Finger Paints, Finger Prints

You find Ma in the kitchen using one of the donttouch knives to slice a bunch of carrots into little strips.

“Ma, why does it smell so bad?” you ask, wrinkling your nose the way you do when Ma drives past the dump and the smell crawls through the glass of the windows into the car.

She didn’t hear you come in, because she jumps a little, and the donttouch knife touches her finger. For a second, the skin on her finger is colorless, but then a big wave of red like finger paint comes out of her and she hisses, and puts the finger in her mouth.

She washes it in the sink and then wraps a piece of paper towel around it and smiles at you. “I don’t know, baby. It’ll probably go away soon.”

There’s blood on her teeth.

“What’s for dinner, Ma?”

“Soup,” she tells you. “With potatoes. And you can drink grape juice out of the rainbow cup if you like.”

You squeal with delight. The rainbow cup is only for goodboy days, and you don’t know why today is a goodboy day, but you love the rainbow cup.

“Is Pa coming home soon?” you ask. Pa loves goodboy days because he always lifts you up and puts you on his shoulders on goodboy days and he tickles you until you can’t breathe.

Ma peels the paper towel away from her finger and it looks like something you would paint at daycare. “Pa won’t be home for a few more days, baby, remember? He had to go away for work.”

Oh. You forgot. Ma told you about that yesterday.

She smiles at you and squeezes more drops of blood from the finger. “It’s alright, baby, we don’t need Pa all the time. We have to share him. Like your toys.”

You nod. You’re good at sharing your toys. You think you can also share your Pa.

“Go get ready for dinner, baby,” Ma tells you, and when you leave the kitchen the smell comes back and you have to wrinkle your nose again.

Dinner is strange without Pa. You don’t like the soup Ma made, but you try to eat it anyway because you don’t want her to take away the rainbow cup.

Ma keeps looking at you funny, like you’re going to do something Very Bad.

You don’t like how the table feels with Pa’s chair empty, and you keep looking over there hoping he’ll be back. Like magic.

“How many days will Pa be gone?”

“Go to your room.” Ma’s voice sounds like it does when you do something Very Bad.

“Why, Ma?”

She pushes her chair away from the table, and where the wood rubs against the tile it pulls a scream from the air, and then Ma is standing. You can’t breathe. Like when Pa tickles you on a goodboy day but different. Worse. There’s dark all over Ma’s face.

You wake and there is nothing but black in the world, black and quiet.

Why are you awake? You were having such a nice dream. Something about sunlight and grass and race cars. Through your wall you hear Ma’s voice. She sounds Angry. You know better than to go by Ma when she’s Angry, so you close your eyes and try to go back to the sunlight and the race cars.

But then you hear Pa’s voice, and Pa sounds like you used to sound when you were a Baby and someone forgot to check under your bed for monsters.

Maybe Pa needs you to save him from the monsters, so you get out of bed and tiptoe in your socks to the door of Ma and Pa’s stayout room.

You can see inside, a little bit, and you see dark all over Ma’s face and you feel scared, like how Pa sounded, so you run back to bed before anyone can see you.

The rainbow cup shatters against the wall, and grape juice stains the carpet. Ma moved so fast you couldn’t see her arm.

“Because I said! You’re just like your father! Go to your room!”

A little bubble of spit escapes the corner of Ma’s mouth.

Her fingers close around your arm, too tight for you to shake off, and then she’s walking you there herself.

The smell is worse upstairs; you gag a little bit from it, and Ma’s fingers close tighter and she puts you in your room and tells you to go to bed.

The smell won’t let you sleep. You lay on top of your covers and watch headlights from passing cars move across your ceiling. They’re always yellow, or white, yellow or white, yellow or white . . . red and blue?

You don’t hear the sirens at first. Your nose is so busy trying not to smell the smell that your ears aren’t working, but when you do hear them they’re just like on TV. Maybe even louder.

Ma opens the front door, and the sirens get louder. But then they stop and in all the silence after, you can hear Ma’s voice. “He’s away for work. I don’t know what else to tell you, he’s away for work. That smell? I can’t figure out what it is, really I can’t.”

You hear footsteps come upstairs and go into Ma and Pa’s stayout room. You hear the sound of a radio squawk-squawking like they do on TV, and then Ma’s voice again.

“It was an accident, I swear.”

A few minutes later the door to your room opens and a lady in a police uniform walks in. She takes your hand with a smile and walks you down to sit in the back of a real police car, with the lights on and everything.

“Did you ever hear your mom and dad fighting?” the lady asks while the car drives away.

You don’t answer. You barely hear her.

In the blue light, the finger-shaped bruises on your arm look dark purple.