The Push, Ashley Audrain [popular novels TXT] 📗

squeezed his fists so his knuckles were the color of the potatoes. I wanted him to yell with the same rage that brewed inside of her constantly. He was so still that I wondered if he was still breathing.

‘I went, didn’t I? To the fucking tea? I was there. I sat at the little table and played along. What more do you want from me?’ She grabbed her cigarettes and left for the porch. My father took the cloth off his head and folded it on the table. He picked up his fork and looked at me.

‘Eat.’

27

The spring after Violet turned four, her preschool teacher asked us for a meeting after school on a Friday.

‘Nothing of major concern,’ she’d said on the phone, emphasizing the major. ‘But we should talk.’

You were skeptical from the start, although I knew a part of you was nervous about what she would say. What, she won’t share the glue stick?

We sat on tiny chairs and your knees nearly hit your chin. She offered us water in pink plastic cups that tasted like dish soap.

Everyone knows you open with the good news.

‘Violet is an exceptionally bright child. She’s mature for her age in many ways. She’s very … astute.’

But there were incidents that had caused her classmates to be uncomfortable with her. She gave us the example of a boy who was scared to sit near her because she sometimes twisted his fingers until he cried. A girl who said Violet stabbed her thigh with a pencil. And that morning, during recess, someone said Violet pulled down their pants and threw handfuls of rocks in their underwear. My face grew hot and I covered my neck, sure it was blotching. I was embarrassed that we’d created a human being who would act this way. I glanced out the window to the playground covered with small, dusty pebbles. I thought of the aggression she’d shown when she was younger. Of what little empathy I saw in her now. I could easily see her doing it all.

‘She’s apologetic when told to be, yes,’ the teacher said hesitantly when you asked her. ‘She’s smart. She knows her behavior is hurtful, but this hasn’t seemed to deter her like we’d expect. At this point, I think we need to introduce consequences.’

We agreed on the strategy and thanked her for the meeting.

‘Look, it’s not good, but every kid goes through this kind of thing. Testing the boundaries. She’s probably bored in there. Did you see all that plastic shit lying around? It looked like a room for babies. Remind me how much we’re paying them?’

I watched the bubbles dance up the side of your glass. We’d gone for a drink, my suggestion. I thought it might ease the tension between us.

‘We’ll talk to her,’ you rationalized to yourself. ‘Something’s obviously provoking her to act this way.’

I nodded. Your reaction made no sense to me. You were such a sensible person in every respect. And yet when it came to our daughter, you lost all your levelheadedness. You defended her blindly.

‘You’re not going to say anything?’ You were angry.

‘I’m – I’m upset. I’m disappointed. And yes, we’ll talk to her …’

‘But?’

‘But I can’t say I’m surprised.’

You shook your head – here she goes.

‘Other kids her age would act out by biting or hitting or saying, “You’re not coming to my birthday party anymore.” What she’s doing sounds … kind of cruel. Kind of calculated.’ I put my head into my hands.

‘She’s four, Blythe. She can’t even tie her shoes.’

‘Look, I love her, I’m just saying –’

‘Do you?’

How good that must have felt. It was the first time you’d said it aloud, but I knew you’d been thinking it for years. You stared at the ring-stained bar top.

‘I love her, Fox. I’m not the problem.’ I thought of how carefully the teacher had chosen her words.

I walked home alone and gave the babysitter money for her taxi. Violet was fast asleep. I slipped into her twin bed and pulled the duvet over my legs and held my breath when she stirred. She wouldn’t have wanted me in there but it’s where I so often found myself. I was trying to find something in her stillness. I don’t know what. Maybe the raw, sweet smell of her when she slept reminded me of where she came from. She was not perfect, she was not easy, but she was my daughter and maybe I owed her more.

And yet. As I lay there in the dark, I felt a twinge of vindication thinking about the meeting. I’d been living with a terrifying, unrelenting suspicion about my daughter, and I sensed that someone else could finally see it, too.

28

Sometime in the weeks that followed, I went to a gallery downtown after I dropped Violet off at school. There was a controversial exhibit that had been reviewed in the newspaper the day before, and I watched you read it over your morning coffee. Ever so slightly you had shaken your head before you turned the page.

I took one step inside the gallery and stared at the walls. On the matte white paint hung portraits used in media coverage of children who had been accused of gun violence. Unthinkable, sometimes deadly violence. Children, some barely old enough for acne, barely large enough to ride a roller coaster. I thought of how tiny those boys’ genitals would have been, how juvenile they were, hairless, sexless.

Two of the children were girls. Each smiled widely, intensely, lips nearly curled under. One had braces. She would have gone with her mother to the orthodontist every month for an adjustment, picked out which color bands she wanted for her wires. Asked for strawberry ice cream after, because anything else in her mouth hurt too much.

For hours the children watched