Mama said, “Go to your papa. He’s sunk low and your sisters can’t do it. Go sing your song.”
Papa, his enormous legs, black hairs sprouting from his ears, his knees like white plates, a pounding voice. If I don’t do it, thought the boy, he’s going to blow his head off. Papa hunched in the dark living room, his whiskered chin drooping to his chest. He wore his uniform, his name stitched in red on his pocket. Not his real name, a joke, but he’s stuck with it, the money-grubbers.
The boy smelled his papa’s stink and sausage breath, and Papa was breathing like a dragon, with big fumes of horrible stink coming at him.
“Papa?”
One eye opened and the boy climbed onto the fattened lap. Papa’s thighs were hot, searing like a stove, so he stood on Papa’s legs like two boards, but his papa didn’t hold on to him. If I don’t sing, thought the boy, he’ll blow his head off with the gun in his closet behind his shoes. Mama said someday he’s going to use that gun on himself, he sinks so low, right into the muck.
Unsteadily, the boy sang about flowers and someone frying eggs, but his papa’s chin was still low, and the boy started to cry. He ran outside. Tree shadows flickered on his hands. The blueness of the garden. Papa’s thunderous footsteps, the porch rattling, his giant hand on the boy’s head.
“There,” said Papa. “Don’t worry.”
The boy heard the lie in his trembling voice, and if he looked at his papa—he dared not--he’d see it in his dark-circled eyes.
“You’re a good boy,” said Papa. “Always remember that.”
Nina Schuyler's award-winning short story collection In This Ravishing World will be published on July 2, 2024. Her novel Afterword won the PenCraft Seasonal Book Award for Fiction-Science Fiction.
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