Girl and Samson had made it as far as the sidewalk and Stepmother was at the top of the kitchen steps. Her face was red and taut, her hands on her beefy hips. She was only five foot two but outweighed Girl by at least fifty pounds. While female, she exuded masculine strength and, at that moment, anger. She called down to them, “You need to know that before you can marry my daughter, you need a full-time job with benefits!”
Girl just stood there. She was five inches taller than Stepmother, but when Stepmother yelled, Girl turned small. It made her lose her words.
Samson didn’t pause for a moment—he unleashed a tirade on Stepmother that ended with “I’m going to rip off your head and shit down your throat!” After which he slid into the driver side of the car, Girl hastily hopped into the passenger’s side, and they drove off. Girl was shaking like a naughty puppy, like she always did when people fought, but inside, she was overflowing with exaltation. She had waited her whole life for someone to not just stand up to Stepmother, but to win. Samson might have been too aggressive, but he protected Girl from all the people she was afraid of, and the number one person she was afraid of was Stepmother. He had slayed Girl’s dragon.
“She came at me. She was above me, looking down. She was trying to intimidate me by staying up on the steps where she thought she was safe. I showed her!” Samson crowed on the car ride home.
“You didn’t even do anything to deserve it!” Girl said, defensive of him.
“Sure I did. Didn’t you hear me needle her about what a scam insurance is? She thinks I’m Johnny Lunch Bucket, but she’s no better than me. I was provoking her and she knew it, and she wasn’t gonna let us leave till she pissed on her territory. She wants to act like a man, I’m going to treat her like one.”
Mother called Girl the next day.
“We were up all night terrified that Samson was going to come and kill us. Every time we heard a noise Stepmother would grab her gun. You know we really need to talk about Samson’s anger.”
Girl didn’t see it that way and said so. She didn’t think Samson had done anything worse than Stepmother had. It was just that for once, someone had out-bullied the bully.
“Girl, he threatened us,” Mother said. “How can you think that’s okay?”
“Come on, Mom, that wasn’t a real threat. Ripping someone’s head off is superlative.”
“No, I meant it,” Samson said when she relayed the conversation to him later. “They were right to be scared. But I was just defending myself.”
Girl and Mother didn’t speak for two months. They had never gone this long without making up—they had always spoken at least a few times a week on the phone, even after she ran away back in high school. For Girl, every day was marked with an undercurrent of sadness. She missed her mom. She didn’t know what to do. Christmas came, and they made up just enough for Girl to go over to their house on Christmas morning, but without Samson.
Spring came, and although Girl and Mother talked every now and then, they didn’t see each other in person. Girl asked Mother to look at wedding dresses with her, but she replied, “I can’t picture all four of us in the same room together, let alone at the wedding.”
Girl went dress shopping alone, without a single friend or relative who thought this union was a good idea. It didn’t matter. Girl would marry this man no matter what anyone else thought.
Mother’s anger finally broke.
“What can you and I do to get Stepmother and Samson to make up?” she asked Girl. Within a week the four of them met at a restaurant, and no one mentioned the fight, or apologized. They just went on like it hadn’t happened. When Stepmother reached her spoon into Samson’s bowl of ice cream, he didn’t say a word, though he didn’t eat any more of it.
name change
Girl walked down the aisle in her white princess dress. She had bought it from a classified ad in the newspaper—the only bridal gown she could afford—but it was beautiful, and thick satin, not that flame-retardant crap a lot of bridal stores sold. It didn’t have a train, but you can’t have everything. When Girl walked out of the church—ran, actually, holding hands with her new husband—she became Wife. She had always wanted to be Wife, had decided to change her name as soon as she could, but now … let’s be honest, it was a little weird. Part of her missed being Girl, like when she wrote a check and had to stop and think for a minute, sometimes starting the first letter wrong and having to draw that “W” over the beginnings of the “G.” The “G” had more grace to it. The “W” was stiffer, less round. Now her high school friends would not know how to look her up in the phone book, but that was a small price to pay. She was starting her own family. She belonged somewhere now.
moving on
“I need you and Brother to come over for dinner tonight,” Mother told Girl one night. “We have something to tell you.” Girl could not imagine what was too important for a phone call, but she sensed it wasn’t something good.
“We were on vacation in Mexico, and I saw a little sailboat bobbing on the water. It looked so peaceful,” Mother said.
“Then I realized that I wasn’t depressed in Mexico,” Stepmother added.
“So we bought a twenty-eight-foot catamaran,” Mother said.
“I was a small watercraft instructor back at Camp Ononda,” Stepmother
