Category: short fiction

Mall Goddess | Marilee Dahlman

Let’s put this into perspective. There were problems in the world. Bill Clinton, at that time, he had problems. The whole Monica thing. O.J. was free, there was still stuff going on in Bosnia, and the Spice Girls were breaking up. But my problems, right then in that food court? They were epic.

What was happening was I was sitting across the table from my true love, Justin. He was doing more wincing than talking. I could see palm sweat where he’d been gripping the edges of his Sbarro tray. 

“I felt like I had to say yes, Kylie,” Justin said. “I mean, when you just grabbed me in the hallway. I was in the moment, you know?”

The hallway, grabbing him—that would be in the school hallway, right after the class we had together, Greek & Roman Mythology. Sometimes I called Justin my Apollo, which he liked, but the truth was that he reminded me more of a centaur. He had doe eyes, soft and brown and hidden by long lashes, just as I imagined the eyes of a half-boy, half-horse. He was beautiful and strong, but prone to skittishness. At that moment, his soft eyes kept glazing over and flitting sideways to glance at his friends, sitting at a table over by Subway. He drummed his fingers and fidgeted.

Justin and I were at our favorite table, the one by the window overlooking the parking lot that sits between the mall and Applebee’s. That was our joke—let’s have a date at Applebee’s. But we couldn’t afford that so he’d get two slices of pizza from Sbarro, I’d get a cinnamon Auntie Anne’s pretzel and we would dine like gods at our special table. 

“I know I said yes,” he said. “I just don’t know if I meant it.”

My mind caught up to what “yes” he was talking about. I’d told Justin that we’d go to prom together. He’d said yes. I’d said yes to other things. Three times in the car, parked in a quiet spot, I had said yes.  

I had to respond. But my breath whooshed up and down my throat, sweat popped out all over my body, including my face, and my brain mostly shut down, except for the part that became omniscient, able to see other people staring at us as they sucked on straws to hide their smirks. To top it off, I had to sit a certain way because of a bad zit on my back that hurt when I leaned against the chair.  

“I love you.” I wished we were together in his dad’s Trans Am, Soundgarden playing low. Anywhere but here, under the glare of the mall’s fluorescent lights.

“What, Kylie?”

“But I love you.” I said it more loudly. At that point, people openly looked our way. Justin’s friends, Marcus, Steve, and Wendi. The two guys in blue Menards shirts eating KFC. The lady with a kid pushing Matchbox cars onto the floor.

Justin beamed a smile. His lips pursed to make a “pfft” sound. He acted like he was five years older, even though he was two months younger and we were both seniors. 

“We can’t go together.” He paused to glance at the friends. “I know what I said, but no.” 

That’s when everything burned. My heart went as dark as a charcoal ember, with crackling red pieces breaking off. My brain smoked. I looked around, anywhere but his face. Flames streaked up the food court walls, melting the octagonal skylights, blazing through electrical wires and drywall and incinerating everything in the whole mall, every fleece jacket, fruity candle, crappy piece of jewelry, all the CDs and Pepe jeans, everything, every shelf and mannequin. It all burned to a crisp, and it didn’t make any difference to the world because it was all nothing to begin with. I ought to do it. Burn the place so there’d be nothing left but a jumble of blood and bones sitting on ash and the smell of smoke obliterating the lingering aroma of Orange Julius. 

Justin was still in front of me. He started to push out from the table—no! I would not be left sitting alone, like a loser. I would get away first. Standing up fast, I shoved the table somehow, which I didn’t mean to do, and Justin looked scared. Okay, if he was going to act jumpy, I’d make his performance worth it. I picked up my chair a few inches and slammed it to the floor. To this day, I try not to think much about what happened next, which is that I strode away, toward the mall’s main corridor, but had to stop and puke up that pretzel. I did it next to a trash can, by the mural with the buffalo herd and the cornfield. I guess everyone saw me do that but, like I said, I try not to think about it much.  

###

So, anyway, that was the drama of my life. When I graduated, it was clear I needed a job, so I tried different things and ended up back at Empire Mall. Weirdly, my best job was at Foot Locker. I didn’t mind the people I worked with. The place had a clean, rubbery smell. Yeah, I felt I was above having to fit shoes on people, but it was better than working in fast food. And I had no interest in breaking my back or slicing off a finger down at the meatpacking plant. 

Wendi, Justin’s friend whom I finally understood was more than a friend, would come to the mall sometimes and pretend not to recognize me. Other times she would act really friendly. I met a guy named Brandon who worked at Sbarro. Justin never came to the mall, so God knew where he got his Nikes. I’d see him around town sometimes. He’d cut his hair shorter and gained fifteen pounds. If we were together, I’d still love him. 

I married Brandon. We had a reception at the Best Western where we danced to the Kelly Clarkson song “Breakaway.” More importantly, when Foot Locker left the mall, I snagged a job in maintenance. I was doing that for about two weeks when my supervisor retired and the mall’s security guy quit, which left me as the mall’s chief maintenance and security person. The mall management company emailed me, “We’re happy to have you keeping an eye on things as this commercial center’s chief custodian.” 

So, mall janitor. I had a job and a husband and you’d think that’d be enough, but I made a point of keeping tabs on Justin’s whereabouts. Accidentally-on-purpose I’d end up in the same place as him. Picking up pop at Hy-Vee, waiting in reception at the vet, once watching the downtown Halloween parade. I wouldn’t say anything. Neither would he.

That is, until the summer I turned twenty-nine. It was an average day, no warning. I hadn’t even planned it. I was crossing the parking lot of the highway Culver’s under the glaring August sun, mind going a mile a minute, just wanting to pick up a Butterburger and frozen custard. Justin was walking out alone, and when our eyes met, he got this look like he’d been caught shoplifting. Beauty’s skin deep? Whatever. When I took in his brown-green eyes, quick smile, and broad shoulders under that plaid shirt, I knew his soul was all colors of the rainbow edged in gold. 

We passed each other. Behind me, his voice floated along the air. 

“I was stupid back then. Sorry.” 

He actually apologized to me, at least to my back. But it was so unexpected. What do you say if you hear what you always wanted to hear but you aren’t ready for it? In an instant, I remembered what he’d been like and why I’d never gotten over him. We’d bonded in art class and he’d paint with green while singing Green Day songs. He’d always found something nice to say about my mother, whose moods swung between vacant silences and hurricanes of pointless activity—“She wears the prettiest earrings!”

I faced him. “You were never stupid.” 

Justin flicked his head like he was making sure nobody was looking, stepped closer, and snuck a hand out to graze my elbow. He smiled at me with his mouth and eyes and whole heart. A wonderful moment. I’ve held onto it for years, always going over the memory with care, like it’s a floor I’m waxing. 

###

Brandon turned out ok. We pretty much get along. We have one child, though that took a while. When Sbarro left the mall, Brandon got a job at Casey’s gas station. Sometimes the Casey’s manager gives him old t-shirts for free when they get a new shipment. I wear them. 

The weird thing is, sometimes I catch Brandon looking at me, his eyes on the hard plasticky print of a lizard or truck or whatever’s on the front, and he’s standing there, and I’m sitting on the couch, and his chin—he’s still got zits, after all these years—wobbles and his eyes get wet. He looks so pathetic I have to get up and leave, trying to resist kicking in drywall on my way out. We don’t have much to say to each other the rest of the time, but I give him orders. Pick up the kid, stop buying milk at Hy-Vee when it’s cheaper at the new Walmart, and why don’t you put laundry away for once?

He doesn’t do what I say. Neither does our kid, for that matter. It’s only at the mall where I’m really in charge. 

