Unless she forces herself to. Mostly she forces herself to think of her child while sitting in front of the three-way mirror in her dressing room. The view of her beautiful, pain-drawn face sometimes puts her in a self-pitying mood. She cries then. The few times she’d felt something for her—go ahead, say it—child had been long ago. Sometime before Peter’s third birthday, before he started to become weird, and before she realized there was something worse than living in a shithole in Poland. That was living in a shithole in Poland with a fucked-up child. Peter’s mother had been so poor that she now deems it her right to be rich. If that means sucking on a sausage for a few minutes a day, then please. She’s the perfect lover. Good-humored, open to experimenting with drugs. Charming to her Russian’s colleagues, a perfect hostess. She had, as mentioned, had her breasts. And lips enhanced. Every centimeter of her body is taut and groomed. The Russian’s taste has for decades been unwaveringly old-fashioned. Triple-A women had to look like 2017 influencer-hookers. In Europe this look was a bit embarrassingly antiquated and betrayed one’s origins in the developing world. Or what the English took for the developing world.

“Show me Shit Happens,” says Peter’s mother to her fucking Amazon Echo device. The latest episode of the beloved BBC show appears on her flat-screen. Ever since the BBC had been privatized, the programs, unlike the unbelievably dreary old garden shows, are supposed to elicit huge interest among the viewing public. Shit Happens is one of these shows. People are crazy for it. The show’s about the greatest possible humiliation you can inflict on a person. Friends and family members nominate candidates to the BBC, algorithms take care of the rest. Search the net, create a profile, and hit the candidates where it hurts them the most. They take mothers hostage and isolate them from their newborns. Show wives recordings made in a brothel. Show butt plugs in teachers’ backsides. People in front of their computers wanking to cat videos. Speaking of which. Peter’s mother is beyond humiliation.