Wire Mesh Mothers

40

The girl was back. Mistie flinched when the door slammed. She stared as the girl came in, strode between the bed and the T.V. up to the door and back again, then tried to pull the mirror off the wall with a loud grunt. It didn’t come, so the girl pulled a drawer out of the dresser and cracked the glass with it. The splinters of glass in the frame looked like the shiny star in Princess Silverlace’s crown. The girl paced again, her arms crossed and her eyes straight ahead. She looked like somebody had put her in a car and rolled it into a lake. She was messed up.

As she passed the television the fifth time, she drove her fist into the power button. The T.V. winked off. Mistie drew herself up, and scooched up to the head of the bed.

The girl paced some more. Her eyes were ugly. They looked like pit bull eyes. There was a high school boy who lived at the trailer park who had a pit bull with eyes like that. The dog didn’t seem to have any sense except for biting and chopping at everything that went near it on its chain. It seemed more like a machine than a dog.

Then the girl went into the bathroom and the water was turned off.