By Sydney Salter

My stomach knots with anticipation—bad and good—every time I pull up to the house. I dread seeing how the yard looks like crap. Grass gone weedy. Dead patches. Shrubs not trimmed. And then there’s Christina’s condescending smile. “How are you?” she asks.

“Doing great,” I’ll say, rolling down the window of my fourteen-year-old Corolla. I’m still making payments on the three-year-old minivan that she drives. For the kids, of course. I gave her the house, too. For the kids. Only she doesn’t take care of it. Too busy taking classes. She’s going to be a nurse now. Probably end of marrying some uptight doctor who’ll buy my kids anything they want. I’m sunk in the fantasy when the girls bound out of the house shouting, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

At least we got divorced before the kids were old enough to completely absorb her disdain for me. Grace is eight, a shy bookish girl who loves animals of all kinds, but keeps to herself too much, maybe. Olivia is six and bounces with every step. The girl radiates energy from her mess of curls to her untied shoes. Everything she does is turned up to the loudest volume. Exactly like her mom.

I met Christine while playing for the company softball team. I drove a delivery truck. I still do as long as I can manage to outperform the cheaper seasonal workers who show up every October and to try to steal my job. I deliver more and more efficiently—sprinting packages to doorsteps—to justify the extra buck-fifty an hour. And I still live in a depressing hole of an apartment that smells like poo, according to Olivia.

I’ll probably never be good enough for her either.

Back in the beginning I loved Christina’s energy—her easy smile. I loved the way she teased me in the outfield, comfortable with the guys, the way girls who were popular in high school learn to be. Christina was the hot receptionist. A buddy dared me to ask her out.

We fell in love—got married, got pregnant, bought a house, fell apart.

Now I only want my kids to like me.

Love me.

Love me best, even though I only have partial custody. Christina turned religious to mess with me. Now she’s got to take them to church leaving me with Friday nights until Saturday at 8PM sharp—and more existential questions than I’m prepared to answer. “Why doesn’t God like people who drink beer, Daddy?” Grace asked when I opened a bottle to drink with the plain cheese pizza I ordered to be a popular dad. Fun dad!

The girls clamber into the back seat.

“It’s too tight!” Olivia complains about the booster seat straps. “I don’t like it.”

“Have you grown since last Saturday?” I tease. “Are you going to grow as big as the icy snow monster in Frozen?”

Ollie laughs. “Nooo!”

“She’s just fat,” Grace says. “She eats too many carbs.”

“I do not!”

Grace tickles her fingers toward Ollie, chanting, “Carbs. Carbs. Carbs,” as Ollie, restrained by the straps, reaches and screeches. Holy crap. They’re just little kids. “Where are you hearing all this nonsense?” I ask, and then I remember to be a good dad. “Ollie, you are not fat. You are just right.”

“Mommy can’t eat glue anymore,” Ollie says.

“Gluten, stupid.”

“I’m not stupid.” Ollie groans as her sister hovers outside her reach.

“Stoooopid.” The girl can be mean like her mother. Something in Grace’s voice is like Christina’s too. But she’s half you, I remind myself. She needs you.

Ollie explains, “Mommy’s trying not to be fat.”

So she’s already thinking about—or actually beginning to—date again. I imagine her smiling over a plate of fettuccine at some stranger she met online, who probably lied about his profile, who could be a child molester for all she knows, and what if she brings him home, where my kids are sleeping, so she can act like a—only months after our divorce. Guess some people don’t need time to mend emotional wounds. No, she wouldn’t eat fettuccine. Too many carbs. She’d have a salad, even though she used to be the kind of woman who wasn’t afraid to tear into a cheeseburger.

“Mommy used to eat plenty of carbs.” More than once, we’d share a large pizza and a pitcher of beer after a softball game, and end up fooling around in the backseat of this Corolla. Couldn’t get enough of each other. Back when it was a new car, not crusted with kid spills. “You shouldn’t listen to Mommy about that stuff.”

Grace stares at me with an open mouth. How dare I question her mother! Oracle of all things. Ollie doesn’t pay attention. She’s too busy stretching her foot out to tap her sister’s foot, which will enrage her, of course.

“Where shall we go?” I speak too cheerfully, a friendly dad voice that sounds too fake. I’m always trying too hard to be fun and likeable. Loveable. Better than mom, if I’m admitting things to myself. Providing an alternative, according to my support group leader.

“Disneyland!” Ollie shouts.

