school and church and helped with homework and broke up fights and washed endless stains out of endless shirts and pants and demanded good manners and prayers before bed and respect for their father and mother. Times were either normal and hard, or something was wrong. I preferred normal and hard. That was what I wished for. Enjoyment, or fun, never occurred to me. I just prayed to God that I would not lose any more children.
I shift my shoulder slightly against the rug. I plan to lie here for a few more minutes and gather my strength before I try to get up again. It’s better to just bear through pain. When my children came inside crying from a scraped knee, I used to tell them that complaining wouldn’t help, and that if they were quiet the discomfort would eventually go away. I wasn’t going to lie to them and say that life wasn’t supposed to hurt. I was afraid that if I coddled them they wouldn’t grow strong enough. I needed them to be strong. I always hated the sound of their tears, their weakness.
I was almost embarrassed when Pat sobbed and wailed while Patrick punished him. Didn’t he know that his blubbering made his father even angrier? I knew the blows couldn’t hurt that badly— Patrick would never really hurt one of his children. I also knew that Pat’s sobs were for me in the next room. They were to make me feel bad. It worked, of course. Those were awful moments for me, but I also knew that if I went in there and tried to stop Patrick, things would only be worse. He would become more angry and hit harder, because I was questioning his authority. It was better for Pat if I stayed away. I couldn’t help the fact that Patrick somehow tied together in his brain the birth of his oldest son and the death of his oldest daughter. He hated Pat for being born right after that death. Patrick never got over the loss of that baby girl. It was something I couldn’t help. But when Pat Jr. had finally had enough and didn’t want to come home the summer after his first year in boarding school, I found him a summer job through one of my father’s contacts and bought him new clothes and packed his bag. I knew I wouldn’t see Pat for a long time, and that he would never live in my house again, but I was glad to see him go.
I wanted life to be just normal and hard in our house. I yearned for that. And indeed, when Pat left for boarding school, the semblance of normalcy returned. Patrick joked at the dinner table. The other children laughed more. Lightness returned to the household, but I was unable to find comfort in it. I could see that it was a false lightness, an imitation of a peaceful time. I was the only one in the family who seemed to notice, so I kept the truth to myself. I pretended I was happy, too. I pretended everything was as I had wanted it to be. But by that time I had lost not only my daughter, but the twins as well. I had watched my oldest son walk away, still a boy, knowing that I had not gotten him safely from infancy to adulthood. I had lost him as well. I was losing the live ones now, too.
When Ryan’s behavior started to change shortly after Pat left, when he started to say odd things, and stopped playing with the other little boys, I was not completely surprised. I had failed at holding my family together. I should have fought for Pat. I should have noticed my baby girl’s symptoms earlier. I should have done something, anything, to bring my twins into the world whole and full of breath. I should have found a way to stop these cracks from forming. I should have kept everyone together, and safe.
I feel tears, which I recognize in disgust as self-pity, push at the backs of my eyes. To shake away that sensation I heave myself up on my elbow. I breathe there for a moment until my vision clears. I am fine from the waist up aside from the creaking gate door in my chest, but I can’t seem to move my legs. My lap is twisted slightly under my periwinkle blue dress. Apart from the same dull ache, there