God told me plenty of times to smash your face under Daddy’s mallet, Sibby said, but sometimes I don’t exactly obey God.
Sibby had the Ziploc out, the one she filled with the spider’s eggs she’d find in the backyard. These are gifts from the Lord, she told me once. He sprinkled them around for me to find. Now she worked the Ziploc under her shoe, slowly mashing the eggs and baby spiders spilling out, like there was great pleasure in it. That what God told you to do with the eggs, I asked her. God told me plenty of times to smash your face under Daddy’s mallet, Sibby said, but sometimes I don’t exactly obey God. She finished her mashing, took off her one shoe and left it over the Ziploc. Let her sock get black with dirt. Why’d you do that, I asked her. Because, she said. She peeled off her sock, laid it out on the back step beside me. They were fixin to hatch, and without no mother it was dumb for me to let them be born. She disappeared into the house behind me.
Our mother had gone off to work weeks before and never come home. Her peeling brown purse lay there on the dip in the counter, the same dip I dreamed Daddy placed a orange sea urchin in night after night. Eat up, children, he’d say, dealing out pink Baskin Robbins spoons. That purse bothered me, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop dreaming about the urchin, fighting us off and screeching like a hungry baby and Daddy near hysterical. I’d wake up and check and the purse would still be there, undisturbed.
Sibby came back out with some of Mother’s clothes bunched up in her arms. She dropped them over the Ziploc and the shoe, kicked them around until they were just as much dirt as cloth. What are we going to have for dinner, she asked, walking past me again into the house. She came back out a few minutes later with that keepsake box of hers, unlidded it and seasoned the pile with its contents. I saw the opal ring I thought I’d lost tumble into the dirt. Pancakes, she said. With sugarbutter.
On the schoolbus Robbie Favers told us about the rumor that Daddy’d killed Mother and tossed her into the river for one of the old fishermen to reel in. With a old plastic bag from Ingles he found in the backseat, Robbie said. Cinched over your mama’s head till she stopped trying to live.
I went into the house and got Mother’s purse. Her wallet and crocheted coin purse were still in there, and her fancy lipstick with the built-in mirror. I took the purse to Sibby’s pile and placed it in the middle. Her lipstick’s still in there, I said. I know, Sibby said.
We threw a few more things onto the pile—Sibby’s other shoe, Mother’s thimble collection, a marker set Daddy had bought us the Christmas before. Then Sibby poured what was left in Daddy’s gas can over the pile, lit her a cigarette, and tossed the match in. The flame caught in a roar and jumped to Sibby’s leg, and she ran a few steps and dropped to her knees, rubbed mud up and down her shin.
I got the hose going and dampened down the fire pile. Sibby’s shin was black and angry red as she limped past me into the house. I’m going to dip into an ice bath, she said, and the cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth fell out. Don’t forget about the pancakes.
With a stick I rummaged through the pile. Near Sibby’s charred shoe I found Mother’s lipstick case, still silver and gleaming. It singed my fingers when I picked it up and I saw that my opal ring had partly melted into it, the opal hanging off the case like a gouged eye. I dropped it all back into the pile, went inside to start Sibby’s pancakes.
Daddy came home and ate his pancakes and drank his Jubilee scotch in front of Jeopardy. He called out the answers. What is The Bible. Who is Jezebel. What is The Bible, you bunch of stupes. What is the holy spirit! I worried that he’d notice Mother’s purse was gone, but he hadn’t said a word. The Double Jeopardy question was about black holes and Daddy screamed out What is the resurrection!
At bedtime Sibby wore her long pajama pants to bed so Daddy wouldn’t see her shin. Daddy watched us say our prayers. Pray for your Daddy, girls, he whispered. Don’t forget to pray for your Daddy. He leaned in for his kiss and his breath was sour with Jubilee.
Daddy was nearly out the door when Sibby said, I prayed for Mother to come home. My stomach filled with the urchin.
In the doorway Daddy was backlit by the hall light and we couldn’t see his face. He was just a manshaped darkness. What mother, he asked. You sure you ever even had a mother? He giggled in the doorway a while. Then he said Don’t you think if there was anything you were meant to know I’d tell you? He chuckled some more, then snapped off the hall light and went back to the TV.
That night I had a dream Mother’s purse was burning, there in the dip in the counter, its orange flames waving around like lit snakes. Daddy dipped his pink spoon in and filled an Ingles bag with fire, and when it was full he set it on my head like a helmet. In the dream the fire scrabbled across my face with its million legs. Take your time, Daddy called through the flames. Take all the time you need. I can wait you out.
After I woke up I went back outside for the lipstick, but there was no moon to help me find it and I began thinking Daddy was right, how could I be sure there ever was a mother, or a fancy lipstick to pretty herself up with, and I gave up looking. In the morning we’d eat pancakes again and before I got back in bed I took the butter out so it’d be soft enough for the sugar.
Lindsay Hunter is the co-founder and co-host of the Chicago reading series, Quickies. She has two dogs. They bark a lot. She has great hair and a fondness for Kit-Kats. Her fiction has appeared in Nerve and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
For more on Quickies!, visit quickieschicago.blogspot.com.