“Unfortunately, that’s hundreds of miles away, so— Mickey Mouse will have to wait until another time.” The girls understand, probably subconsciously, possibly not—given that they’re half Christina—that they can take advantage of my desperation to be a great dad, so every negotiation starts big. Too big. Spinning my own fun family vacation fantasy, I quietly say, “Someday.”

“Fun center!”

Ollie chants, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.”

Twenty-five bucks for adults. Fifteen each for kids. Plus six dollar sodas and terrible twenty dollar pizza. It’s the end of the month. Rent’s coming. Christina’s punitive child support. House and minivan aren’t enough. She needs a third of my paycheck too. I wish I actually had cheated on her—or done something terrible so that this pain made sense.

“How about the park?”

Grace’s frown fills my rearview mirror. “We did that last time.”

Sounds like her mother. Nothing is ever enough. I’m never enough. The girls keep whining as I drive past the ice cream shop, the expensive one that mixes candy into everything, and past fast food favorite number one, and two. I can’t keep buying stuff.

“We’re going to have a family dinner at home—like we used to. Remember?”

“You don’t cook.” Again that tone of voice.

“I’m learning. It’s good to learn new things, right?”

Grace nods, lips pursed. I can feel her comparing me to other kids’ divorced dads: restaurant dinners, trampoline parks, ice cream, cupcakes, toy stores… The way Christina compared me to other husbands: restaurant dinners—

“What can you cook?” Ollie asks.

“Mac and cheese!” I grin.

“That has carbs,” Grace reminds me.

I lie. “Not the way I make it.”

“Oh, no waaay,” Grace says. “You’re not making it with spaghetti squash are you?”

What has Christine been feeding them? Turning them into unwilling vegetarians just so she can get her body in shape to attract some potential pedophile.

“I’m making the kind from the box.”

“I like that kind best, Daddy.”

“Thank you, Ollie. I appreciate that.”

The air is still warm as we race toward the swing sets. Kids crawl everywhere, and I lose track of the girls as they disappear into the hamster tube connecting the slides. Maybe I could buy a small pet, so they’d quit bugging me about missing the cats at my house. Ollie claims she can’t sleep without that mangy beast near her pillow. Christina always maintained that men who didn’t like cats didn’t like women. So what did it mean that she refused to get a dog? Man’s best friend and everything? Proves that she’s judgmental and heartless and cold. I’ll adopt a dog—a sweet shelter mutt that the girls and I pick out together—once I get a better place. One that allows pets. Maybe if I amp it up at work, I’ll get promoted to route supervisor. I could buy a condo, or a foreclosure with a big yard. I’ll fix it up on the weekends. I picture myself hauling around two-by-fours, shirtless in jeans. Six-pack abs. A tall, young-ish girlfriend brings me beers. The kids adore her. She’s fun. So much fun. It’s all so much fun.

Screeching interrupts my fantasy. I hate the playground. Movies are so much easier. Dozing in the dark. Kids crunching on Christina-forbidden candy—

I scan the playground for the poor sucker who’s got to deal with the screamer. Can’t find the girls. I’m not used to their growing shapes anymore, not seeing them daily.

Turns out the sucker is me.

I spot clouds of dust—poof, poof, poof—above the small tube slide. The decibel-level of Ollie’s scream surprises me as I walk close enough to see her scooping armfuls of sand and tossing them into the air. Aiming at younger children. Grace has wisely distanced herself from the melee. A two-year-old stands blubbering in the middle of the sandstorm Ollie is creating. His mother swoops into the dust, shouting, “Stop that! Right now.” Ollie bends to gather more ammunition, but the angry mother shoves her elbows causing her to drop most of her supply.

“She’s mine!” I run into the sand pit before the woman can shove Ollie again. “I’ll handle it. So sorry. So sorry.”

“She could have blinded my son!” The woman grows increasingly hysterical. “Look at his eyes. Oh, my poor baby, my baby. What is wrong with her?” She coos to her son. “Let Mommy look. What did that bad girl do to you?”

Ollie’s face looks blank as she stands stiff, sand drizzling from clenched fists. I reach out to her, but she flings the remaining sand into my face. The sting makes my eyes water.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Stop it, Olivia.” More sand pings my skin. Eyes pinched shut, watering against the scratch of the grit, I hear the exodus around us.

Let’s get out of here. Some people can’t control their kids. What a monster. I’d kick her ass, I would. Psychopath. Can’t even take your kid to the goddamn playground anymore.

