Chapter Two #2
Glazed cherries and spiced cinnamon wafts down the length of the small hallway. The sweetness crawling through the door Jade left open, tilting my stomach.
Our mother was baking again.
And that only ever meant one thing.
I kick back and shove up from my broken chair, moving toward the door, following after Jade.
“Can you please grab the ice-cream?”
My mother’s soft voice carries through the hollow walls like an echoed whisper, and when I bridge the entrance of the kitchen, I see Jade’s head stuck in the freezer, rifling for said ice-cream.
My mother leans over the small rectangle, retractable table in the middle of the cramped room, flanked by mismatched wooden chairs.
The top half of her long dark curls are pinned in the back with a small claw clip and her ivory apron, covered in a field of strawberries and ladybugs, brushes over the table as she works to make precise cuts into the cherry pie I knew she’d labored over for hours.
I’d overheard her share more than once with Jade that the homemade crust was her biggest challenge.
She’d start at dawn, combining ingredients in what she hoped would be the start of something golden and flaky.
The cherry filling would come next, and then, the delicate, intricate lines of pastry that crisscrossed the top of the sweet, blood red center.
It was perfect, and while she looked proud of the final product, Jade and I both knew she didn’t bake for enjoyment.
Jade flashes me a side eye, dumping the container of vanilla ice-cream next to the pie, along with three electric blue plastic-handled spoons.
We drag out a chair each. The legs scrape across the mint green linoleum floors, vibrating up the slightly darker green kitchen cupboards and slithering out the open window above the rusted sink.
The air around us is dense. We are both holding onto our breaths, waiting to see who, out of the two of us, will check on her first.
Jade makes the decision for us when she slumps over the table, drags the plate she’d made toward her, and cuts a crescent moon into her slice, taking a bite.
I keep mine where it is, dropping both of my arms down beside it, picking at a loose thread at the corner of the tablecloth.
I knew not to ask Mom what had happened, because what happened never mattered. It’s what he did to her that did. “What did he do to you, Mom?”
The chair creaks when she sits across from me. My eyes watch my mother’s heavy ones. They’re identical to mine, brown with gold flecks that flash in the darkness. Although, today, I can’t see the light, only sable shadows, an empty sight.
When Mom doesn’t answer, my question hangs there, between us, cauterizing the air.
She blinks repeatedly, then slides a heaping spoon of pie into her mouth and pauses before slowly guiding it out.
Her thin eyebrows pinch together, the lines at her forehead rippling into a wave of concern.
Her high cheekbones are sunken and hollow, and today I can make out the purple ligature marks on the side of her neck that she’d attempted to hide beneath a heavy pressing of compact powder.
My stomach turns sour, and the tightness builds in my chest. I skate my gaze back to Jade, watch her hesitantly swallow her mouthful.
“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 know he hadn’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.
I smile, wide. Tell him with my eyes, better luck next time.
Uncle Nick and Kristen weren’t from here, they’re rooted in LA, a three-hour drive from Devil’s Peak. The last time we had seen them was a little over six months ago, when we met Kristen, so pleasantries still meant something.
Well, to my father anyway.
Me and Kristen, we were well past pleasantries.
While my father and uncle spent the night lulling themselves with liquor in the back shed, I spent the same one balls deep in my uncle’s girl.
“My gosh, Heather, that smells amazing,” Kristen groans, stepping around our father and reaching for our mother, pulling her in for a hug.
And Mom accepts it, though she looks hesitant. She wasn’t used to gentleness; she was used to anger, aggression, and violence.
Kristen’s long dark hair waterfalls over our mother’s bony shoulders, the caramel highlights catching in the spear of light that filters through the kitchen window.
She is twenty-one-years old, which makes her eleven years younger than my uncle, and apart from her whiny, too-high voice, she is supermodel hot. I just had no plans to dip twice.
Uncle Nick claps his older brother’s back, though the greeting doesn’t deter my father from the daggers he’s determined to throw at me.
“Didn’t know you were coming into town,” my father says to his brother, however his brown eyes stay levelled with mine.
I’m still grinning.
Nick scratches through the dark, short, and well-trimmed stubble at his chin.
“Yeah, bit spontaneous. Big week at work, wanted to get away for a night,” he tells him, flicking his gaze between me, his nephew, and my father, his belligerent brother, no doubt feeling out the thick air hovering between us.
I drag the back of my hand over my mouth, wiping away crumbs.
I didn’t know what Nick did for work, didn’t care much to ask either, I just knew he was important, smart even, and he wasn’t scratching for money like us.
I return my eyes to my father, screech the chair backward, balancing the small plate in the palm of my hand and shoveling another spoonful of pie.
I chew, counting to ten before tearing them away, smirk still on my face, moving toward the back door that opens to our small backyard.
I make sure to snag Mom’s packet of half empty cigarettes that sit at the edge of the counter on the way.