Teeth

Flashback: She loves me not.

"So I got a call from yourteacher today."

Her voice hits me and it's like the snap of a whip, you cringe even before you're sure the lash is going to tear your skin or not. With her it's not an 'if', it's a 'when' you'll suffer. Especially when He isn't home. I shrink down, biting my lip and trying to look... how should I look?

I settle on a neutral expression, or as neutral as I can manage, working my shoes off carefully and neatly lining them up by the door mat. Always be neat, especially when you’re in trouble. Don't do anything to make it worse.

I say nothing, just look up carefully as she looms toward me like a storm cloud starting to roll across the plains, turning the air the sickly color you see on documentaries before a tornado starts. She makes me feel that kind of sickly color in the pit of my stomach.

"She said she's concerned.Apparently she's gotten the impression you aren't being treated well."

The neat curls of her short neat haircut quiver with each emphasized word, and I find myself trying to backtrack through my thoughts, wondering what I said, or did, that brought this on. I've done a bad thing. I've done a bad thing and I'm not sure what it was.  We do not air our dirty laundry to strangers. People who are not family don't get told if we're not happy.

"Do you want the government to come take you away? Do you want them to? Because they will. They'll take you away, they'll give you to some horrible family with twenty kids they're milking for welfare and you'll never amount to anything. They'll throw you out as soon as you're eighteen, you'll never go to college, you'll just end up on the street, and you'll break my heart. Is that what you want? Are you happy now you horrible little beast? Are you happy that you've convinced everyone I'm a monster?"

I'm trying to stay silent, trying to keep my face neutral, but I can't help it. I don't want these things. I love my mommy, and I know she loves me, even when she's scary. I know she'll say it again but right now I'm afraid I'll never hear it again. I feel awful, all sick inside, and tears start rolling down my face, hot and burning and painful, and I struggle to keep my lip from quivering. She hates that. Lip quivers are for babies. I am not a baby.

"Are you happy??" She demands again, and I know I can't escape an answer.

"N-no."

"No what?"

"N-no I'm not happy, I d-didn't..." But there's no telling her now i did nothing. I must have done something. I wish daddy was here, I want to be able to sneak out to him on the porch and curl up with him in his coat when he finishes smoking his pipe, but he's not here.  "I didn't mean to!"

"Liar." She snarls, lip curling. There's a hint of lipstick on her teeth, and I look away from it quickly. "Go to your ROOM. We will discuss this LATER."

I flee before the storm, and hope that it finds something else to destroy so that I can have back the mother who will tell me she loves me, and that I am obedient and good; That I am not a monster.