She sat at the wooden table swirling the Fruit Loop’s in her pink plastic bowl remembering. She swung her feet in tight little circles as she swirled and swirled. Reaching under the table, she felt the tiny little “A” she had carved into the wood with the red ballpoint pen a year ago, burning through her fingertips and she felt a pull to something historic. She remembered how when the nights were hot, a kind of sticky heat, Mommy and Daddy had given each other bed hugs in the dark. Sometimes the sheer steam from their room would cause her to give Mr. McStuffins, the little caramel colored bear her Daddy had won from the fair at the Cajundome, little bed hugs of her own, his hard plastic nose pushing against her chest.
She remembered the glass breaking as her father’s shouting came muffled through her door. The nightlight glowed against the cotton candy pink wall, illuminating and shrouding both. There was a light under her stickered door frame, yawning electric sleepiness into her room. Curiosity got the best of her and she swung her legs from under the Barbie covers, being careful not to disturb Mr. McStuffins in his glassy slumber. She tiptoed to her door, her feet shuffling in the furry pink slippers, and opened it a crack, putting her eye there.
“I can’t believe you.” Daddy hissed.
“I’ll apologize for the rest of my life, I swear.” Mommy unfolded her arms, her robe dangling pink fuzz. “I get so lonely at night now.”
Whispering now, “You deserve to be.”
He spun and ran his hand through his hair, walking through to their room and slamming the door behind him. As quietly as she could, little Annabelle shut the door closed, sliding tiny fingers through her dark matted hair, and crept back into bed.
She lifted her eyes to peer through lashes at her thin Mommy clutching the glass with that nasty brown stuff swishing around. She knew the bubbling cough. The TV was a low roar in the back ground, stuck in a cycle of CNN. Bobby Jindal flashed across the screen, the news anchor babbling about how a governor from Louisiana had finally become the president and Annabelle could almost hear Daddy’s voice. “That lil fucker. Wish I could get that bastard on an operating table, swear to gawd…”
“Mommy, when is Daddy coming home?” It was a common question and the same answer was always given.
Mommy stared at Bobby Baker’s bulldog puppy pee-peeing in the green leaves of her garden, standing in shadow made by the yellowing curtain. She swirled the glass around and brought it to her lips again, never drinking, just smelling the mud. Bobby Baker was that doo-doo head from school that always talked really fast and said these random “fun” facts that Annabelle thought were neither fun nor factual. He once told her that birds and bees do some sort of secret devil worshipping ritual, that that’s what his Daddy told him.
“Mommy, how come that stuff doesn’t turn your tongue and lips brown like chocolate milk?”
Mommy smiled a little and muttered under her breath, “If this were from a cow I’d be Wonder Woman.”
Annabelle’s eyes grew wide with green wonder, her hair glowing golden in the sun’s kiss. Wonder Woman. That would make her a tiny superhero. Like an angel or something. Then she was off remembering again. Daddy would always put on the cape in his socks, twirling and spinning, his dark black hair slicked back. His eyes would blue into the sunlight streaming in. They were happy even if Mommy was still teary over the argument they had just had. It was bliss in a bubble. The image twisted and popped as she remembered Doo-Doo Head Bobby Baker’s Daddy coming over and the clinking glasses with the brown stuff in it. “She’s dead, Jenn. For chrisssakes, she won’t mind. Don’t you remember what we were like before you married the quarterback?” he hissed to her. “Don’t you remember that you’re a deacon now at my husband’s church?” He sucked his teeth and continued, “Don’t you remember the oak tree and how we sat there all night, sittin’ under Jesus’ eyes just breathin’? Don’t you? You, Jenn. Don’t you remember how heavy we were?” He put his hand on her thigh. “So heavy. Heavy, heavy. Does he do this to you? Does he show you what a woman in a red dress you are, dahlin?” Mommy shuddered as his hand disappeared beneath her skirt. Her voice came out breathy, steamy. “No.” She whispered something to him. “Does he even know?” he slurred and smacked. A quick pause, adjacent. “No.” She remembered how hard they had bed hugged that night; so hard the squeaking noise traveled desperately into Annabelle’s dreams like a train, the whistle piercing like earrings.
Mommy was thinner still, lying with most of her skin showing on the sofa, focused. She was sweating, tiny beads falling from her shoulders. Her eyes black in the shadows narrowed in anticipation, bloodshot. Her back arched as she screamed, gripping the sofa cushions. Eyes rolling back into her head, her mouth formed a long “o”.
“Mommy, Mommy what’s wrong?” Annabelle screamed, her voice making the glass shudder.
Mommy turned over quaking and put a pillow between her knocking knees. She almost told Annabelle. She almost told her that Daddy was never gonna come home. Daddy was never coming home and it was all Mommy’s fault. Before she could though, she saw the letter in little Annabelle’s hand and she knew it was the same lie. I’m at work sweetheart. I miss you but I promise I’ll be home soon. Give Mr. Mcstuffins a kiss for me, Baby Belle, and when I come back we’ll sit in the old car again and talk for hours like we used to. Love and kisses. Daddy. It was the old truths that he didn’t say that broke Mommy’s heart, her tears stifling her ache.
“Mommy has a toothache,” she whispered the lie.
“Don’t worry, Mommy,” Annabelle whispered too loudly back in her ear, leaving the ear moist and warm. “I hope the Tooth Fairy will take good care of you.” Then later, quietly “Bitch.”
