“Mom, this is so good,” she praises.
However, our mother doesn’t hear her. She gulps hers whole, delicately placing the spoon back into her bowl, and just as softly, slides her chair back, rising from the table. Every move is measured until fear, as she knows it—and as I hear it—twists her larynx.
“Th-th-th—” she begins to stutter. She looks frantic, her eyes misted and scared, reaching toward mine. “The crust, it’s not c-c-crumbly…he-he-he will…” Mom pauses, scrunches her eyes closed, then turns, stalking into the kitchen. “I have to make a new one,” she cries. “I-I-I have to make a new one.”
I shove up from the table, round the corner and move toward my mother. Her cries are reduced to whimpers as she perches on the balls of her feet, frantically searching through the cupboard above the gas stove, ripping out ingredients and dumping them onto the cluttered counter. I turn over my shoulder, seek out Jade, and the smile that had lit up her face in my room no less than half an hour ago had fallen away. I place an open palm to the middle of my mother’s back, whisper, “Hey, Mom, stop.”
“He-he-he will—” She tries, though I cut her off.
“I won’t let him do shit, Mom.”
The smell of something burning assails the entrance of my nose and I look toward my feet noticing my mother’s apron has caught alight on the burner she had left on at the stove.
In a moment of panic, I stand there in some disconnected stupor, watching the lick of flames eat a strawberry before dismantling the head of a ladybug when a heavy splash of water comes from our right.
Jade is standing beside us with a glass trembling in her palm. “I’m s-s-sorr?—”
The clang and clatter of the front door sucks what air and breath and voice is left in the room out, as I quickly turn off the burner.
Jade’s and my mother’s eyes shoot toward the entrance of the kitchen, though mine level on my mother and it’s there that I see terror tighten and sharpen every bone, every muscle in her body. Each vein pops and bulges as she tries to swallow and when I crawl my eyes up to hers, I almost see them shake.
She is petrified.
Large footfalls echo off the cold, cheap and rotted flooring and when our father’s shadow curls around the corner, she hastily tears her gaze from mine, a veiled mask slipping into place.
It kills me.
I don’t greet my father. I turn. I give him my back. That’s when I feel the heel of a palm clip the underside of my skull.
And I don’t flinch; I was expecting it. Our father is—and has always been—a violent asshole. With my back still turned, I watch Jade in front of me, watching me, watching him.
Our father scoffs, clearing phlegm. “What? You think you’re too good to say hello to your father, boy?” His voice is scratchy.
I don’t answer.
I keep my back to him.
I hadn’t been back here for what felt like weeks. Growing up, I spent more time sleeping on park benches than I had my own bed to escape him and his bullshit. Now, I was only here when Jade wasn’t with her best friend, Laiken, or when Mom called to let me knowhehadn’t come home that night.
I place one foot in front of the other and jerk my chin in Jade’s direction, prompting her to follow me.
She does, and we both return to our seats at the table.
I keep my eye on the pie, stabbing the perfect bite. Jade follows, and after swallowing my mouthful, I drag my eyes up from the table with little to no urgency.
Our father’s jeans are dirty; a landing place for grease. His shit-colored flannel is torn, and his sharp jaw and hollow cheeks are stippled with a week’s worth of lazy person's stubble. And his hair looked like he’d dumped it in an oil drum of fat.
He is the definition of trash, a warmed-up pile of shit.
I shove another piece of pie into my mouth and chew, and as it makes its way to my stomach, I keep my eyes on my father, but direct my statement to my mother.
“This is great, Mom.”
Jade follows the way I knew she would. “The best one you’ve ever made.”
That’s when the front door creaks, when laughter channels through the static violent air around us, and I see my father’s nostrils flare, his jaw twisting with a rage he is too piss-weak to contain.
I don’t take my gaze from him when Uncle Nick and his girlfriend, Kristen, walk into the kitchen.
