The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Eldest Daughter: a Break-up Story by Megan Cannella

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content warning: domestic violence, death, self-harm, body horror

Baby, Don’t Cry

Pat found herself the mother of four. It was supposed to be three, until her husband convinced her that you can still be a good Catholic and use the rhythm method. She would have preferred that it had been none.

The husband drank, which led to yelling, which led to fighting, which led to tears. Hers, her daughters’, her husband’s as he apologized himself into a blackout and pissed himself. Somewhere along the line, Pat started keeping tissues up her sleeve. She could wipe her girls’ tears without being accused of babying them. If she wasn’t reaching for the box of tissues, she could hold her husband’s face with care and wipe away the tears he’d never remember. Reaching for the box was defeat. He’d hit it away from her. Sometimes, he’d miss the box and just hit her.

She kept tissues wadded up in her sleeve. With four kids, there was always a runny nose or grubby hands. By the end of the night, her sleeves were empty. Pat dried her own tears on those empty sleeves.

As her kids got older and cried less, Pat developed allergies. Her adult daughters chided her for continuing to see an allergist who seemed to offer no relief. Pat shooed away their concerns, teased if she didn’t have allergies, what would she do with all these tissues up her sleeves?

After the husband’s stroke, he used Pat to steady him. Why would you need a walker when you have a wife? The doctors and her daughters worried Pat would get hurt when the husband hung on her arm, attempting to transfer his pain and deterioration onto Pat’s small frame. Pat shooed away their concerns. She filled her sleeves with more tissues. They were extra soft tissues, lotion added.

During the husband’s many hospital stays, Pat sat vigil. She didn’t eat or ask questions of the doctors or comfort her husband. She waited. Her kids would buy her a tuna melt each night on the way home from the hospital. She would only eat half of the sandwich and four fries—one for each child—even though she hadn’t eaten anything all day. Her kids never noticed. They had kids of their own and work and a dying father to worry about.

Despite her pale, wan face, one might actually say she looked healthy, robust, thriving. By the time the hospital priest was reading the husband his last rites for the third time, Pat was too big to fit in the hospital room’s visitor chair.

After one more last rites ceremony, Pat was widowed. The doctor declared the husband dead from the hallway. Pat was taking up too much space in the hospital room to allow anyone else in. Earlier that week, the husband’s roommate had to be transferred to another floor, to make room for Pat.

At the funeral, Pat had grown too big for her daughters to get close enough to comfort her. No one knew what to do with the husband finally laying silent and Pat unavoidable.

Her youngest daughter walked up to the casket and started to cry. At her daughter’s first grief-filled hiccup, Pat pulled a tissue from her sleeve. She gave a tissue to each of her girls. Her muscle memory started passing tissues to all the mourners. She grew smaller by the tissue. By the time she had passed tissues to every mourner in the old, drafty church, she was naked. Her clothes too stretched out by tissues to hang on her boney frame in their absence.

For the first time, her daughters saw the bruises on Pat’s arms and stories Pat had carved into her stomach rather than speak aloud. Pat would have winced or tried to cover herself if the scarring weren’t so intertwined and illegible. The girls cried at the sight of their mother so worn and haggard. Without more tissues, Pat started to peel off pieces of her tissue thin skin. Her daughters tried to protest. Pat shooed away their concerns, which made them cry even harder until they were freely pulling Pat apart to dry their tears.

Those in attendance would comment on the beautiful service and the selfless mother comforting her children. On their way home from the church, Pat stayed in the car while her eldest daughter ran in to pick her up a tuna melt. That night, Pat ate the full sandwich and all her fries, all except four—one for each child.

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