The mall got quiet. Literally, because the speaker system broke and I didn’t know how to fix it. But the place didn’t become a ghost mall, not totally, not from my perspective. I kept it alive. The fluorescent lights glowed and the skylights were clean. It was only the vacant stalls that made it seem dim. Sometimes, doing my patrols, I got the feeling that the mall was truly alive. In the heat of summer, being inside the mall felt like being inside a human lung, all damp and warm and dark. The space slowly replenished its air, breathing in the hot mist hovering above the parking lot asphalt, and exhaling its humid stuffiness through every crack and orifice in the roof and walls. The circulatory system of pipes still worked and the nerve system of wiring and lights illuminated every inch of peeling linoleum. If this place was a ghost mall, it was a living ghost. 

Justin never came in. He and Wendi had one kid, like me. I’d once admitted to Brandon that my feelings for Justin hadn’t been a short-term thing. By junior year, I’d actually been in love with Justin since I’d seen him on stage in eighth grade singing the lead in Music Man. Brandon was understanding about it at the time. But once in a while, like an assassin slicing a dagger, he makes a comment about Justin and Wendi, twisting it in a way that makes it nasty about me. Like, Wendi went back to school and became a nurse practitioner. He says, “They must want more in life, you know?” 

I did used to want more. Something with myth, maybe becoming an archeologist. But not everybody’s meant to follow dreams. Some people have to survive a dying empire. I conduct my patrols, mop the floors, change lightbulbs, water plants in the brick planters, dust benches, tar up roof leaks, fix broken tile in the restrooms, pull weeds in the parking lot, and even repair the electrical although I don’t have a license. The management company doesn’t ask too many questions. They just claim new tenants are about to arrive. 

Some vacant stores have beige banners across, showing jubilant women shoppers and the words “Good Things Coming Soon . . .” I stopped believing good things were coming when they stopped sending the banners. JCPenney was deader than a doornail. Bath & Body Works, a black hole. Spencer’s Gifts, godforsaken and possibly haunted.

One time, I went into the old Kmart and saw graffiti splashed on the back wall, red and yellow flames bursting everywhere. That hit funny. It made me mad, like, if anybody’s going to burn down the mall, it’s going to be me. This place is mine. I take care of it, keep it alive, and I’m the boss. If I hear clatter or laughter pealing from the darkness of that empty Kmart, I go over there. I’ll say, “Won’t have that business here,” but mostly my mere presence with a big yellow flashlight is intimidating enough. 

But sometimes, when it’s a bright day perfumed with Mr. Clean, it feels for a moment like all the retail could return. Everything could go back to how it always was, if only the mall management company or the U.S. president or God just flipped a switch. 

###

I’ll tell you what happened last July, when I was repairing a broken window: I saw an old red 1991 Trans Am cruise by really slow. Justin’s ride. He’d kept it going all these years. 

Quickly, I patrolled the whole mall, peering out all the windows. What I saw made my heart race and my head go all light, just like when I was a teenager. The Trans Am was parked at the old Applebee’s. It wasn’t an Applebee’s any more, it was a Mexican cantina that a family started up three years ago in that building when the Applebee’s left. 

Justin had gotten a job as a server there, it turned out. I stood at our window, right by our old table, and watched him get in and out of his car a dozen times. He always wore jeans and an untucked white shirt, sleeves rolled up. His hair was still thick and he’d put on a few or fifty in recent years, like we all have. It was the same Justin with the charming tilt of his head and slow saunter like he had all day to get wherever he was going. I wanted to be closer, to know if his eyes were still penetrating and kind, if he sang along to the radio, if he still wanted a pet bird or ever got one. How can it be, after all these years, that I wanted to hold his hand on a blanket in the grass at a firework show?

The best part wasn’t how he looked. Minor details. What mattered was where he looked. When he arrived or left, I would see him take a long glance toward the food court window where we used to have our dates. This was true whether I spied from the windows, the roof, or the old Kmart’s glass doors. 

Take a long look, Justin. It’s the place where you ruined your life. Both our lives. 

I wanted him to come over to the mall. I also didn’t want him to come over, because if he was nasty somehow, I’d lose something inside me, some little jewel of hope I pretend I don’t carry around all the time. 

But sometimes, you have to go out on a limb. After careful planning, I made a point of timing things. A month ago, striding across the parking lot to my car just as he was getting out of his, I lifted the hand that held my keys, keeping the wave as casual as I could. The first time he just nodded back. The second time, when I was up on the roof trying to push October’s first snow off the worst leaky places, he waved first.  

After that was the long waiting time, when the sun dimmed for winter and every day lasted forever. Every morning, I looked at Brandon sleeping, and saw someone I loved. But at the mall, in the women’s restroom, I looked in the mirror and saw someone who’d never gotten what she wanted. Across town, was Justin looking into his own mirror, and contemplating what could happen between us? 

The waiting got worse. I sat in the mall and things no longer burned. They vanished. The steel and concrete dissolved into the air. The linoleum sank into the soil and the artificial lights faded to let the real stars glow. In my mind I chased Justin. Confronted him. Long after closing up, I would collapse on the floor in the food court, next to the buffalo mural, now with chipped tile and the buffalo fur faded to corpse gray, and I’d unwrap a Pecan Spin, the crackling wrapper the only sound on planet earth, and I would wait. 

The Mexican place closed in February, shut down for good. I don’t know if they went bust or the family just moved away, but the cars stopped coming and so did Justin. It took twelve hours for the place to look like it’d been abandoned for centuries. With snowdrift piled against the front entrance and icicles dangling from the eaves, the cantina was a ruin that belonged in a haunted forest. I emailed the mall management company and they said they’d heard something about a barbeque joint going in, maybe.

The Mexican place going bust meant even less foot traffic in the mall. I still patrolled with my mop, trying to get my ten thousand steps in, but it didn’t seem to do much for my physique or energy levels if I did or didn’t. The Claire’s left, as did the Things Remembered and the twin-screen movie theater. 

So, now there’s the florist, jewelry and watch repair, pawn shop, and military recruiting office. The place where the Buckle used to be is a Senior Citizen Meeting Room. I said to Brandon, I’ll bring the kid one day. She can get some energy out. Brandon just sucked on his bottom lip and said, “I don’t want her to see her mom as a janitor, ok? I just want more for her, you know?”

###

Justin’s Trans Am cruised along Seventh Avenue, in front of the mall, twice in early spring. Twice that I saw. So, how many times total? And, why? He lived in a neighboring town. No reason to be here, except maybe to visit friends. He’d always had friends. 

A mall is kind of a changing thing, just like a person. We would definitely get a medical clinic. That tenant was starting to set things up. The food court had a donut shop. There were white mannequins left where the JCPenney used to be, always standing like naked ghosts about to have a party. I left it that way because the gray hairs walking in the mornings always take a long look at that scene, it was part of the entertainment of their morning exercise. 

I always kept the food court tables clean and the chairs lined up nice and straight. That’s where I was when it happened. Right in the food court, while spring rain pelted the windows, I heard the soft tap of footsteps. A second later, I saw a man in a green plaid shirt, wet hair flattened across his forehead, amble in with a brave smile spreading on his face. 

It was Justin. 

He stopped under the sign that said “Food Court” in cursive letters. They used to be bright yellow. Now they’re the color of stained teeth. He took in the scene, snake plants in big cracked pots under the skylights, every table empty, and the dark void where I used to buy big soft pretzels caged in metal. Even though he was the confident type, he said nothing. His grin froze up. 

I edged closer, near enough to know he smelled like the rainy outside, damp earth and wet asphalt. He regarded our old table. 

His face looked so sad, I said, “Wanna walk?” 

He nodded. We took off into the mall’s main corridor, strolling side-by-side past shuttered stores like we had some place to go. My heart raced. I attempted a dignified smile while feeling like a magical power would lift our bodies and we’d transform into people with shining eyes, wearing glowing garb. Why was I so devoted to this prince? He wouldn’t change our realm of rotting mall and dying town. Yes, he’d been a friend. Back when we were dating, there were laughter and parties and fun and the belief that there was a golden odyssey of life waiting for us. Not always easy, but a journey with meaning and mystery along the way. Maybe, together with him, there would still be some wonder ahead. 

