Free Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter

shapes, we are being put together and ripped apart and put together in different shapes like the wind does to the leaves, a man says dominoes, a man says Jezebel, a man says Amen, a man says God almighty, we go home and make dinner, knifing out the eyes in the potatoes, shaping the meatloaf with our hands, Don’t wash them, Daddy said, plenty of iron in womanblood, he falls asleep and we make shapes over his face in the blue light of the television: a bird, an alligator, a fist knocking over and over on the pocket of his shirt. Baby, we whisper, baby, are you in there?
     
    Finally we find a boy. He is pale. We see the blue veins behind his ears, one threading from his right eye to his cheek, he shows us a dagger wrapped in a dustcloth at the bottom of his schoolbag, we take him home with us, we lay beside him on Daddy’s bed. He says I been watching you, I have named you. We pull up his shirt, we write letters over his heart, he says I know that one, that one’s easy but it ain’t your name. We say come with us, bring something to show, he brings the dagger. We pull our box out from under the bed, we open it and pull the newspaper away, we show him what we’ve collected, a few teeth, a purple rock, a used condom, a burned Bible, Daddy’s naked circus people cards. We save it for last, pulling it out and laying it in front of our boy, pulling the lace away until we see its gray form, its tiny penis, we see how its mouth has shriveled since we last saw our baby, we see more of its eyes now, we knock on its chest, we show the boy how baby has become a stone. See how black baby’s tongue is, we tell our boy. See how thirsty. We hold baby up and feed him, when we lift him we remember how like life death smells, we pick maggots from his legs and pump our breasts.
     
    Our boy is sick down his shirt, another smell, he pushes the dagger in the air around us, he runs the blade down our arm, forcing it in at our elbow. He runs from us, we go to the window and watch him run through the yard, down the road toward school, toward nothing beyond, he disappears. Baby is finished eating, we follow our blood back to our bedroom, we pull out the dagger and give it to baby to hold, baby is covered in blood, is alive, we hear Daddy’s truck in the driveway, we cover baby’s mouth and nose with our hand. Hold your breath, baby, we say. We will gather maggots in a jar for Daddy. We will go fishing. We will catch baby, reel him in. We will kiss the gash in his cheek. We will throw him back.
     

FIFTEEN
     

    Tina’s mama got us some Boone’s. Turtle was on his back in the bathtub upchucking in his sleep. Gin still thought he was cute even as he burbled like a gut fountain. We left her to tend to him. Later on Gin’d be porking Freeman and then Freeman’s little brother. We dared Katie to eat what was left in the ashtray and she did. In the corners of Tina’s mama’s apartment there were little piles of things. Tiny shrines to catshit and dryer lint and wrappers for condoms candy beer-bottles toilet paper lipstick-tubes and various electronics. Tina’s mama was a space clearer, is how you could put it. Joey pushed Katie down into the catshit corner and got emphatic in air-grinding over her. Katie had black smudges at the corners of her mouth from the ashtray and it was clear she was working hard to swallow something back. Joey’s eyes were closed. Later we realized he was humming that one Journey song. Freeman’s little brother was on his back bragging how he could see each individual fan blade in Tina’s mama’s ceiling fan. His eyes went round and round. Ingalls woke up laugh-crying from what had been an hours-long nap. After he caught his breath he screamed EAT AT THE Y, SUCK IT LIKE A STRAW and then tucked himself back into the couch. It was clear he was a sleep-farter but no one wanted to talk about that just yet. Gin killed the bottle of strawberry-flavored and wondered aloud could kissing Ingalls make the zits near his