Ollie continues to throw sand like a pitching machine—whack, whack, whack. Watching her with one open eye, I make my move, scooping her into my arms and hefting her over my shoulder as she squalls like a wounded cat. Her hands scratch and hit my face, neck and back while her feet pummel my side. One strike hits my nuts knocking me with stunning pain.

People gape at us. The spectacle. An entire Little League team on the adjacent baseball field stops practice to gawk.

Ollie starts yelling, “I don’t wanna leave yet!”

“You cannot throw sand.” Demonstrate calm. “We’re going home now.”

“Our home or your apartment?” Grace asks from a few paces behind.

“Our home at my apartment.”

“Nooo!” Fists beat a choppy rhythm into my back. “It stinks. I hate you.” Rage radiates from her along with heat, sweat, and tears. My arms ache with restraining her, protecting my neck. The kid wants to hurt me. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

I blink fast hoping to release the grit in my eye. “Hushhhh. Hushhhh.” I soothe her like an infant, although that was never easy either. Or effective. I rock and hum as she thrashes like a kid on ecstasy in a mosh pit.

I might be humming to calm myself.

Just get to the car. Just get to the car. Just get to the car.

Grace stands next to the locked Corolla as if nothing unusual is occurring. I’m not sure how to get the keys out of my pocket without putting Ollie down. I’m afraid that she’ll bolt. Rush into the carpool traffic gathering at Little League practice.

A round motherly type approaches us. Just what I need. If people could just stay out of our business. Our family. Just let us be. Let us solve our own issues. On our own. We would be fine. Christine and I would’ve been fine without that opinionated therapist, and her snooty Pilates friends.

“Let me help. Hey, there sweet, Olivia.”

Diane. I recognize that condescending voice. The neighbor with four perfect little athletes and a well-trained Golden Retriever. I’ve hated the woman since she advised me to buy a different lawn fertilizer. Can’t afford that brand, Diane. Bet she loves seeing me struggle. She’ll be able to prattle to all her pals over nonfat pumpkin spice lattes. “So guess who I saw? Poor dumb Eric. He absolutely cannot control those girls.” She’ll click her tongue, I’ve heard her do it a thousand times. “She’s so much better off without him.”

“I’m fine, Diane. Thank you.” I squeeze Ollie tight, as if I can anaconda the anger now walloping both of us. Instantly she calms, the way swaddling worked when she was a newborn. How did I forget? Ollie sucks down a few hiccup-y breaths. Yes. Yes. I keep her firm in my arms, stroke her damp hair with the tips of my fingers.

Diane smiles, satisfied. As if she single-handedly solved the tantrum simply by exerting her calm, well-behaved presence of parental perfection.

Ollie eyes her, and calmly states, “You’re a fat bitch.”

“Oh, my!” Diane’s face reddens as her eyes widen. “Such. Language. Young lady.”

“Bitch. Bitch. Fat-fat-fat.”

“Ollie! Apologize!” I turn toward Diane. “I am so sorry,” I mumble, hating the humble tone in my voice. “I don’t know where she picks up this stuff—?” I’m already debating if it’s worth approaching Christina about the foul language issue again. Christina used to call Diane by the code name Nosey B. I guess now she’s focusing on fat-shaming the woman more than critiquing her overall demeanor. Diane seems to be waiting for a confession of some sort, but I only shrug.

“Certainly not from her mother,” Diane says, proving that she knows nothing about my ex-wife. “But you can be sure that she’ll hear about this—”

I blink. “Of course.”

I picture Diane marching across the dandelions in the weedy lawn to give Christina the scoop about the tantrum, the lack of parental skill, and topping it off with a cherry: vulgarity. Will Christina see herself? Or will she find a way to blame me. Diane shouts across the field to greet her son as I buckle Ollie into her car seat. The kid’s limp with fatigue. Grace acts rather nonchalant. So like her mother. “Can we stop for ice cream?”

“No. It’s full of fucking carbs.”