“So, this is where you’ve been hiding,” he said. 

The way he said it, a little high-pitched, I figured the words were planned out. After he said them, he glanced at me. I didn’t like that look at all. It was slightly timid, as if he was afraid that I’d strike him down with a bolt of lightning. He didn’t used to have that look. Maybe I was overthinking things, but I got the feeling he’d been saying things for a long time, and getting mean answers back. I had stuff I wanted to say to him, aching matters to get off my chest, but I decided that, for the time being, I would just be agreeable. 

“Yeah, but you found me, huh?” I smiled and stopped, and he did, too, and we didn’t know what to do so we started walking again. Maybe a promenade is all he planned on. There was nobody else around. We got to the theater and I wondered if I should invite him in. We could sit in the dark and talk. The words just didn’t come out, though. We went back to the food court, quiet the whole time. 

“You could’ve been my prince,” I finally said. Yeah, I know, I have a one-track mind. All these years haven’t changed me. At least, not how I feel about him. Justin didn’t seem surprised by my words. “My prince,” I said again.  

Justin winced and waved a hand at the faded lime green acre of chairs and tables. “And this would be our court.” He twirled and gave a dramatic bow, swooping his head low and scraping the floor with his fingertips. 

I felt sick. Like, depression walloped me like it was an ice road trucker and I was a half-wit doe. God, what did I have? What did I ever have that I could give to anyone else? And what could Justin ever give me? I’d never had much power over my own destiny. Not once the local college closed down, taking its arts program with it, and not when life had handed me the duty of caring for a mother with mental health issues. Yet, with Justin there could be laughter. Music and camping trips and laughter. At least sometimes. Maybe.

Justin’s hand was suddenly holding my elbow. I got a strange sensation, like my brain was in a Ninja blender. We were walking but my head was spinning and weightless. It was all I could do to plant one foot in front of the other and not puke or fall down. We left the mall and trudged through the parking lot. The rain had stopped. The only sound was the gigantic American flag at the dealership across the street flapping in the wind. We arrived at his Trans Am, parked between the mall and the old Applebee’s. He let go of me to rummage in the passenger side and grab a plastic Hy-Vee grocery bag. 

“The pizza’ll be cold,” he said.

I looked at his wedding band on the hand holding the grocery bag. He noticed me looking and our gaze met.

“We’ll have an affair, see,” he said.

I nodded. Yeah, of course I’d go along with that. No question. The fleeting thought of my husband Brandon hurt more than I would’ve expected. It wasn’t a wood sliver under skin, it was more of a smash of a hammer on a thumb. But when that happens, you swear and keep pounding away. Sometimes, you just have to finish building something.  

Justin still had the keys to the old Applebee’s. I guess that was his kingdom now, the way the mall was mine. The old restaurant was dark but not as dilapidated as I would’ve thought. The plants were dead, there were carpet stains and a slight mildew smell, but the ceiling didn’t look like it would collapse on us.

“They took care of it,” Justin shrugged. “But you know how it is.”  

The electricity wasn’t on. The window shades were up, letting sunlight in, and cracked glass let in fresh air. We picked out the table facing the mall parking lot. We sat down, vinyl booths squeaking like crazy. It was funny to get this perspective, to face the gray boxy building with peeling paint and faded store names surrounded by a weedy parking lot moat. We’d started over there, a million years ago. I guess we got farther than where we’d begun. 

Justin sat everything on the table between us. Some Mountain Dew, pizza slices and cookies. 

“Royal buffet,” I said. The emptiness inside was filling up with something. Justin, this old place, the food – it was a nice concoction of novelty and the familiar. It was real life. It was magic. Whatever the power behind it, I’d have someone to share my realm with.

Justin laughed. He drummed his fingers on the table and his grin spread wide and genuine.

We didn’t eat at first. I took his hands and we looked at each other, the inside of the restaurant, and the outside of the mall. All abandoned property, or close to it. To put things in perspective, I guess everything crumbles eventually. But something else had begun. No myth or fairy tale. Just me and Justin together, finally, in our own ever after.

Listen as Marilee reads from her story…

About the author:

Before the Waters | Corrina Chan

Time doesn’t flow right on the river Acheron. Several days on Earth could be a mere moment here, a grandmother could pass through long after her granddaughter, a single trip across could take years. Despite this, the river represents order, represents change and justice for all the lives on Earth—a passing from one state of existence to another, from one life to another. I serve as caretaker of their souls. I do my duty, what I was created for, and I do it well. I deliver them to their fates, but only for a certain price. 

A Silver Dollar, 1935 

Pass. 

A Peso, 1840 

Pass. 

A Bànliǎng, 378 BCE 

Pass. 

A Honey Cake 

I stared down blankly at the older woman. She held the plate up in her hands, the little honey cake, golden and perfect, glistening in the low light of the Underworld. It smelled divine—slightly fruity, with a caramelized glaze. 

I lifted my eyes from the pastry back to her. “Step out of line.”

She looked like she was going to say something, but I interrupted her, already knowing the question. “No coin, no access.” 

She looked down, despair running over her face like I’d seen billions of times before. I sent her back to the water’s edge. 

A Roman Gold Coin, 309 

Pass. 

A Mink Fur Coat 

Step out of line. 

Two Two-pound Coins, 2048 and 2060, and an Urn Containing the Ashes of a Husband 

“No bodies in Hades,” I declared. 

“But I was buried with this! You cannot take him away from me! Not again!” “Leave the urn here or step out of line.” 

“But I brought enough for both of us! I made sure he would be able to come with me.” “You are permitted to board. It,” I gestured to the plain metal vase with the engraving of a name and a date and nothing more, “is not.” 

The woman hugged her possession tighter and stepped away. 

A Burmese Ruby Necklace 

Step out of line. 

“Wait! Do you know what this–”

Step. Out. Of. Line. 

A Rupee, 2013 

Pass. 

A Scythe, a Black Cloak, and a Quarter Dollar, 2003 

Pass – “Oh, hello again.” 

“Charon.” Death tossed the coin to me and it evaporated instantly. 

“What do you want this time?” 

“One report per century, Charon. You know the rules.” 

“Has it really been that long?” 

“No.” 

I looked at him quizzically. 

“I am told that millions of souls are being held up somewhere. I came to check-in. I knew it would happen here.” 

“People aren’t being buried with as much wealth as they used to be. I cannot accept their non-payment.” 

“You cannot discriminate against the poor and forgotten. They are being buried with wealth. Just no longer of the monetary kind.” 

“I cannot accept these treasures,” I replied, shaking my head. 

I took a look behind the old man, two figures shrinking away behind the ruffles of his cloak. I looked back into Death’s decayed face. 

“They cannot enter.”

“They can and they will. They are under my protection. I have supplemented this woman’s non-payment.” He retrieved a golden Drachma from his sleeve and patted the woman’s head. “And I will argue on behalf of this woman’s husband,” he gestured to the second figure behind his coat, “and ask that Hades allow a mortal body, though no longer a body, into his realm.” 

He tossed me the coins and they vanished less than a foot away from my face. I didn’t blink, but I stood still as they climbed into my boat. We rode across the river in silence, the two women holding their treasures close, and holding themselves even closer to Death. 

A small, bright honey cake sat on the seat of my boat as I departed back to the other side. I dissolved it, accepting the non-monetary gift. I flinched at the new sensation. It wasn’t overly sweet, and I realized that the fruity scent I had noticed earlier was from the cherries. I looked up and its maker nodded back at me as I sailed away, satisfied.  

“Good, Charon.” Death’s voice echoed in my head. I rolled my eyes, the honeyed taste still lingering. 

An Heirloom Scarf and a Bundle of Rosemary 

Step out of line. 

A Blindfold and Pieces of Rope 

Step out of line… 

An Umbilical Cord 

Please step out of line…

Nothing at All 

I’m sorry. 

