– by Erin Dunn
Twin pillars sitting on the carpet, backs pressed against beige walls, voices low and tears
suppressed. One begging the other to stay and to speak.
The boy tells the girl of that afternoon when their father took her away for a drive.
When alone, the boy and their mother sink their claws into one another. Brutal verbal
slashes, nothing the girl should have to hear. The boy tells her anyway.
The boy was her hero. A beacon in the crashing sea of adolescence. Not a beacon of light,
or even of hope, but of something. He meant something to the girl. He represented some
shred of life. Of vivacity in the crushing chaos of teenage girlhood.
The boy made progress. He stood up for himself, he moved out of the house, he made
his place in the world. The girl wanted that.
But now their places are swapped. The girl cannot remember what happened to that
bond.
The girl does not see the boy’s stubbornness, his brashness, his anger, as vitality. Not
anymore.
The girl is ashamed of the boy.
She’s ashamed of him. The way he talks. Of the way he speaks disparagingly to her
people’s faces. Of the way he treats himself. Of the way she no longer sees that bit of
something in him.
He’s not her hero.
They say blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
How did blood turn to water?
