The Birthparents by Frank Santo

Author:Frank Santo [Santo, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tortoise Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The drunk in the next room must have smashed the lightbulb on his way in again that morning. The floor of the hallway twinkled in the dark. In her room, Rita took a handful of Xanax, washed it down with a glug of Pepsi from a liter long gone flat, and shot herself between the toes with what she had left in her suitcase. Her door was just a piece of thin, unfitted plywood, so she took the knife that Ty had lent her out from beneath the pillow in case her neighbor tried to force his way in again.

Her room was one of several in the basement of a vacant building. She shared a single doorless bathroom glowing greenly at the end of the hall. In her room, there was no furniture besides a mattress with a fitted sheet slumping off the shoulder, and a few stacked plastic drawers dotted with glitter and tied shut with bungee cords. Half-filled, uncapped plastic bottles lined the windowsill. Two leopard-print suitcases lay splayed open on the floor with their innards bared and neatly folded. Photographs of the kids and Ty were taped to the wall above her mattress, beneath two words written in marker: BE HAPPY. In a tank beneath the window covered by a towel, Harley’s turtles floated dead atop an inch or so of brownish water.

The tithe brought her what she needed. One minute, everything was jagged edges; the next, every cell in her body was wrapped inside a velvet blanket. She was liquid; she was easy; a warm sack of water sinking slowly to the ocean floor. People think that it’s a weakness, she once told me, but that’s just ‘cause they don’t know.

She felt a pulse inside her pocket then. She rolled onto her side, took out her phone and saw a text from Harley.

You coming?

For a moment, the text confused her. It confused me too, when Titi first showed it to me on her nephew’s spyware application. Rita lay back inside the bliss, her vision blurring now, sweat beading at her throat. The phone pulsed again and again.

I’m where you said to wait.

Ma?

Hello?

You coming?

Really?

Downtown, Harley boarded the 2-train north from the Port Authority. The train car swelled with noise and bodies. Margarita took another handful of Xanax. How many would it take? Ten? Twenty? Enough to fade away. Enough to make her children doctors. The world drew itself around her. She pulled the fitted sheet over her head and felt her blood fill up with light.

She texted Harley that she loved her. She sent the same to Ty. In that moment, did she finally feel it? Or did she hope that texting it would make it true? Death was coming now. Closer. Drool trickled from her lips onto the pillow. Her skin was itching, tickling, buzzing. She thought of Harley and Jojo—the best things she ever did—but did she even really do it? I love you—she texted again. To Harley, to Ty—to Titi even. I love you. I love you.

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