Chapter 29 #2
The day drags its corpse toward an early dark. We forgot to eat lunch and I don’t want to cook now. We get gluten-free pizza from Jules, which I usually love; I dump hot honey on mine. Then hot sauce, too. It still tastes lackluster, empty.
I text Mom, Where are you aren’t you supposed to be home?
Grabbed drinks w Jenn! Brought Al! Took him to late lunch since he’s never had french fries!!!!! Back soon , she texts instantly. Ah. That explains where he went. Mom and Al are best friends.
Ella finally settles down on the couch with her tattered copy of Libby and the Garden Gate, and I feel like I can breathe for one second, and then she gasps loudly and I am already cringing hard when she begins to wail. “Oh no! Oh no!”
I make a strangled sound.
“Ahh, ahh, it’s bleeding! I saw my own blood!” She is speaking in bursts, hyperventilating.
“What now?” I say to myself as I go into the living room. Ella is curled up, rocking herself on the couch, her book beside her. A second ago, there was peace; now there’s a storm of frantic misery. She’s holding up one trembling hand like a flag. “Paper cut?” I ask.
Her whole body nods, rolls forward, back again. “It’s bad!”
I come closer, get ahold of her hand. It isn’t bad. It’s pretty average.
“Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it!” Her wet, hair-plastered face pops up, mouth gaping open in a desperate cry.
“Ella, I’m just looking at it.”
“Get a BAND-AID!” She seems furious at me. She isn’t really, just terrified.
“Okay, I’m getting a Band-Aid. But you’re fine.”
“I’m not fine! I’m not fine! I’m bleeding! You touched it!”
“I didn’t touch it.”
“You did! I told you not to touch it and you touched it!”
“I didn’t touch it. I touched your hand. And you told me after that.” Yes, I’m arguing with a seven-year-old. Eight soon. And still terrified of a drop of blood. Still terrified of so many things. So many fears, so many phobias. So many issues.
I go into the kitchen, where I keep extra Band-Aids in the cabinet with the vitamins.
Crap, we only have the Monsters, Inc.–themed ones left.
She hates those. She thinks the monsters are creepy.
How have I failed to replenish the Band-Aids?
It’s been a while since I went to the grocery store, actually.
“Okay, Ella, I’m going to put the Band-Aid on now.” I work to keep my voice even as I come back into the living room. Her suspicious eyes come up over the barricade of her knees. They widen in outrage.
“No, no, no, NOT a monster Band-Aid! You know I hate those so much. They are too scary. I already told you that so many times. . . .” She trails off, aggrieved and entitled.
“This is what we have, Ella. You need a Band-Aid. I know you want a Band-Aid.”
“I don’t want that one!”
Blood is dripping down her finger. The couch is oatmeal colored, not without its faint map of stains, but still, we don’t really need to add blood.
I can already hear her mournful voice explaining, again and again, “That’s where I cut myself.
. . .” Or worse, with panic, every time she sees the rusty spot: “Cover it up! That’s blood! I can’t look at my blood!”
“This is what we have,” I repeat, my voice rising.
“Get me a different one! I don’t want that one!” She escalates far beyond me, hitting a shriek almost instantly. Her toes flex and then curl with fury, as though she is digging invisible claws into the cushion beneath her.
“Ella. Give me your hand right now.” I reach for it and she falls to the side, tipping like an angry egg, anticipating me with some animalistic instinct, even though her eyes have retreated behind her knees again.
“Don’t touch it! Don’t touch my cut!” she bellows, choking on sobs.
“Stop it right now!” I bellow back. “This is ridiculous! Give me your hand! You’re bleeding all over the place! I’m putting the Band-Aid on you—just stop it!”
At the part about bleeding, her sobbing peaks hysterically and she screams, “You stop it! Don’t touch it!” her limbs erupting outward—a ferocious alien baby high-speed hatching, ready to wrench my face off. “Bleeding ‘all over the place’? ‘All over the place’?”
“This is so stupid,” I hiss, bending over her, trying to catch the bloody hand as she whips it away from me, toward the back of the couch.
“I hate you!” she screams in my face, her sweaty face twisted, mouth wide, spittling. “I want Mommy! I hate you!”
My hand flicks out, connects with her cheek. It makes a satisfying, solid sound.
We stare at each other.
I hit her.
I hit Ella.
I slapped her across the face.
My niece. Who is practically my own daughter.
There is a chasm of silence into which everything collapses.
And then she asks, “Titi?” in a quavering voice. As though she no longer in this moment recognizes me.
“Oh my God,” I say.
And then she’s crying even harder, if that’s possible (it is), and I hear that the door has opened and closed, because Dee is suddenly home, too, much earlier than usual. I know she’s standing behind me at the entrance to the living room.
“What’s going on?” comes her tight, confused voice.
I don’t know how much she saw. I don’t think she saw me hit Ella, but the timeline is already folding in on itself, and it doesn’t matter because Ella flings herself up from the couch, explodes into Dee’s arms, features wrung into an ongoing gasp of horror.
“I hit her,” I say, flat voiced.
“You hit her?” she repeats, as though this doesn’t make sense.
I nod. “I just flipped out and hit her.” I turn, and it feels slow, it feels like it takes a long time to get all the way around to Dee.
My gaze slides over the blue vase collecting dust on the mantel, the dried flowers Ella and I picked from the front garden last year and put in it.
The curling portrait she did of our family, also dried out, the colors bleached by time like old bones in the sun.
Mom stands a little bit apart in it, beaming.
Ella and Dee and I are bunched together, all of us in gowns as though we are princesses.
Dee, who always has something to say, is silent.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Open them again.
“T,” she says, her voice low and hard. “What— ”
But before she can continue, I step quickly forward. I can’t bear it. I put my hands on her shoulders and look into her eyes.
“Don’t be angry,” I whisper. “Don’t. I can’t do this.”
She blinks, tries to step back but can’t quite.
It has to work. It has to. I feel feral, cornered.
“I’m not angry.” Her voice isn’t quite right.
It isn’t quite hers. Not the firm, take-charge voice I’m used to from my sister.
She’s uncertain now, her will folded under something else.
Under my will. Her pupils dilate. “I’m home early,” she says, and a note of cheerfulness sounds in her words.
“Maybe we should all play that unicorn game?”
I back away from her. Ella’s shuddering sobs have paused, as though she’s holding her breath. She senses something is off, something is terribly unbalanced here. At least, I think she might. Her hand is clenched into a protective fist, though she seems to have otherwise forgotten about the cut.
“Wait, actually,” says Dee, bewildered. “I have to run upstairs and send something really quick. I left it on my desk. T?” She turns as though through water, looking for me.
“Yes?” I say, reading my line.
“Can you just watch Ella for a few minutes? I have to do something. Josh needs me to send him— ”
“No.” I have to get out of here.
“That’s okay, Josh can wait. Ella and I will hang out.”
“I’m going out,” I say, already at the door. “I have to go. Out.” I yank my sneakers on, stagger-hop on one foot.
I skid outside, the front door squealing shut in a rusty yelp behind me.
I’m running. I’m running but I can’t get far enough away.