No Amount of Light

My grandma thought she was helping.  I mean she was, taking me in when my parents dumped me. My own father wouldn’t even cut the engine on the night they left; he just pushed the Gran Torino’s wide, heavy door out with his shiny, crocodile boot and said, “Git.”  My mother sobbed next to him, curled up in a ball, cradling herself. I squeezed out, then stood there not knowing what “git” meant this time.

I always feared the dark.  I stumbled across the yard marked by pine roots that buckled up from under the ground like the skin of unseen beasts forcing their way through and Grandma’s flower pots empty for the winter, discarded there until spring.  I forced my way across, skinning my knee twice as I lunged toward what I hoped to be the front steps.  No moon lit my way.  The car’s taillights disappeared down the long drive before I even made my second step.

Grandma fixed that candle above my headboard, patting the blanket twice as if to say there, there, before she closed the door and disappeared back down the stairs.  I heard them creak, then the flick of the television, a laugh track, people excited about something, somewhere faraway. 

 The heat kicked on; the candle’s flame hissed and spit.  The shadows moved.  Sharp shapes like fangs and ears.  The points of polished cowboy boots and the ends of leather belts.  They danced around my head.  No amount of light could change that.