Words

By Amethyst Turner

Love is deep affection

Adequate is up to par

Contemplation is deep reflection

Mangled is having scars

I know what they mean but

Nobody really loves me

I am not adequate

I can't contemplate anything

But all these scars I want to quit

Hiding from the world

I still am just a girl

Waiting for love that will never come

XXX

Amethyst was obviously very smart, Libby could tell that.

She was gaining words at an almost alarming rate, asking for things and telling her thoughts with surprising fluency. Richard found this funny, and often sat down to talk to his daughter for a few minutes when he got home at night.

Libby didn't talk to her. She didn't want to know what was in the little brat's head.

The next months, the next year seemed to blur together for Libby. Wake up, eat, think, sleep, eat again, sleep again. Cry. She wanted to die so badly that she began a journal on all the ways to accomplish the feat. Only, she knew she didn't have the courage to go through with it. Then she'd cry some more.

It was an endless cycle of torture, like a hot summer night when you can't sleep and keep tossing and turning, dreading the next morning after the sleepless hours.

Somewhere around Christmastime, Libby stopped eating. After that, she allowed herself one meal every other day, hoping she would deteriorate quietly, be dissolved into the atmosphere. It didn't happen. All this plan accomplished was to add to her pain and pile of bad habits.

Pills were her other killer addiction. Valium, most of the time, but she would settle for a handful of sleeping pills or painkillers if she was out. Addictive was an understatement. She couldn't even die now, she needed those pills so much. The valium muted the baby's shrieks and lulled Libby to sleep when nothing else could. And in those troubled fits of drugged sleep, she would dream of finally doing it.

Finally slitting her wrists. Finally swallowing too many pills at once. Finally ending it.

She promised herself she would do it soon. Soon never came fast enough.

XXX

Vita only hesitated for a moment. Then she rapped her knuckles on the chipped, white door, setting a look of determination on her face. Her bags sat at her feet, Toto's cage on the other side.

There was no answer, nor was there a doorbell. Vita knocked harder, muttering under her breath, "People these days." That crap pile that Richard called his car wasn't yet parked in front of the house, so Vita figured he was home yet. She would just have to wait for him.

An hour later, a rumbling sound snapped Vita out of her thoughts. Out stepped Richard Turner with a look on his face like she had three heads. Irritable from an hour alone with only Toto and the biting cold March air for company, she glared back at him.

He approached, recognition dawning on his face. "Um, hey. Vita, right?"

"Ms. Miller," she corrected. Don't call me by my first name, sonny boy. Get some respect, would you?

Richard nodded. "Ms. Miller. Good to see you . . . uh, what are you doing here?"

She squinted at his face. He looked more hungover than drunk. Maybe he was just stupid. "Well, I tend to get worried when my daughter doesn't answer my calls."

Richard glanced at her bags. "Okay . . ."

"So I am coming to stay with you until I'm convinced that you can effectively raise my granddaughter."

He looked like she'd slapped him in the face. "Who, Amethyst?"

Suppressing an eye roll, she responded, "Yes."

"She's fine . . ."

"Need I remind you how your wife pushed her down a flight of stairs last year?" Vita snapped. She felt a little pang of guilt. She should have come sooner.

Richard seemed to get her point. "Alright then," he sighed. "But we don't have an extra bed."

"I'll sleep on the couch."

They exchanged a bitter smile. The couch it was, then.

XXX

Amethyst liked playing with her grandmother. She did funny little voices for the toys and gave them personalities and stories.

Over the next few months, Aimee learned funny words like "Bubble and "Centipede". She also learned some words that weren't so funny. "Broken". "Adoption". "Bitch".

These she heard when the grown ups were arguing while she pretended to be asleep. She pieced together definitions in her head.

"Broken", she thought, meant something that didn't work. Mama kept using that word to talk about her leg last year. Aimee remembered that. The cast had been heavy, but not as heavy as her thoughts when she tried to awaken from her month-long sleep.

"Adoption", meant to take someone away. Mommy said that Vita couldn't 'adopt' Amethyst because she had no proof. Proof, she thought, meant reasons. Mama didn't have any reasons to take her away, did she?

"Bitch" seemed to mean that someone was annoying or not nice. Mommy and Daddy used that word, but mama never did. Whenever one of them called her a "bitch" she would say, "I'm sorry you feel that way," and go to bed.

Mama slept on the couch across from Amethyst and always made uncomfortable, pained noises when she would get up. She told Aimee one day, "My back is killing me."

"Killing" was a word that she still didn't know. She didn't hear it used often enough to figure out what it meant.

Some days, Mama wouldn't want to play. She'd sit by herself on the porch and read or write letters to people Amethyst didn't know. On these days, she would turn her attention to Toto and let him chase her around the yard. Sometimes, when they were done playing, she would lay down next to the exhausted dog in the grass and practice talking. Toto didn't care if she got words wrong or said her l's like w's.

Scrubbles liked playing with Mama too. She ran him through the wash and straightened out his bow, so now he looked very distinguished, as Mama said. "Distinguished" meant important and stylish.

Of course, Aimee had all these words filed away in her head, but couldn't say them aloud. They were too long with too many letters and syllables. She figured that when she was older, she could use them. Once she could talk like the grown-ups did.

Grown-up. She knew what that word meant. It meant that you were big and had wrinkles on your face and worries on your mind. You could use words like "Distinguished", "Killing" and "Bitch" without hesitating. It meant that you could slap somebody, or question someone for slapping somebody. Grown-ups had money, and they could buy things like Scrubbles with it, or they could buy things like beer and cigarettes. You could be a grown up like Mama and play and laugh, or you could be a grown-up like Mommy and sit alone all day, smoking and crying.

Amethyst wanted to be a grown up like Daddy most of all.

He was big and strong and had a job. Whenever she needed something, he would get it for her. He was like a superhero, Amethyst thought, taking care of her and Mommy and doing chores that Mommy was too sad to do anymore.

It was a shame, she decided, that no one else seemed to think the same thing.

XXX

And I'll hold on to the words you spoke of

Anchored down in the throat, love

And I'm captain of this sinking boat now

With just one armband to carry me home

When salted tears won't dry

I'll wipe my shirtsleeves

Under your eyes

These hearts will be flooded tonight

I'll wipe my shirtsleeves

Under your eyes

-Shirtsleeves, Ed Sheeran