A Five-Yen Coin, 1960 

Pass. 

The others watched as she stepped into my boat and we sailed away. 

A Love Token 

Step out of line please. 

“Wait, what do you mean?” 

“I will accept this token, though it holds no monetary value, for one person and one person only. Your partner will have to wait.” 

“No, no, no,” one of the men shook his head. “We need to go together. We promised. Together in death. We couldn’t be together in life. You have to give us this. Please.” I stared at them for a moment. I stared at the coin in his outstretched hand. I stared at them again, their pleading eyes boring into mine. Damn it. I sighed and dissolved the coin.

Pass. 

A Javanese Gold Ingot Coin, 732 

Pass. 

A Sumatran Electrum Coin, 1077 

Pass. 

A Forget-Me-Not, Wilted and Twisted at The Stem 

I twitched, deciding. The little girl looked up and handed me the little flower. I paused for a moment, considering the implications of a broken rule. All the while, she waited, still holding the tiny offering up to me. I took it carefully and put it back into her hair. She giggled as I helped her into my boat. 

Pass. 

One Hundred and Twenty Eight Thousand and Forty One Reales, 1499-1515, a Rapier, and a Dagger 

“Where the Hell am I? Who the Hell are you?” 

Pass. 

I didn’t respond other than that. I was used to the occasional dictator, conqueror, emperor, or even “Karens”, as they used to say, so I really didn’t care to deal with the abuse. “I’m not getting on that Godforsaken dingy. I commanded thousands of ships—my own fleet! I require something much more suited to my standing. I am offering you more than any other man could give. I deserve lateral compensation.” 

Pass. 

“How dare you insult me in such a manner! I should have you flogged just for speaking to me as such.” 

“Do you want on the ‘Godforsaken dingy’ or do you want to step out of line and wait a century?” I responded curtly. 

The man pulled the rapier from his belt and aimed the tip towards my chest. I gave him an indifferent look and tossed his “offerings” into the river. He screamed as they sank below the surface and lunged towards me attempting to pierce where a heart should have been. It passed right through like the wisp of a long-forgotten ghost. I grabbed the hilt and twisted it from his grip, tossing it, as well, into the Acheron with the rest of his wealth. He pulled the dagger from the scabbard attached to his thigh. 

“I am Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán. You will obey me. I will never bow to lesser men!” Step out of line. 

With that, he grabbed the little girl with the forget-me-not in her hair from her seat on the boat and slashed her throat, shattering her soul into nothing but dust and a memory. I grabbed him by his throat, crushing it, spitting in his face, “I am no man.” I released him into the river. He can burn and drown with all that he ever cared about. Humans. 

A Golden Dollar Coin, 2420 

Pass. 

A Silver coin of Aphilas, 680 

Pass. 

An Alexandrite Ring 

So close. Step out of line. 

A Scythe, a Black Cloak, and Another Drachma, 514 BCE 

“Charon.” Death was the only being I allowed back over the river once across, save for Hades, but he doesn’t get out much. 

“What.” I didn’t take my eyes off of the infinite line of souls to meet his. I was getting tired of these interruptions. 

“Be nice.” 

“Why do you care so much about these people? Why would you go out of your way to fill up my boat for two humans who couldn’t even pay the proper fare?” I asked him as we rode alone. 

Death considered this for a moment. “I see them on Earth. I see them as human and not just passengers, as you do.” 

I scoffed at this. 

“But it’s true,” he went on. “What do you see when a child gives you a smooth rock as a gift? Or a woman gives you a honey cake as an offering?” 

“They’re just things.” 

“And why do you say that?” 

“Because they are. They just are.” 

“You see, I don’t see things that way. I get to be with the humans up close. I get to see the moment a mother’s face lights up when she scoops the stone out of the river and hands it to her child because it is just as small and round as he is. I get to see the years and years it took for that older woman to perfect that honey cake recipe with her husband and continue to make it for him long after his death. I see the history in the scarf that was passed down for generations from mother to daughter, the one that was hand-stitched by her great-great-great grandmother and gifted to her on her wedding day. 

“Humans are strange and I will never truly understand them, and that might just be because I am not human,” Death said to me, “but what I see in these offerings is their entire lives. Their love and their souls. I see everyone that has ever loved them, and I see everyone they have ever loved. It never truly goes away. I see their passions and their hopes and every experience that has ever led them to the edge of your river.” 

I stared at him, just then realizing that I hadn’t been rowing in a long time. “So what am I to do then?” 

Death shrugged as he stepped out of the boat and onto the bank. “That is up to you, but remember that they had lives before you and, soon, they will be lost to time. They are humans, not just another passenger in your boat. Are we clear?” 

I watched as he disappeared into Earth’s light, then turned back to the infinite line of souls before me. The memory of the tangy cherries and the sweetness of the honey danced on my tongue. 

A Love Letter, 2013 

… 

Pass.

More about the author:

Puppy | Deidre Jaye Byrne

She wants a puppy. The desire permeates her like smoke from a wood fire, clinging to her hair, her skin, her heart. She doesn’t know when it started, exactly, but one day she joked to her friends, “If that s.o.b. gets elected, I’m going to need a therapy dog,” and let the joke lie. Sit. Stay.

Wednesday mornings at the diner, while Dina waits for her poached eggs on dry toast to arrive, she watches. She watches mothers and fathers walk their children to school, carrying their children’s too-heavy backpacks, believing they can shoulder their children’s burdens. She watches ancient seniors toddle from their 55 and over apartment complex across the street, up the ramp to the diner, slowly filling the booths, grateful she hasn’t yet joined their ranks. And she watches all the people walking their dogs.

The big ones she’s pretty sure are mostly rescues, the ones she sees at shelters. Large muscular dogs with square heads, broad chests, pit bull silhouettes, dogs she could never own herself, never really love. But she is happy to see them out in the world, knowing someone loves them, gives them homes. A mastiff goes by, pulling hard at the leash, its owner following like an awkward marionette, and Dina thinks, poor training there, then relents, reminds herself dog and owner are doing the best they can.

The cute little dogs, with their jackets and smart outfits, are the ones Dina waits for. She loves to see their short legs moving them along with brisk, crisp contentment. Some, she knows, are just puppies on their way to becoming larger dogs. Small dogs are just cuter, she thinks, easier to keep. Who knows. Everyone, it seems, has a dog these days; Dina feels conspicuous for what she lacks. She wants a puppy.

Sitting on the sofa alongside Hal one evening, dinners on their snack trays, watching the nightly news, she’d tried to tell him about the puppy thing.

“Why would you want a dog? A puppy of all things?” Genuinely curious, he sounded surprised rather than accusatory, yet she felt suddenly embarrassed for her need, her inability to articulate her yearning. It wasn’t Hal’s fault; he was a good man, a kind man. For thirty-five years now he’d been pushing a broom at the school, worked a second job nights and weekends to pay off the bills from their daughter Erika’s rehabs and hospital stays.

“And what about vacations?” he asked, and she wanted to say, “As if.” 

She’d laid her hand gently on his arm. She wanted to sound reasonable, or at least not desperate. “When would we have time for that, Hal?”

But Hal was scrolling through the channels, looking for “Nature” on PBS. He loved documentaries about animals in the wild.

Most weeks, after she leaves the diner, she drives to the Petco across town where she watches the puppy kindergarten classes. From behind a towering cat condo—she tries to be inconspicuous—she watches as people work to bond with their playful, unruly pups. Sometimes she paws through the accessories aisle, imagining how a cable knit sweater or rain slicker (with matching boots!) would look on a small puppy of her own. She studies food and water bowls, thinks about where she’d put them in her kitchen, what brush or leash might be best, what toys her imagined pup might like. Back at home, she opens her laptop and watches YouTube videos while folding laundry: Mackay’s First Day Home, Maltipoos From Birth to Ten Weeks, Eight Great Dogs/No Shed Dogs/Easy to Train Dogs for Seniors. Usually.

