Small Silent Things by Robin Page

Author:Robin Page
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

5

“IT WASN’T A HOLIDAY, SO WE KNEW,” SHE SAYS IN THE SMALL OFFICE. “WE never got gifts anyway. Holiday or not.”

She is loose and free from the sex with Kate. She wishes she could go straight home, enjoy the day. She doesn’t want to be here bringing in the past, but she is here again for Conrad. For help he thinks she needs, and Dr. Bruce is invading, asking, pressing. She is always trying to put her back.

“So, you never really celebrated Christmas or birthdays?”

“Sometimes Gladys would put something on layaway and get it out after a long time. Then she’d sell it to a neighbor or a dealer for drugs or just take it away. Nothing belonged to us. We learned not to get excited.”

“Did that bother you? I mean not to ever get anything from your own mother, on your birthday, let’s say.”

“Yes,” she says, lying.

It didn’t bother her. It was worse when there was a gift. A trick. Power. Things they never wanted. A theme even. Once, in June, there were blow-up toys, bats, balls, a clearance sale of beach things, a naked blow-up doll to embarrass William with. Where it came from, they couldn’t tell, but Uncle Al found it funny.

He and Gladys had been at a thrift store all day. A thrift store in Norwood. Just white people there, Gladys saying. Uncle Al saying, Hey! I’m white. They were high. Gladys and Uncle Al had a look of conspiracy in their eyes.

She and Ycidra and William were still as stones, all staring at the table, at the stale things they’d brought back. Not wanting any of it. Just wanting to go back into the room that they shared. Can’t trust your fucked-up ass with your sisters, Gladys would say, but all of them knew that William hadn’t thought of a girl in that way his whole life, much less his sisters.

“We thought you could hit the dogs with them,” Uncle Al said seriously, his eyes glassy, his mouth wet. “They need a bit of training.”

Jocelyn remembers the looking away, the floor falling out beneath her.

There were no dogs at the apartment in Winton Terrace, but Uncle Al rented a house in North College Hill. Jocelyn hated to go there.

There is this cold place for us, she used to think.

Jocelyn feels it now, as she felt it as a child, sitting at that table. It is weighty, the taste of copper, a tightness always in the shoulders and the neck, a cowering. The dogs behind gates in the yard—a concrete slab under bald bellies. The space, three by five at most. They were large dogs. A ground full of piss and feces. Stink in the air. Always there were smells when she was young, smells that she couldn’t get away from.

She has seen them many times in her mind, but she cannot bring herself to talk to Dr. Bruce about them. They are pack animals that are afraid to socialize. As a child, Jocelyn loves them for a second before she realizes she cannot love them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.