My Personal Beast

1584 Words4 Pages

I was 13. It was spring, the barren time in March when you cannot be sure if it is really warmer, but you are so desperate for change that you tell yourself the mud at the edge of the sidewalk is different than winter mud and you are sure that the smell of wet soil has suddenly a bit of the scent of summer rains, of grass and drowned earthworms. And it has, because it is spring and inside the ground something is stirring. I was wearing a yellow linen dress which my mother had picked out and which I therefore disliked although I knew it flattered me. My shoes were white and I was concentrating on keeping them out of the mud. My father and I were going to mass--my mother did not go; she was Protestant. My father put his hand on top of my hair, his palm on my head, and I could feel the bone of my skull and my skin and his hot palm, so dry and strong. When I was a little girl, he did that often, and called me 'Muscles.' He had not called me Muscles or put his hand on my head for a long time. I could not help arching my back a little, I wanted to push against his hand like a cat but the instinct that comes with being 13, the half-understood caution that makes a girl timid, or wild, the shyness told me to just walk. I wanted to feel the rough edge of the pocket of his coat against my cheek, but I was too tall. I wanted to be seven again, and safe. But I still wanted to push against his hand and put my hand in his pocket and steal the leather palmed glove, that secret animal.

Instead I went into the church, took a Bulletin, dipped my finger in Holy Water and genuflected. The inside of the church smelled like damp wood and furniture polish, not alive at all. My father took off his coat and draped it over the edge of the...

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...estick thrown under the bleachers. Outside it was wet and smelled of spring. My father let go of me and adjusted his coat on his shoulders and I felt embarrassed.

I stepped outside, careful of my white patten shoes; the cars were all gone from the parking lot and the sign in front of the school said, "Easter Vacation; April 4 - 11, Drive Carefully." A wet sparrow sat in the bushes.

I looked back at my father, still in the darkness of the doorway. His face was strange, empty. His eyes were golden and where the pupils would be they reflected red, like a cat in the dark, but when he came outside he looked like himself.

I wanted to be home eating peach jam on toast, so I forgot. At home my mother was waiting. When she asked my father what had happened to his glove he didn't know.

And I did not say.

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