Mother
says children should be seen and not heard, and sometimes I don't see her for
days, not until another uncle comes by to pay a visit, or pay for a visit, if
she's feeling nice. Mother says I look just like Daddy, but he looks a lot like
the man in all the picture frames at CVS. Sometimes I pretend he's an officer,
knocking on the door. "Ma'am, can you come to the door please? I need to
ask you a few questions about your daughter." I hear the wind-chime sounds
of his handcuffs clink-clinking on his belt, and for just a moment, I
feel secure.
Mother
says don’t talk back, but then she asks me a question, like do I still love
her, would I still love her if she cut off my tongue and fed it to the cat? She
asks me while I'm eating breakfast: bacon, toast, and eggs. I press the food to
the roof of my mouth, real hard, so I know my tongue is still there. It tastes
like the iron bars of a bird cage. She smiles, her cheeks stained with the
knuckle-love her men gave. "Don’t worry, I'm just kidding. There'd be too
much blood."
Mother says I wet the bed, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes I sleep in the
closet, sometimes I sleep in the shed, if I can sleep at all, from the loud bang bang bang on the wall. It's cold out
there. My teeth rattle, chattering, make noise and tattling, telling where I
am. When she finds me, Mother says, I'm no good. I have to go, she can't take
this anymore. I'm just another mouth to feed, another warning to heed, she
should have listened before. "I should have done it, the dirty deed. I should have told the doctor to shut you up while you were still a
fetus, a tiny seed." When I start talking, I never know when to
stop. That's what Mother says.
This is my first Friday flash in probably two years. It's the result of a writing prompt from Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway.
