Stork Page 3

  She paused again, waiting for him to interject, tell her she was wrong, that she was normal, that she wasn’t evil. But nothing, not even the twitch of a finger.

  “I got into drugs…bad. I…I got pregnant…a few times. But I took care of them…aborted them.” Her head felt like it was filling with hot air. Sweat coated her face and mixed with the tears. “Ten…I had ten abortions during that time.”

  His head turned. Eyes bore into her face. Jaw muscles twitched.

  He’s leaving me for sure now. I’m going to be all alone again and I deserve no better. I deserve worse.

  “I had it in my head that it didn’t matter. That my babies would be evil anyway…so I always aborted them. I…I…”

  “Suzey…” His voice crackled in the air like lightning.

  She met his eyes and prepared for the shitstorm he was about to give her. Her tongue bled as her teeth mashed it down.

  “Suzey…it’s not your fault.” And he crawled to her side of the bed and held her. The familiar feeling of his embrace was something she never thought she’d feel again, and his strong arms wrapped around her, his warmth smothering her, felt overpowering. Even the hint of alcohol on his breath was welcome.

  “You…you’re not leaving me? You’re not gonna divorce me?” She spoke into the crook of his arm and she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her.

  “Leave you? Suzey, I married you because I love you. You, the woman you are today, the woman I met three years ago.” He pulled her away so he could look into her face. “Whatever you did…whatever happened in your past…I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t change it because it made you into who you are now, and that’s who I love. That’s who I’ll always love.”

  She clutched him hard, palmed the back of his head.

  “Your grandma is to blame for all this shit. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope she’s dead, hope she died terribly. Putting it in a child’s head that she’s evil? My god, Suze, I’m so sorry.”

  “You know, I have no idea if she’s alive or not. I guess I don’t want to know. If she is, she’s probably in the same old house in Travis.” The notion that the old woman could still be alive poked at something inside of her, filled her with a sense of dread, the same feeling she used to have just before the lashings started. And she couldn’t tell Eddie that she still believed it to a degree, that she had no soul. That the stork would never stop bringing them dead children because she was a bad mother, a mother that had killed ten of her own babies.

  “Well, for that bitch’s sake, she better be dead. Because if I ever find her…”

  Suzey chuckled lightly, hugged him again. “I love you so much, Ed. I was so scared to tell you…I thought you’d run out that door and never come back.”

  “We’re family. I don’t turn my back to my family.” He pressed his hand to her belly, kissed her and rested his forehead against hers. “How did you ever survive out there at such a young age?”

  Her brow bunched up and she pursed her lips. “I just sort of became…numb. Blocked a lot of bad shit out, don’t even remember most of it.” She cupped his face in her hands. “And now I have you. I don’t deserve you, did nothing in my life to warrant any form of happiness, but here you are, and here we are.” She swept the room with her eyes, glanced at her stomach. “And I’ll never take any of it for granted.”

  After another round of hugs and kisses and I love yous, they both lay on their backs, staring at the ceiling fan, fingers intertwined tightly between them.

  “So…I guess that explains it.”

  “Explains what?” she said.

  He giggled, sniffed, turned to his side so he could look at her. “Well…you’re sex drive. It’s always been good, but lately…I don’t know, it’s been…potent.”

  “Potent?” She flushed with embarrassment. Even after all she’d already told him, and even though he took it better than she could have ever dreamed, she decided to leave out the part about the blackouts. If she told him she didn’t even remember having sex with him most of the time, probably ninety percent of the time, he could take it the wrong way. The rest of it was in her past, but this…this problem, was in her now.

  “I don’t know…you’re like an animal.” He scratched his head, sort of looked away. “You’ve even been growling lately. It was kind of strange at first, I admit, but I’m starting to like it.”

  Growling?

  She tightened her grip on his hand. Couldn’t find any words to respond. So she just rolled over, laid her head on his chest, and within a few minutes, had drifted off to sleep.

