Free Fragile by Chris Katsaropoulos

gibbering of the Saturday morning cartoons, she had to call in sick again, her head swimming as if it has been submerged in a vast vat of liquid teeming with muffled noises, a throb of pain at the back of her skull any time she turns her head. Saturday, her biggest day of the week, seven customers canceled and all because of Rick. No, not Rick. She knows it was her own overweening need for him, her own baseless hunger that got her into this again.
    â€œTurn off the TV Jenny,” she says. “You’ve had it on all day.” Beyond the crest of a fold in the blanket that covers her, the screen flickers with frenzied images. Jenny ignores her mother for a moment and Zoe sits beside her Indian-style on the living room floor of the small apartment, fumbling with something in her hands.
    â€œI said turn it off, and I
mean
it.”
    She really shouldn’t yell at them, the effort of opening her mouth that wide and expelling the words sends a spasm of pain up the back of her head. Jenny looks around at her mother, to see if she’s really serious, and Holly returns the look. Then Holly closes her eyes for a moment and lets her head sink into the pillow, inhaling and then releasing a deep breath. Let them watch if they want to, she thinks. The reddish-orange afterimage of the screen glows on the backs of her eyelids, floats thereand contorts into a lozenge of fading brilliance. Let them watch. Why should she be so hard on them after she made them stay at the old lady’s house last night and now here they are stuck in the apartment with her all day today. Jenny was so good, getting bowls of cereal for Zoe and herself this morning, opening a can of tomato soup with the electric can opener and heating it for their lunch. Jenny must think her mother is a drunk—she knows about it now, they teach them about drugs, and cigarettes, and drinking in school. Maybe sex too, in fifth or sixth grade. Or maybe that’s next year. Zoe just thinks that she’s sick all the time, but this time is more than a hangover. The back of her head is pounding, where it slammed into the lip of the sink. And then, as she lies there with her eyes closed, drinking in the grey darkness, the sound of the TV goes away.
    â€œOh …” she says, with her eyes still closed. “Thank you Jenny.”
    She could drift off into sleep again in the quiet. The girls she hears as soft rustling sounds, getting up from the floor, moving closer.
    â€œIt was me,” Zoe says, letting her know she’s a helper too.
    Holly’s eyes open slightly, revealing harsh trapezoids of sunlight slanting in past the floor-to-ceiling vertical blinds that shield the sliding doors to the balcony. Now the girls have nothing to do. Jenny sits on the floor, staring at the TV screen as if it still emits some form of entertainment for her. Maybe she’s waiting for her mother to fall asleep again so she can turn it back on. Zoe walks past the couch towards the small diningarea and the galley kitchen—getting a snack. When they’re not watching TV, Holly thinks, they eat.
    â€œWhy don’t you go outside,” Holly says, “and play. It’s nice out.”
    â€œPlay what?” Jenny says. She’s reached the age where all her answers assume the form of a challenge, an impertinent dig at Holly’s authority. Holly can think of any number of things to play, games she used to play with kids in the neighborhood when she was young, running loose for hours, but her head is throbbing so much that the words cannot form, the names of those simple games seem to elude her, and even if she could remember, they don’t live in the same kind of neighborhood she did, the residents of the apartment complex are transient, mostly young singles or older retired couples on fixed incomes. There is a small playground in the courtyard behind their building, but the few kids who are around tend to stay inside, their parents wary of