I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
She bares her teeth, clicks them in her mother’s direction as she diligently cleans her chin.
She loves her mother fiercely, but she is protective of the blood.
As if she knows it’s worth something.
As if she doesn’t want anyone else to ever know how it tastes.
She will get used to it, her mother says, but she likes the way the blood drips from her chin. She likes the way it pools in her mouth and slides down the column of her throat. But her mother’s attention is stolen away by him again and she glowers, pouts, a petulant child. She wants her mother to kiss her and touch her and encourage her to eat and to sleep. But he keeps speaking to her, arresting her focus.
She hates him for the way he makes her mother blush. She hates him for having any effect on her mother at all. She had so fiercely hoped that she’d chase him off by sinking her teeth into his shoulder but he remains, steadfast. A pillar in a storm and she hates him for it.
Gospel murmurs her truth into her mother’s skin and is immediately reprimanded for it. She hates that her mother takes his side. She squeals and hisses and shakes her head. Her mother kisses her but it does not feel so sweet. It conjures up a darkness in her chest.
And Beth, he merely watches. As her father, he should perhaps help her in her punishment. They should present a united front, he thinks, but he does not know what the child has said and he knows that it’s not really his place anyway. He is her father in title alone. He does not know the first thing about active parenting. He tries not to think of Adna’s other children, the ones that came before this one.
“I don’t like him,” the child mumbles into her mother’s side, anticipating the sharp sting of her mother’s rebuttal. But she has inherited her father’s penchant for honesty. She cannot choke it down. And were Bethlehem privy to it, he might have been proud of her inability to swallow her truth.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