  ***

  She woke in a dark room. Cold. Alone. She tried to sit up, but something was strapped over her chest, over her arms and legs, and she couldn’t move an inch. Not her bedroom; she wasn’t in her home with her loving husband. Whatever she lay on top of was hard, cold metal.

  The lights cut on, like stadium lights, just above her body, blinding her. Someone stood at the end of the metal table she lay on, someone she couldn’t make out because of the harsh luminescence burning her eyeballs.

  “Who are you? Where the fuck am I?”

  The man tilted his head, studied her for a moment, then stepped closer. Close enough for her to make out his face, close enough for her to see the long, metal rod in his hand. The soft-looking, white feathers coating his arm.

  “What…what are you doing? Let me out of here!”

  The man walked to her side, sort of strutted, his neck bobbing back and forth as he stepped closer to her. He wore doctor’s scrubs, white speckled with red. The downy feathers on his arms had the same crimson stippling. He wore a surgical mask over his face, but his eyes bore into her, huge and black and wet.

  “Let me go…please let me go.”

  His head tilted again as he studied her, then he strutted back to the end of the table, back at her feet. He gripped something there, something Suzey couldn’t see, but she could tell by the grinding sound and the motion of his body that he was cranking something. And ever so slightly, her feet separated from each other, spread wider and wider. A translucent film flicked over the massive orbs of the doctor’s eyes, and her legs were spread wide, felt like they would tear free at her hips like baked chicken drumsticks. The doctor showed her the metal rod again, the end thick with gore that wrapped around it and hung down in tattered ribbons.

  And with a violent surge, he thrust it deep inside of her, swirled it around, pulled it out, and jammed it in again.

  ***

  “On the last house in a little village the storks had built a nest, and the mother stork sat in it with her four young ones, who stretched out their necks and pointed their black beaks—”

  “Please, Grandma. Can’t you tell me a different story?” Suzey said the words though she knew she would probably regret it. She had begun to grow jaded to the constant punishments, feared them less and less each day.

  The old woman lightly shut the book, set it in her lap, leaned forward and glared at her granddaughter. “Another story?”

  “Please?”

  Grandma set the book aside, shifted in her seat, and cleared her throat. “This is a true story.”

  Suzey sat Indian style and rested her elbows on her knees.

  “There once was a girl, a beautiful girl, with hair as yellow as banana peels…”

  Suzey giggled at this image, then mashed her lips over her teeth when Grandma’s eyes thinned to slits.

  “This little girl was born into a good home, a happy home, and she had everything a little girl could ever want. But as she grew older, she became tempted by the devil, as we all are, but she succumbed to the evil, left her loving family behind to pursue the life of a harlot, to feed the mouths of those that hungered for flesh.”

  Suzey shook her head. “Okay, okay…read The Storks again, Grandma. I don’t like this—”

  “And then the harlot became pregnant from the seed of one of any of the hundreds of fornicators she bedded with. But the stork never visited her, never flew to her w
indow, yet her belly continued to swell.”

  “Please…please stop now.”

  “And the whore’s child came screaming into the world, empty, soulless…and evil. An abomination against god, against the great white stork. And then the harlot was killed, an inevitable end to a life of darkness.”

  “No more! Please shut up!”

  “And then the child, the offspring of the devil, was thrust into the arms of her poor grandmother, the loving mother of the little girl that became a whore. But the grandmother knew it was a sign, a sign from god, from the stork. The abomination must be punished, and it is and always will be the grandmother’s burden to show the whore’s child the wrath of god.”

  Grandma’s shoe caught Suzey’s chin in a quick kick that sent the girl flying backward. Her teeth clicked and bit into her tongue, and she writhed on her back as blood spurted into her mouth.

  Grandma rose from her chair, the hardback book in hand, and stood over Suzey. Her eyes showed how much hatred and resentment she held inside, and Suzey knew it would never stop, knew she had to get out of there before it got worse, before she was killed.

