America was Ma’s idea. America, bunny, is what she said as she waxed her crotch using an old washcloth torn to shreds. Ouch, fuck, she said, tearing away a strip to reveal bare skin, sore and pink as raw meat. That’s where we belong, bunny. That’s where the stars live.
She had big dreams before she got pregnant with me, and she liked to remind me that I was, first and foremost, an interruption. I kept her from getting famous. She was going to be an actress, a star, and then I arrived and, like a tickle in her throat, I just wouldn’t leave, kept growing, kept growing her, and she had to stop going to auditions as her body grew and grew and she had to give up what little she had just to keep me alive and then she was too old, she told me, too wrinkled to be in the spotlight, but me? It was my birthright, my responsibility, to live out her fantasies. Just as soon as we could fix my teeth.
We can’t afford flights to America, I said.
We’ll sell this dump of a house.
We can’t sell the house.
Why not? Ouch, fuck.
Where will we live?
In America!
She stood in front of me and gestured to her groin. She’d made a little upturned triangle, an arrow. Is it even?
It wasn’t. I pointed to where she needed to level out the hairline.
Once we’re in America, you’ll be famous in no time, she told me. Ouch, fuck. Once we’re in the right place, you’ll be a star, bunny.