I go back to work sooner than I want to, mostly because otherwise I won't be able to afford childcare for Larxene. The cost of babysitting is extortionate: after hours of picking through the confidentials the cheapest one I can find comes to about four hundred munny a day, which is ridiculous considering that I only earn three hundred and fifty munny a day. I don't understand how child benefit, which comes to two hundred munny a week, is supposed to cover these costs. But luckily when I go down to the job centre, they tell me that once I'm working I'll be eligible for enough tax credits to pay for child care and other important things, like food.
So when Larxene is two weeks old, I reapply for my job at a nearby food proccessing factory. They let me on straight away, probably because I don't need training and am therefore more cost effective than the other applicants. I catch the first bus of the day all the way into town, heading straight for the public toilets. In one of my carrier bags I have the baby things my new childminder will need; in the other I have a plastic wash basin, soap, shampoo, a sponge and a towel. Luckily, the piss-smelling building is empty, so I fill my bowl up with water at the sink and carry it into a cubicle. I wash myself down with great care, trying not to let too much water slop onto the floor. Then I get dressed in my dirty clothes again, which probably defeats the point of the entire exercise: but my hair, still with its remnants of bossy pink beneath two-inch mousy roots, feels nicer after a wash, and once I've towelled it down and applied some make up to my drawn face I almost look respectable. Then I then walk around with my body still hurting from the birth, sometimes even bleeding again, until I find the house of the woman who is going to be Larxene's part-time mother. After what happened at the hospital, where I could hardly let go of my baby and greedily snatched her back as soon as the Doctor was finished, I don't know how I'm going to say goodbye.
Mrs Merryweather is a middle-aged lady with an attractive face that suits her age and her gracefully greying hair. She is large, in a way that matrons ought to be, and cannot move without bustling. She has two children of her own, both in their teens, and as I arrive at the side door they're preparing packed lunches for school. And just like any time I see a family, when I see people my age with smiles on their faces and clean clothes, I think jealously: that could have been me. If the whole universe weren't tripping over itself trying to make me miserable.
"Hello," she says cheerfully, doing a very good job of masking any distain she might feel for this trampy teenage mother, "Are you Marluxia?" I nod without saying anything. She bustles aside to let me in. "Do come in for a cup of tea!"
I enter the kitchen. It is worn out but well kept nonetheless, the old appliances sparkling and little corners stained but clean. The children smile at me, and one of them says hello. I don't like looking at them, though. One of them is a boy and he's very cute, with big kind eyes like his mother, and I feel that familiar self-consciousness well up inside me, threatening to explode into a blush.
"I can't stay long," I manage to whisper (I always whisper, not trusting my unnatural falsetto), "I have to go to work soon."
Perhaps there is always a full pot of tea in this house, because almost instantly I have a steaming mug in front of me. I reach out gingerly, wrapping my fingers around the smooth china and pulling the cup close to my body. I glance at my watch. If my bus is on time, I can spare ten minutes in this kitchen, expelling the chill that has settled in my bones during the last month.
After a few minutes, the son and daughter leave, and Mrs Merryweather sits down next to me, nursing her own cup. She leans over, looking at my chest, where Larxene is snuggled in amongst spare shirts.
"So this is Larxene," she says affectionately, reaching out to brush her finger against Larxene's tiny hand. Larxene soon latches on, like she knows that somebody who was meant to be a mother is nearby. "Oh, she's gorgeous," Mrs Merryweather adds. I glance down; Larxene is mine and I love her, but I don't think she's gorgeous. Firstly, she's a baby, which is a huge disadvantage for anybody wanting to be aesthetically pleasing: moreover, even as babies go, she is not exactly a perfect specimen. So either Mrs Merryweather really likes babies, or she's just saying that to be nice.
"Thank you," I say on reflection. "She's two weeks and five days old."
"She's absolutely lovely. May I?" And Mrs Merryweather holds out her hands expectantly. With the same reluctance as I gave Larxene to the Doctor, I hand her over to her childminder, my fingers still lingering nearby even as Mrs Merryweather rocks Larxene soothingly against her ample bosom. Something inside me, an ancient maternal instinct, wants her back, even when I am just a few feet away from her.
"Wait until she starts crying," I warn the childminder as I heave the bag of baby things onto the kitchen table. "Here's everything you should need." And I go through everything as I take it out, until there is a little heap of nappies, milk and more on the table. Just as I'm about to put it all back in the bag, Mrs Merryweather's cute son pops his head in the door to say goodbye. He says goodbye to me too and I give him a little wave, flushing pink as soon as he's gone. At least, I think miserably, I'm playing my part well.