By Lauren Miller

The chapel was teeming with sweltering, sweat-slick bodies. We were glowing. Filled with God. Men stood with fiddles made from spruce trees and women shouted praises as the music grew louder, holding their babies up towards the rafters as if they were offering lambs for
the slaughter. The flesh of my cheek was all that I had tasted in days. I felt the hunger reverberate in the shaking of my hands as I raised them above my head, but nothing else mattered as I watched Cyrus move across the stage. Not even the feverishness permeating my skin from my
mother’s overheated body could draw my attention from him.
He was speaking a language none of us understood, slurring words sent from the Lord and letting them drip onto the little boy he held in his arms. It was the newborn son of one of the congregation members who lived outside the ranch. Cyrus didn’t often let strangers onto the
property, but this was the grandson of one of his oldest disciples. The child, who was only a few weeks old, had been born blind. One of his eyes never opened. Cyrus said that he would live a life half-asleep, one eye always roaming, looking for the Devil.
“This child,” he said, “this dear, dear child. He was born with evil inside him.”
The boy, who was called Isaiah, looked up at Cyrus with a silence I had never witnessed in a human before. I wondered what kind of sins his mother had committed to create that sort of unnatural quiet.
Cyrus held the baby to his chest, swaying back and forth, whispering something into his ear. The child stared up at him with his one good eye as if he was seeing the sun for the first time after knowing only fog. It was the way everyone looked at the Messiah. Cyrus continued to
murmur to the child, his lips circling around the prayer in the most beautiful oval shape. His mouth hadn’t touched my skin in so long. I ached for it even more than I ached for food.
After a few more seconds of muttering, Cyrus held up his palm, asking for the musicians to cease. The hush that overtook the crowded chapel was immediate. The only noise carrying on was the sound of Isaiah’s parents weeping. The Messiah gazed out into the congregation with his
face sweat-slick and gleaming. The hues of the stained glass skylight above the stage casted a crimson shadow across his face, morphing the perspiration into blood.
“This child needs to be cleansed of his wickedness. He needs to become holy in the heart of the Lord so that he may follow Christ with perfect sight.”
Shouts bellowed from the throats of the congregation as we celebrated the miracle that was about to occur. I opened my mouth and hollered, screaming as loud as my lungs would allow. I wanted him to hear me. I wanted anyone to hear me.
Cyrus nodded in acknowledgement of our praise and waited for us to calm before he spoke again. “God asks the faithful to lay their hands on the sick, for they shall be healed by the
true believer.” He looked out into the crowd, eyes glazing across people’s faces, until he reached mine. My stomach writhed under his stare and I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat as his
gaze intensified. My trembling fingers grew still. Whatever hunger had been growing inside my body was gone. “Lou Parson, will you join me, please?”
I had only heard my name in the voice of the Messiah once before, during my baptism. He never invited others onto the stage when he was preaching. Even those who played music for the services stood in the altar rather than on the wooden platform, because Cyrus said that the
Word of God was the only thing we should hear with complete clarity.
I felt the sure, guiding hand of my mother press against the small of my back, and I turned towards her. She nodded, just as the Messiah had, and shifted so that I could leave the pew our family was sitting in. Envy penetrated the air, rising from the rest of the congregation like the uncomfortable wet of morning dew. I willed my body to stand, and began to pray, asking God to give me mercy for the pride that I felt with each step I took towards the Messiah. A lightness was boiling over inside me. It was sinful and ugly and I had to bite my lips to keep from grinning at the pleasure of it all.
When I reached the stairs, the Messiah beckoned me closer with one pinkish hand, still holding the child with his other. “Lou,” he said when I approached, “are you a true believer?”
“Yes,” The word was hurried as it left my tongue. I glanced at the crowd of my neighbors, waiting for someone to object to my response, but no one did. They looked so inconsequential from where I now stood. Not people, just bodies. I knew then that this was what God felt like. I looked at the Messiah and waited.
“A true believer shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall be healed.” As the Messiah spoke these words, he bent down at the edge of the platform and handed Isaiah back to the arms of his father. His eyes never left mine as he stepped back to the podium where the Bible was closed, waiting, waiting, waiting. Cyrus opened the Book, exposing a long piece of silver that shone in the dappled morning light. His touch was delicate as he lifted the knife from the pages. “A true believer, if he shall be righteous, will hold the Balm of Gilead in their veins.”
Cyrus held the weapon out for me to take and I knew without question what was being asked of me. To bleed was to heal.
