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She also says she was the love of his life, even though the last memory I have of them together is Dad standing in the kitchen with blood beneath his nose while Mom screamed that she’d tell everyone he hit her if he tried to take me.
I was eight.
He died five months later.
My eyes drift toward the closet; the rabbit isn’t the only thing hidden there. Beneath a stack of winter blankets is a plastic tote containing three photographs, Dad’s Purple Heart, and the folded American flag someone gave Mom after the funeral. The flag is still in its wooden display case, although one corner is cracked from when she threw it in the trash.
I rescued it.
I rescue a lot of things.
Blouses, buttons, magazine scraps, and a dead man’s belongings.
I glance at the time displayed on my phone. 5:21 a.m.
Mom should be home in another hour, assuming she actually went to work last night.
Her newest boyfriend, Wade, left sometime after midnight, slamming the front door hard enough to rattle the whole dang house.
They had been arguing again. Money this time, although money is always part of it. Wade accused her of taking something from his jacket, and Mom accused him of spending too much time with a woman named Tasha.
Something shattered in the kitchen, and I lay in bed with my pillow over my head, waiting for one of them to come looking for a softer target.
Lucky for me, neither did, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen next time.
Wade has been living here for almost six months, which makes him one of Mom’s more enduring relationships. He’s younger than she is, maybe around thirty-five, though it’s hard to tell because his skin has the gray, stretched look of someone who sleeps poorly and eats mostly from gas stations. He keeps his hair shaved close to his scalp and has a blotchy tattoo creeping up the side of his neck.
He doesn’t hit Mom as often as some of the others did, which is nice, I guess.
He mostly grabs—wrists, arms, her hair, the back of her neck. Sometimes me, when he thinks I’m ignoring him.
Mom says I’m lucky he tolerates having me around.
Because apparently a scrawny nineteen-year-old taking up one small bedroom in a house his father paid for is an enormous burden on a man who has never once contributed to keeping the lights on.
The needle slips easily through the collar, and I finish another line of stitching before knotting the thread. I’m inspecting the seam when headlights sweep across my curtain.
My body responds before my mind does, and the blouse is folded and beneath my pillow in seconds. The mint tin goes back into its hiding place. I gather the sketches with shaking hands, stacking them unevenly and shoving them into the space between my mattress and box spring, just in time to hear the front door creak open.
Cold morning air moves through the house, carrying the smell of rain and motor oil beneath the crack in my bedroom door.
A second set of footsteps follows him inside—Mom’s. How do I know? Because neither of them has ever realized how loud their “whispers” are.
“What was I supposed to do?” Mom hisses, her voice brittle.
“Keep your fucking mouth shut for once,” Wade answers, his voice gruff.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You always gotta say something, Sherry,” he spits back at her before slamming the front door shut.
I stay kneeling beside my bed, one hand pressed flat over the hidden sketches, as cabinet doors open in the kitchen and glass clinks against the counter.
Mom mutters something I can’t make out, and Wade tells her to shut up.
I rise quietly, switch off the desk lamp, and let the gray light from outside take its place. The room immediately loses its warmth.
The mirror on my wall catches me before I can avoid it. I’m wearing an oversized shirt I stole from Dad’s box years ago, so faded that the military logo on the chest is nearly invisible. It hangs past the tops of my thighs, leaving my freshly shaved legs bare.
