Beneath the Skin

by Kyla Stone

  The boys clatter out the screen door and down the porch steps. They grab their scooters and take off down the driveway. Frankie doesn’t even look my way. Aaron pauses next to my window. I roll it down. “I did a painting in art class, with pink glitter and everything. Wanna see?” His breath hits the glass in white puffs.

  “Later. Go back inside and put a coat on. It’s freezing.”

  “But Frankie’s not wearing a coat!”

  “Just do it. Go on.” I roll the window back up and get out of the car.

  “But I don’t know where it is!”

  “Didn’t you wear it to school today?”

  Aaron just stares at me with his huge brown eyes. “No.”

  “Why the hell not? Doesn’t Ma know it’s 25 degrees in the mornings? You need your coat and your gloves. Every day. You’ll catch pneumonia.”

  His gaze slides down to the ground. He kicks at the gravel.

  “What? Spit it out.”

  “Ma had a headache. You got us ready today.”

  I close my eyes. A shiver runs down my spine. Now, suddenly, I remember Frank banging on my bedroom door. “Get the boys to school. I’ve got a wood-clearing gig in Niles with Tommy J.” And me, jerked out of a fitful sleep, hastily cramming together peanut butter and pineapple sandwiches, tugging a comb through Aaron’s hair, yelling at Frankie to brush his teeth, rushing them both out the door so they wouldn’t be late, the frigid blast of cold, gray air. And Aaron, tugging on my sleeve, saying he was cold. I was so exhausted, I told him to shut up and stop whining.

  I bite the inside of my cheeks, hard. It was me. I sent him to school without a coat. It wasn’t Ma who failed him yet again. It was me. Self-loathing overwhelms me. I can’t do this. I’m barely holding my own shit together on a minute to minute basis, but they still need me. They still need me and I have nothing left to give. Terror and shame fuse in my chest. What am I going to do?

  I must have a horrified look on my face because Aaron throws himself at me, wrapping his little arms around my waist. “It’s okay, Sidney. I wasn’t even cold.”

  Because he’s sweet, soft Aaron, he’s already forgiven me. My heart crawls into my throat, and I can’t speak. I press him against me, the warmth of his body seeping into mine. I want to say something, to tell him how much he means to me, to tell him something so wonderful his whole face will light up. But I can’t.

  “You’re squeezing all my breath out,” he says in a muffled voice.

  I let him go. “Your coat is hanging on the backside of your door. Go get it.”

  I step over the backpacks and lunch boxes strewn on the porch steps and open the door. Aaron runs inside and comes back with his puffy white coat that makes him look like a midget version of the Michelin Man. “I’m hungry!”

  “Are you asking for something?”

  “Can you make a peanut butter string cheese burrito? Pretty super-duper please?”

  I’m so hungry, even that sounds good. I want to eat everything, anything. I let my backpack slide to the kitchen floor and open the fridge. “Okay, but then I’ve got to go. Where’s Ma? Still sleeping it off?”

  “I dunno. Nobody was here when we got home.”

  I spread a tortilla shell with a generous amount of peanut butter and wrap it around a string cheese. I pop it in the microwave for 45 seconds, fold a paper towel around it so it’s not too hot to hold, and hand it to Aaron. I glance at the calendar tacked to the wall with a thumbtack. Today’s date is circled in red with “The Big Day” scrawled in Ma’s scratchy handwriting.

  My stomach clenches. She’s at the second ultrasound, the one Frank paid extra for to get a better look at the baby’s gender. He wants another boy. “Girls are only good for sex and cleaning,” he said to me. “Too bad they can’t do both at the same time.” He laughed hard at that joke.

  Just then, a truck roars into the driveway. A door slams. Damn it all to hell. I wanted to be gone already. I can’t be here. I wipe my forehead with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Don’t panic. Think. I need to get out as fast as I can.

  Frank stomps into the kitchen, a flask dangling from his right hand, a cigarette in the other. “It’s cold as hell out there.”

  I finish wrapping my burrito around the cheese stick with fingers I can barely feel. I’m sluggish, numb.

  “I just got the text from your mom. She’s on her way home from the doc’s office. We’re all gonna get fancied up tonight. We’re celebrating.”