But today is different, today is THE day, she thinks, as she scoops up her rain jacket, pays the check, leaves a bigger tip than usual because she is feeling excited and expansive. She’d torn the ad from the community board at the supermarket yesterday: “Puppies for sale, small mixed breed. Males and females.” She held the paper tightly in her hand, the address scrawled in the margin.

When they’d first brought Erika home, their sweet baby girl a prize after years of infertility and indecision, Dina couldn’t relax for days, unwilling to trust the adoption could last. Maybe Erika had picked up on that uncertainty; had that been the thing that inhibited their bonding? She’d never been an easy baby, never a cuddly toddler. When Erika was in middle school, running track, Dina and Hal were forbidden to attend her meets. She didn’t like being watched, she said. Being watched by them was what she meant. It disrupted her focus; she meant it was none of their business. She never noticed her parents sitting at the edge of the parking lot, sharing a pair of binoculars, watching her blow past the others on the track. She was small, but fleet.

Dina wishes she could adopt a dog; she’s been to several adoption events. “Rescue dogs are no different than a used car, just passing on someone else’s problem,” Hal had warned her. It had taken some persuading, but when he finally relented on the dog question, that was his only condition. The thing Dina loved was the dogs’ excitement, tails wagging, on their best behavior, orphans in search of some perfect future. But when she asks about the puppies, she wants a puppy, the staff tell her there’s no way to know how big the pups will be. She ends up leaving, relieving her disappointment with justification. The questions, she thinks, so invasive. How many hours will she be away from home? Own or rent? Where will the dog sleep? Is the yard fenced in? List three references, two of whom are current dog owners.

The second time Erika was arrested, Hal’s patience had been stretched to the breaking point. Her failing grades, repeated suspensions, an attitude toward her parents that was both manipulative and dismissive, had left him exhausted, his love frustrated. He wanted to send her to a therapeutic boarding school. How would that help? Dina saw the problems, felt every insult, every lie from her daughter a betrayal, but still, how could they let her go?  

“Sure, she’s a little wild,” she’d said to Hal, downplaying, again, their daughter’s transgressions. “Aren’t all teens?”

“Maybe she got that from her birth mother,” he’d said. “It’s that school or rehab. I’m sorry but the kid’s got to be brought to heel.” 

It’s an hour’s drive to Calville, a place she’s never heard of. Dina is tense but  excited, her skin tingling with anticipation. She imagines how sweet the puppy, her puppy, will be. How nice to come home from errands greeted by an excited, joyful pup, tail wagging, bursting with enthusiasm and affection. She pictures the first few nights at home, comforting her pup, assuring it of her love, promising security. Vivid images light up her mind: the puppy snoozing on her lap as she reads through winter afternoons, the praise she and her baby dog will receive in the puppy kindergarten classes. She’ll finally make use of the stack of books on her nightstand— Pup to Perfect in Ten Days, No Bad Dogs, Decoding Your Puppy. She keeps a tiny notebook in her nightstand drawer with lists of puppy names. 

Dina is wrenched from her fantasies when a police cruiser races up behind her, flashing lights and sirens raging. She pulls over, heart pounding in her ears, a flush of panic overcoming her like a wave, undertow pulling her back in time: Erika on a stretcher, one arm awkwardly twisted, moaning as they pull her from the wreckage, car and tree married in a gruesome embrace, right there on the front lawn. EMT’s working to stabilize her, IV glinting off the light in the ambulance cab. It’s harder these days to push those memories away. Dina signals and pulls back onto the highway. Puppy, puppy, I want a puppy.

The road is pot-holed; gravel pops against the underside of her car. Dina crawls along, looking for the right number. To the left and right, mobile homes reveal a community’s exhausted aspirations. Suddenly, children are bicycling toward her, one girl with wild brown hair riding so close Dina stops her slow rolling car. The children surround her, their thin arms flapping a semaphore of excitement. “You here for the puppies?” Dina nods, feels set upon, though it’s not exactly an ambush. The girl and her companions lead her forward, and she is unsure whether she is captive or hero, led on by this juvenile motorcade. 

They come to a stop in front of a yellowing, rippled fiberglass awning propped up with uneven two-by-fours, an imitation of a porch. “For Sale” signs seem to be attached to everything. On a rusted truck, a flapping sign: “Parts only.” Dina peers into the shaded dark, sees a woman whose girth spills from her sleeveless blouse and her denim capris; she fills the plastic yard chair. Without rising, the woman smiles, brushes back her untidy hair, apparently unselfconscious of the fading bruise under one eye, the blooming purple splotches on her arms and legs. Dina keeps her focus on the woman’s eyes as she introduces herself, does not want to judge. And, she realizes quickly, she doesn’t want to stay, either. It’s too awkward to turn away now, she thinks, especially after such a long ride. But this is not how she’s pictured getting her puppy.

In her fantasy, the puppy comes to her in a basket just outside her front door. Maybe it’s a cold, snowy night and the basket has been dropped off by a stranger, the tiny puppy abandoned and alone. She is the hero, taking in this pup, loving it, raising it, giving it a good home. Dina’s seen sites online that promise almost that. She’s made deep dives into the world of online puppy sales, places promising no puppy mills, proffering corporatized photos of angelic puppies, every breed and size. She finds herself willing to accept the disingenuousness of their adoption fees, grateful for permission to pretend she’s not part of the “puppy industrial complex,” as Hal calls it. She’s tempted every time, a one click solution to her unending ache, but dreads her friends’ righteousness: Why didn’t you get a rescue dog? What about those poor abandoned dogs? And she wishes she had the strength to ask them What about the puppy mill dogs? Why is it wrong to care about them? Aren’t those puppies also victims? 

Dina follows the woman, Annie, into the double wide trailer. The children try to tag along, complain when she denies them: “Don’t you sass Mama Annie now. Go around back till I call you in.” 

Inside, Annie turns to her, “Them kids! Three are mine, the other two, fosters. Gotta love ‘em!” She laughs as the dogs, maybe eight or ten, Dina can’t tell, fill the room. Hefty pugs, corgi-like dogs, and combinations of the two, come rushing toward the women. None of them are puppies, Dina sees. One barks, setting off a chorus. Annie shouts, waves her arms, “That’s enough, get out of here,” and herds them out the back door leading to, Dina supposes, a yard. 

The women navigate a labyrinth of over-filled rooms, rooms packed with the accumulations of people trying to feel like they have enough. On the kitchen table several large bags of dog food take up all the surface, a plastic window box liner serves as a water trough on the floor. Along one wall a cracked fish tank, a screen and a rock on top, hosts a large snake. Chewed rawhide bones and dog toys lie scattered across the floor. The woman explains, “Didn’t expect to have more puppies.” Dina thinks about the two other obviously pregnant dogs she’d just seen, decides not to challenge the story.

They enter a smaller bedroom with two unmade beds, a TV running cartoons, and a wide cardboard box in the middle of the floor. In it, puppies clumsily clamor over one another toward their mother, lying on her side. Exhausted or resigned, Dina can’t tell.

“Here she is, proud mama. Dad’s one of those noisy coots I shushed outside.” The pugs or the corgis or what, Dina wants to ask, then realizes it doesn’t matter, reminds herself she’s not getting her dog here. Annie reaches down, grabs two pups, intercepting them before they reach their mother. 

“Boy or girl, which one d’you like?” Dina hesitates, unsure how to extract herself from a situation that feels wrong to her. “Oh here, just take them both.”

The woman’s acrid scent mixes with the sweet smell of the pups as she pushes them into Dina’s arms, and she begins to feel at risk in a way she can’t name.  

The warm, sweet-smelling pups squirm; Dina holds them close. A low insistent chorus of warning voices fills her head. She remembers the first time she held Erika, the way excitement and fear made her tremble. Hal had put his arms around them and she had choked down her fear that this was a mistake. 

