She screams as I stomp down on her broken arm. She tries to keep her phone away from me, but I grab it out of her hand easily enough. I can hear John yelling before I even have the phone up to my ear.
"—t’s happening, Claire, CLAIRE!?"
"Hi darling. Everything is—"
"Sharon, what’s going on, what have you done with my daughters!?"
"—fine, everything is fine."
"Everything is not fine! Your note said you took my daughters—"
"Actually, I think you’ll find that it’s 'our' daughters, not "my" daughters. You inconsiderate asshole."
"Sharon, we’ve only been dating for seven months, and I know things have been moving fast, but—"
"Daddy, help me..." moans Claire at my feet.
"Shut up, you filthy little whore! Sorry darling—Claire is misbehaving! You know how she is. I think she gets it from that other one—you know, the one you’re cheating on me with."
"Sharon, please, listen, I don’t know what’s happened, or why you’ve taken my daughters, but please, just come home. We can talk about it together, just please, bring my daughters back."
"Oh I can’t do that. My car’s totaled and our daughters will be dead soon anyway."
I take a moment to revel in the silence of everything except for my CD and Mary’s constant crying.
I start to sing along. "You come and gooooo, you come and gooooooooo."
Static comes through the phone speaker, and Claire seems to have forgotten her mangled arm. I can hear John speak again.
"What did you say?"
"It was going to look like an accident, but the slut just had to tip my hand early. I guess you might as well hear the truth from me."
"Sharon—Sharon, no one has to die."
"Yes they do. You wanted to ruin this family by letting her take our daughters."
"Sharon—they’re Jackie’s daughters too, she has a legal right—"
"DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK THAT FILTH TO ME YOU FUCKING BASTARD I HATE YOU I HATE YOU! I KNOW YOUR MIND! YOU WANT HER BACK! ALL THE WORK I DO ONLY FOR YOU TO GO BACK TO THAT WHORE! I’M THE MOTHER, I AM I AM I AM—"
I’m kicking Claire’s arm with each word. I assume John can hear her screams clearly, as his voice is cracking.
"Sharon! Sharon, please, you—you need help, an—and I want to help and make it better, just come home and—"
"There’s nothing more for you to say, you backstabber. You’re trying to kill this family. I’ve worked far too hard at being a good mother to stand by and watch you destroy everything we’ve built together. Our daughters are no better. An idiot child and a slut. I’m going to do my motherly duty and punish all of this awful behavior."
I can hear him screaming as I end the call. I look down on Claire, and she stares silently back, her mouth agape. The phone rings again and I ignore the call as I stuff the phone into my pocket. I grab Claire by her good arm and drag her over to the car.
"You know, I was just going to punish you and your sister by leaving you here in the desert. And I was going to make it look like an accident. A camping trip, some time with just us girls, gone horribly wrong. I had some drugs to make it look natural. You would’ve just gone in your sleep and I would’ve tragically survived instead of the children. It would have been punishment enough for John. But you’ve forced my hand, you little tramp. You shouldn’t have called your father. You should have left this all to your mother."
"...not m-m-my mother..."
"SHUT UP!"
I open the passenger door and stuff her inside. I wrap the seat belt around her so she can’t move her good arm. Then I reach over, pop the trunk, and hear a thud from the back. That’ll be the gasoline can falling to the ground. Mary sobs and bleeds and Claire tries to reach back to her. She can’t. I laugh in her face as I crawl out, stand up, and grab the gas.
The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. I guess I could turn it off, but I want John to keep trying, keep thinking that maybe, maybe I’ll pick it up this time. All the while, I hum along to Culture Club while I pour gasoline over and in and around the overturned car.
"'Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry?' Well, I guess you all did! No one really thought about how I felt!"
After the gas can is empty, and the phone is still ringing, I press the answer button. John’s yelling, something about the police and satellites and finding me and the children. I talk over him into the phone.
"You made a mistake. Now it’s time for you to accept your punishment like a big boy."
With that, I toss the phone into the car, where it lands next to Claire. I can hear John yelling still, tinny through the speaker. Claire, bound to the seat, stares at me, saying something quietly.
"What do you want, slut?"
"...i-insane..."
I smile back at her and pull a lighter free from the glove compartment. "Insane." Please. This family has fallen so far. I’m going to make it right.
Claire keeps mumbling, "...d-don’t know, how...what happened...what made..."
"I’m just trying to protect our family, you ignorant whore."
John is still yelling through the speaker. Claire falls silent. Mary is still crying. I climb into the car on the driver’s side.
"Now hush, children. Don’t worry. Mother is only doing what’s best for the family. I want you to understand that. This is all for our family. I sacrificed so much for you, and you never even tried to understand. And I’m going to keep on sacrificing even now. For our family."
I light the lighter.
"I love you both, even if you never loved me."
Even if they won’t have me as their mother, and even if John wants to betray me, I’ll still do my motherly duties. It’s a mother’s duty to discipline, after all.
And I’ll stay with them until the end, as any good mother would do.
With that, I drop the burning lighter into the gasoline.
And I do my best to calm the screaming children by singing along to the music.
"'Do you really want to maaaake me crryyyyyyyyy...?'"
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Kevin D. Woodall lives in a snow globe in the far reaches of the north. He is the co-curator/editor for Memoir Mixtapes, which, if you enjoy music and reading life stories, you should definitely check out. You can read his dumb tweets if you want: @Kevin_D_Woodall. He drinks so much coffee these days he can now smell and hear the passage of time.
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