Free Y: A Novel by Marjorie Celona Page B

frozen, then suddenly she is standing over him, slapping
     his face and punching his stomach.
    “God fucking damn it,” she spits. She punches Quinn’s stomach again and he retches,
     spits the pills down his shirt. She drags him into the shower and straddles his body,
     grabs his hair in fistfuls, turns on the cold water and smacks his head against the
     tiles until he fights back.
    “Okay, fuck. Stop.” He pushes her off and retches down the drain. They sit in the
     shower, hugging their knees. His hair hangs in slimy white strands down the sides
     of his face, the ends dripping. His neck is rippled in little folds beneath his chin;
     she has never noticed it until now. He looks smaller to Yula somehow, and barrel-chested,
     as if he is affecting the posture of an old, weathered boxer.
    The steam from the shower makes the spray-on dye run out of Yula’s hair, and it slides
     down her shirt in black and purple streaks. Her clothes are waterlogged and cling
     to her pregnant body like kelp. She leans against the wall of the shower, her back
     sore from the weight of her belly. She rubs the skin on her swollen feet.
    “Yula,” Quinn says. He reaches for her with his good hand. “Oh, Yula.” He spits into
     the drain. “I can’t do it. I want to, but I can’t.”
    His fingernails are caked with dirt. Yula gets the nail clippers and digs it out,
     then shampoos his hair. She wraps him in a big blue bathrobe, and after she’s changed
     into dry clothes, they sit on the front porch and share a cigarette.
    Harrison waves from the cabin’s kitchen window. He has on yellow dishwashing gloves
     and an orange baseball cap. Yula sits with Quinn until he’s sleepy, until she’s convinced
     that he wants to live again. Later, while he eats his dinner, she washes and folds
     his clothes and turns down his bed.
    “Stay with me, Yula,” her father says. “Don’t ever leave me. I don’t know what I would
     do. Don’t ever leave me, Yula.”
    “I won’t, Papa.” She watches him eat, then takes his plate, washes it, and puts it
     back in the cupboard. She puts a smear of toothpaste on his toothbrush and sets it
     at the edge of the sink along with a glass of water, his antidepressant and antianxiety
     pills.
    When she treks back to the cabin, Harrison takes her in his arms. Her body is so tired
     it feels as though her bones are disintegrating.
    “He’s all I’ve got left,” she says as Harrison holds her. “I can’t lose him, too.”
    “I’m here with you.” Harrison tucks her hair behind her ears. “I’m all you need.”
    She feels his cold eyes on her suddenly. It’s an argument they have weekly and never
     finish. He is unhappy living under the thumb of her father, but she is too scared
     to leave. The thought of what might happen if she left—of losing her father—is too
     horrible.
    Besides, she can’t imagine her life any other way: listening to her father’s troubles,
     polishing, cleaning, examining his tabletops for dust. She makes him one frozen meal
     after the other, finds his shit-stained underwear and bleaches them clean, asks him
     to tell her stories about her mother—why not; what doesn’t she want to know. Later,
     she hears him crying in the shower and, not knowing she’s still there, watches him
     walk into the living room and lie on the rug, weep, and clutch his body with his wet
     hands. Unwillingly, not wanting to, she sees it.
    “I need my dad,” she says.
    Eugene wakes from his nap, runs to her, and wants to know why her hair is wet and
     her eyes full of tears. He is almost three years old, his hair shiny and black. “You’re
     crying,” he says.
    She sits at the kitchen table and pulls him onto her lap, but he is fidgetyin her arms. His leg kicks out and rocks the table, and Harrison’s bottle of beer
     smashes to the floor.
    “Go to sleep, you little shit,” she says and carries Eugene roughly into the bedroom.
     This moment of nastiness is something she will