Free Sound Of Gravel, The by Ruth Wariner Page B

buy my family a showerhead.” She threw her arms out and then brought her fingertips back to her chest. When she spoke again, her voice was louder. “How can you even try to excuse using my money to buy something for her ?!”
    Now Lane’s voice matched Mom’s. “What makes you think the money was yours? What comes into this family is for everyone to use. I’m the one who decides what to do with our money.”
    They stared at each other, both bodies cantilevered across the table. Suddenly I smelled burnt milk and turned to find it boiling over into the blue flames.
    Mom twisted around in her chair. I turned the stove off and lifted the pan from the burner, but even as I did, I heard the legs of a chair scrape against the floor. Mom tore the long, black handle out of my grasp with one hand and squeezed hard on the thick part of my upper arm with the other. “You stupid kid!” she said through clenched teeth. “Can’t I count on you to do anything right?” I felt a pinch on the inside of my arm where her fingertips pressed together. “Get away. I’ll take care of the bottle.”
    Matt looked at me, his brows raised in sympathy. My eyelids stung with the beginnings of tears and my throat hardened. Mom hardly ever yelled at me. I was shocked.
    She knelt down to the spigot that rose up from the floor, turned over the pot of burnt goat’s milk into the drain underneath it, scrubbed it clean, rinsed it, and refilled it.
    Aaron walked into the kitchen. He stopped, looked at Mom, then took a seat at the table as if he thought it was dinnertime.
    “Why are you making such a big deal about this?” Lane said to her. “We’ll get you a showerhead after I get paid for my last load. You’re gonna get more welfare money. Stop complaining about it!”
    Mom made a sound from somewhere deep inside her, as if she’d been angry a long time.
    “Complain about it?!” Blotches of red began to appear on her neck and upper chest. “That’s not the point. That was my money . Money that I saved.” Mom took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “Did you even stop to consider how I might feel about this?” she asked quietly.
    Lane cocked his head and stood up. “It’s not your money, and you don’t have any reason to feel bad about this. You’re overreacting.” His palms rested on the table, but now he glared at Mom. “Like I already told you, the money that comes into this family is for everyone in this family .” He pressed his grease-stained index finger into the table so hard the entire tabletop shook. “ I decide what happens to it.” Now Lane’s teeth were clenched too. “Now you need to shut up about it … or I’m gonna take my belt off to ya.”
    “No! You go get that showerhead from that woman before she puts it up in her bathroom. It’s mine ! I paid for it.”
    Droplets of spit flew from her mouth as she screamed, some of them landing on Lane’s face.
    “The shower is already all hooked up and working in her bathroom, and I’m not going over there and taking it out. You can wait your turn .” He jabbed a finger into her collarbone.
    Luke was standing in the kitchen entryway, big eyed with his mouth agape. I could hear Audrey too, still sitting in the living room, now moaning and rocking faster than ever before. The base of the chair slammed against the living-room wall again and again.
    All I heard after that was screaming. Mom was yelling at Lane, and he yelled right back at her. She slapped his finger away from her chest and then, without warning, threw Meri’s warm bottle of milk at him. We all watched it bounce off his shoulder and land on the table, then roll onto the floor, where the nipple exploded, splattering milk all over the entire kitchen, even the stove and the fridge.
    Thunder continued to roar above us, and rain dripped into the pan on the floor next to the table.
    “Who do you think you are?!” Lane bellowed, reaching over and grabbing Mom by the short layers of her hair. He