ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 113
Annabelle has left the bathroom, and wrapped herself in tight
blue cloth from her waist up, and loose red cloth from her waist
down, bright coloration made lovelier for its compliment to her skin.
It is hot inside of the house, as it is outside of the house, and though
the water that the woman had used to clean her skin until her skin
was sore with the rubbing is gone, she is sweating. She wipes some
of it from her upper lip and snorts through a half a sneer. She is
standing in one of the three rooms with beds, and looking at her
hands again.
“God damn it,” she says.
Later today she will be looking at her sister, while their mother
will be sitting, narrowing her eyes, in front of the ugly house, as if
she were attempting to see through the encroaching darkness her
eyes are metamorphosing into. The relation between these three
women and the men the Elder does not talk about is a family. Mistakenly, none of them ever has will ever say so. Jude belongs to the
woman at whom the younger Annabelle will look. Like her, Jude’s
skin is very light, like water with coffee beans’ oil and milk mixed in
and stirred a bit, and heated. Together, the mechanism of this family,
its flaws, is greater than the perfection of its ideal, obscuring its
truth as foliage obscures the trunk that uplifts it, the roots that feed.
“It was a fucking accident,” Annabelle will say, “Wouldn’t’ve happened if you took fucking care of your own fucking baby.”
“I haven’t yelled at you yet Annie, but you talk that nonsense like I
did, and I will.”
“You come to Lemon and talk this shit and act like a fucking queen
and—”
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