Buzzards peck at a mangled dog along the side of the driveway. I feel the bump of our tires as my mother hits the carcass head on, crushes even more of the dead animal’s bones. In the rearview, I see the buzzards scatter, flapping wildly a mere foot off the ground before returning their attention to the remains of what looks like a dog. My mother parks a good ten yards away from my RV. When I exit her car, I look back and two of the birds are pulling flesh from a collapsed ribcage while one of them stabs the intestines with its beak. I don’t recognize this dog, but the ruddy auburn of its hair, the undocked tail, the stunted legs, all tell me that it’s probably just a mutt, a long-forgotten pet maybe, or some stray that no human will even know has gone missing.
“Want me to help?” my mother asks while looking into a compact mirror, wiping lipstick from the corners of her mouth with a wadded tissue.
“It will only take a few minutes, that’s all,” I say, “just lay your seat back. You’ve got to be tired.” The last week in the hospital was hard on her too. I mean, she never did like Bobby, but she still can’t wrap her mind around what he did to me.
“That’s a mighty fine idea,” she says and then she lets her window down, removes the keys from the ignition. As she turns her head away from me, I notice a patch of hair missing from her scalp, behind her ear, round as a crop circle.
That I've been sent home with no baby after thirty-two hours of active labor, after giving three victim impact statements and enduring six days of post-partum counseling is something neither one of us can talk about. I’ve run through the “get over it” solutions in my head, but I haven't told her about any of them, not while we were being discharged, not on the drive over, and I don't think that will change.
"Take your time," she yells to me, her voice hoarse and insistent. My feet squish through wet leaves and mud leading up to the RV. The door is standing wide open. I remove my shoes and leave them on the top step before I peek inside. Two raccoons are face deep into a ripped open bag of garbage. I step onto the welcome mat and lean forward onto my toes until I can reach a box of Mac and Cheese on the kitchen counter. I chuck the box at them, but I miss. It busts open against the fridge and dry noodles scatter across the linoleum, and yet, the raccoons don’t seem to notice me. One of them turns and begins gathering the noodles, one by one, popping them into its mouth and sucking on them like they were Tic Tacs.
I take one step to the right, toward Bobby’s signed John Wayne photo on the wall, and before I can take my second step, I hear the raccoons scurrying about. I turn and they dash out the door, a trail of bottle caps, condiment packets, and plastic silverware behind them. With the curtains pulled tight the way Bobby always liked them, I can’t look out the window and follow the raccoons outside to see if they frighten my mother or the buzzards or if they spare the dog his final degrading moments. Instead, I focus on getting the cash. When I grab the photo, I flip it over and there’s masking tape but no envelope. I run across the room, stepping over the mound of trash in my way, and I feel around for my emergency fund, the plastic bag of change atop the refrigerator, but it’s gone too. In the back of the pantry, at the bottom of an Uncle Ben’s box, I find the check from my father but not the gas cards. His check is more than two years old, $100, but it’s all I have that I don't have to ask for.
I pause and evaluate the room, considering if there is anything left of value that I’m missing, my jewelry box, though only full of costume pieces and maybe a banged-up cameo or two that my grandmother left me, valuables of Bobby’s I could pawn, like that welder’s mask I bought him last Christmas or the industrial grade metal detector he uses at the beach. The couch bed has been pushed to one side of the room, blocking my entry to the bathroom. When I walk around the bed, my foot slides in something wet and I almost lose my balance. I look down and blood is coming up between my toes, a smear of burgundy pooled beneath the edge of the bed and onto the throw rug. I lift my foot and see the shape of tiny raccoon’s feet surrounding mine and for the first time, I notice that they tracked what must be my blood throughout most of the RV, into the kitchen and onto the stovetop, down the airbrushed drapes that cover the back wall, and along the footrest of the recliner.
My mother’s voice calls out just as I take a seat on the edge of the bed. I’m lightheaded as my breasts surge with milk, suddenly soaking my sweatshirt. I hear the car door slam. Before she steps into the RV, I grab a blanket from behind me and toss it to the floor, covering as much of the blood as I can.
“My God,” she says, staring at the stained sheets, at the bloody paw prints that stop at her feet.
“Pardon my language sweetie but, you don’t need to be in here.” She swats at the air in front of her face. “The smell is enough to make me nauseous. It looks like someone butchered a hog on your bed.” She points to the spot behind where I’m still sitting that, in its dried state, looks as if someone spilt a pot of coffee onto the fabric. “I didn’t know it was this bad. Oh sweetie, I am so sorry for what he did to you, what with you carrying his baby and all.”
“Don't apologize,” I say. I wrap my arms tight about my throbbing breasts, the pain making it difficult to tolerate anything else.
"Well, I sure hope they don't let him bond out, at least not while the baby is in such a state." Her reference to my son being relinquished to the Department of Children and Families makes my breasts ache even more.
"Let's just leave. There's nothing left here that I want," I say. My mother turns her back to me and exits the RV. Then I see it, the mechanical breast pump I leased from the health department. All I need is the attachment and some storage bags.
"If I decide to breast feed," I yell out the door, "they will have to let me see him, right?"
At first, I don't think my mother heard me. The sound of a sheriff helicopter hovering once again over the neighboring pasture is so loud, so close, that I can count each propeller rotation. I step onto the top stoop holding up the machine like I've won a trophy and wave it at my mother who is now sitting on the hood of the car with her hands covering her ears. She shakes her head as the chopper puts some distance between it and us. Then she speaks.
"That thing won't do you no good if you're still doing drugs. How long will that TPC stay in your system again?" My mother slides off the hood and opens the driver door.
“It’s THC, not TPC, and I should pee clean now. They should let me see him.”
“That don’t mean they will,” she says without looking back at me as she wiggles into the seat and starts the car. I open the trunk and move stacks of empty egg cartons to one side in order to find a spot for the pump. Beneath the cartons is a mountain of Redbook magazines. I think of the patch of hair missing from her scalp.
"Have your headaches been getting better?" I ask after adjusting the radio knob to an AM country oldies station. My mother snaps the radio off.
"Too much noise. These ruts make the driving loud enough without that racket."
As we rattle slowly back up my driveway, my breasts bounce, their heaviness pulling at my ribs until the milk in them loosens. With my back to my mother, I look down and notice that the wetness that has returned to my t-shirt. I relax only after she makes a left onto the highway, and we have cleared the stretch of road with the dead dog and the buzzards still feasting there.
Jami Kimbrell is a mother of four and a trial attorney practicing in Tallahassee, Florida. Her short fiction has appeared in Word Riot, Monkeybicycle, Vestal Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, New South Journal, Tin House Online, Fiction Southeast, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Wraparound South, and the Masters Review, among others. Her poetry has appeared in Birdcoat Quarterly and her nonfiction has appeared in Tahoma Literary Review and Jet Fuel Review.