Under the Dome

Somehow she got Little Walter to hold still long enough to plaster three SpongeBob Band-Aids along the gash, and to get him into an undershirt and his one remaining clean overall (on the bib, red stitching proclaimed MOMMY’S LI’L DEVIL). She dressed herself while Little Walter crawled in circles on her bedroom floor, his wild sobbing reduced to lackadaisical sniffles. She started by throwing the blood-soaked underpants into the trash and putting on fresh ones. She padded the crotch with a folded dish-wiper, and took an extra for later. She was still bleeding. Not gushing, but it was a far heavier flow than during her worst periods. And it had gone on all night. The bed was soaked.

She packed Little Walter’s go-bag, then picked him up. He was heavy and she felt fresh pain settle in Down There: the sort of throbbing bellyache you got from eating bad food.

“We’re going to the Health Center,” she said, “and don’t you worry, Little Walter, Dr. Haskell will fix us both up. Also, scars don’t matter as much to boys. Sometimes girls even think they’re sexy. I’ll drive as fast as I can, and we’ll be there in no time.” She opened the door. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

But her old rustbucket Toyota was far from all right. The “deputies” hadn’t bothered with the back tires, but they had punctured both front ones. Sammy looked at the car for a long moment, feeling an even deeper depression settle over her. An idea, fleeting but clear, crossed her mind: she could split the remaining Dreamboats with Little Walter. She could grind his up and put them in one of his Playtex nursers, which he called “boggies.” She could disguise the taste with chocolate milk. Little Walter loved chocolate milk. Accompanying the idea came the title of one of Phil’s old record albums: Nothing Matters and What If It Did?

She pushed the idea away.

“I’m not that kind of mom,” she told Little Walter.

He goggled up at her in a way that reminded her of Phil, but in a good way: the expression that only looked like puzzled stupidity on her estranged husband’s face was endearingly goofy on her son’s. She kissed his nose and he smiled. That was nice, a nice smile, but the Band-Aids on his forehead were turning red. That wasn’t so nice.

“Little change of plan,” she said, and went back inside. At first she couldn’t find the Papoose, but finally spotted it behind what she would from now on think of as the Rape Couch. She finally managed to wriggle Little Walter into it, although lifting him hurt her all over again. The dish-wiper in her underwear was feeling ominously damp, but when she checked the crotch of her sweatpants, there were no spots. That was good.

“Ready for a walk, Little Walter?”

Little Walter only snuggled his cheek into the hollow of her shoulder. Sometimes his paucity of speech bothered her—she had friends whose babies had been babbling whole sentences by sixteen months, and Little Walter only had nine or ten words—but not this morning. This morning she had other things to worry about.

The day felt dismayingly warm for the last full week of October; the sky overhead was its very palest shade of blue and the light was somehow blurry. She felt sweat spring out on her face and neck almost at once, and her crotch was throbbing badly—worse with every step, it seemed, and she had taken only a few. She thought of going back for aspirin, but wasn’t it supposed to make bleeding worse? Besides, she wasn’t sure she had any.

There was something else, as well, something she hardly dared admit to herself: if she went back into the house, she wasn’t sure she’d have the heart to come back out again.

There was a white scrap of paper under the Toyota’s left wind-shield wiper. It had Just a Note from SAMMY printed across the top and surrounded by daisies. Torn from her own kitchen pad. The idea caused a certain tired outrage. Scrawled under the daisies was this: Tell anyone and more than your tires will be flat. And below, in another hand: Next time maybe we’ll turn you over and play the other side.

“In your dreams, motherfucker,” she said in a wan, tired voice.

She crumpled the note up, dropped it by one flat tire—poor old Corolla looked almost as tired and sad as she felt—and made her way out to the end of the driveway, pausing to lean against the mailbox for a few seconds. The metal was warm on her skin, the sun hot on her neck. And hardly a breath of breeze. October was supposed to be cool and invigorating. Maybe it’s that global warming stuff, she thought. She was first to have this idea, but not the last, and the word which eventually stuck was not global but local.