My body stilled. I glanced at my mother’s face in the crowd, at the child. My stomach writhing as I hesitated, the pungentness of my fear. Cyrus did not waver. He knew that I was going to obey, and after a moment, I took the knife. My hand was clenched into a fist that I forced open with the jagged edge of my fingernail, and then I laid the tip of the blade along the length of my palm, from my middle finger to my wrist. If the congregation was making noise, I could not hear it. I was not aware of anything but the coolness of the blade on my palm and the steadfast eyes of the Messiah. I took a breath, inhaling the scent of sweat and God, and I pressed the knife into my flesh. Blood rose from the cut and I sunk my teeth into my tongue to keep from
screaming at the horrible ripping open of my flesh. The Messiah stepped forward, taking my injured hand in his. He lifted my palm, the blood spilling out from the incision onto the wooden floor of the stage. He looked at me, and he beamed, kissing my marred skin. When he lifted his face to look at me, his mouth was the color of a poppy bloom.
“Beautiful,” said the Messiah. “Just beautiful.”
I heard the truth in his words and smiled. I watched the blood spill out of my veins and it was so astoundingly beautiful. Light radiated from every inch of my body. There was no more pain, no more doubt.
I walked to the edge of the stage and knelt, just as the Messiah had done moments before, holding out my hand so that my palm hovered above the baby. The blood trickled from my hand onto the infant’s face, splattering against his forehead. His face turned sour, as if preparing to weep, and then the boy opened both eyes and looked at me with wide, blue irises, seeing everything there was to see.
Although they couldn’t see the boy’s face, the congregation began to holler, clapping their hands, and shouting praises. Even the youngest children, ones who had only heard of miracles happening before, knew what they were witnessing. We all knew who the Messiah was.
We all had faith. Glorious, gorgeous faith that spilled out of us like blood.
Cyrus moved beside me, reaching for the child. The boy’s father held him out to The Messiah without even a moment of hesitation. His wife fell to the ground, hands grasping at the dirt-encrusted carpeting of the altar, writhing from the force of the sobs that echoed throughout
her body. The father was pious, quiet, waiting. Cyrus looked out into the reverberating crowd, and then to me. He turned the baby so that only I could see him.
“Lou,” he said, “tell me what you see.”
I flinched, unsure of what he wanted to hear. “His eyes are open.”
“How do you know?”
I flicked my gaze away. “Because I can see them.”
“But how do you know that your eyes are open?”
“Because my heart is holy. Because I have God in me.” I had been baptized five years ago, and ever since then, each Sunday during worship, I would partake in the same ritual as the adults. Cyrus knew when you were ready to hold God not only in your heart or your soul, but in your earthly vessel.
On this day we had not yet done it, and Cyrus led me back to the podium where the Bible and the bloodied knife sat, waiting or forgotten, I didn’t know which. Perhaps there wasn’t truly a difference. There was one other thing on the rostrum; a little bowl filled with white powder.
I gazed at Cyrus. Isaiah had been placed in the arms of his parents. Maybe he’d never left them. I couldn’t see anything but Cyrus, and I wondered if this was how the boy felt. His parents looked down at his face, marred with my drying blood, and his eyes were clouded, unfocused. Open, but seeing nothing. Isaiah’s eyes roamed toward the Messiah’s voice but couldn’t find its source. His parents cooed at him, wiggling their fingers as if they were worms over his line of eyesight. He didn’t blink.
Cyrus motioned for me to stand next to him and placed the moonscape of his thumb onto my bottom lip, pulling it down over my chin, exposing the flesh and bone of my mouth. His finger tasted of saline and I couldn’t resist swallowing the saliva that pooled with his sweat on
my tongue. With his other hand Cyrus swiped at the powder that shifted inside its porcelain bowl. His eyes were wide as he pressed the dust into my gums, his pupils dilating, a wild grin forming at the sensation of my spit on his skin. Bitterness filled my mouth as the powder seemed to seep into my blood. Cyrus placed his hands on my cheeks and kissed my forehead, his lips warm and wet.
“The bones of Jesus are within you,” he said, and I nodded, allured by what I knew was to come. The powder and its euphoria. It had a different name outside the ranch, but I didn’t know it. All I knew was the brightness and the bitterness and the beauty. He then waved his hand towards the crowd, indicating for them to stand. “Anyone who has been blessed by the Water and the Father may come to taste the skeleton of the Lord.”
There was a tumbling of movement throughout the chapel as people stood, waiting for the others in their pew to line up at the steps of the stage, one by one readying themselves for Cyrus to place some of the white powder in their opened mouths. As people began to climb the
stairs, I turned to go back to my seat, but the Messiah caught my bloodied hand in his own. He pulled me into his body so that his voice could only be heard by my ears.
“God has chosen you, Lou,” he said, kissing me again, this time on the lips. I could taste my blood on his mouth. He looked at me and smiled.
As I passed Isaiah’s parents on my way back to the pew where my family sat, I glanced at the boy, searching for the blue, but all there were were little pinkish eyelids on a sleeping child who would never wake.