“I guess I should have asked before I came here.” Dina avoids the woman’s eyes, nuzzles the puppies close. Lying, she says, “My husband has allergies. I was hoping for a hypoallergenic dog.” Inwardly she cringes; this is not a woman concerned with allergies.

“Well, why don’t you take one home for a day or so, see how your husband does.”

Dina looked at her and felt a thin thread of panic. “Oh, I couldn’t…”

“Don’t worry. It’s fine; I trust you.” The woman’s too easy familiarity, her constrained desperation reaches Dina, ripples through her. She wants to run. She wants a puppy.

The puppies wriggle in her arms, squeaking, deprived of the mother and the nourishment they need. Memory intrudes and Dina thinks about Erika, just three days old, the mother already on her way home. So much promise in such a small bundle. No one warns you, Dina thought. 

“It’s okay, I know you’d come back. Just take one home and try her out.”

Dina leans down, lets the puppies slip from her arms, watches them eagerly return to their mother and worries they are too young to be separated. 

The room feels small, alarmingly close. Dina wants to leave. She wants a puppy, and here are puppies, and yet…what if this is the wrong dog? Should have asked more questions before driving all this way. Hal doesn’t even know about this trip. Hesitation hangs over her like a cloud.

 “You know, if you think a puppy is too much work, I can let you have one of these other dogs. Half price. I got to clear them all out asap. I just figured people would come to see the puppies. Everyone loves puppies.”

Back on the main road, checking her rearview mirror, Dina’s perspiring and her heart thumps urgently,irregularly. Her hands tight on the wheel, her insides feel like soft serve ice cream, vanilla and chocolate twisted together, relief and sadness, yearning and doubt. Once again she has failed to bring home a puppy, choosing the companionship of an unanswered question and the shallow comfort of not yet. Still, the need runs inside her like a crawler at the bottom of the TV screen. Puppy, puppy…

Dina pulls into her garage as the sun fades; a storm threatens, but has yet to arrive. She can’t stop thinking about Annie, the bruises, the covered-up desperation. And the children, the fostering. She pushes herself from the car and into the empty house. On the hall table she sees another postcard has arrived addressed in Erika’s spiky handwriting, the only proof of life. No message – there never is one,leaving Dina to wonder again whether these irregular mailings are intended as bare reassurance or a taunt. She will put this postcard with the others she keeps tied in a bundle under the book with puppy names. She walks up the stairs, tries not to look at the photos that line the wall, the pictures of her once precious Erika, whose every captured smile feels to Dina like a lie. 

She slips off her shoes, lays on the bed watching the sun sink below the horizon. Puppy, puppy, puppy… 

More about the author:

Babygirl  |  Mychal Hope

Mama had my brother first; he came out with his hands folded and his head down. My parents used to say that he hardly made a peep, even when he was hungry. If he did cry it was gentle and sounded like please. I made Mama get a C-section. She blamed me for her body when she got angry. Lifted her shirt up and pointed at the ragged line that runs across her stomach where they cut her open, laid her guts out, and gave me life. Mama would look at me with fire in her eyes and despise me for what I did before I was born. When I was hungry I’d roll over, pull a boob free, and feed myself. Mama said that’s how she knew we wouldn’t get along. What kind of lady takes without asking first? 

I was fourteen when I told everyone at the school lunch table that I hit my mama back. I was bored, breaking carrots in half and tossing them at the sixth graders as they walked by to grab their milk. My statement garnered attention. All of their eyes widened and they leaned forward like I was someone to listen to. I never hit Mama back; she wasn’t much of a hitter anyway, words were her weapons. There were times I’d have rather been slapped in the face than hear the things Mama had to say. Mostly, I just wanted people to like me and I didn’t know how to be nice yet. The people at my table ate it up, all except for Rosie who sat opposite of me, staring at me with my mother’s eyes, cold and prickly.  

My town was semi-small; everybody knew someone’s cousin and mine went to school with me. Rosie’s something special. God stamped a smile on her face in the womb, sent her into the world with the whitest teeth anyone’s ever seen, hair long and blonde. She held herself like royalty and everyone treated her as such. She was golden and I was rotted, curdled like my mother. A daughter’s burden.

Rosie brought a lunch pail filled with little triangle sandwiches and strawberries cut into hearts. What a bitch. She whispered to her friends, her long hair creating a curtain that divided them from me. The gleaming barrier couldn’t block out their vicious humming. I sat quietly as the gaggle of girls giggled and looked away when they saw me watching. I felt like prey. It’s said hyenas can kill a lion if the group is big enough. They run in circles around it, isolating the kitty cat and taunting it with their jeers. I sat straighter, wiped my hand on my dress, crossed my legs, and waited for them. 

She saw me twiddling my thumbs and sat up, sparkly hair falling back into place, shoulders poised, sandwiches untouched. She smiled, white teeth and pink gums. I didn’t; there’s a gap between my two front teeth and Mama said I needed to start grinning with my mouth closed. I placed my hands on the table and grabbed another carrot. I couldn’t sit still. Rosie watched the movement with a hunter’s eye. I cracked the stick in two and her gaze jerked back towards my face. Then she laughed and shook her head, like I was really funny. “You’re something else, Babygirl.” She said like she meant it, like it could be a compliment if I was stupid. 

“Oh, yeah?” I replied, playing the game. “Why’s that, Rosie?”

It’s an old game; it came before our mothers and will remain after we’re gone. We held eye contact as she took a teensy bite of her sandwich, putting her finger in the air, asking for just a second, please. I broke another carrot in half. She swallowed. 

“My daddy says you drive your mama up the wall. She called last week asking for us to take you in, but he said no.” Her smile grew bigger, a winner’s triumph. Embarrassed and angry, my vision went hazy, blurring around the edges. I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks as people started to glance my way. Everyone had been pretending not to hear, but who could fake civility when good ammunition was brought forward? Encouraged by the audience, Rosie made sure to finish well. “You ain’t hittin’ your mama, Babygirl. She won’t even let you get that close.” 

She was goddamn glowing. Victory tasted as sweet as her stupidass love-shaped strawberries. Fucking skank. I didn’t know my cousin well enough to call her a liar, but I know my mama well enough to believe that what Rosie said was probably the truth. Everyone was silent, trying their best to breathe through the thickness in the air. Rosie was grinning and her cackle huddled close and hissed to one another. The game was won and congratulations were in order. I chucked a carrot at another passerby and smiled, gapped teeth and all. 

“You wanna know something funny, Rosie girl?” I asked, chewing on the tension in the cafeteria. She looked at me, cold eyes contrasting her warm radiance.

“Sure,” she said with a shrug, taking another teeny tiny bite from her pretty little sandwich with the crusts cut off.

“My mama said that there’s a reason your baby sister looks like your neighbor and it ain’t cause he’s a cousin three times removed. You catchin’ what I’m sayin’?”

Usually, the hyenas don’t win, surrounded by many, the lion only needs to kill one of them to scare the others off. Her smile faded, slowly pulling from the corners first and then gone were her pearly whites. I snapped another carrot in half, refusing to break my gaze. I have my mother’s eyes, too. Unmovable and harsh, born frozen. I leaned forward, dark hair mingling with my broken carrots as it brushed over my plate on the table. 

“I’m sayin’ your mother’s a whore, Rosie.” I felt it, the heinous slash that comes with hurting someone guiltless. Rosie’s mother was kind and good, heart as golden as her daughter’s hair. Nobody actually believed her mother slept with their neighbor, but putting it out there scrapes a smooth reputation. My mama never said anything about my aunt, but it hurt my feelings to think of her calling around begging for people to take me away. It was my father that spat this lie when he was drinking, haha-ing with his big boys, and now I had, too. My victory felt sour and decayed. 

