I draw her outline, head to toe.
What follows is not easy.
I pin the bottom of the page under my right wrist, while tugging the top margin up with my left hand, stretching the paper taut like the side of a pup tent. With my right hand I stab the picture repeatedly with a needle, staying inside the lines, never pricking the same place twice.
Now her skin's as rough as a cheese grater. I clip around the riddled figure, wad her into a crisp sponge, drop her into hot chocolate.
Bye Mom.

My mother used to stride through country fields trailing her palms along the weed tops, unleashing clouds of insects. While I chew patiently, cowlike, the paper dissolves into many bits. I think of the way she sucked on stalks of grass. Yummy, chocolate. How she spit on dry stones to make them shine.
A real flirt.
She habitually caressed her coffee spoon while she talked, slipping her thumb into and over its curves, along its edges, around and around and around, without looking. I had to look, mesmerized, mute. I swallow hard to get it down, gritty chocolate cement coating my tongue.
My mother was hard to get rid of. Because in fact she was already gone. How do you throw out a tenant who left yesterday? How do you evict a ghost? Alive or dead, my mother has always haunted me. Although I spent relatively little time with her, I could never get out from under her.

"No, dear. Orson Welles did the radio broadcast, but Herbert George Wells wrote the book."
As she spoke, my mother patted the inside of my elbow to comfort me in my stupidity. We sat thigh to thigh, having steak at the Ponderosa because Mom was visiting me at college, a very rare visit. My boyfriend gazed back and forth, waiting.
"Is that right?" he finally said for me, looking at her. "Wells, wells, wells."
She smiled, bravo, winked at him, squeezing my arm.

Whether it was The War of the Worlds or the world's wars, I could never compete. She always outdid me. She always knew better.
"Exactly what do you mean by that, dear?"
"Oh it's just, like, a phrase, Mom. You know."
She didn't trust me, not even after my graduation in journalism, magna cum laude. Without warning I had dropped by California to see her.
"Well let's think." Mom didn't give up. "There's really no such thing as `just a phrase.' When you say, as you did just now, 'Occupying Grenada isn't exactly the Normandy conquest,' one wonders just which Normandy conquest you're referring to."
"I meant the famous one." I was in trouble. Mom had caught me.
"The famous one! Really dear, let's think. The 'Norman Conquest' came when William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, whereas the 'Normandy campaign' refers to the Allied invasion of the Continent in 1944. These are both famous, but neither's precisely 'the Normandy conquest.' You see your mistake."

I wanted to be as ruthlessly intelligent as she was.
That was my mistake. We had the same name for a while, sure, but we'd never be equals.
I could never catch up. She had been menstruating for years and years by the time I got my period in fifth grade. I still love the smell of new Kotex. I don't know why. Sometimes dogs go crazy over shoes, sniffing the leather like drug addicts. That same year my breasts grew big as hers. She forbade me to wear a bra. "You're too young. And because I said so." The boys tortured me at recess, calling me "Jiggle Tits," "Floppy Knockers," and "Boom Boom Bazoom." But Mom did invite me to try tampons. "Here, let me put it in for you." I wanted to say no, but I couldn't say anything.
I wondered about her motives.
Why she left us the following year. Women are tricky like that. They pretend to be your mother then poof, they're gone. Surely, it was her departure that eventually gave me the courage to finish her off. Still, I think we loved each other. If ever I do get another dog, I'll name it after her. "Sit, Mom. Heel, Mom. Stay, Mom. Play dead, Mom. Good Mom. Bad Mom. Bad, bad Mom." She's actually dead, not playing. "Good girl!" And I'm... smart now. Got it? There are plenty of other women around if I want that kind of company. I'm not under anybody's thumb, not anymore, not unless I want to be.

* * * * * *

I yawn wide as a horse and try to remember if whoever's beside me is male or female. I slide my hand along the ceiling of the blanket suspended between us, take blind aim, lower my hand. An erection. Large, firm... cold. Some lesbian with a strap-on dildo? Wait. I feel balls. Also cold. A strap-on with balls attached. I drop my hand farther, to stroke the inside of the thighs... Cold. I open my mouth to scream, then don't. Although now I realize that even if I wanted to, I could not wake this man, now or ever—nevertheless, I disengage myself from the sheets as stealthily as possible.
"Get up."
My Lover has once again rudely awakened me.
"I said, get up. You're so helpless like this in the morning. Anyone could do what they want with you. Get up. Darling, would you make me breakfast?"
"Some dead guy was in bed with me."
"Better dead than alive," she says. "Dead men have fabulous hard-ons."
"Did you tell me that last night?"
"I'll tell you that every night if it makes you happy. Anything for your pleasure. Only please make me breakfast. Us. Make us breakfast."
"Yeah. Some dream. Gotta pee first-"
"Don't forget to uh, wait a minute, I didn't get a chance last night, untie your uh, from the-"
"Ow. Fuck. Just fucking untie me now."
"I guess," My Lover says. "Although you do look nice, all twisted up on the floor. A little bruise would spice up that knee anyway."
"Fuck you."

* * * * * *