The bastard never listens, Debra’s mother says. The receiver is cradled between her ear and shoulder while she pulls the cord taught with two hands. Debra lifts the crayon off the page to make that sticky click. She puts it in her mouth and bites the tip off.
Debra chews slowly, feeling the wax coat her molars. She reads the peeling label on the crayon even though she has them all memorized, then bares her blue/azul/bleu teeth at her mother. He’s shit, her mother spits into the phone.
That night, Debra’s mother stands next to Debra’s bedroom window and stares into the overgrown yard. Goddamnit, she says, closes the window and shuts the door behind her. Debra slips out from under the covers, pads to the window, pushes it open, and breathes in the honeysuckle air. Debra likes the grass long. She sits on the sill, pulling her knees up under her nightgown. A fingernail moon sits on the neighbor’s roof.
The sounds of the television downstairs make her eyelids heavy. After ten minutes or an hour, Debra hears a rustling and a swoosh and opens her eyes to see two eyeballs peering at her through the darkness. Orange/naranja/orange but lit from within. They hover at window height. Dark streaks radiate from the pupils like fireworks.
*
He’ll regret it, Debra’s mother says through curled lips. As if the words are poison and she is darting them into an unseen enemy. Debra pushes her mashed potatoes with her fork. White/blanco/blanc. She puts her fork down and makes five swoopy lines in the air with her finger. Look Mama, she says, I drew a bird.
Debra’s mother takes a swig of wine. Red/rojo/rouge. Not this time, she says. But not to Debra. If her mother wanted to talk to her, about anything but especially how they were alone here now, why they were alone here now, Debra would listen. In English, Spanish or French.
The nights get colder, and the honeysuckle air turns to smoke from backyard bonfires. Debra waits on the sill, clutching her upper arms.
*
It’s not like he gave us anything, Debra’s mother stares into the street with her hands in her back pockets, holding the screen door open with her foot. Debra remembers her father giving her a tiny gorilla from the zoo. Black/negro/noir. It is sitting on her dresser next to the metal Matchbox car. A wild thing for a wild thing, he said when he pulled it out of his pocket and gave it to her by the flamingo enclosure. She remembers whisker-scratchy kisses before bed and him pretend punching her on the shoulder. She remembers her father touching the back of her mother’s head softly with his hand. Before her mother stopped allowing that. Before he packed the sofa into his truck and unpacked it across town in an apartment with a green door where Debra got to go once-a long time ago now.
Look Mama, Debra says, even though she knows better. I drew a plane.
Her mother turns and stomps up the stairs. The screen door bangs shut.
The kind that can take you anywhere.
*
That night, the bird comes later than usual. Debra is almost asleep. Her toes are frozen from waiting on the windowsill. She knows it is cold across town, too, in the place with the green door. The bird gives her a long orange/naranja/orange look. It tilts its head to the side as if to say this time?
Debra knows that’s what being married is - touching the back of someone’s head softly and them letting you. She knows that when that stops, there is nothing keeping anyone together anymore and everyone flies away.
Debra pulls her nightgown up past her knees and grabs a handful of soft brown/cafe/brun. She hoists herself up, leans her chest against the cool soft feathers and tucks her bare feet into the fluffy underbelly. The bird darts its head back and she gives it a tap before it flaps its great wings and leaps from the windowsill.
Author: Lisa Thornton is a writer and nurse. She has work in SmokeLong Quarterly, Tiny Molecules, and Bending Genres among other literary magazines. She was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize in 2023. She has been nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She lives just south of Chicago with her husband and son.