Mrs Merryweather is bouncing Larxene up and down in her arms, making the baby gurgle with delight. I didn't know Larxene was old enough to be shook about like that; I always tried to move her as little as possible in case I made her puke again. Now I want to bounce her on my lap, be the reason why she laughs. I cannot express how deep or now unnatural this longing for Larxene to be mine and only mine is, only that it both frightens me and grounds me. As long as I care about her, however inexplicably, I am her mother.
All too soon, it is time for me to leave. I try to say goodbye to Larxene, but my throat tightens and my eyes well up with tears. From the moment she was conceived I have never been parted from her, and suddenly I am so very afraid. I snatch her back for a moment, holding her very close and breathing in her loud baby smell, feeling the unexpected weight of her soft body pressing against my hands. She is warm and real and imine/i, and before I know it I am making plans to leave Mrs Merryweather behind and take Larxene with me to work, hidden right under my clothes and next to my skin. But she pats my back and says soothing things like "A lot of mothers struggle to say goodbye the first time" and "Don't worry, I'll take good care of her," and "You'll be reunited before you know it", and finally I am able to place Larxene back into her practised hands. I go to get my wash bag, but she says I can leave it with her, without even questioning why I should have a plastic sink and a towel with me.
So I catch my bus back out onto the industrial estate, am issued a new sign-in card, and take my familiar place in amongst the dead people I work with, ready to spend the next eight hours of my day packing biscuits. Why are they dead people? Because if you spent fifty six hours a week packing biscuits you would be dead pretty quickly too.
In fact, they are so dead that nobody says a single thing to me until lunch time, when I am accosted by a man I affectionately refer to as "my worst fucking nightmare". His name is Axel Hayes, he is sort of not really my boyfriend, and I loathe every second that I spend in his company.
"He-ey, Marluxia," he says, stretching the greeting out into about twenty too many syllables, "You're looking very slim today. Have you lost weight, babe?" And he laughs at his joke, because Axel's predominant personality trait is that he thinks he is hilarious.
"Fuck off, Axel," I say, trying to operate the coffee machine in peace. Axel says "Aw, don't be like that," and pinches my bottom. I want to slap him because it shoots barbs of agony right into me, but I can't reject his advances too much or he'll start sulking and might refuse to give me a lift into town. Because this is how our relationship works: I don't let Axel touch me inappropriately and say lewd things about my anatomy because I like him, I do it because otherwise I wouldn't be able to stay over at his house sometimes and sleep in a real bed, because otherwise even more treacherous lechers will touch me instead. And Axel may be a bastard, but at least he's clean and only twenty one.
"I missed you," Axel lies, running a hand through his bright red porcupine-hair. Axel is not stupid either; he could probably do well if he cared about anything other than football and porn and booze. "So, boy or girl?"
"Girl," I say without looking at my only friend (if he could even be called that). "I called her Larxene."
"I knew a girl called Larxene once," Axel says idly.
"Oh yeah?"
"Fucked her brains out."
I look at Axel. Axel looks at me. He grins, like fucking a girl's brains out is an achievement. I give him an expression of pure contempt, which makes him shuffle his feet and roll his eyes. Men aren't used to girls who treat them like this. It was one of the first things I noticed when I moved here and swapped my jeans out for skirts and learned how uncomfortable push up bras really are: men just expect me to find them hilarious, and if I don't, it's my fault. And I'm supposed to be flattered when they call out across the factory floor "nice tits!" and not, as I actually am, insulted beyond belief.
"Aw, come on, babe," he groans, getting the wrong idea, "Don't be like that. It was a long time ago."
"You mean it never happened." I collect my tea in its polystyrene cup and pour three satchets of sugar into it to make it drinkable. It is disgusting compared to Mrs Merryweather's proper pot-steeped tea, but at least it's warm, and staves off my hunger a little bit. So I sit down and let Axel move in too close to me, so close that his sharp hipbone jabs into my padded side.
"Still living in the car?" He asks after a moment, leaning back and putting his hands behind his neck so I can smell his ultra-deodorised armpit. I nod, made irritable by the fact that he says this with an amused tone in his voice, like it's funny that I can't afford to rent even the cheapest of bedsits. "Pity, huh. And here I thought Traverse Town was cheap as shit."
Now I want to punch him, but I play it nice and even give him a kiss when he complains that our reunion wasn't affectionate enough, so after work he drives me to Mrs Merryweather's house so I can pick up Larxene. Even though I already associate her with sleepless nights and a lot of milky vomit, my mood lightens when she is back in my arms. I thank Mrs Merryweather and pay her her four hundred munny as Axel laughs and says "Marluxia, you don't earn that in a day," which makes me flush hotly; then I climb into his car, which isn't much better than mine, and we go back to his flat.
