Chapter Text
For her sixteenth birthday, she went for a drive with her dad.
They drove up to their city’s overlook, cranked up the jazz station, and she sat on the hood of the car while her dad smoked a cigarette. Below her, the city looked so small, so plain, so simple. Gerri’s lived here all her life, so have her parents, and her grandparents. With one eye closed, she traced the same path she's taken to school her whole life, marking the five blocks with her bile and blood.
Her dad was staring off into space, deeply lost in thought. They had just found out a week ago that her mother was pregnant again, the third new Scott in five years.
“Can I have one?” Gerri asked her dad as he lit another cigarette, and he sighed, passing one to her without any protest. What a striking image that must have been to an onlooker. Gerri, with her blonde hair flowing down her back, in a worn green tartan skirt and a white blouse, the locket her mother gave her that morning, (her one allowed birthday treasure), tucked close to her chest, with her father- Mr. Scott still in his uniform from the garage, grease caked up to his wrists, eyes sullen and tired. The two of them indulging in a cigarette, the mark of Gerri’s impending adulthood written all over them.
Her dad looked much too young to have a teen daughter, still handsome despite the obvious way the years were wearing on him. Her mother was the same, still wearing her nice jewelry from her youth to church on Sundays, even if it clashed with the handmade dresses and thrift store shoes, her younger children crawling up her body and pulling at her skirt as they made their way to the pew.
“You know,” her dad said after giving her a light, “your mother and I were your age when we had you,”
“I know,” she didn’t look at him, simply took a long drag, already so graceful and poised, a debutante of a different world.
“Well, I just wanted to remind you, so you won’t make the same mistake,” he looked at her then, really looked at her, “your the best of us Geraldine, you’re going to be something, as long as you don’t fuck it up,”
And with that, he stubbed out his cigarette, walked past her, and started the car. She hopped off the hood, smoothing down her skirt and taking a final drag. When she finally joined him in the car, she did so with a new heir of confidence.
“You're the best of us, Geraldine,” ringing in her ears, it's the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to her.
—
They drove home, and she spent the rest of her evening shut away in her room. Her younger siblings had commandeered the living room, playing noisily with army men and her old baby dolls. If it was up to her she would be sitting by the TV, feet up, watching reruns of Bewitched and flipping through a brand new tiger beat magazine. But the TV was tuned to the CBS news hour, and there was no money for new tiger beat magazines. So she laid on her bed, still fully clothed, and cocked her head up near the window. The neighbors were playing the Beatles, music her mother wouldn't let in the house.
“I wanna hold you hard” she hummed along to the song, tapping the beat against her thigh.
“Oh please say to me, You’ll let me be your man,” she knows this is a waste of her time, rotting her brain on pop music, muffled as it traveled from the neighbor’s window. She glanced over at her desk, the stack of novels her aunt and uncle sent her glaring back ominously.
She really should write to them, ask if she can come to spend the summer at their Florida estate. Pick oranges from their orchard, and have big important conversations with the rich sons of her uncle’s friends. Begin to learn how to blend in with the men who one day will be her equals.
It would be so lovely, escaping the boredom of a summer job and endless hours babysitting, as her Mother would be too pregnant by then to deal with her siblings and manage the house. She could be someone else for three glorious months. Shorten her skirts, comb out her hair, and prepare for the part she was born to play.
“Gerri, dinner!” Her mother called from the kitchen, and she sat up, straightening her clothes and making her way down the hall.
Her mother was laying plates on the table, her father getting the kids settled. Edith at two in her highchair, Robert at five jabbering away from his place next to his mother.
“Let us say grace,” Mr. Scott said, taking his wife and daughter’s hands in his, bowing his head, and muttering a hushed thanks for the food. Mrs. Scott had made spaghetti, and Robert was complaining about how it looked like worms.
“Eat your dinner,” Mrs. Scott told him, sounding even more tired than she looked.
Gerri glared at Robert, trying to silently tell him to behave. Who gave him the right to make a fuss? To demand something more than the scraps that sustain them.
—
After dinner, her mother presented her with a homemade chocolate cake, sixteen blue and white candles sitting atop it.
“Make a wish, Gerri,” Mrs. Scott told her, looking at her from over the cake, the candles casting a soft orange glow over her face. She looked so broken- as if someone had taken to her soul with a melon baller, hollowing out all the things that once gave her joy, replacing it with sawdust and baby formula.
She closed her eyes, unable to look at the horror anymore. It’s grotesque what she did to her mother sixteen years ago today, killing her with her first breath. The wish came to her then, as she was shielding herself from the figure above her, the omen of her future.
“I wish to escape,”
If only she knew the weight of those words, a bet made with the universe, damning her in ways she wouldn’t truly understand till she was at death’s door. When her own children were grown and gone, and the word she cultivated, where she was a god, had stripped her of all that she once held close.
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