farther away from her. As I descended, it got quieter and quieter, until her screams dissolved. I gently floated down to the bottom without sight, without sound. As I rested on the soft sand, retracting steel doors slammed down around all four sides of my heart, boxing it in where she would never reach it again.
That’s when I made up my mind that I no longer belonged to her. As soon as the thought came to me, a warm light broke through the darkness all the way to the seafloor, warming my skin all over. I was free. She could do whatever she wanted to me now, and it wouldn’t matter. I was mine now, and would never again be hers. Relief enclosed me in a cocoon, knowing that I didn’t have to love her simply because she was my mother. All I had to do was survive her, and one day I could leave her for good. Grandpa was right. If I just obeyed and kept out of her way, I’d survive. My body was imprisoned beneath her, but my mind didn’t have to be. The thought made me smile.
“Oh, you think this is funny?”
She raised her palm and her slap was quick and sharp, sending an electric jolt across my cheek. I tried to cover my face with my hands and turn my head away, and through my fingers I spotted Matthew coming out of the bedroom just as Mom swiped her fingernails across my opposite cheek.
“Mom!” he shouted. “Stop hitting her!”
His voice landed on her like a lasso and she instantly stilled. She looked down at me with a quizzical expression, as if she didn’t recognize me. She gasped once, rolled off me and slumped on the carpet, her shoulders heaving. I scuttled like a crab in the opposite direction, backing up to the wall so I could keep my eyes on her. She was sobbing now, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her knees. I reached up and touched my hairline, and pressed on the bald spot to make it stop throbbing. I rose to my feet and crept on wobbly legs along the wall to the bedroom, and quickly pulled on some clothes. I heard the bedroom door creak on its hinges, and froze.
“It’s me,” Matthew said, sticking his head inside the room.
He came into the room and reached for my hand, and we ran past our balled-up mother, out of the house, through the fence and to our grandparents’ house. Granny and Grandpa were watching TV when we thundered into the living room, talking over each other in a hysterical rush of words.
“Whoa, slow down,” Granny said. “One at a time.”
I tried to explain but sputtered halfway into sobs, so Matthew finished for me, telling Granny what he’d seen. Grandpa reached for the lever on his recliner and bolted himself upright. Granny scowled and snapped off the television. “Well, what did you do to upset her?”
“Ruth honey!” Grandpa said, shooting her a pleading look that did absolutely no good. He had corrected her, and she was incredulous.
“I beg your pardon?” she said to Grandpa, like she was berating one of her insolent students.
Grandpa turned to me. “Are you hurt?”
“She doesn’t look that hurt to me,” Granny said, squinting at me from across the room. She turned for the bedroom, complaining to an invisible audience as she walked away. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I swear to Almighty God I’m going to get some peace one day before I meet my Maker.”
I heard the clacking of the rotary dial as she called Mom, followed by murmurs of consolation. It was going to be Mom’s word against mine.
Grandpa shook his head in disgust, and I thought he might make a complaint, but he held on to whatever was on his mind. He stood and let out his breath, like he had been holding it awhile.
“Let’s go on outside,” he said.
Without needing to discuss it first, the three of us walked toward Grandpa’s beehives. There was more activity than usual outside them, and at first I thought one of the colonies might be swarming. But as we got closer, I could see it was only a group of bees circling outside the hive. They took to the air, made a small loop in front of the hive and then returned to the landing board. They repeated the pattern over and over, as if they kept losing their courage to travel.