Page 65 of Pieces of Ash

I have learned how to shut up.

I have learned how to keep my head down.

I have learned how far a human can bend without breaking.

I have learned that bending can be another kind of breaking.

I lost another baby today.

Taking ashitload of vitamin C a day every day basically ensures that I’ll stay sterile, but this time I was scared. It took a couple of weeks, but finally, today, my period came. Big clots ofred and black tissue falling to the toilet in loud plops while I cried tears offuckithanks.

Goodbye, baby.

ThankfuckGod.

If I brought a child into this life, I would be damning my eternal soul to hell.

It’s bad enough I brought Ashley here.

When Mam and Tad visited in March, I begged them to move back to Anglesey with Ashley. She can be your daughter, I said. She can be beautiful and dutiful and good. She can be the me you never had.

But Mam doesn’t want to raise mybastardkid. And Tad looked at me with disgust.

“What do you think of us taking Ashley back to Wales with us, Mosier?” my mother asked my sadistic husband over dinner. “Teagan feels the change would be good for her…younger sister.”

I froze in my seat, cold, hard dread seeping into my bones like a never-ending disease.

My fingers curled into my napkin, and I bit the side of my cheek until I tasted blood.

I don’t know if she knew the price I would pay for her words. Maybe she did. Maybe that’s why she said them.

His eyes, so dark and furious when he looked at me, promised unimaginable pain in retaliation for my suggestion.

“Ashley stays here,” he said lightly, “at school, near her family.”

My mother shrugged when she looked back at me. “That’s that. Ashley stays here.”

I died sitting in that chair that night. Everything about me isfuckidead now except my body, which can still feel pain. My body that was subjected to extreme horror when my parents left after dinner that night.

If he finds out that I lost a second baby today, there will be more pain tonight.

But I will close my eyes and think of Ashley and of the baby I lost today. The baby I SAVED today.

And I will take it.

Chapter 13

Ashley

“Did you know that Tig got pregnant again?” I ask Gus as he helps me set the picnic table outside. “After me, I mean?”

Jock, Julian, and Noelle are playing something with beanbags called cornhole on the front lawn while Gus and I lay plates and silverware on a crisp, white, just-ironed tablecloth.

He doesn’t look up at me. “Yes.”

“How many times did she miscarry?” I ask.

“Too many to count.”