  “We will revenge ourselves, whispered the young storks to each other,” Grandma said, always able to recite the book without seeing it. And then the book was over her head. It made a loud slapping sound when it hit Suzey’s flesh, over and over and over again. Pink welts rose from her skin, and she tried to scurry away, but Grandma followed, hitting and kicking and grunting.

  I’m an abomination. I deserve this. I deserve all of this.

  ***

  Suzey pulled the laces of her running shoes tight and headed out the door. The sun shone brutal heat down on top of her, but she soaked it in, relished in it. It was a new day. She hadn’t felt this good, this free, since the day she ran away from Grandma’s, and even that couldn’t compare to how she felt now.

  Yes, when she married Eddie, when she turned her name from Bastion to Buddinger, it was an amazing feeling, a love that bubbled deep within her chest, but now…now she truly felt free. The weight of her secret, her dark past, had been lifted. And she was still married. The man was so understanding, it almost seemed unreal. But now he knew. He knew and he accepted it, accepted her for who she really is.

  The devil’s spawn.

  She glanced at her belly, but it was too early to be showing. In her mind, she spoke to her unborn child, begged it to be healthy, to make it through. With her putrid secret out of her system, out in the air, the longing to be a mother—a real mother—had intensified. She wanted nothing more than to cradle her baby in her arms, cover it with soft kisses, hug Eddie as they looked down on their son or daughter sleeping.

  We’re waiting for you, baby. Mommy and Daddy can’t wait to meet you.

  She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Eddie’s number. By now, his plane would have landed, and though she didn’t want to bother him, just thinking about him and their child filled her with so much excitement, she just had to hear his voice, had to tell him how much she loved him.

  “Everything okay, baby?”

  “I love you.”

  A chuckle. “I love you too, sweetie. That why you called?”

  “You’ve been gone too long already. I miss you so bad.” She heard his voice in a muffled tone, as if he’d covered his phone with his hand.

  “Sorry, baby, I have to go. We’ve just arrived and we’re already late for the meeting.” More muffled talking, a raised voice. “I’ll call you back as soon as I can, all right?”

  “Okay, sorry. I love you.”

  There was no answer, and Suzey kept the phone to her ear for a few minutes before she realized he had hung up already.

  A slight pang of jealousy flared within her, but she laughed it off. He’s at a business meeting, stupid. He just got off his plane, doesn’t have time to baby talk with his needy wife right now.

  She slipped the phone back in her pocket, the device doubling as her mp3 player, and tucked the earphones into her ears. Beethoven oozed into her head as she stretched in the driveway, bending herself in half and touching her toes.

  The gravel track looped around a small pond with twin fountains shooting geysers of water into the air. A children’s playground sat to the right of it along with a half basketball court and a swimming pool.

  You see that, baby? We’ll play there, together, as much as you want.

  As she jogged around the first curve, she passed an elderly couple walking a pair of black labs. The dogs tugged against their leashes, desperate to reach Suzey and slap their tongues across her sweaty flesh. She smiled, gave the couple a slight wave before zooming past them and down the other side of the track.

  The lone duck floated along, its orange feet kicking it across the surface. She wondered briefly why a duck would come here to be alone in such a small pond, but then she saw it, and she nearly stumbled to the ground. Her heart jumped into her throat as she stared at the tall white bird, standing on one foot at the edge of the pond. Its long beak stood atop a stretched neck, and as she approached, the head swirled around too look at her.

  What…what does this mean? How can this be?

  The stork opened its wings, flapped and created ripples on the surface of the water, as if displaying its power to her.

  She almost pulled her phone out to call Eddie again, but stopped herself, took deep breaths and took a seat at the green plastic bench there. The bird walked along, its legs disappearing in the water, and poked its head through the surface every so often, surely in search of a meal.

  “They’re good luck, you know.”

  Suzey had been so entranced by the great bird, she hadn’t noticed the woman standing just to her right, tossing torn bits of hot dog bun into the water. The woman’s voice startled her, and she flinched, then snickered.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you, missy. Just making conversation is all.”

