She stepped out, umbrella up, yelled across.

Wait.

Wait a minute.

Had Alma waved her off?

She had. Oh, my God. You have got to be kidding. What nerve! What balls! Still queen? Peasant girl still too lowly? To come fetch you, Your Highness?

Stick it, Alma.

Let this be a lesson to you.

There is some shit I will not eat.

Because she, Debi, was also a person who had the wisdom to let the world teach the evil ones a lesson while she stood calmly by, watching/trusting the cosmos.

She stepped back inside, slammed the door, shot the umbrella into the stand, retreated to the middle room, Mom and Dad’s old room, angrily pulled her tax things from the file cabinet, sat shuffling the forms uselessly around, thinking of how strange it was (beautiful, really, a mysterious unsought blessing) that, after a lifetime of being everybody’s joke (easy lay, jilted lover, discarded mom), she was finally (in the eleventh hour) learning to frigging stand up for herself.

She stayed in there about fifteen minutes, fuming, getting absolutely nothing done, until she heard the first ambulance arrive and leapt to the window, heart in her throat, and watched as, without even trying the shocking-paddles, they pulled the sheet up over Alma’s head and loaded her in.

Debi’s mind lurched forward, sputtered, went (momentarily) quiet.

Alma got hold of a fence slat. To pull—pull herself out. Of this. Pain. Something new was happening now. The tightness in her chest was worse. Jesus. Like labor with Paulie. Then it went past that, to labor with Pammy, and she was giving birth to something bigger than Pammy, out her chest.

God, oh God.

Pop! is how she would have described it had she still been able to describe.

Pop.

A number of little beings came now. God, get back. You didn’t know whether to pet them or kick them. As they gazed up at her intently, she saw they were saying, Careful, girlie, careful.

Then their boss-being came: a man.

Paul, Sr.

Looking so handsome.

“Did you finally wake up, dear?” she said. “And love the right person? The one who knew you longest and understood you best?”

Looking at him, she saw the answer was no.

Still no.

The little beings condensed into two. Boy and a girl. Paul tapped them on the head and they turned into babies. Who stood cowering beside Paul. Giving her the stink eye. Like he was guarding them. From what? From her? In a pig’s ass! It was his fault! He never let us be a family!

“Now will you accept me as I am?” Paul said.

What? What a crock! How about you accept me as I am? Treat me nice. Like a wife. A real wife. Forsake all others. Love just me. Is that too much to ask?

She saw it was still a no and always would be.

It hurt. So much. Again. Well, if he wanted a fight, she knew how to fight. She liked it. She was good at it. She’d make him pay. The way she always had. You’d think he’d know that by—

She looked down. Her hands were glowing. Glowing red.

“This has nothing to do with him,” the girl baby said. “How do you want to be?”

How could that baby talk so well? She was like a little genius. In a diaper. And what did she mean? It had everything to do with him. He’d done it all. Turned everything bad. Before Paul had messed with her, she’d been a smiling little dear sniffing lilacs on graduation day, swinging her diploma by one corner. It was Paul. Paul who’d made her hands this way. She went to wipe her eyes and started her hair on fire.

No problem.

Didn’t hurt.

Much.

Now Paul was gone. The babies looked lost. She should pick them up. She went for the boy. His eyes got wide at her hot hands. He toddled away. She went for the girl. She toddled away. It was like when you dropped a piece of paper on a windy day and it grew a mind bent on eluding you. She stood still. The babies drifted back. They wanted her. But she had the hand problem. She went for the boy. Who toddled away. She went for the girl. Who toddled away.

Then it happened again.

And again.

For like a hundred years.

A stump appeared. At some point.

At least now she could sit.

She sat trying to figure it out.

It seemed she was meant to admit that she was wrong. But she wasn’t. If she was wrong about this, there was no right.

Maybe she could fake it.

“O.K., O.K.,” she said aloud. “I was wrong. The whole time. About everything.”

Hands still hot.

The stump began rising. Lifting her above the babies. Then: a terrible bark-cackling. The beings were back. With big old teeth.

Here they came, scrambling hyena-like across a vast plain.

Real baby-eaters.

Lord, so fast. She’d have to hoist the babies up. She reached down, grabbed the boy, singed his little arm.

How to do it, how to do it, how to get her hands to cool?

“Whose fault was it?” the girl baby asked.

“His!” Alma cried. “His, his, his!”

Her arms went hot right up to the elbows. Big bully! Whoever’d made her this way, unable to lie, was jerking her around now because she wouldn’t lie.

The hyena-beings were closing in, all meat-breath and yellow teeth.

“Whose?” the girl baby said. “Whose fault?”

“I don’t know,” she cried desperately. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I really don’t! Mine? My fault?”

“No,” the girl baby said.

What the hell? Fine, forget the babies, she’d keep the hot hands. She was what she was. No one could blame her. As long as she was Alma, she’d be mad. She had a right. Did she want to be mad? No. What she wanted to be was her, younger. Her, non-mad. Her, not yet mad. Pre-Paul. Smelling lilacs, swinging that diploma. No, even before that: so young she wanted nothing yet, liked nothing, disliked nothing. No, before that: before she was even Alma, because Alma would always find Paul, love Paul, and Paul would always be Paul.

It came to her, and then was happening: it would be fixed when she stopped being Alma.

Her arms and hands went cool and pale, perfectly normal.

She reached down, hauled the babies up.

“Who do you want to be?” the girl baby whispered into her ear as the stump rose just high enough to keep them safe from the hyena-beings bark-cackling below.

It was like waiting at the top of the Alpine in that little wooden car, unable to believe that what was about to happen was about to happen, and then, even as you thought, God, oh God, this cannot possibly—

“Nobody even close to home in there,” the paramedic named Henry said to the paramedic named Claire.

Which was rude, Claire thought. But actually, no, it was fine: the daughter was out of earshot, sobbing against a tree. ♦