  I keep my eyes on the table. “Celebrating what? Is it a boy?”

  He steps closer, drops the flask on the table. He grabs my chin with his hand, forcing my head toward him. His gaze stabs into mine. I can smell the sickly stench of his breath, feel it tremble against my cheek.

  “Go outside and play, Aaron,” I say through clenched teeth.

  “But I wanna celebrate too! I want cake!”

  “Get out!”

  I can’t see Aaron because Frank’s got an iron grip on my jaw, but I hear him scamper out, hear the bang of the screen door.

  Frank blows a stream of smoke into my face. He stubs out the cigarette on my plate, flecks of ash landing on my burrito. He leans close, whispers into my hair, “It’s a girl. I’m looking forward to it. If you won’t put out, you know she will.”

  The image his words hurl into my head cracks my mind. My rage is an explosion. Fury blasts through me in white-hot pulses. No. No. No. I can’t breathe, can’t distinguish shapes or sounds. A curtain of red falls over my eyes. All I can see is blood. “Get away from me!”

  “Just what do you think you’re going to do about it?”

  I gasp, heaving, but no oxygen can get to my lungs. My chest closes up like a vise. Everything is going black, then red, then black. I grab the bread knife covered in peanut butter and slash at his arm.

  He releases my jaw with a curse. There’s a long red scrape on the back of his hand. He comes at me fast. Grabs my wrist and backs me up until the ridge of the table bangs into the back of my thighs. He flips me and bends me over the table. My cheek smashes into the wood. The peanut butter jar sits inches from my nose.

  “Just who do you think is in charge here? You nasty little whore. Maybe your Ma is right. Maybe you need some sense knocked into you. I’ve been too easy on you kids. Look what good it did me.”

  I try to wriggle away, to kick out with my legs. He grinds his forearm into my spine, pinning me down. I hear the click and slide of his belt buckle. Then his hand, hot and urgent, scrabbling at my jean buttons. “Hold still! It’s the only way you bitches ever learn.”

  Fury mixed with fear blazes through me. No. He’s not going to do this. I won’t let him. He unsnaps the first button. He grunts from the exertion of trying to yank down my zipper while keeping me pinned. I squirm and wriggle and jerk to the left. He loses his grip and I roll off the table and fall hard to the floor.

  I’m up and running for the door. Frank’s right behind me. I knock a chair over. Frank stumbles over it, but regains his footing. I grab the ceramic rooster with both hands, turn, and hurl it at him. He throws up a hand to shield his face. The rooster crashes into him and shatters into a thousand pieces. Several small shards stick out of the skin of his hand.

  His face goes savage.

  Run! My brain shrieks, but my feet are rooted to the linoleum. I’m backed up against the counter. The only way to escape is outside, where the boys are. I can’t let them see this. My veins are threaded with frost, my legs made of lead. Terror zips up and down my spine.

  He snatches at my hair, but it’s too short. I duck away. But he comes at me again and grabs the neck of my sweatshirt. He jerks me stumbling and teetering through the kitchen, around the table, into the living room. My knee cracks against the coffee table. He doesn’t slow down.

  “Stop it! Stop! Let go!” I claw at his hand, his arm.

  He drags me half-falling past the couch, down the hallway lined with family pictures. My flailing arms strike the framed embroidered purple vase with the flowers Ma m
ade my eighth-grade summer. It crashes to the floor. I slip on a shard of glass. He yanks me back up and wrestles me through his bedroom door. He throws me on the bed.

  I roll, but he’s on top of me. He slaps my face. Red and white stars explode across my vision. My eyes leak pain.

  “Stop acting like you don’t want it, like you aren’t asking for it every miserable day of your life.”

  “Stop it!” I scream at him. I slap his hands away from my chest. “Get off me!”

  He punches me in my stomach. My breath sucks itself right out of my lungs. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. My vision blurs around the edges.

  He pushes up my shirt. He’s panting from exertion. “You know what the problem with you is? I waited too long.”

  He reaches for his crotch and when he does, I buck and knee him as hard as I can. I hurl myself to the right, and this time his body softens and gives way. I tumble off the side of the bed. Frank’s side.