  Suzey stood, approached the woman. As she grew nearer, the woman’s face molded into her grandmother’s, all scowl and hate. But she blinked it away until the woman’s kind face unblurred and smiled at her. “No problem. I was just so…taken by the bird. B-beautiful.” Her eyes pulled her head back toward the stork, but she caught herself and faced the woman again. “I’m Suzey…just moved in a couple of weeks ago.”

  The woman tossed the rest of her bread into the water, wiped her palms on her pants, and approached Suzey with an outstretched hand. “You can just call me Mrs. Hopps. Welcome to the neighborhood, missy. Welcome.”

  Suzey turned again back to the pond and watched the stork, who now stood on its one leg as before, as still as a statue. “What’s a stork doing at a place like this?”

  “Oh, they just like the water. Not too uncommon for one to make its way to a pond like this one here. Gorgeous animal.”

  “Y-yeah. You said something about them being good luck?”

  “Oh, yes. The white stork is a symbol for good luck and fertility. I’m sure you’ve heard that the stork brings babies to parents’ homes, yes?”

  Suzey hugged herself, eyes still on the bird. “Yeah, I might’ve heard something about that.”

  “They say babies souls float in the water, and the storks scoop them up and deliver them.” The woman laughed. “Greeks thought the stork was a baby thief, can you believe that? Took babies away instead of bringing them.”

  The stork suddenly burst into the air, raining droplets of water down into the pond, and took to the sky. Its wingspan stretched impressively wide, and it flapped away. Suzey and the old woman stood in silence and watched for a couple of minutes, squinting against the sun.

  “Looks like it’s got a baby to deliver, yes?” The woman chuckled.

  The duck quacked and picked the bits of floating, soggy bread from the surface, free to eat now that its larger pondmate was gone.

  “Well,” Mrs. Hopps said. “I think it’s time for a turkey sandwich and a nice cold glass of iced tea.” She pointed to the house just behind her. “That’s me there. You up for i
t, missy?”

  “Thank you, but I’ll have to pass. Still got two miles to run to meet my goal.” She pointed to the track and stood from the bench.

  “To be young again, I’ll tell you. The trek from my door just to the pond here is enough for me. Knees can’t take much more than that.” She beamed at Suzey, gave her a light pat on the shoulder. “Hope to see you around again, missy. Don’t go hurting yourself, yes?”

  “Okay, great to meet you, Mrs. Hopps. Maybe I can bring some hamburger buns next time, mix it up a bit.”

  A hearty chuckle. “Oh, yes. That sounds fine.” And she waddled away, back toward her home.

  The people in the neighborhood, though mostly older folks, seemed extremely friendly. The thought of raising a family here filled Suzey with joy, made her excited for their future.

  But she couldn’t help but think the stork was some kind of omen. Out of all the places they could have lived, all the ponds that bird could have chosen, they met here, at this place.

  The stork has never come to visit me before, never brought me a living baby.

  Mrs. Hopps’s words echoed within her skull, about how the Greeks thought the stork to be a baby thief. She looked to the sky, one hand acting as a visor, the other at her stomach, rubbing.

  You can’t have my baby, you bastard. I’ll kill you first.

  ***

  “Where’s your head at, Ed?”

  “Huh? What’s that?” His vision focused and he saw that all the ice in his drink had melted, watered down his Crown Royal.

  “We just scored big on this account, and here you sit, looking like your dog got ran over.” Buford slapped Eddie on the back, knocked his own drink back, spilled crooked lines of liquor down the side of his neck.

  Eddie sipped his drink, but the sting of it didn’t sit right. “I don’t know, man, I’m just…somewhere else right now.”

  Buford whispered something into the ear of the blond bar rat in his lap, slapped her ass as she waddled away. He faced Eddie and chuckled. “These bitches see a man in a nice suit, and they get stars in their eyes, I tell you.” He downed his drink, motioned the bartender for another. “Broad wanted a hundred bucks for a fuck. Anybody sellin’ their pussy for that cheap probably has a dick, know what I’m saying?” Another slap to Eddie’s back.