I approach the bed, double check the pillows placed on the floor to catch the girl in case she falls. Snuggled into the corner, she sleeps the sleep of the dead. She breathes, I listen; she squirms, I watch… and consider the enormity of my achievement in creating such a shiny object, in convincing the court to award custody after the death of the girl’s mother at the hands of a stranger on the other side of the country.
My job is to wean the girl to safety. I’ve bought books on the topic, taken classes, purchased videos. The animals pasted on the wall will assist, like the soldiers from my own past who tried (in vain) to stop the demon from making its rounds and laying hold upon my heart: the minutemen from Concord, the Hessian Grenadiers, dragoons with jodhpurs and curved swords. Along the top of Ginger’s room, forest creatures parade in an endless loop. Ready to charge, the animals dwell in a state of suspended animation: the bear; a buck backlit by the setting sun; a tom with flushed feathers.
It is my duty to guard this girl from the ill-intent of others. Her forest friends will keep a watchful eye, the soldiers of my youth will rush to defend if called upon from some other or the ether of Devil Dreams that have haunted me for as long as I remember. Like a caricature from a book, I back away and sit in a chair in the corner of the room, close my eyes and ponder what I have done.
Where’s mom, Daddy?
Her head is so enormous: she is as pale as light. Red hair coronates her forehead. Standing next to my knee, she is small and helpless.
She asks again: Where’s mama? I don’t know if this is a dream from which I’ve awakened or a terror waiting to collapse. I don’t know the time of night, how long she’s been standing or how long I’ve been asleep.
“Ginger, sweetheart . . . “
Should I hold her on my lap? hug her to my chest? call Mama Beck and explain that a terrible mistake has been made: there’s a monster in utero—lurking—sitting nearby—waiting.
“ . . . remember, your grandparents left this afternoon and won’t return for a couple of months. Remember, sweetheart—it’s you and me now.”
I went pee pee, she says and taps me on the knee.
“Okay,” I say, “sometimes you go wee wee at night; right?”
She shakes her head.
“Let me help.”
Alone—Mama Beck and Papa Beck thousands of miles away with no one to care for the innocent but a person with whom she shares ancestral blood, I kneel. A light from the hallway illuminates my actions as I tear the cloth down the side of the white thigh. The child wiggles out of the pull-up. I toss it into a plastic container, rise and walk to the changing table. When I turn, the girl is lying on a pillow next to the bed. I lift her and stare: spellbound by the purity.
Mrs. Beck demonstrated how to bathe the child, how to wash its hair and do the things required to keep a girl clean. The responsibility belongs to me as does ownership. Such an odd thing, how to describe it: what I now observe unhindered by the presence of others.
I know how humans behave, I recite to myself. You want to know how?
Sure, says he who is also me.
I used to be one.
A petal, a crevice—a fissure in flesh as nacreous as frost on a cake, as white as snow on the mantle of a frozen world: the aperture is shallow and curved. Half-asleep, my daughter stands in an upstairs room in a house that I own at the end of a cul-de-sac. Beneath the waist, she glows as radiant as uranium glass. Transfixed by the shadow within, the translucence without, I stare and realize that somewhere, safe and snug, are the seeds of the future.
Such thoughts frighten: I’m frightened by such thoughts.
I tell her to step forward.
“Step into these, I’ll put you to bed.”
The girl is quiet, her eyes scarlet green. She holds still and repeats in a whisper:
I wish Mama was here.
I cannot explain that mama like my mama is dead and murdered by the fiend of the world. She is helpless and we are alone. Mama Beck is gone and someone else must care for her now. I whisper:
“I know, sweetheart, but I’ll watch over you. It’s going to be all right. Now step into these and let’s go to bed.”
I lift her leg and steady it: I place my hand beneath the cotton nightshirt, flesh on flesh—flat and warm, precious—and push against the purity. Nothing more for now, perhaps in the fullness of time, but not tonight.
Charles Sutphin has lived in Indianapolis for more than 60 years. His cobbled career includes editor, journalist, writer, attorney, professor and capitalist. Married for 35 years with two children, he taught at the University of Indianapolis for 18 years. His fiction has been published in Vita Poetica, The Flying Island, Helix Literary Review, Chamber Magazine, Agape Review, Literally Stories and the upcoming edition of Eclectica Magazine.
