I was one of those pageant moms. I know, pathetic, right? I used to get my self worth from how prim, and proper, and yes…pretty others viewed my six year old daughter, Lucy.
It started as a hobby after the divorce, but soon became an obsession. Poor Lucy, being made to strut around, to perform on her tiny keyboard, wearing thick makeup more appropriate for a lounge singer.
But I thought she enjoyed it, and it gave me something to post on social media. When Lucy took second in a local pageant, I got over one hundred likes. It was the happiest day since my husband Dan had abandoned us.
But I wanted more…
After another disappointing performance, I started to fret. Nobody ‘likes’ fourth place, and if they do it’s just to be polite. I could tell even my own mother was disappointed when Lucy failed to place at the counties.
“Just have to double down,” I told Lucy. “We just have to work harder.” And we did: more vocal lessons, more piano practice, more expensive cloths and makeup, even though we were strapped since Dan left and my job paid peanuts.
“You simply need to be more,” I told Lucy. “More talented, more beautiful…the world is a competition and you don’t want to be left behind. It’s better you learn that now, as a child.”
But the results only grew worse. Perhaps I put too much pressure on her.
One night, after having been officially served with the divorce papers, a demon came to me. It spoke in my mind, but I knew it was pure, and evil, and real. It gave me one wish, but said to choose wisely. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I was desperate. So I wished all the same.
I wished that everyone in the town would recognize how beautiful Lucy was…
A few days after that she took ill, some terrible infection that spread and spread and that antibiotics could not cure. After a three day battle, Lucy was gone forever.
Or so I thought…
At her funeral, everyone from the town gathered around the tiny open casket, and commented how beautiful she was. Just as I had wished.
But that’s where this story veers from tragedy to horror…
It goes like this: each night since Lucy was buried I awake with a start, blurry eyes to the radio alarm clock. Squinting until the red numbers come into focus. Three in the morning, as always…
I hear a light tapping along the sink in the bathroom across the hallway. So I clear the rheum from my eyes and sit upright, in the creaky king-sized bed I used to share with my husband. By then I can clearly make out the pitter-patter of little feet on tile. And given the familiarity of the noise, I forget for a moment that Lucy is dead.
Next comes the sound of running water, then the croaking thump of the pipes as the old faucet is turned off. So I slip out of bed, sliding my ratty nightgown against the low count sheets, feeling the horror of regret, as well as true repulsion and terror. In these moments, I feel as though I am being carried forward by some oblique yet indefinable momentum.
Every night I wish it’s a dream, or even a nightmare, but it never is. Just reality: harsh, unblinking, reality…
As I near the bathroom, my nose is assaulted by the distinct smell of earth, as though Lucy had just come home from trundling through a local park.
On I walk, to where bathroom meets hallway, moonlight snaking in through the foyer window and dancing like tiny zombies across the carpet.
There is fresh dirt staining the carpet, a trail of breadcrumbs to where I must go. I will clean it up later, a mother’s duty. Downstairs I can hear the front door ajar, heavy wind throttling it back and forth. I would like to lock the door, but I dare not resist my little Lucy. She’s always had quite the temper.
As I trudge forward, out of the corner of my eye I see her empty bedroom, and all its empty pageant ribbons and trophies. More trophies than toys, I realize, bitterly.
I walk on toward the pale iridescence sneaking out from under the bathroom door’s piny frame. As though the door itself is a splintered coffin. I open the door at last, tasting metal in my throat and a steady pulse rattle through my body like electric current.
Inside, it is always the same: Lucy standing on her tippy-toes, using the mirror above the sink to apply lipstick.
She turns to face me, growing more decayed with each passing day. “Mommy!” She digs the lipstick at herself, claws at her tiny little face. “I’m sorry I’m not more pretty,” she says. “I’m so sorry, mommy!”
Last night was the worst; the smell of a slaughterhouse. My daughter’s rotten face, colorless, with bits of dry patches forming where the skin has deteriorate away from the bone. Wearing that pageant red lipstick, dressed in the gaudy pageant gown I had hand-sewn for her just a few weeks back. Red as the lipstick, with black frills as accents.
“Lucy,” I say. “Why are you here again?”
“Because I live here,” she says, tears soaking through moldering eyes.
“Not anymore,” I say.
“Because I’m not pretty anymore?” she asks. And I feel both love and, yes, repulsion as I take her hand.
“I woke up in the Lonely Place and realized I must not look pretty,” she had said that first night. “When I first awoke, I thought I was ready for another pageant. My hair was curled and I could taste makeup on my lips. But then I was alone. I knew I wasn’t pretty. I knew I had to come home and get pretty. Appearances matter, isn’t that what you always say?”
I know then the horror of my wish, and all the moments leading up to it. I had tried to make a doll of my child, and now she was but a voodoo doll I could not be released from. I had made a horror of us both.
“It’s cold and lonely there,” Lucy said last night. “Why do you keep returning me to the Lonely Place? Am I in timeout? Is it because I didn’t win? Is it because I’m not pretty enough?”
So night after night I walk her back to the cemetery, and I tuck her in. And then I trudge home, arms sore from the shoveling, and wait to do it all over. This new ritual of the macabre.
But now I must go. I’ve been up later than usual, and I think I hear a scratching at the front door. It will soon be time to help Lucy with her makeup, or at least what’s left of her.
I was one of those pageant moms. And I suppose, in a way, I always will be…