Page 23 of Art of Sin

My heart jackknifes, my stomach cramping. The cabinets are empty, the shelves of the refrigerator bare. No one’s been to the store in a week. Daddy said he’d be home by now, but he’s not.

I place my battered doll inside the shoebox I fashioned into a bed, tucking her between sheets made of newspaper. She stares blankly at me, blue eyes bright in a dirty face. When I found her under a bush near the neighborhood playground last week, I tried for hours to clean her. But the brown stains wouldn’t come out.

“Don’t make me repeat myself!”

Wiggling under my bed, I grab the extra bottle of Jim Beam I store for emergencies. For when there’s no food and my only hope is that she’ll get drunk enough to not care.

“Deirdre Anne!”

“Coming, Mama.”

Bending before the sink, I wash my face again.

And again.

When my skin is red and raw, I reach for the medicine cabinet and my stash of sleeping pills. I swallow two.

Without dinner, without even brushing my teeth, I cross my dark bedroom and crawl beneath the covers. The sky could open right now and spit out an army of aliens and I wouldn’t move. I’m too tired. Tired of pretending, of resisting, of fighting.

As the pills take hold, softening my mental barriers, memories roar through the breach.

“What the hell is this?”

“No, please, Mama—”

Bony fingers grab a fistful of my hair and yank. “Who gave you this doll? How stupid are you to accept something from a stranger?”

I wail as she drags me from my room toward the kitchen. Tears stream down my face; snot pours from my nose. She hates it when I cry, but I can’t stop.

“I found her, Mama, I swear! Someone threw her away!”

She chuckles, the sound raspy and familiar. It means something bad is coming. Pulling me out of the trailer into the brisk night, she finally releases me. I stumble, then fall hard, pebbles digging into my bare knees. Momentarily forgotten, I watch her shuffle to the rusted metal drum we use for fires in winter.

“You know what we did with trash when I was your age?” she asks, tossing my doll into the drum. Her plastic body clanks against the side on the way down.

“No! Mama, please!”

She takes her time lighting a cigarette, puffing three times as the match burns down in her fingers. Then she tosses the dying flame into the drum I just filled yesterday with scraps of paper and twigs. The flames are instantaneous and high. She steps back, whooping in surprise, then cackling.

“We burned our trash, Deirdre Anne. You best be careful, because if you keep acting like trash, you’ll burn too.”

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