Does Your Mother Know?
It wasn’t that she couldn’t let it go. The girl, sitting with her legs crossed, back against a couch covered in purple felt. She could let it go, the photo, if she wanted. She set out to tell herself that at least 20 times over the course of the day but lost count around 11 or 12.
She could choose to drop it, forget she’d even seen it, and it wouldn’t nag like daydreams or make her ears ring when she tried to sleep. Even though it had since Saturday. She could take a deep breath and throw it in the garbage if she really wanted, and indeed she practiced just that; rehearsed the motions between the living room and kitchen several times that afternoon. It was Tuesday, and she was still grounded for kicking the neighbor’s cats again.
And alone in the house, the question still remained. Isn’t it my right to know?
She creased the photo down the middle. A younger version of her mother crouched on the left, and on the opposite side, a girl Sophia had never seen before looked straight at the camera with eyes that didn’t quite match her gap-toothed smile. On the back, written in sharpie: “Molly’s First Day of 5th Grade.” Someone’s hand reached toward the little girl from outside the picture, but Sophia couldn’t recognize it. It didn’t look like Dan’s; it was neither tan nor was there a gold ring with a cross engraved on the inside choking the middle finger.
“That’s what happens when you try to take control of things,” Dan said about a year ago right after Sophia’s mother had scrapped a yellow pole in line at Bank of America. “You’re not good enough to be doing this. Could have gotten us killed somewhere down the road.” And then he slapped her hard enough to hurt but soft enough to justify yet later apologize. There on her cheek, for a minute or so afterwards, was the faint, red outline of a cross.
We should also make clear that her mother wasn’t the cause of those bruises on Sophia’s right arm; Dan was. But it only happened once when he caught Sophia reaching over his plate at dinner. They were alone. It happened quickly. Squeezing. Almost breaking. Before the bruising: another faint, red cross. Sophia struggled with emotions after that. Identifying them. It would take another decade to notice the invisible bruises her own mother suffered. The kind that don’t leave like the purple ones eventually do.
But for the moment: Molly.
What are they hiding from me?
She turned the photo over and traced the cursive, backward-slanted sharpie with her fingertip. Inhaled the memory of it, the soot coating. Peered deeply into the hazel eyes of the little girl and wondered why she looked like her. Tried to place the scent of wet pennies she recognized. She lifted the hair on her arm with the edge of the Polaroid and remembered Dan telling her he would prefer she shaved it off. Ever since, she made it a point to avoid the razor isle on “family” grocery trips.
She folded the photo down on the crease and walked toward the kitchen.
But when she entered through the doorway, she jumped.
Her mother wasn’t home yet. Wouldn’t be for another hour.
But her father was.
He was skinny but somehow imposing and blunt. His hands gripped both sides of the sink as he stared out the window lost in thought. Watching something and grinding his teeth. A dog wriggling underneath its fence to freedom — another fenced yard. A doe, silent, looking for other deer in those dark, foreign woods. Grandpa’s Shack: off limits. Little children. Something.
“I did love her,” he said.
“Who?” Sophia’s heartbeat was slowly returning to normal.
“I tried to tell your mother that over and over.” Gripping the sink even harder, his knuckles turned white and his arms shook. “But she’s her mother, so she wouldn’t listen.”
“Whose mother?”
“Your mother. And Molly’s.”
Sophia realized that in her surprise, she had ripped the photograph in two. She looked at the halves, her mother on one side and Molly on the other. A sister. But he’s not real. He’s lying. She walked over to the trashcan and dangled them over it.
“I could do it you know,” she said, her bottom lip quivering.
“And you’d be better off for it.” The vein in his forehead looked like it might explode.
“I know you’re not real,” she said.
“I wished that about Molly, too.” He snapped his fingers. “Gone. Like she never said anything to anyone. Like we all just gone back to laughing at Uncle Ed’s bad jokes and drinking gin and drowning squirrels.”
“Who’s Uncle Ed?”
“Maybe there’s a photo of him around here. He did it too, you know.”
“You’re not real.”
“I’ll tell you what’s real, Sophia. This fucking layer of skin underneath ours that we’re born with. That you can’t help. Can’t shave away.” He turned his head so she could see the bloodshots of his eye. “Cut in a little bit. What are you?”
She fell silent. Off in the distance, a hiss.
“How do you like Dan?” he said, returning to the window. “Have you bled yet? Does your mother know?”
“You’re not real.”
“Does he do it too?”
“You’re not real.”
And she was right.
He had died eight years ago. Mysterious circumstances. Sophia’s mother would one day tell her how Molly had disappeared with a man named Edward around the same time, and how she’d never gotten over it.
Thanks for the read. It keeps me going. If you enjoyed the story, please consider throwing a clap or three my way. It helps other people see it too.
