When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

expects of us. Even other women who know how hard it is. Especially them.

I look at my tired friend. “OK, well, we’ve got some time,” I say. “That spot by the office threads eyebrows in, like, five minutes. Let’s go to New Look across the street and get you a clean shirt too.”

“Why? Do I look crazy?”

“A little. Let’s get you ready for this meeting. And, listen, you can fix this. You tell Aneela that you’re working your ass off to build a career and you had a bad day because you don’t have enough support. And that your dedication to your career means you’ve left your screaming, crying children in substandard care many times for your job and you’re prepared to do it again, this was just a onetime crisis, and she should know you by now and how hard you work.”

Charlie cracks a sad smile. “That just makes me sound like a bad mother.”

“Yeah. It does. But we’re all bad mothers, Charlie. Kids wouldn’t be such assholes if there were any good mothers. Do you know any kids who aren’t assholes?”

“Aneela’s?” she says, eyebrows raised.

“Good point. They’re amazing. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I know for sure that this baby’s an asshole based on the amount he makes me puke alone, but I’m just a paralegal so…”

Laughing now, Charlie says, “Gigi, what the fuck are you talking about? And you have special sauce on your face.”

“Yeah? Let me tell you, I would take a bath in this shit right now if I could,” I say. Then we both laugh and make our way arm in arm down the street, two bad mothers.

7 blood, milk, shit A Wednesday in August 2016, 4:30 p.m. London, Grand Euro Star Lodge Hotel, Room 506

I stare at the wall. I stare at the wall because this room has ceiling tiles like the hospital. So I keep my eyes on the wall, on the TV, on the floor, anywhere else but up.

Trigger warning. That’s a thing. Trigger warnings for documentaries and podcasts and articles in women’s magazines. They do it to be kind. They do it to make sure you’re not ambushed by your pain when you’re just trying to take the bus to work. But like most good intentions, they’re obvious and misguided. Because there’s no trigger warning for ceiling tiles. For the color blue. For the sound a sheet makes when it’s whipped off a mattress. I can handle people talking about birth. But please warn me if we’ll be getting into an elevator with bright fluorescent panel lights. Please warn me if there will be ceiling tiles. The kind with little holes.

People say that you don’t remember the pain. You don’t remember the pain of having a baby because if you remembered it, then no one would have more than one child. They say that and then they laugh and sometimes they touch your arm and wink. It’s true—you don’t remember the pain. But you don’t need to. There are so many other things to remember. There is so much more than the pain.

Shit. More wine. Another cigarette, please. As I light up I see the red dot over my emails change again. From 32 to 33. Guess who. It says:

Johnny’s home now from camp. He’s upset because you’re not here. I don’t know what to say. I’m really worried now, panicked actually. Why won’t you speak to me? Please tell me what to do. Anything. Anything you need, anything you want. We’ll sort all of this out later, just please come home…

I don’t read the rest. Anything you want, he says.

I want to sit in a chair and drink coffee that’s hot. I want to cut my toenails. I want to go to the post office and stand on line, alone. I want to go to the supermarket and not worry that in the moment that I look away to find my wallet my children will be stolen. I want to shower for longer than three minutes, sleep for more than three hours. I want to go back to my job just so I can eat lunch at my desk.

I want to go to TK Maxx, and not even a nice one, like Covent Garden, I mean the regular, standard, overstuffed one over here on the high street, and try on the clothes in the dressing room, instead of rummaging through the racks with one hand and rocking the stroller with the other and picking up last season’s ill-fitting batwing tops off the floor and buying them out of desperation to wear something other than your old work shirts. Or just leaving them in a heap somewhere because Johnny’s going to piss himself and we have to leave the store.

I want to have something to say to the mothers at the school gates after “hello.”

I want to not need a drink by eleven and another one by four and another one at seven and another one at eleven.

I want them to stop calling for me, clawing at me, walking on me, sitting on me, leaning on me, punching me, throwing things that I have to pick up, crying for me, dropping shit, spilling shit, needing to be carried, wiped, washed, lifted, moved until my muscles feel like they’re coming off my bones, my scar pulsing, breasts heaving, back breaking and then, Harry, you grasping for me, pawing for me in the bed at night, looking for sex and wanting my body too. And how could you, how could anyone, want this body.

I want to stop screaming at Johnny in the street because I can’t handle my shit. I want to love our baby.

I want to talk to someone besides baristas and supermarket cashiers and the postman. I want someone to say they feel like I do.

I want you to not look at me like that. I want to stop dreaming about my scar tearing open, blood erupting from me and me dying under the