These short-short stories first appeared at Knee-Jerk Magazine in February 2017.
Cooling
I’m eight years old and I’m fat. It’s August and we’re home from the pool, dazed from the sun, sipping iced tea on the porch outside our small kitchen. It’s quiet inside. Nothing but the sound of mice who have come to visit us this summer, scuttling.
The cement slab feels cool on my burnt skin as I lie on my belly and rest my head on crossed arms. I stare at Mother’s feet next to me, stretched in front of her like vines. She leans back on her elbows and perches her thin hands on her flat stomach, tilting her head slowly towards the sky.
“Do you think you’re pretty?” she asks me. I see her evaluating my face and round, soon to be even more unruly body, contemplating all its angles.
I say nothing even though the question makes me feel a hazy sadness I sometimes feel even now when I’m uncertain what someone needs from me.
We lie in silence until I say, “I guess,” and when she looks at me, “I guess I think I’m pretty.”
Hesitantly, she says, “Don’t guess, know,” as if not wanting to hand over a prize, as if she’s uncertain she believes it herself.
The snap of the mousetrap inside the kitchen doorway startles us, leading us from one kind of silence into another. Mother looks to the door then back at me.
“The mouse,” I say.
“Your father will get it,” she says, and I wonder if that means he’s coming home tonight.
Lying there, all I can see is blood seeping from the doorway, so much blood it might drown us, but I don’t tell Mother, because of course there’s no blood in sight at all.
Brace
We’re at my Gram's house, but she no longer lives here. Dad does and you and me, we're staying. Outside, I see Dad pulling an old, uprooted redwood down the street in a plastic barrel as if it's weightless. A sprawling group of men follows him like he's their messiah. They are mustached and dirty-jeaned with large, dirty hands.
The men spread across the yard while talking gruffly to one another. Among them, I spot a teenage girl, a specter of my young self. Braces, full-figured, clumsy. She asks if you have a retainer—as if searching for a common thread—and you, annoyed, say “yes,” and suddenly I do see that you have a retainer in your big mouth, and you, my love, are much younger than I remember you.
Eventually, the men become skinnier and less roughed-skinned. Their teeth are white and their nails are clean. They sit in groups of four, ready to play a card game I've never seen. Dad sits next to the girl and holds her as the men crawl closer each time they win a hand.
Dad doesn’t stop them. She is a prize and unable to get away from their pawing. I don’t see you anywhere as their hands cover her until her back is against the dirt ground and she can’t move. You’ve left her and so has Dad.
The men’s hands cover her face even though I know she’s already closed her eyes. So many men have crawled on top of her that I can see nothing but the tips of her toes, writhing. I’ve been here before, but still, I brace myself for everything that happens next.
Drive-In
I’m in the backseat of Ma's two-door. Her and Deb are in the front and the sun is shining brightly through the gaps in their hair sprayed in place on top of their heads.
Ma says, "Oh God, Deb. Can you believe the drive-in used to be here?” We’re at a stoplight near a shopping center. A clock tower looms above us.
Deb smiles while letting her arm hang out the window, ash from her cigarette falling to the ground. “Jesus, we were bad,” she whispers.
Ma snorts with a cigarette hanging from her mouth. It’s guttural and secret that laugh. The smoke drifts to the backseat and I feel nauseous like I always do.
"It used to be a drive-in?" I ask.
The car turns left and into the lot now filled with boxy shops instead of screens and old cars. There’s a bar where I know the junior and senior boys sometimes get served.
“We’ll be back,” Ma says as she parks the car.
“What am I supposed to do?” I say.
Deb looks at Ma and Ma gives me that look I’ll someday be able to identify as resentment.
Once they leave, I get out of the car, lock the door, and I walk. I walk up a big hill towards the next town. A car beeps at me as I cross a busy street towards a path leading into the woods. I feel the car slow down behind me while he shouts for me. I don’t know him well. Only seen him around school. But still, I get in his car because I want to be someone else. Anyone. Anywhere.