Rosie sat there, staring at me, half-eaten triangle and little hearts. I don’t think I had ever seen her frown before, she looked so completely normal. Her glow turned red, reflecting in blotchy patches across her face. Humiliation rattling her bones, anger making her hands shake. I could see it in her eyes, the bitter sharpness, the similarity. As if someone had put a mirror between us. We were the same. I wanted to apologize, could feel it on the tip of my tongue, so acidic in its unfamiliarity. I opened my mouth, trying to force it out, but nothing came. We sat there until the bell rang and then I got up and left. That’s what happens when daughters act like their fathers, they never learn how to say sorry.

Daddy left us a couple weeks later, four days before Mama’s birthday. We all watched him leave from the kitchen table, eating our mashed potatoes as he clip-clopped in his fancy man boots out the door. We finished dinner, washed the dishes and went to bed. Mama didn’t tell anyone, shame keeping her mouth shut. When someone leaves they act like somehow it’s your fault. Maybe if you kept your house cleaner, or made your food tastier, or raised your children better, your husband would stay. Maybe if you were a completely different person than the one that you are, your husband would stay. Maybe if you ripped your heart out of its chest and cut it up into small pieces and put it on a nice plate, your husband would stay. 

For her birthday, Mama asked us not to say anything. Our grandparents were throwing a party at a snazzy restaurant. Mama laid out a dress she wanted me to wear, pink and pretty, with flower shaped pockets. It was itchy, the tulle on the inside stuck to my skin. I told Mama I loved it, just like she’d tell her parents that Daddy was busy tonight. 

The restaurant was nice, it had trees outside wrapped in glittery lights and windows covered in thick shiny curtains. The carpet inside was plush and green, mishmashed with sporadic clusters of tansies.  A room in the back was rented for the evening, spacious and dazzlingly decorated. There were two tables, one in the center, big and round. The second one, pushed to the corner, just wood and paper plates.  The motherfucking kids table. 

Hyenas are a matriarchal led species. Most often, the ladies lead the clan, holding a higher and more complex social role than the males. They become alphas because they form dependable groups. The family was whispering when we walked in, the main event of the evening and you wouldn’t even know it. The air tasted different, heavy and gummy. My uncle and aunt sat close to my grandparents. Rosie leaned against the back of my grandfather’s chair, arms looped loosely around his chest as she rested their heads together. My grandmother held Rosie’s sister, Kitty, in her lap. What a pretty picture it would make if we weren’t in it, standing awkwardly in the background waiting to be acknowledged. 

They had to know we were here, felt our eyes locked on their faces and our ears clinging to their conversations. It seemed like some weird punishment. Mama was teetering from side to side, embarrassed and uncomfortable. My brother was breathing loudly, like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find any words. 

“Happy Birthday, Mama!” I said into the buzz of the room, cringing at my voice booming in a space it didn’t belong. The cackle jumped, their giggle-calls quieting with the interruption. Everyone looked over at us, frozen in their familial positions. They had dinner once a week without us, Mama knew it but pretended like she didn’t. We’re all so good at make-believe. 

They were staring, caught and frozen. Mama stopped rocking and squeezed her hands into fists, like she didn’t know what to do with herself. The three of us stared back, sinking into the squishy carpet, waiting for the ground to swallow us whole. I think I made it worse.

“Sorry baby,” my grandma said, rushing to the rescue. We came back up, the floor spitting us out. “Happy Birthday, honey.” She came up with her arms outstretched and Mama fell into them gracefully. Putting her head into grandma’s neck, a little girl, so young and so far away. Nobody else got up. Grandma didn’t greet me or my brother, instead she grabbed Mama’s hand and brought her over to the lackluster celebration.

“Where’s that husband of yours?” My grandpa asked my mama jovially from his chair, still resting in Rosie’s headlock. He didn’t like Daddy. Outside of Mama, no one did, but he liked his daughter married. 

Grandpa officiated my parents wedding, said a long spiel about how important it is to be a good spouse, to love one another through all things, and when he was done and got the audience good and crying, he turned to my father and said “there’s no returns, she’s yours now.” He meant it, too. Bad news, granddaddy, bad bad news.

Mama stuttered, for all her birthday wishes, it’d be her that spilled the beans. Sticking to my gift, easy-peasy, I told him, “Daddy got a new job. He’s workin’.” 

“That’s good. What’s he doin’,” my uncle asked, a glint in his eyes. There was something here between them the three of us weren’t in on. They’re looking at us the way one looks at a toddler, like they knew more. Like we’re just the slightest bit dumb. Superiority permeated the atmosphere. 

“Big man work,” I said disrespectfully. “Heavy duty shit.”

The only thing my grandfather admired about Daddy was his work ethic. My father was a hard worker, did the jobs no one else wanted to do. Didn’t mind getting dirty as long as he got paid. He was strong, a real working man. It made my uncle insecure because he wasn’t very good at sweating. Born with small hands and soft skin, he chose college.

“Watch your mouth, Babygirl.” Mama said, jabbing her elbow into my arm softly. Usually she’d have some sense about her, she’d be angry at me for cursing in public, but I kept the cap on the beans. 

“You know, everybody has different talents. Some people are born with strong brains and some people are born with strong arms,” my uncle said sophisticatedly. 

“Mhm,” I replied, letting it rest before picking it up again. “You callin’ your daddy dumb?”

“Jesus Christ,” my grandma murmured, putting a hand to her forehead. “How about the kids go sit down, huh? Go, now. Go.” She flicked a hand at me, like she was shooing away a pest, sending us to spend our night in the corner. 

I grabbed my brother’s arm, pulling him along with me to the tiny table. Rosie floated behind us, her footsteps elegant and soundless. Kitty skipped, the buckles of her itty-bitty black shoes jingling with each hop. When I got to the table I pulled out the chair closest to my brother, but Kitty slid into it. She had bows in her hair, light pink sparkly sweet. Destined for a no-good-night, I settled next to my cafeteria buddy.

It was fiddly and the table was ugly. All of us gathered in a quiet circle; it felt like time-out. We were close to the adults, but had enough space so if you talked quietly there was privacy. Twisting my head to the side, I saw Mama, small and hunched into herself. Giving so much personality so little volume. She was the only one in the room with no partner; at least I had my brother. The table was still chattering, keeping Mama out of it on purpose. She watched them, a desperate look on her face as she tried her best to be included. Smiling at something that wasn’t told to her, leaning forward, like maybe it was the distance keeping her apart. Her eyes were sad and feral, darting around the table and room, looking for some sort of reprieve, self-conscious about the lack of interaction. 

“My mama knows what you said,” Rosie told me, bringing me back into my circle. I turned around, giving her my attention. She was leaning on her fist, elbow pressed against the sticky wood, fossilized with all the remnants left over from multiple unwashed kid hands. Her grin smashed into her knuckles, cheek pulled upwards, polished canines bared.

Kitty swung her feet back and forth, poking at my brother with her little pink painted fingers. He swatted her away, unaware of the war brewing. I hadn’t even thought about her telling her mother. It felt like something you carry yourself, saving the other person from an embarrassment they shouldn’t have to deal with. It was schoolyard shit, not talk-to-parents shit. 

“What’d she say?” It’s like I couldn’t help it, the words falling out of my mouth crookedly in their hurry forward, no wit or intelligence behind them. I wanted to know if it was my fault, the icky in the room. I felt gross, my mother’s birthday ruined because of my mouth. My heart was beating fast, sweaty hands pulling at my scratchy dress as I fought down impending panic. I hadn’t meant to make a mess.

Rosie sat up, smiling at full force, big teeth and killer’s eyes; she was always winning. Kitty wasn’t poking my brother anymore. Bored at the lack of mollycoddling, she started kicking the table. Gentle and constant thump thump thump as she watched the entertainment. 

“What’s it matter?”

“Why’d you bring it up if you don’t wanna talk about it,” I asked back. “Could’ve just kept your mouth shut.”

