Memorial Day morning Girl woke up lazily, then remembered the parade with a jolt, and grabbed the alarm clock that she had forgotten to set. She had to be there in fifteen minutes—fuck. Her parents were still asleep—no one had bothered to make sure she got up in time to shower, but she was twelve, after all, she was supposed to know how to set an alarm clock. Girl ran a brush through her hair, but she didn’t have time to tame the messy sleep-swirls out of it. Mr. Bell said if you were even a minute late they would leave you behind. She pulled her navy blue, hooded sweatshirt with the school insignia on it over her head and hoped it would at least cover the cowlicks at the nape of her neck. Her big glasses were covered in fingerprints, but she didn’t have time for makeup, let alone washing them off. She slid her lavender drumsticks into the back pocket of her jeans and ran for Irondequoit Plaza, where the parade was lining up. She made it with five minutes to spare—luckily not the last one to arrive. When the drum line stepped off right-left-right she no longer cared if her hair was unruly or if her pimples were showing. Her sticks bounced on the drum head, and she was part of the music that had always made her cry.
scar tissue
Girl had an inch-long scar on the right side of her abdomen, nearly parallel to her navel. It took five stitches to close it, not as impressive as the seventeen Brother got in his hand when he was seven and accidentally put his hand through a window pane. (Girl had intentionally slammed the playroom door, which always stuck and required a lot of force to open. Brother shoved the glass door as hard as he could so that he could resume trying to kill his sister, and his hand went through the glass.) But five stitches were more respectable than the one stitch he got in his finger when he was eight. (That time, Girl slammed the door on his actual finger. She supposed she should feel bad about these injuries, but in her opinion, he shouldn’t have been chasing her in the first place.)
One morning, Girl opened the brown, vintage 1940s cabinet in their kitchen to get the peanut butter out so she could make her lunch for school. The handle was a bronze, round knob with a sort of four-pointed star behind it. When she opened the cabinet, a ceramic pitcher fell from the top shelf, hit the counter, and shattered, sending a shard into her stomach. Stepmother was in the kitchen, getting ready for work. Brother was there too, which was a lot of bodies for the small space, but that’s how it worked every morning. Their kitchen table was tucked in the corner and pushed close to the wall. There were only a few feet left to walk around the other two sides. Girl turned around to face the middle of the room as she pulled the shard from her stomach. Blood flowed freely from the wound, and although she thought she should cry, she froze. Girl had just wanted to make a sandwich, and it had happened so fast. But Stepmother started to cry.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Stepmother repeated as she cried. “I knew when I put that pitcher in there that it was going to fall, and I just closed the door anyway. It’s all my fault. I’ll take you to the doctor—you’re going to need stitches.”
Girl was afraid of stitches. She had only had them twice before, both times before she was in kindergarten, and both times in her face. Once she had fallen off the ladder of a backyard swing set at daycare, the rusty wing-nut rising toward her face and gouging her above her eye. The second time, also at daycare, Girl had stepped on a coloring book on the floor, skated across the hardwood, and face-planted into an old iron radiator. She remembered the feel of flying, but not the landing. She did remember being strapped to a blue “buddy board” in the hospital. She kept tearing at the stitches, pulling them out as fast as the doctor tied them, so they Velcroed her arms to her sides. She had tried to bite, but a nurse held her head. Girl still remembered watching her mother walk out the door, ignoring her screams. But despite those two incidents, Girl wasn’t an accident-prone child, like Brother, and she didn’t get hurt all that often.
“Can I bring my Pound Puppy?” Girl asked. She knew that at twelve years old she was too old for stuffed animals and dolls. She was on the cusp between child and teen, aware of how she lagged her peers in small social ways. She figured Stepmother would say, “You’re too old for stuffed animals,” but she had to ask. She needed something to hold against her body when she was afraid—something that wasn’t her stepmother.
“Of course you can,” Stepmother said, still crying. They drove to her pediatrician, and Girl got five black stitches. It hurt. A lot. Watching that curved needle poke through her skin gave Girl the heebie-jeebies, so she held her Pound Puppy and tried not to look, but she couldn’t help it. Afterward, Stepmother dropped Girl off at school and went to work. The cut wasn’t bad, but Stepmother’s reaction was. Her guilty tears ran down her face, her words spilled over Girl, sorry, sorry, sorry, as they pulled in the school parking lot. Girl didn’t think it was her stepmother’s fault. Girl didn’t understand why Stepmother was so sure that it was.
Stepmother was all creamy skin over thick body meat. She was a mountain of