  Awareness jolts through me. I know what to do now. I stick my hand beneath the mattress of the bed. My fingers close over the cool metal of the Glock. I stand up, holding the gun with trembling hands.

  Frank scrambles off the bed and stands on the other side of the mattress. We stare at each other. “Just what do you think you’re gonna do with that?”

  “I’m going to kill you.” I blink the stars and sweat out of my eyes.

  He laughs a slow, silky laugh. “Give it here.”

  “Not a chance.”

  He makes a move to come around the bed. I point the gun right at his chest.

  “Too bad it’s not even loaded.” His voice is full of razor blades. “Might as well have a water gun for how much good it’ll do you.”

  I plant my feet. Focus. Keep the gun trained on his chest. Keep the barrel from shaking. “You messed up, Frank. The rest of your guns you keep in the gun cabinet in the closet. But this one’s your baby. This one’s clean and oiled and fully loaded. You thought it’d keep you safe when all the evil you’ve unleashed in the world finds its way back to you. Newsflash. It won’t.”

  He licks his lips. Emotions flit in dark shadows across his face. He wants to dismiss me, but some little warning in the back of his brain niggles that he shouldn’t. The survival instinct. The tables have been turned.

  He shakes his head and grunts in disgust, the moment lost. He wipes his bleeding hand on his shirt. He turns and walks toward the bedroom door. “Put that away when you’re done playing with it.”

  I could leave now. I’ve got the gun. He’ll let me walk right out of the house. But he won’t forget this. He’ll have to reassert his control, his dominance. It’s not over.

  Something dark slithers through me. It won’t ever be over. And when I’m gone? It’ll keep going. He’ll keep going. Even if I manage to escape, even if I fly a thousand miles across the country and never return, he won’t stop. He’ll just hurt them instead of me.

  He’ll hurt her. My sister. The memory of his words, of the images he conjured up scald my mind. The black cloud of my future falls away and all of a sudden I can see clearly. This is why college always seemed nebulous, hazy. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew I could never leave with Frank still here.

  I’ll never let him hurt my sister like he hurt me. I’ll never let him use the boys as punching bags. I can’t leave without taking care of my family. It’s my responsibility to protect them. It always has been.

  “Stop.”

  He turns around. He sees my face, the coldness in my eyes. His eyes. He recognizes himself in me, he knows what I’m capable of. What I’m about to do. Slowly, he raises both his arms. “Sidney, baby girl. Let’s talk about this. You want to shoot? I’ll take you to the range. Maybe I’ve been too harsh. Your Ma always says it. Lighten up on them, Frank. You’re pushing them too hard, Frank. Maybe she’s right. Why don’t you—”

  I don’t hesitate. I have no desire for answers, for apologies, for begging. That’s my mother, the blubbering why, why, why’s. I don’t care. I aim the sights just a bit low and a hair to the left. I pull the trigger and my arms hammer back into my chest. Even though I’m ready for the strength of the recoil, it’s the noise of the shot, like a jackhammer inches from my ear, that shocks me.

  There is no slow motion. Frank falls back against the wall, a startled look on his face, his mouth a red O. His right arm flails for something, anything, knocking against the lamp, his body slip-sliding down the wall.

  My head rings. My ears are stuffed with cotton. Reality is jerky, like a hand-held movie. I take a breath. Focus.

  I can’t see him over the bed so I walk around it, keep the gun up, ready.

  But my aim is true. He looks like some sort of gangly, disturbing doll, arms and legs kicked out in awkward directions. A spot of red blooms over his chest, a ring of scarlet water, no bigger than a silver dollar. His eyes are open, still so blue, the color so rich and deep he cannot be dead. Dead people don’t have eyes like this.

  He’s watching me, sucking out my soul with those eyes, eyes slowly losing their life, their vibrancy, until they’re like marbles, shiny and smooth. Empty.

  22

  I slump to my knees, the gun resting in my lap. It seems like hours but must only be minutes. Or seconds. I blink, and it’s like I’m waking up from a deep, dreamless sleep.

  “Sidney?” My mother’s voice, filtering through the fog.