Annabelle remembered. They were arguing again. It started as a low roar and built up into something more difficult. There was a crashing sound, there was always the crash, and a dark silence that little Annabelle could smell from her bed. “A gay baby,” she thought; a pregnant silence. Then she could hear her father’s voice loud and clear. “What did you just say to me?” his voice belched frozen disbelief. “I said…” her voice trembled. She sighed and it was elephant heavy. “I said…I think…she’s not yours.”
The sun tickled the hairs on Mr. McStuffin’s head, the brown showing white in the soft glow. His shiny black eye was missing its twin, a recent exposure to half blindness. She couldn’t understand why Mommy couldn’t be happy with the letter Daddy sent. He said he would be home soon, like he always did. Mommy was always so ungrateful. Mommy gazed in a trance at the untrimmed grass swallowing the lawn. Her look was empty, flat, her eyes dark and wondering, a new glass fresh with brown liquid swishing in her hand like time.
“How could you make everyone so happy? Why torture me like this? Haven’t I loved you? Gave up my damn soul for this life, I did. I am unmade. You condemned me.” she murmured, staring at the empty driveway alive with the rays of a happy sun, her hair a smokeless flame.
“Deacon Baker says God loves you and me because…”
“Fuck him.” Mommy threw her glass out the window, the brown liquid soiling the green. She drew herself up, licked her lips and turned away, unseeing.
Annabelle slouched into the garage, dragging Mr. McStuffins by the only furry paw he had left, his other lying flat on the grass and white cotton stuffing replacing it. She set him down on Daddy’s old tool crate and looked about for an adventure, some clue as to why Daddy hadn’t returned to her. It was as far as Mommy would let her go, or so she assumed. Mommy tended to play the silent game these days. There wasn’t much to find in the old garage but tools that were impossibly high and paint that, after a bathing incident, she was forbidden to touch. She passed by the old garbage bin that was filled with all of the things she had ever made Mommy. She was always ungrateful. She picked up Mr. Mcstuffins and hopped in the old Chevy, closing the door behind her. She could smell Daddy’s old cologne and she breathed it in, leaning back like he did against the seat, placing her hand on the decaying leather. “Fuck,” she said, testing the word, tasting it. She knew there was something bad about it so she covered Mr. Mcstuffin’s ears but she said it anyway. She said it anyway and it was good. She said it louder, venomously “Fuck!” allowing the silence to swallow the strike whole. At some point she fell asleep in the arms of the old car, snoring lightly, but when she woke up she was in her room in her fuzzy pink pajamas with knots in her hair.
Mommy was sitting there, her murky irises spilling over into a glass of water, a man in a brown suit like dirt sat rubbing his glasses on his shirt and doing that funny noise with his throat.
“Ahem, Ahem.”
His black case was open on the table and his tall lanky fingers came to his tongue and flicked back down to these crisp white papers he kept placing in front of Mommy. He placed a shiny pen in front of her, cracked his knuckles, and put the wire frames back on his tight face. The little girl wanted to ask him if he had a box of lemon drops because she knew that’s how her face got when she ate those things too; all scrunched up like paper.
“Ahem!” he repeated more pointedly.
Mommy raised her head and stared at Annabelle, her eyes brimming.
“The Tooth Fairy didn’t fix your toothache Mommy? Don’t worry I’ll just ask Mr. Mc…wait a second…”
“Sweetheart.”
“Where’s Mr….?”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Do you know where my bear is? I can’t lose him too…”
“Your father is never coming home. You see Daddy and I…” she paused for a moment to sniff a little. The man with the briefcase shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Daddy and I we aren’t…He’s still going to be your father, sweetie. It’s just…you see…Mommy’s a bad person and bad people hurt good people. I just want you to know how sorry I am for…”
“You heard what I said.” “Say it again,” he whispered, eyes closed, his right hand forming an “o”, beans of sweat cooking on his forehead. “Say it.” She sighed softly, her mouth forming sharp edges and hard lines. “She’s just…she’s just not yours, Jonathan.”
She’s not yours. “It’s too painful. Tell my…tell her that I love her. Maybe someday she’ll understand, but right now I just don’t think I can face this. I quit my job at the hospital and got another one in New Orleans. Maybe one day you can tell her the truth and she’ll understand that I can’t… May God have mercy on your soul, Jennifer.”
“Does this mean that Bobby Baker is my brother now?” Anna interjected tightly, her tone deepening.
“Anna! What would make you say that?” But she wasn’t surprised, not really. Her lips were upturned at the corners.
“I saw you two bed hug, Mother. Mommy and Mr. Baker were sitting in the tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First come bed hugs then comes marriage then comes Bobby Baker eating all my carrots. That’s not all, that’s not all. Here comes Mommy drinking alcohol.” Anna stared at the woman in front of her. “May God have mercy on your soul.”
Her words were ringing in the air as she turned her full back to the two, her hair blonde-ing in the dim light. She twisted her head around her bony shoulder to stare unwavering at her mother. Her mother’s hair burned down to smoldering shoulders, sliding off in drapes of fiery slices; it slithered through the pale fingernails covering her face. Her mother’s shoulders shook as it started, “My soul? My soul?” Her hysterical laughter erupted from the bowels of an empty place. She was gone. Mr. McStuffins was gone. Daddy was gone. She turned her head back to the door and she could feel the color of her mother’s face oozing into her back. She ran her hand through her hair like Daddy and slammed the door behind her. She was gone.
The old Chevy stood in the garage, dark and dusty against the metallic walls. The car roared to life as a key clicked in the ignition and as it jolted forward into the night, a tiny bear missing an arm and eyeball was decapitated by a tire and lay staring unblinking in a glaze at a sky filled with empty promises and a lost future.