Mothering makes Elizabeth uncomfortable and it’s no wonder. Haunted by an abortion she had as a teenager, an older, married Elizabeth recalls her first night in the hospital after giving birth to a daughter, Little Mary.

            “I had a dream that frightened me so much, I never dared to share it with anyone. My first child, the one Mary Kline and I had tossed in the garbage, had pinned a note to the north wall of my womb. It read, ‘Watch out, brothers and sisters! This mother will eat her young!’”

            As a new mother, Elizabeth equates even the tender experience of breastfeeding with pain and hurt and need.

            “I didn’t mind that my nipples were bruised and blistered beyond recognition those first few weeks. My new little friend came for visits often, always wanting to know what she could eat. The pain started to feel good and satisfying once I could actually hear the baby gulping back big glubs of milk…What a good mother I was! The tiny droplets of milk that gathered on her pink lips satisfied me as much as her. I was giving her my best, as much as she wanted. I came to her in the darkness, giving bluish-white nectar that flowed in endless supplies. She took and I gave, keeping pace with her frantic sucks.”

            Elizabeth’s understanding of motherhood is skewed by her own experience. She has spent most of her life trying to contain the rage she feels for fat Mary Kline, the woman who raised her.

            “Early in my life, Mary Kline stepped into the shoes that were never possible for my biological mother, Pearl…I can guess that Mary Kline had moments when she resented all of the energy she dedicated to me, raising a little girl who wasn’t her real daughter. But the job had its perks. She was the recipient of all of the hugs and wispy kisses that only little girls can deliver. I was her excuse to buy crayons and paper dolls and dye for Easter eggs.”

            As she grows into a surly adolescent, the relationship strains even further. Elizabeth remembers it like this:

            “Mary Kline tried so hard to anticipate my desires that most of the time, it seemed like she was waiting with labored, baited breaths for my next request, ready to smother me with her responses. I once made the mistake of mentioning that I liked chocolate milk. Mary came home with four jugs, more than the two of us could consume in a month. In another bag, she had collected all of the ingredients to make enough chocolate milk for my entire fourth grade class. Our kitchen became a laboratory and Mary was the mad scientist determined to concoct the best chocolate milk possible, something that would be perfect enough for my spoiled palate. She purchased two kinds of dry cocoa mix, three kinds of syrup and a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips, which she melted in a double boiler, all in a furious effort to unlock the secret to my happiness. All I wanted was a glass of chocolate milk. Mary turned everything into an elaborate, sticky-sweet, fxxxxxx production.”

            Elizabeth’s body develops and her knowledge of sexuality becomes more sophisticated, but her cruelty toward Mary Kline and her birth mother, Pearl, intensifies.

            “I wondered if they knew that Mary weighed about 400 pounds, and that my real mother was a drooling idiot…These two mothers of mine looked ridiculous in just about everything they did…I was a seasoned lover compared to Mary. She stayed home and kept the house from blowing away, while I ventured out, hips first, into the world, daring all the boy-men to slap me, tickle me, or touch me in any way they would.”

            Even after she grows up and moves away, Elizabeth can’t shake the ire she has for the woman who raised her. She says,

            “My irritation with Mary Kline had a pulse of its own that out-thumped those in my head and heart…I couldn’t stand myself for the way I treated this woman who adored me. Why did her presence annoy me so badly? Why couldn’t I eat her food and thank her for it? Why didn’t I ever thank her for the hours she spent stooped over the sewing machine, all so I would have beautiful things to wear? Why did it bother me that she was so huge? Why should I feel embarrassed by her? She wasn’t my mother, but somehow I was tethered to her like a daughter. I owed this gigantic person everything, but I could give her nothing.”

            The tension isn’t lost on Mary Kline. She’s hurt and bewildered by Elizabeth’s rejection, but keeps mothering her the best way she knows how:

            “I wondered if any of Elizabeth’s friends would notice the smells of delicious meals permeating every room in the house. I wondered what they would think if they’d seen me hunched over Mother’s sewing machine, making a diaphanous fairy costume or an Easter frock with matching purse and cape. Would her friends forgive the exteriors if they stayed long enough to notice what stood at the creamy center of the three of us?

            But the creamy center that binds Mary Kline, her slow friend Pearl Davis and their daughter, Elizabeth, isn’t all that sweet, and Mary knows it.

            “Without Pearl and Elizabeth, I am nothing. I didn’t take them because I wanted to. I took them because they were a lifeline, and without them, I would have sunk to the bottom of lagoon that would have no choice but to accept me. I was too big to hoist myself out and nobody else would be able to do it, either…In the beginning, baby Elizabeth needed me as badly as I needed her. But she soon grew into a goddess who recognized her pathetic surroundings and her skewered circumstances…my love offerings looked like sacrifices, like acts of worship. But Elizabeth and I both knew that the carrion I brought to her altar were really peace offerings meant to appease her, to atone for my most grievous sin: I needed her.”

            Mary Kline is fat, but she’s not stupid. She knows exactly why she and Elizabeth’s mother, the simple Pearl, became friends in the first place:

            “Pearl Davis and I were friends for one simple reason: neither of us had anyone else to sit with during lunch. That had been the case since my freshman year. Pearl was a simpleton and I was fatter than a hog…My proportions were so expansive my poor, devoted seamstress was forced to expand her understanding of geometry. But my body confounded even sound mathematical theory. Fabric arrived in bolts, so I would have a closet full of tents that covered the freak show my body had become…At 17, the prospects for a girl the size of a house were slim to none. It wasn’t the dearth of prospects that saddened me so much; it was the idea of not having a child, a baby elephant of my very own.”

            When fat Mary Kline and her parents discover that Pearl Davis is pregnant, they jump at the chance to take over the girl and her unborn child. Years later, Mary reveals what she’s known all along: the siege was wrong from the beginning.

            “I was the mother of this baby, and Pearl could come along for the ride if she chose. We Klines had willed it so…Sometimes, as held her close to my bulky body to feed her a warm bottle, Elizabeth gazed at me, deep in baby thoughts, and I imagined she could tell I was a fraud. She sucked intently, boring into me with her blank slate of a face. This infant was not to be fooled. I gave myself away by trying to anticipate her every need, instead of letting it flow naturally, like I thought real mothers must do. I had snatched something that wasn’t mine, and no amount of loving and squeezing and smoothing was going to change that…Pearl Davis was one lucky girl to have the Klines take over like we did. That baby she housed in her ignorant belly would want for nothing and neither would she. All we wanted in return for her to let fat Mary waddle over and play Mama from time to time…What my parents couldn’t anticipate was how seriously I would demand my due. Not that Pearl didn’t need me every step of the way. Her own inadequacies were bountiful, and I was all too ready to fill her gaps. I had needs of my own. I took over because I was good. I took over because I was huge and not to be denied. I took over because I could not resist that baby any more than I could resist seconds and thirds at dinner. If that baby had been edible, I would have devoured her, and Pearl, too.”

            The rest of Anne Shaw Heinrich’s first novel, God Bless The Child, reveals the sad truths behind Mary’s insatiable hunger and Elizabeth’s dark understanding of life and love. This novel is not for the squeamish. With a story unfolding over a thirty-year period, readers will come to know a cast of surprising characters. The book reveals the dark side of people and places that should be safe, and illuminates how closely burdens and blessings are bound, especially when forgiveness and redemption are at stake.