My voice was fast and shaky. I felt like a stray dog getting meat dangled in front of it, just too high out of reach. If it was my fault, this terrible dinner, I’d fix it. Go to my aunt personally and apologize. I’d force the words out of my mouth, pry them out with my fingers. 

“I just wanted you to know, Babygirl,” she said, waving her hand in the air like she was dismissing the issue, diffusing the conversation.

My meat was yanked, the string tugged back into the Heavens. My brother looked at me, What’d you do? his face asked. He had my father’s eyes, warm and nonthreatening. A liar’s eyes, he just hadn’t grown into them right. I shrugged my shoulders, nothing. 

The food was brought in on big metal trays with fancy clattering lids. The waiters went to the grownups first, plating their food for them, dishing it out in hearty spoonful’s. The adults clapped gleefully, salivating as steaks were slapped on plates. 

“I haven’t eaten all day,” Mama burst out. A trick passed to her from her mother’s mother, an excellent excuse for her hunger. She was digging in, cutting up her steak and buttering her bread.

“You look like it,” my aunt said. There was a pause in my mother, hand halting mid-butter. The room held its breath. There were multiple ways to take that comment. The good way: she looked thin or the bad way: she didn’t. The game, dealt out in sneaky hands across the table, had begun.

 Female hyenas have working penises. They mount both the males and females, ensuring their position. They’re the most aggressive in the species, big and powerful and bitey. “Thank you,” Mama said quietly, mounted with teeth at her neck. 

My aunt was usually kind, good hearted and sugary to be around. She had crystalized, harsh and tart. My fault, all my fault. The waiters came to the sticky table next, our dinner wasn’t nearly as luxurious. Paper plate made beige with tater tots and a hunk of chicken breast, pure fine dining. 

There was a hush as we all ate our food, a clink of silverware on porcelain the background music for the big night. Acrid static bathing the ambience in bile. Both tables were rickety and disjointed, failing at loving family. 

“So, when does your man get home?” My aunt addressed my mother, friendly and genuine. Their first real conversation all night. It would be such a simple question if Daddy hadn’t dipped less than a week ago.

Rosie leaned in close to me, calculated and poisonous. “We know what happened,” she whispered. Her long hair fell, hiding us behind a blonde screen, concealing us from the others. I felt stuck, like a fly caught in a web. I missed being on the outside. My stomach hurt. There were no beans to spill; the can had been long dumped. 

“Late.” Mama replied to my aunt, trying her best to maintain the lie, while quickly realizing the show was coming to an end.

“What did you say his job was again? Must be a strict one if he has to miss his wife’s birthday.” Playing dumb for the sake of the bit. Maybe we don’t change as much as we think we do. We’ll always be kids fighting in the cafeteria at lunch time. “Such a bummer, too. I know he’d love to spend it with you, huh?”

“You remember the girl that sits next to me at lunch? Our mama’s are friends and she told hers what you said.” Rosie disclosed, soft and evil. “My mama was so angry, but then we saw your daddy with his suitcase hitchin’ a ride out of town. You and your mama drove that man away, Babygirl.”

I swear to God I wasn’t breathing. My skin turned blue and my vision went black. Mama’s smart, played this game many times, but she had the baggage this round. No upper hand. I turned to her and she was already looking at me. We were ugly, stripped to our insides. It was jarring seeing her like that; she looked so much younger than I was. Parts of her stolen by the people she loved. A chunk of her taken from me. 

“We know,” my grandma says, putting down her knife and fork. “We know he doesn’t have a new job and trust me, as your mama, this whole thing is hard for me too.”

Mama sat silent, stunned as everyone continued to eat their food. Dark red dripping down their mouths as they bit and ripped apart the meat. Using their teeth to tear into the flesh, licking up the scarlet ooze that trickled down their arms and stained the tablecloth. Animals, savage and wild.

“What’s it like to have a daddy that doesn’t want you?” Rosie whispered in my ear.

It felt like too much, unbearable and excruciating. My body caught fire, lit up and burned slowly. All I could think of was my mama and how my heart ached for us. A lady that saw so much of herself in me she could rarely look me in the eye without turning away in disgust. I hurt for her and hated her, too. I was born my mother’s tongue, speaking the words she can’t get out. The words that jump through her veins and scratch at her skin, begging for their release. 

“You’re a bitch,” I said to Rosie, who just smiled wider. It grated at my charred skin. Kitty was still kicking the stupid fucking table and taking bites from my brother’s chicken. He didn’t even notice, focused on Mama and the battle she was losing. The silverware rattled, clinking obnoxiously every time the table was thunked, overwhelming the tension. The knife that I used to cut my food toddled closer and closer to its departure with each goddamn kick. It was at the edge, thunk thunk thunk, then on the floor. 

“Don’t be rude,” Rosie said, sweetly. “Pick it up.” 

Sometimes in an act of aggression, a female hyena will eat the cub of another to sustain their rank. I grabbed the knife off the floor, grasped its handle tightly, and lunged. Unlike most predators, hyenas eat their prey while it’s still alive. We fell backwards, the chair hitting the ground hard, jerking our bodies roughly, our heads knocking together. People around us were moving and shouting; bones creaked with the strain of old bodies running. Rosie was looking at me scared and stupid, both of us hideous, regurgitated pictures of our mothers. But our eyes were the same, our blood so similar. 

The knife was dull, so I had to saw and hack my way through. There were hands on my arms, tugging me away, bruising my stinging body. I let them drag me back because I had my prize. My gold. I dropped the knife. Rosie lifted a hand to her head, trying to feel for the yellow strands that used to float down her shoulder. My brother was holding me, all the adults gathered around Rosie except for Mama, who never left the center table. My head was fizzy, clonked hard and irritated by Kitty, who was still sitting in our corner, kicking the table and eating my brother’s dinner.

When Rosie saw her hair in my hand she wailed. Screamed and cried and kicked the ground. My aunt cradled her close, murmured to her softly, and made her angrier. She looked over at Mama, not me. I eat my prey while it’s still wriggling.

“You need to keep Babygirl on a leash,” she spat venom. Then she hauled Rosie off the floor and grabbed her youngest on the way out the door, my uncle trailing behind them. 

My grandparents were shocked, still kneeling on the ground where they’d been when they tried to break us apart. Slowly, my grandpa got up, bad knees making him wobbly in his old age. I would’ve offered him a hand, but they were full. 

“That is not how a lady acts, Babygirl.” His steps were still strong when he marched fiercely towards me, waving an arthritic finger in the air. He was sneering, red in the face, steam out his ears. “Now, your daddy’s gone, so someone’s gotta teach you some manners.” He raised a hand, bigger than my face and strong from years of hard work. My eyes widened, lungs straining as they attempted to do their job. My brother’s grip tightened on my arms as he tried to retreat me.

“Don’t you touch my baby girl,” Mama called from the big kid table, popping the dangerous bubble that had trapped me in. Grandpa stepped back, shocked and reprimanded, hand still in the air. Then, after swinging his arm back into place, he turned around and left, no good-bye or look backwards. My grandmother stood up swiftly and smoothed out her dress. She made her way over to Mama, kissed her head, grabbed her purse, and walked out of the room. 

I stood with my back to my brother’s chest, unsure of my next move. Mama’s knife scraped against her plate as she cut her meat up; it had to be cold by now. I forced myself forward, went to the big table and plopped myself in the seat closest to her. Sitting where the grownups sat, the cushion still warm. 

I was stone, dazed, a champion’s penitence. Resurrected by something that moved across my head, smoothing my singed hair and soothing my burns. Mama’s hand dropped down to mine, the one that still gripped the golden locks, and grabbed it. She pulled me close, tucked my head into her neck and held me for the first time since I was a baby. 

After a long second, she mumbled, “Oh, you’re sweaty.” And gently pushed me back into my chair. I sat there warm and unsteady with a handful of hair, as Mama cut another bite of her steak, liquid red running across her plate and down her chin.

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