A Little Girl
Title: A Little Girl
Author: Afiawri
Rating: PG
Word Count: 656
Notes: I found my style falling into a bit of rut and I wasn't too fond of it, so this is the result of a style challenge. I wrote it at four in the morning.
She wanted them, the little glass, brightly color monkeys, the day we walked through that store on our way out the other door to the rest of the mall. She reached up for them, more than a foot above her spit-slick little fingers, and at first we thought she wanted the pink and yellow ball: safe, rubber.
“No ball today,” he said and I agreed. She had many like it at home and if she wanted, we’d happily spill hundreds of balls across the hardwood floor, provided we were close enough to catch her when she inevitably tried to walk on them.
“No ball! Those,” she whispered in the awed tone that promised a fit if denied. She pointed at a box above the ball, deliberately placed where only older kids could reach. They were pretty, the colored glass monkeys, and for a second I felt that tiny twitch of longing for a child’s toy I still hoped to someday outgrow.
Before he could finish opening his mouth to tell her no, come along dear, I found myself reaching for them. They were gorgeous, made of tastefully dark glass but cartoonish in appearance and each one made a different, more frightful face.
I wanted them.
I looked to him, he looked at me. I saw in his eyes the knowledge of my trip to Disney World all on my own at the age of twenty-six and of the bookcase of children’s tales published this decade that came into a marriage that never intended to have a child. If someone was willing to sit with her through Bambi the two hundred fifty-sixth time, he didn’t complain.
The prospect of buying for myself something she wanted closed and turned down his ever-laughing mouth. Still when, monkey box still in hand, I hinted I had to go to the bathroom and they should continued on without me, without another word he pulled her away from the toys.
The bored teenager behind the cash register followed them with her eyes until I place the box on the counter. “Birthday present?” she inquired with a smile that begged me to talk to her for just a few more seconds than it would take me to make my purchase.
They went on the highest shelf on our closet, the one I needed a stool to reach, where I couldn’t see them. When I pushed the stool back in the corner, I noticed his feet out of the corner out of my eye. He said nothing; the guilt knotted in my stomach and hollowed it out. We went to bed like it was any other night.
He meant to put them on the table for me, though whether it was to absolve me or confront me will always be a mystery. He didn’t expect me to become engrossed in my book- a thriller with a raunchy, classless sex scene- or for her to wander out and find the box somehow magically home when Daddy had said no.
I snapped the book shut two and a half hours after I’d told him ten minutes. My slippers made a slapping noise on the floor all the way to the den, but she didn't stir in the middle of the wreckage on the floor.
All around her were glass monkeys, their faces still horribly distorted, but now they had reason. Most of them were drowning in finger-paint, some had colored pencils shoved so far up their noses and butts they’d been cracked nearly in two. I stood there, surveying them, picking out the dark purple that had been my favorite through the clear plastic on the box. His purple fur had been spared the paint, but he hadn't been spared the pencil. The crack ran all the way from his back side to the corner of one lip.
I could barely tear my eyes from his pain to check my daughter's hands for shards of glass.
Author: Afiawri
Rating: PG
Word Count: 656
Notes: I found my style falling into a bit of rut and I wasn't too fond of it, so this is the result of a style challenge. I wrote it at four in the morning.
She wanted them, the little glass, brightly color monkeys, the day we walked through that store on our way out the other door to the rest of the mall. She reached up for them, more than a foot above her spit-slick little fingers, and at first we thought she wanted the pink and yellow ball: safe, rubber.
“No ball today,” he said and I agreed. She had many like it at home and if she wanted, we’d happily spill hundreds of balls across the hardwood floor, provided we were close enough to catch her when she inevitably tried to walk on them.
“No ball! Those,” she whispered in the awed tone that promised a fit if denied. She pointed at a box above the ball, deliberately placed where only older kids could reach. They were pretty, the colored glass monkeys, and for a second I felt that tiny twitch of longing for a child’s toy I still hoped to someday outgrow.
Before he could finish opening his mouth to tell her no, come along dear, I found myself reaching for them. They were gorgeous, made of tastefully dark glass but cartoonish in appearance and each one made a different, more frightful face.
I wanted them.
I looked to him, he looked at me. I saw in his eyes the knowledge of my trip to Disney World all on my own at the age of twenty-six and of the bookcase of children’s tales published this decade that came into a marriage that never intended to have a child. If someone was willing to sit with her through Bambi the two hundred fifty-sixth time, he didn’t complain.
The prospect of buying for myself something she wanted closed and turned down his ever-laughing mouth. Still when, monkey box still in hand, I hinted I had to go to the bathroom and they should continued on without me, without another word he pulled her away from the toys.
The bored teenager behind the cash register followed them with her eyes until I place the box on the counter. “Birthday present?” she inquired with a smile that begged me to talk to her for just a few more seconds than it would take me to make my purchase.
They went on the highest shelf on our closet, the one I needed a stool to reach, where I couldn’t see them. When I pushed the stool back in the corner, I noticed his feet out of the corner out of my eye. He said nothing; the guilt knotted in my stomach and hollowed it out. We went to bed like it was any other night.
He meant to put them on the table for me, though whether it was to absolve me or confront me will always be a mystery. He didn’t expect me to become engrossed in my book- a thriller with a raunchy, classless sex scene- or for her to wander out and find the box somehow magically home when Daddy had said no.
I snapped the book shut two and a half hours after I’d told him ten minutes. My slippers made a slapping noise on the floor all the way to the den, but she didn't stir in the middle of the wreckage on the floor.
All around her were glass monkeys, their faces still horribly distorted, but now they had reason. Most of them were drowning in finger-paint, some had colored pencils shoved so far up their noses and butts they’d been cracked nearly in two. I stood there, surveying them, picking out the dark purple that had been my favorite through the clear plastic on the box. His purple fur had been spared the paint, but he hadn't been spared the pencil. The crack ran all the way from his back side to the corner of one lip.
I could barely tear my eyes from his pain to check my daughter's hands for shards of glass.