Page 63 of Frankly, My Dear

“Now, Etienne, you can either get in the tub yourself and scrub your own body or I’ll do it for you. Which will it be?”

He narrowed his blue eyes, miniature versions of his father’s, and answered too quickly, “I’ll take a bath myself. You can go away now.”

“Nice try, kiddo. No way! I stay right here until you’re spit clean and dressed in clean clothes.”

He gave her his version of the evil eye, but when she didn’t cower, his shoulders slumped with resignation. “Oh, all right. I’ll do it, but no soap in the mouth,” he bargained.

Selene agreed, but before she allowed him to get up off the floor and climb into the tub, she had to make sure he wouldn’t be retaliating afterward. It was time for her insurance policy, her good luck charms.

“Etienne, we have to come to an understanding. There will be no snakes or spiders or ghosts or voodoo curses or anything else done to me. Do you hear?”

He gazed up at her slyly, saying nothing but clearly already plotting his revenge.

“I know you’re not going to do anything nasty to me, Etienne. And the reason is that I know more tricks than you do.” With that, she dropped her hold on his hands, still sitting on his body, and popped her contact lenses out of her eyes, holding them out for him to see in her palms.

His devious little eyes grew wide with amazement. “You popped yer eyeballs out! And you changed their color!” he exclaimed.

Then Selene proceeded to pull off, one by one, each of the long fake fingernails she had glued on a short time ago.

“Are you a voodoo priestess, like my mama was?”

“No. No voodoo. I just have a few…powers that I have to use sometimes when little boys misbehave.”

Etienne studied her eyes and then the long fingernails in her palms. He shuddered, as if considering the implications. “You musta put a curse on Papa. No wonder he was tryin’ to put his pizzle in such an ugly wench as you.”

Selene made a low snarling sound in her throat, but managed not to throttle the troll. “Well, I could put a curse on you, too, if you should somehow try to get back at me for making you take a bath. How do you think you would like to have your eyeballs pop out? Or your fingernails?”

His bottom lip quivered, but still he went on bravely, fighting tears. “I could tell my papa. He hates voodoo. Oui, he does.”

“Oh, I think this will be our little secret,” she said with a smooth voice, its underlying threat loud and clear. She put the contact lenses in a plastic case in her pocket, then examined her fingernails in a bored fashion, still pinning the child to the floor. “I’m rather good at popping toenails, too,” she bragged unabashedly. “Once I even made a man’s…pizzle fall off.”

Selene almost choked on that last outrageous claim. She should feel ashamed of lying to the child, scaring him so, but she didn’t. Extreme measures were called for if she was going to get the spoiled brat to toe the line.

Finally Etienne agreed to her terms, also promising not to tell anyone of her “magic.” Selene stood, releasing the scamp. His cute little buns were the last thing she saw as he sunk all the way under the water, then came up with a curse. “The water is bloody damn cold.”

Then he looked her in the eye in a calculating fashion and deliberately farted in the water.

I’m going to kill him.

Blinking with wide-eyed innocence, he said with awesome politeness, “Pardonnez-moi.”

Selene had won a minor skirmish with the imp. But, obviously, the battle was far from over.

She sat down on a stool and propped her elbows on her knees, chin in hands. “Etienne, your name is an awfully big mouthful for such a little boy,” she remarked idly as she watched him bathe. “Don’t you have a nickname?”

“Non,” he replied, soaping his body with gusto, ducking under the water repeatedly, sloshing water carelessly over the side of the tub. Now that he was in the tub, he was having a grand time with the bath. Too bad she didn’t have a Rubber Duckie to give him, she thought with a chuckle. “Besides, there is no nickname for Etienne. Everyone knows that. What did you expect, Et?” he sneered.

Selene smiled at his quick wit. “No, but maybe E.T. Yeah, that would be great. Just like the alien, E.T.”

“What’s an alien?”

“A being from another planet.” Selene bit her tongue, knowing James would not like her speaking of her world, let alone another world. She proceeded carefully. “Where I come from, there’s this wonderful…story about a creature who comes to earth.” She relayed to Etienne in capsule form the story line from the famous movie, pleased at the fascination that gripped the small child. When she finished, he asked if she would tell the story again.

“Later. Right now, I want you to get out of the tub so that I can cut your hair.”

“Non!” he protested. Then his eyes fixed on hers, probably fearing she would pop some more eyeballs, or maybe a nose or tongue this time. Grumbling, he climbed out of the tub and began to dry his body with the towels. “So that’ll be my nickname then. E.T.”

“Okay.”