"Chronic" by Hannah Grieco
“Did you know caregiving is considered a chronic stress experience?” I ask Kate over coffee. “I read it in The New York Times today.”
“I believe it,” she says and pulls out a small brown bottle of pills. “Last week my gynecologist made a joke about me getting a massage on a beach somewhere so I don’t end up with ovarian cancer. How fucked up is that? Then she gave me these.”
She opens the bottle. Hands me a yellow pill.
“Klonopin?” She nods. I take it with a sip of coffee. “Your gynecologist shouldn’t joke about cancer.”
“I don’t think she was joking.”
“That’s even more fucked up.” I take a small bag of weed out of my purse, unroll the top, sniff. “Ovarian cancer is bad. Imagine getting that while taking care of our kids. Cancer in the same organs that started those babies.”
“Or getting cervical cancer from getting fucked by your husband for decades,” Kate says, then laughs.
“Kate.”
“Maria can get that shit now! Yay, Maria!” she says and I grab her hand and squeeze. She pulls away, waves me off. “I’m okay.”
“We’re doomed, aren’t we? It’s always something, you know? Over and over.”
“Like a dick pounding your cervix?” Kate cracks herself up, looks at my face and laughs even harder. “Lighten up, girl.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Or is it?” She asks and grabs the baggie. She takes a fat bud, crumbles it delicately between her thumb and middle finger, removes one seed, then another.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, giving birth is a trauma.”
“Fucking is a trauma,” Kate says. “Fucking a man who cheats on you and gives you HPV, increasing your risk of cervical cancer every time he’s inside you, never telling you so you find out at the fucking gynecologist after eleven years of marriage. That’s a trauma.”
“Yes, it is,” I say.
She shakes her head, flutters her fingers toward the kitchen windows above my kids’ dirty breakfast cereal bowls and Brian’s half-full coffee mug. She casts out something, like a witch, and looks back down at the small pile of weed with a smile.
“I guess Maria and I both get to think about that,” she says brightly, winks at me, and starts to pack the pipe. Her fingers work fast, elegant even as they scrape the resin off the screen.
“You know, you’re a really good mom,” I say.
“So are you,” she says. “But does it matter? It’s still all trauma.”
“I have a pretty good life,” I say and get up to pour more coffee. She grabs my hand and pulls me back down.
“Fucking a man who leaves you with two kids and runs off to live his life is a trauma,” she says. “Or. Fucking a man who says he loves you and leaves you home with three kids to take care of as he works and does shit and lives his life. As he lives his life and you stand still.”
She hands me the pipe.
“Brian’s a good dad,” I whisper.
“Yes,” she says. “Let me light this for you.”
Hannah Grieco is a writer in Arlington, VA. Find her online at http://hgrieco.com and on Twitter at @writesloud.
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