Melody’s Reviews > Nothing to See Here > Status Update

I had never wanted kids, because I had never wanted a man to give me a kid. The thought of it, gross; the expectation of it. But if a hole in the sky opened up and two weird children fell to Earth, smashing into the ground like meteroites, then that was something I could care for. If it gleamed like it was radiating danger, I’d hold it. I would.

“Why are you running away?” I asked them.
“It would be easier, right?” Bessie said. “If we just disappeared, everyone would be happy.”
“I wouldn’t be happy,” I told her, meaning it. “I would be so sad.”
“Really?” Roland asked, surprised.
“Yes—Jesus Christ—yes, I would be sad.”
“Okay,” Roland said, satisfied.

This was how you did it, how you raised children. You built them a house that was impervious to danger and then you gave them every single thing that they could ever want, no matter how impossible. You read to them at night. Why couldn’t people figure this out?

They were me, unloved and fucked over, and I was going to make sure that they got what they needed. They would scratch and kick me, and I was going to scratch and kick anyone who tried to touch them. I didn’t love them; I was a selfish person and I didn’t understand people all that well, not enough to really feel an emotion as complicated as love. But I felt tenderness for them, which felt like a kind of progress.

Maybe that’s what children were, a desperate need that opened you up even if you didn’t want it.

I wasn’t destined for greatness; I knew this. But I was figuring out how to steal it from someone stupid enough to relax their grip on it.