Chapter 1 - The Mark in the Dirt
My stepfather stood in our backyard holding a rattan cane. My mother watched from the porch while my twenty-six-year-old stepsister pointed her iPhone at my face.
I’d committed a terrible crime, apparently. I’d sent $200 of my own hard-earned money to my grandmother.
"You're thirty-two years old," Harold Briggs snarled, his voice dropping into that low, flat register he used whenever he wanted to strip someone of their breath. "You should know better than to steal from the household."
I stared at him, my fingernails biting into my palms until the skin went white. "Steal? I earned that money teaching summer classes online. Every single cent."
He tapped the cane against his palm with a dry, rhythmic *thwack*. "Under my roof, I decide where the money goes. You live here. You consume resources. You follow the chain of command."
Behind him, Tara let out a shrill, mocking laugh. "Come on, Mara. You're a high school teacher. You should understand basic discipline. Or did your husband leave you because you couldn't follow rules there, either?"
A hot spike of humiliation flared behind my eyes. I looked past them, toward the woman who had brought me into this world. "Helen? Are you seriously going to stand there and let this happen?"
My mother gripped the porch railing with both hands. Her knuckles were bloodless. She wouldn't meet my gaze, staring down at the cracked gray paint beneath her feet. "Sweetheart, just apologize. Please. Don't make a scene."
Harold took another heavy step forward, his work boots sinking into the dry Georgia soil. "Your mother isn't going to save you. Down. Now."
The cane snapped against the dirt an inch beside my sneaker. The crack was sharp like a small-caliber gunshot, kicking up dry dust.
I flinched. My body betrayed me before my pride could hold its ground.
Tara moved closer, circling me like a scavenger, tilting the phone to catch my face in the full glare of the midday sun. "Oh, that's perfect. Do that again. Look at the camera, Miss Keaton."
My legs buckled. Slowly, bitterly, I lowered myself onto my knees. The coarse Savannah dirt burned through the denim of my jeans, sharp pebbles digging into my kneecaps.
Harold smiled. It wasn't a smile of amusement; it was the cruel, satisfied grin of a retired correctional officer seeing an inmate back in line. "Now we're making progress."
Tara leaned down and grabbed a fistful of my hair, wrenching my skull backward toward the lens. "Look at the phone, teacher. Smile for your students."
"Get your hands off me!" I jerked violently away, tearing strands loose.
"Someone's still got an attitude," Tara scoffed, checking her screen to make sure the angle was clear. "Maybe Dad needs to show you how they handle insubordination."
Harold raised the cane again, his shoulder drawing back.
"Harold Briggs! What in God's name do you think you're doing?"
The voice cut through the heavy summer air like a blade.
Nobody moved. Harold froze, the cane suspended at the apex of its arc.
Across the low chain-link fence separating our properties, Mrs. Ethel Carter stood by her hydrangeas. She was seventy years old, wearing gardening gloves, and holding an old flip-phone pressed tightly against her ear. Her dark eyes were fixed on Harold with absolute, unblinking disgust.
Harold lowered the cane slowly, his posture shifting in a split second from predator to respectable neighbor. "This doesn't concern you, Ethel. Go back inside."
"That's funny," she said, her voice carrying clear down the quiet block. "Because the police dispatch seems to think it concerns everyone on Bay View Street."
Tara’s hand dropped. Her iPhone slipped into her back pocket.
For the first time since I had dragged my three cardboard boxes into this house six months ago, I watched Harold Briggs lose his smile.
"You're making a mistake, Ethel," Harold warned, his voice tight.
"Get up, Mara," Mrs. Carter commanded softly, looking right at me. "Get up off that dirt and go inside."
May you like
I rose on shaking legs, brushing the red clay from my jeans, my heart pounding so violently I could hear it ringing in my ears. I didn't look at Harold. I didn't look at Tara. And most of all, I didn't look at my mother, who had already retreated into the shadows of the screened porch, closing the door behind her without a sound.
***