  Suddenly Ma’s pushing past me. Her scream smashes into me like a train. She falls onto the body, weeping. The noise thunders in my ears. I stare at the wall, where there’s a dime-sized hole in the drywall about chest high. The bullet went clean through.

  Everything is numb. My legs are sloshy as water, and they won’t hold me up. Fear takes hold again, thrumming through me. I can’t move. Can’t think. What does this mean? What have I done? “Mom.”

  Ma looks back at me, her cheek slicked with blood like someone swiped it with a paintbrush. Her eyes are wet and red, her mouth slack. “What did you do?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her face contorts. She stands up, one hand pressed to the hump of her belly. Her dress is smudged with blood. “Give me the gun.”

  I’m so shocked, I do what she says. Ma wipes it thoroughly with a clean section of her dress. “Check your clothes. If there’s any blood, dump them somewhere. You need to be somewhere else. Anywhere else but here. You were never here.”

  “Ma—”

  Emotions flicker across her face. Her eyes are clearer than they’ve been in years. “There’s no time. Go.”

  I pull myself to my feet. My brain is so frayed, I can’t make sense of what’s happening. “I need to—”

  “Go!”

  Like a robot, unfeeling, unthinking, I go. I pick up my backpack off the kitchen floor and wipe off slivers of ceramic rooster. I crunch across the floor.

  When I get to the front door, Aaron is walking up the porch steps. Dark-bellied stratus clouds drape everything in sheets of gray. Far down the road, I can see the small red dot of Frankie riding his scooter.

  The gun shot startles us both. Aaron’s mouth falls open. He sees something in my face that must frighten him because he starts to cry.

  “Don’t go inside,” I say in a voice scraped raw. I grab the collar of his jacket. “You never went inside today, you hear me? It’ll be easier for you.”

  “What’ll be easier?” He gulps. “Sidney! What’s wrong? Where’s Ma? Where’s Daddy?” I just brush past him. I get in the car and pull out of the driveway. Aaron runs after me with confused tears streaking down his face. But I don’t have to worry about leaving him anymore. The monster in the house is dead.

  23

  My hands tremble so badly on the steering wheel, I can barely keep the car on the road. My breath steams in jagged gasps in the cold air. The radio is playing but I can’t hear anything but white noise. Everything swells in and out of focus. Darkness hovers at the edges of my vision.

  I’m driving. I don’t know where. I need something. Anything. I can
’t be alone. I don’t want to be alone. Things are disintegrating around the edges. What now? What now? I can’t think straight. I can’t think at all. The gunshot echoes over and over, pulsing through my brain.

  I blink my eyes. I’ve just driven over the meridian. I jerk the wheel, overcorrect back into my lane. My heart is slamming against my throat, my chest, my skull. Somehow, I turn onto Thornberry Road, turn left at a nice tree-lined street with rows of stately brick colonials.

  And there’s her house. I don’t even remember how I got here. Arianna’s navy Nissan Altima is the only car parked in the driveway. I stagger up her sidewalk, punch at the doorbell with shaking fingers.

  Arianna opens the door. She’s wearing a hot pink apron over a fuzzy cream sweater and dark leggings. Her black waves are piled in a bun on top of her head and she’s swinging a spatula. Her eyes widen.

  “Can I come in,” I say, already pushing my way past her.

  “Um. Hi?”

  My legs give out then and I crumple to the floor. I lie on my back on the cool tile and watch the arched ceiling sway and fade above me, each breath ripped right out of my chest.

  “Are you okay? What’s going on?” Arianna stares down at me in alarm.

  “I—I think I killed him.”

  “What? You killed something? I can’t understand you.”

  “Someone. Frank. I killed Frank. I killed my father.”

  Arianna’s face goes pale beneath her makeup. “Is this a joke?”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?” I nearly scream.

  She kneels down next to me, cradling the spatula. “Why—what happened—whatever did—how?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I shot him.”

  “Like—with a gun?”

  “No, with a camera.” A jagged sob burns through my chest, punches through my lips.

  Arianna stares at me blankly.

  “Yes! Yes. With a gun. With a bullet. I pointed and squeezed the trigger and he . . .”