I'm sure that the only reason Axel shows any interest in me is because he's desperate, and no real girl would touch him with a barge pole. It's certainly not for my good looks, charming personality or sexual prowess, because I haven't got any. Axel isn't ugly, but his entire appearance just reeks of absolute arsehole, from the crusty leather trenchcoat right down to the clown tears he paints on his face for "irony". And he is a bastard who thinks he's better than he really is.
"So," he says once we arrive, clearing empty beer cans off the table and emptying the ash tray into the bin. "Now that your brat's not in the way any more, how about we get a bit more physical tonight?"
"Are you kidding me?" I scoff. "I'm still sore." He rolls his eyes again like I am pathetic for not recovering quickly enough to sate his endless desire for sex. Then he lights up and I want to tell him to stop because the last thing I want is Larxene second-hand smoking, but if I do he'll just tell me to go home.
"You know, I could get any bitch I like," Axel says after a long pause, switching on his old telly and changing channels until he finds a football related programme. "I don't have to bother with someone as easy as you. I just feel sorry for you."
Easy! I have never slept with Axel despite his crude advances, and he calls me easy. He also calls me a prude and an uptight bitch a lot, and apparently this blatant contradiction doesn't bother him in the slightest, let alone the fact that he is far, far more willing to sleep with anyone and everyone than I am. But as usual, I let it slide.
"Yeah, right," I say instead, because an insult is almost a fair substitute, "You couldn't even get a whore to sleep with you."
"Evidently not," Axel says, giving my body a critical one-over. I shiver, disliking the way he looks at me. I don't want him to find this characature of femininity attractive. Then when he finishes his fag he leans over and touches my breast and says "I'll be gentle," in a tone that I think he thinks is sexy. I shake my head.
"You'll fucking rip me open again," I mutter back, a threat which is gruesome enough to keep him away from my groin. I can't deny any of his other advances, though, his wandering hands and hungry kisses that don't always quite catch my mouth. His breath carries the stench of smoke, and it is only while he tongues me that I feel a sudden pang of longing for a cigarette. I quit as soon as I realised I was pregnant, and after a few months the cravings subsided, but in this instant I want to fill my lungs with nicotine and tar, and shed just for a brief moment the stress of existence. But I know that I can't afford the habit, and my lifestyle choices are still going to affect Larxene even now that she has left my womb, so I force myself to let Axel's clingy breath be enough.
He presses needily against me, his skinny limbs catching at my fat, mouth grinning but eyes hungering for more. I set Larxene down on the coffee table, in amongst the porn and dirty plates and crisp packets, thinking about how she is still going to be trapped in this vicious circle at the bottom of society, how she's going to rebel and smoke and drink and hate everybody just like me, and it makes me so suddenly sad to know that my daughter's innocence is just a temporary buffer from the shit of the world that tears drip down my face while Axel kisses me and caresses me, oblivious.
He lets me sleep in his bed tonight, looping one casual arm around my neck. He smokes in bed too, his "night time fag", and in the light of his bedside lamp we watch the smoke curl in the air and bump into the ceiling in a thoughtful silence. Then Axel says "You'd better not make me change her fucking nappy in the middle of the night" and I promise not to and, in fact, he sleeps soundly on every single time Larxene cries. In the morning, we drink bitter coffee and make toast for breakfast, then Axel holds Larxene while I have a shower, joking once I'm out that I'm turning him into a "fucking domestic". I scoff at him. If he was a domestic, then he'd have at least woken up when Larxene needed feeding during the night. "How many times did she wake you up?" he asks. I tell him angrily. He doesn't believe me.
Then he drives me to Mrs Merryweather's house and I want to stay for a cup of tea but he hasn't left enough time, cutting his schedule so short that we only just get to work on the hour. I spend a few days at his house before he decides that he's "busy", which actually means he just wants to masturbate over the pay-per-view channels, then it's back to the car. The weekend is a blessing: I spend every spare second asleep. After a few weeks my tax credits come through, and I stop raiding Axel's fridge every time I stay over. Larxene grows. I shrink. Axel begins to pester me for sex even more. Week after week I tell him that I'm still sore, which I am, but he doesn't believe me until I fabricate a horrible lie about the type of tear that needs sixty stitches.
And I get better at pretending that at night when I am alone Larxene and I don't cry together, and that when she's sick I don't panic with the thought that it's my fault because I can't give her what she needs, and that it doesn't hurt me deep down inside that she likes Mrs Merryweather better than me. And I struggle on and on and on, saving up pennies for a roof over my head, pretending that I love Axel while he pretends that he loves me, dreaming every night of the careless abandon of my old life, the life that I hated, and that I miss.