The M.I.L.F. Man

This is the way the world ends

Started with a mild ache I almost didn't notice during all the drama that went down that day.

Gas, I figured. But about an hour later I knew better.

And an hour after that, it was over.

I'd lost my child. My first child.

And I went to a bad place. I can't even tell you how bad—scared the hell out of Chas.

Because even sedated I was jittery. Manic. Kept leaping out of bed and wandering the loft, swatting people away. So he called Lupita--she was the only one who could bark back at me.

He'd had an awful time. Especially when those really sharp pains doubled me up. He cannot handle me being in any kind of distress. Physical, emotional—he can't stand to see me hurting.

And they don't tell you it's like labor. Not as scary as full-term labor, but I swear it felt like someone was trying to pull my uterus out with their fingers.

Waves of razor-sharp pain. And then a sploosh of warm wetness...my baby gone...

My mind wouldn't let me believe it. I was catatonic. A ball of sweaty, quivering, blood-streaked flesh.

So it was my husband who did the terrible, terrifying job of lifting me out of the muck and retrieving the remnants. Lupita watched me laying there all balled up on one side of the bed while he handled all that.

And she wrestled me when I suddenly started tearing at the t-shirt I'd slept in. I didn't want any blood on me, any trace of what'd happened anywhere near me. And that's when the wandering around began. The "Don't touch me" hand slaps whenever someone reached out.

The parents gasped when she hissed, "Girl, you slap me you'll wish you'd never been born," the one time I raised a hand to her. But it actually made me laugh.

It was the sort of thing someone would've said back home in the village where I was born. They told us if mere words could hurt you, you were never going to survive in that world. In fact, sometimes it felt like they were trying to hurt me. To toughen me up.

So if I'd lost a baby there at such an early stage, I would've cleaned myself up and gone back to weeding the milpa or making tortillas for dinner...whatever. And there'd be all kinds of gossip about why it happened for a little while. Stupid gossip. Superstition. Maybe a curandera would come by to smudge the house and give me a "cleansing" tea to make sure there wasn't anything left in there that might "get after" the next inhabitant...

I don't know what they did with the remains back home, but ours were cremated and put in a sterling silver heart encased in a beautiful wooden chest that I wouldn't go near for months. He still calls her/him our little "bean." Because whatever he saw was shaped like one.

"About the size of the top of your thumb; the bit from the knuckle up," he said. The warmth in his voice as he spoke of "it" amazed me.

I would not allow myself to feel anything. I was grateful for the meds that kept me floating above it all. Weightless and woozy...

So I forgot about everything else that had happened that day--there'd been a helluva battle before the world ended.

Rich Bitches vs. Barrio Babes at the police station where they'd taken all the kids.

Zaddy Mike was there, too. AKA Mr. Michael Thomas Reynolds, III.

Good looking son of a bitch—I've told you that before. No designer suit this time. Jeans and a blue shirt, but not the cowboy kind. Totally Polo, you know? Magazine cover cool. Shut the women up, he did. At least for a few minutes.