Disclaimer: I don't mind if I get disqualified for thinking of the prompt philosophically rather than literally, but I got "writer in a glass elevator creating more questions than answers," and I thought about glass as a see-through but reflective surface held in place--so started thinking about memory. This is what I came up with (at just under 1,000 words):
Sun shouted from the blade of the chicken knife as Mama crossed the kitchen in three big steps—thump, thump, thump—chest moving hard like a mare after racing. I never knew if talking about Daddy would make her laugh or make her mean. Noon buttered us with sweat and the hot sweet smell of pie peaches. A fly threw itself into the window, again and again, killing itself against the glass.
I ran.
The screen door slammed into the cockeyed frame and my feet got dusty from the road. I could hear Mama screaming on the back step, could taste my stomach crawling up my throat.
“You snotty little BITCH.”
I didn’t dare turn round.
“Daddy’s gonna bust you.”
Down the hill, through the field, and into the shade of the birch grove, where bark-skin peeled away in scrolls. Daddy called them harlot trees, because they were always taking off their clothes.
I dove into the smell of dead leaves, their backs still shiny with last night’s rain. The soles of my feet stung, a burn running up my ankles like the iron slippers Cinderella made her stepmother wear.
“Dance for me, baby,” Mama would say. She’d clap her hands, fast and faster, as I heard her giggle and stomped loud. She called it “our dance,” but I was the only one who ever really moved.
My chest slowed down and my eyes shut up while I thought about dancing, and making her laugh. The green dress from Nana Kay stuck to me like wet paper. Leaves and dirt hissed off to the side, and I held my breath though I knew it wasn’t Mama. Mama never walked so soft, anywhere she went.
“You trip?”
“No.” My cheek came away cold from the leaves when I looked up. “Who’re you?”
“Henry.”
I waited for Henry to ask me my name back but he didn’t. He just nodded and sat down with his legs crossed and sun-sick hair spilling into his face.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Ten.” He caught my frown. “It’s a lotta years, innit? My sister’s fourteen but I say she’s twelve. I can be eight if you want.”
I sat up, cleaning my palms against my knees. “Can I be nine?”
“No,” said Henry. “It don’t work that way.” He held out his hand before I could sulk. “I got something to show you.”
“What’s that?”
“C’mon,” he said. “And no telling.”
We both got up and I followed him like a kitten after her mama, because eight is still bigger than seven.
We walked till we got to a slope that slid into the vein of a mucky river. The banks were green with summer fern and hemlock, and Henry made me crawl into the cage of a boxwood bush. He squeezed in next, bracing his feet on the crooked branches and sitting his chin on one bent knee.
“What is it?”
“Quiet up,” he said.
We curled beside one another in the solid heat and didn’t touch. Henry watched the pull of the river, and I watched Henry. The forest breathed around us.
After while, the singing started.
Out of the woods came an old hymn that Mama sometimes picked up while she did washing. I looked over to find Henry leaning forward, palms tight around rough bark and dirt still sticking to his elbows.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Hush.”
The hymn got louder and I turned back to the river. A man walked out of the woods wearing white robes, too heavy for summer, and I wondered that he hadn’t fainted. Behind him were the singers, each of them wearing their Sunday best.
“They’ll get dirty,” I said, but Henry didn’t answer. “Who are they?”
“Father,” Henry said. “And his babies.”
“But they’re big.”
“Grown-ups have daddies too.”
I thought about that, and about how Mama talked, too calm, about her own daddy when I didn’t mind my please and thank yous.
"He's gonna bring 'em back to life," said Henry.
“But they ain’t dead.”
“Yeah,” he said. “He’s got to kill ‘em first.”
Now I leaned forward too, and the pair of us watched as the daddy took his children one-by-one and sank them in mud-thick water. One-by-one, a hand on their back, and another behind their head, their mouths shut and bodies still as they went down.
“They come back new,” said Henry, sounding hungry. “Clean as Jesus.”
I went home before sunset to find that Mama had cooled. She’d already eaten, but there was a plate on the counter that I took to my room and ate slow, the juice from Sunday chicken greasing my fingers.
I threw my scraps in the trash and washed my plate and face. As I tip-toed on the stepstool and leaned over bubbly water, Mama came up behind me.
“Where you been?” she asked, quiet so Daddy wouldn’t hear.
“By the river.”
“What’s by the river?”
“This man was killing people,” I said. “And bringing ‘em back from the dead.”
She waited for a long time before saying anything else, and I could see her fingers on the counter, straight like when kids see Ritner’s dog and try too hard not to move.
“Did he touch you?”
“No. I was in the boxwoods.”
“Well you just stay in the boxwoods, honey.” She let go of the counter and, slow, took the hem of my left sleeve between thumb and finger. One soft tug and then she left.
Patsy Cline started singing in the den, just loud enough to cover the cricket sounds of sundown, and I wondered what would happen if Mama got made clean.
