The following is a fictional short story (though reflective of many realities) that I’ve written as a bit of a distraction from the editing work I’m doing on my novel. It feels great to post something again after so long! Please share your thoughts if you feel so inclined. And thanks for reading.

My bum hurts on this hard floor. The shower stopped a long time ago, but she still hasn’t come out. I want to go to the living room where the floor is carpety, but I’ll wait. I want to see secret pieces of her, pieces that my eyes have fun with.

The door opens, I tuck behind the table. Today, her steps are slow even though she’s naked.

I don’t know where to put my eyes first; she’s like the ocean tanks at the aquarium with lots of special things to see all at once. Her wet hair is combed into faraway rows of corn. Her boobs hang long and loose and have big circles at the ends. I think how maybe she leaned over two cans of brown paint, her tips dipping into each, and then pulled them out, letting the drips at the ends dry. Her frontside gone, I watch her two pumpkin cheeks take turns moving up and down as she walks, like they’re playing on a teeter totter.

I think I make a sound because she turns and sees me looking. Whoop! Her eyes go big and her steps go faster. She wraps one arm around her boobs and the other down her backside, her fingers spread across her bum like I did once when I was really sick. She closes her bedroom door quickly behind her like a bug is about to fly in.

My fingers tingle, thinking about when I would push my hands between the folds of skin on her sides, a stack of warm pancakes. Then I’d put my nose to her armpit and sink it into the crease so I could smell who she is. And she’d laugh.

I can’t do that anymore. Her body goes stiff and she says, “Don’t touch Mommy’s fat!” the way Mrs. Donker tells me not to touch her mean dog.

She comes out of her bedroom now, dressed in her comfies, her boobs all tucked up. I put my hands on my chest and push hard; I don’t think I’ll tuck mine up when I’m older.

“You’re a nosey little one,” she says. “Always peeking when you shouldn’t be.” I look at my Polly Pocket and move her legs because I don’t know what to say. I’m mad at my eyes for always wanting to look when they shouldn’t. I squeeze them shut.

But then, she gets fun and says, “Baby girl, do you want some ice cream?”

“Yes!” I say, jumping up from the floor, so happy to think about ice cream instead. “With chocolate sauce!” She takes in a big breath to think. “Pleeease.”

“Okay, with chocolate sauce. But you know what that means.” I forgot what that means so I just bounce up and down, I want to show her how happy I am. I say, “Yay-yay-yay,” when I bounce and it makes a fun feel in my neck so I do it more.

“Stop it!” Her fun is gone and I don’t know where it went. “You shouldn’t get so excited about treats.” She gets madder as she tries to get the bucket of ice cream out from behind a box of waffles. I sit at the kitchen table and wait with my feet hooked together and my hands tucked between my legs to keep them from looking excited.

I don’t know if it will be a big bowl day or a little bowl day. She reaches into the cupboard and grabs a Peter Rabbit bowl I used when I was a baby; it’s a little bowl day. But I’m still happy. Almost as happy but a little sad somewhere in my head. And my tummy.

While I wait, I look at Grandma’s square table with gold flecks on top that I tried to dig out with my fork last night. Because Mommy says we don’t have enough money since Daddy left. That’s why we’re at Grandma’s. I count the sides of the table—one, two, three, four—and think how it should have one person on each side, but it only ever has three now.

She sets the bowl of ice cream in front of me. “Why are you looking that way?” she says. She saw my less happy even though I tried hard. “You’re the one who wanted chocolate sauce. Extra calories so less ice cream, right?” That’s what I forgot. “If it’s in a smaller bowl, it looks bigger.” I try to imagine the same scoop in a bigger bowl but it’s hard. I just know it would look bigger if it were bigger.

I nod to Mommy and dip the tip of my spoon into the sauce and scrape just a little bit off the top so I can see the white underneath. I want to make it last forever, but that doesn’t last long, and I start taking big scoops. It’s so good. And then, I feel her staring at me, but not in the way I stare at her when she’s naked and doesn’t know I’m watching.

“Slow down. You look like a starving dog you’re eating so fast.” She sits down at the number two side of the table. I swallow and look at the spoonfuls left in my bowl, I just want to eat them. My spoon has chocolate sauce on the handle, and I lick it, but then I quickly look at Mommy because maybe a starving dog would do that too. I don’t want her staring at me, I want her to have fun eating with me like she usually does.

“Where’s your bowl, Mommy?” I say. She loves ice cream almost as much as me, and she loves chocolate sauce even more.

“No, Mommy isn’t allowed ice cream today. She hasn’t been a good girl.” She stretches her shirt out and looks down at it like it told her a sad story. I think the story is about Daddy. I stretch my shirt out too, like a tent for my tummy, and then smooth it back down. We both have a donut tummy and I laugh because there’s a drip of chocolate sauce right where my bellybutton is. I look up to tell her, but her face crunches up like she’s got a bad gas pain. She looks up to the ceiling. I look too but nothing is there. I see water make a line down her face and fall in her ear, and I look at the ceiling again to see if it’s leaking. But it’s not and I look at my ice cream. I think it’s sad too; it has dripping, brown tears.

I get up from my chair and hug her from the side, one of my arms over her tucked-ups and the other I push between her squishy back and the chair. My hand hurts against the chair, but I don’t move even a little, hoping she doesn’t tell me not to touch her fat.

“Who told you you can’t have ice cream?” I ask. I would be crying too if someone called me a bad girl and wouldn’t give me ice cream. Maybe it was Daddy and that’s why she told him to leave. Maybe it was Grandma who yelled at her last night for not getting out of bed. My mind is full of thinking why she’s crying and who called her bad.

And then I think an idea that makes me mad. “Did Debbie call you bad? ‘Cause she’s the one that’s bad.” She’s Daddy’s girlfriend. Mommy’s chest lifts and it pulls my body up, but I hang on. I think it was a laugh, but I don’t know how she could be laughing and crying.

“Oh baby girl, no, she didn’t call me bad.” I think maybe she’s smiling a little by the way her voice is, but I don’t look. I just keep as still as I can, holding on, pressing my ear onto her heartbeat.

“Then why don’t you have some ice cream to help you feel better? You always do that and it helps.”

I can feel her face stop smiling on top of my head. She squirms and I let go. That was a bad thing to say.

I sit back down to finish my ice cream and chocolate sauce. I think about why she could be bad enough to not get ice cream. I think about how she could be bad when she’s so good. I think about how I don’t know how to make her happy again when me touching her used to make her happy.

“You’re a really good girl, you know,” I say in my quiet voice. I don’t look at her in case I see that it doesn’t make her feel better.

She lets out another laugh that sounds like a cry and lifts my bowl to take it to the sink. Before it leaves, I quickly peek inside because I can’t believe it’s empty and I’m not full.