“Sure you are,” she always said.
After she left us, it took all of his willpower to keep himself from going out and roaming the woods every night, and to his credit, he only allowed himself a couple of humps a week. Still, he stayed gone a terrifyingly long time, rarely coming back before I put Nate to bed. I was supposed to be in bed too, of course. Instead, after making sure my little brother was asleep, I crept outside and stationed myself on the porch to keep watch.
What was he searching for out there? What did he so desperately need to find? The answer ripened in me like a poisonous fruit. His patrols were never aimed at rooting out enemies. He must have met someone new.
How I hated her, this woman who was gunning to replace our mother, hoping to steal our father right out from under Nate and me. Unable to properly despise a faceless person, I pictured the worst sort of creature I could: the thick, crimson smears of lipstick she wore, the false lashes, the obscene skirts and dresses she wedged herself into. I imagined she was the type to take whatever she wanted, whenever it pleased her, yet condemned anyone else who did the same. Late at night, when she was alone at last, she would stare down the hard choices she’d made in her life and convince herself the world was to blame for her failures, hatching desperate schemes to snatch back what she’d lost. For her, the so-called female advantage had turned out to be her undoing––nowhere near the prize she’d believed it to be. It wasn’t until later that I understood how closely this description fit our mother.
And then, much later, myself.
Once I followed him. His older sister, our Aunt Rennie, had just brought over a heaping platter of chicken. She claimed she was worried about us.
A graduate of Warren Wilson College, Karen Tucker is the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant for Emerging Writers. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.