101 Words

This was going to be unpleasant. Heidi pounded her fist on the door to Room Six as the sweet stench of clove cigarettes seeped out into the night.

“You had your chance,” she called. “No smoking means no smoking. You’re out.”

He was barely more than a boy. Nineteen, she calculated from his license when he checked into the motel. Heidi stood in the doorway as he packed his clothes into a Transformers backpack.

“You should learn to listen,” she said.

He ground the glowing butt into the bedspread and walked past her. “Yeah, that’s what my dad used to say.”

Mama’s scream wakes me from dreams of carousels and cotton candy. Ana’s tiny silhouette moves quickly towards me from across the room. She is only three, but she knows she must hide when Mama screams. She crawls into my bed. I wrap the covers tightly around her, and I don’t know if the pounding is her heart or mine.

The screaming grows louder.

The door handle rattles. I cover Ana’s eyes but can’t look away.

The lock turns.

The hinges creak.

A skeletal hand reaches out. She screams for her baby.

And then Mama is gone again.

And so is Ana.

My grandfather used to be an acrobat, but the neighbors say he was a factory worker.

Some nights, the moon glowers through my window to frighten me. That’s when Grandpa swings up, knocks a crater into it, and pulls me across the ocean to his one-street village where Mom grew up. There, I sit atop an iron gate and watch him hop the neighbors’ tin roofs.

One morning, I found a piece of moon below my window. I gave it to Mom and asked if Grandpa should be swinging quite so high at his age.

“Don’t worry—Grandpa’s still an acrobat.”

The knives hated Susan, grumbled quietly when she was around, complained loudly when she wasn’t.

And why wouldn’t they? She abused them horribly, tossed them into the dishwasher with the rest of the silverware, left them lying uncleaned on the countertop, scraped their edges along the top of the cutting board.

“You have to treat them delicately,” I tried to explain. “They’re precision instruments.”

“They’re freaking kitchen utensils, Clara, not Fabergé eggs!” she sneered.

The knives collectively cringed.

“That’s your story? The knives did it?” said the officer.

The knives looked askance, wouldn’t meet my eyes as I was led away.

Some birthday.

Megan woke with cramps, and when she rose from her bed, she saw blood on the sheet.

She showered, then opened the box that her mother left under the sink after The Talk the week before.

Strange. She didn’t feel any more like a woman than she did yesterday.

Still in her bathrobe, she entered the kitchen and saw her mother holding up a jar. “Look, dear.”

Inside, a tiger swallowtail perched on an opened cocoon, its wings still wet.

Outside, Megan laid the jar in the grass, its lid removed. “Happy birthday, Tiger. You’re a real girl now.”

Anna stared at her younger self in the dresser mirror. She’d returned with the weapon in her right palm. As always, her quick fix. Her thumb stroked the spark wheel as she gathered courage to strike the flint. At first the child in her delighted at the wandering flame, but the child gave way to a bully who held it steady under her pinky to form a blister. Adult Anna had mastered this cruel and medieval medicine. She took angry pride in her skill, her guts to inflict wounds that obliterated other pain. After all, burns heal and scabs fall away.

Darrell took his seat on the therapist’s couch. Cheyenne took the far end.

Darrell, as always, spoke first. “I spent ten days sculpting Marilyn Monroe out of butter for the county Farm Show contest. Cheyenne ate her leg. I don’t know if I can trust her anymore.”

Cheyenne stared out the window. The therapist nodded and jotted another note.

“I love her, but she doesn’t respect me, or my work. I’m not sure this is working out. What do you think?”

The therapist massaged his brow. “I think you need a girlfriend.”

Cheyenne barked at the blue jay on the ledge.