Listen to the author reading this story:
Do it just once, taxes will go down, dad said. Cat in her white dress disagreed in charades behind him, perched on the table scuffed with coffee rings and knife scars. Eating plums. ‘Our conscientious objector,’ mama called Cat in a half-fond way, while they called me Donk because I brayed when I was a kid.
Dad felt the whoosh of Cat’s white-sleeved arms but couldn’t see her gestures. He was obsessed with taxes. He complained even when he didn’t pay any. ‘Why are you worried about someone else’s money?’ Cat asked, while I just did what he wanted. Taxes did not go down. ‘Things don’t change overnight,’ Dad said, as outside the city kaleidoscoped around us. I hung nauseated in sticky air, web strung between branches. All of us nervous and unhappy, except dad.
The stringy air smelled of plum and snapped like gum. Arguments between Dad and Cat sharpened, switchblading even their silences. A pebble lodged in me, I felt the roundness as I did what I was told, mama making sure of it with a bony finger gun poking that part of my back that makes me freeze up. I hate that part though physiologically it doesn’t exist. ‘There’s nothing there,’ Cat said over and over, but Cat doesn’t understand the process of petrification. She crawled beside me at night to whisper about terrible things happening outside. Her breath lapped my sore spots and I barely heard the words.
When she finally stopped coming home, Dad said don’t look for her, as if she wasn’t his child. As if the line of his cheek wasn’t carved into hers. Nodding Mama cried fat useless tears in the privacy of her closet. Taxes did not go down. Taxes began to sound like it meant something else.
We swam through days sawing miserable meals together. Get out, you still can, Cat whispered every night in my dreams but my limbs were slow, clumsy as barges. Stringy air twisted me up.
Stuff shut down as workers evaporated like dew and the drug dying didn’t slow. We kept in touch by funeral and everyone I knew was afraid of getting pregnant. Pregnant and stuck, pregnant and sick, pregnant and dead. Mama couldn’t understand. ‘Aren’t you glad you were born?’ she asked, and I am. Raise a statue to me, reluctant daughter of obedience. The ridiculous make monsters too.
Next year, the plums grew even sweeter. ‘Just wait,’ dad said, ‘things take time,’ while everywhere melted and no taxes went down. ‘Light a candle,’ mama said, her answer for most things. ‘Light a candle and your prayers come true.’ I didn’t light a candle. The pebble grew into a rock where my stomach had been. I felt it harden. Soon I’d be ripe. Cat would be disappointed. She would be furious but we’re not the same. I’m not who they build statues to, Cat. I’m the stone they grind to make it.
Eirene Gentle writes lit, mostly little, usually from Toronto, Canada. She’s happy to be published in some great journals and for Pushcart and Best short fiction nominations.