Temper
We're not in the car two seconds when the argument starts. Shell calls her sister a butt face and threatens to slap her if she doesn't hand over the twenty-five cent plastic bracelet that Shell says belongs to her.
Caz tells her, “Go ahead and slap me, see what it gets you.”
Then the tussling starts. I can see bits and pieces of it in the mirror: Shell in her car seat trying to reach across and slap her sister, Caz tight against the door frame with her hands up to protect herself. If not for the seatbelt Shell might have some luck. When she realizes her arms are several inches too short to make good on her threat, she starts to scream, first at Caz and then at me.
“You're the worst daddy in the world,” she says, “in the whole wide world. If you cared about me you'd make Butt Face give me my bracelet.”
“That's enough out of you girl,” I tell her. “You better get control of yourself, 'cause I promise you won't like the punishment. Do you hear me?”
She answers by kicking the back of my seat, her feet like miniature jackhammers trying to pound their way through the upholstery and sever my spine. Shell's only four and already her temper controls nearly every aspect of her young life, and parts of mine. I'm about to pull over and sort it all out myself, make some more threats of my own if that's what it takes. But then the kicking stops and I hear Shell say, “Daddy, I didn't hit her. I promise I didn't.”
I'm not sure what to make of it until I turn and see Caz crying in the corner.
“What's the matter, honey?” I ask.
“I miss Jolene, Daddy. Can't you take us to Tennessee so I can see her? You have a map. I know you do.”
“Listen, Caz,” I say. “It's only natural that you miss her. But even if we knew where she lived in Tennessee we couldn't go see her.” Jolene is Caz and Shell's birth mother. Shell is too young to remember; but Caz, being three years older than her sister, has at least some memory of her past.
“Please, Daddy?” she begs.
“I'm sorry, we can't. I'll tell you what, though. When you're old enough your mom and I will help you find Jolene if that's what you really want.”
“What if we can't find her?”
“We'll find her,” I say.
In the months after the girls moved in with us Caz talked less and less about Jolene. It seemed she was on the verge of letting go of the past, allowing it to fade into the haze of all the changes that had enveloped her. But I guess the finality of signing the adoption papers yesterday, coupled with a new last name, has reignited her sense of loss. Just when I think my offer to help is enough to console her, she starts to cry again.
“Daddy,” she sobs, “what if we find her and she doesn't remember me?”
Right away I realize her pain is greater than I ever imagined. I want to tell her that a mother never forgets a child no matter how long they've been apart. I want to wave my hand in front of her beautiful face and erase the memory of those years she spent with Jolene. I want to do almost anything to ease the hurt she feels inside.
Before I can think of something to say to convince Caz that if she is patient everything will work out fine, I hear a thud and then a slap followed by a scream from Shell's side of the backseat.
I glance in the mirror and see Shell waving the pink leather purse she has fished from the pocket of her door panel. Caz slides toward her, rubbing her ear with one hand while swatting at Shell with the other. Both girls are screaming now. I think to myself: this is where a good daddy intervenes, steps in before somebody gets hurt. Then it occurs to me that for once I am grateful for Shell and her temper because she has succeeded where I failed: with one swing of her purse she has helped Caz forget, if only temporarily, about the distance between her and Jolene.
Allen Hope's fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous publications including Zaum, Snow Monkey, Eclectica Magazine, and Ghost Town. He lives in Gallipolis, Ohio.