If the Creek Don't Rise

by Leah Weiss

Daddy’s spirit voice comes soft from behind my open eyes. “You got yourself in a pickle this time. No two ways about it. That husband of yours won’t stop till you and your baby draw your last breath. You don’t even look like yourself no more. He broke bout every piece of sweet in you. You gonna let him break your spirit, too? You gonna do nothing?”

Daddy loves me better in death than he ever did in life.

I thought she was jealous cause I was happy. I thought I was smart and loved a bad man turned good. I’ve been on a losing streak a long time.

I was a fool hanging hope on a weak man I thought would stand tall if we got married.

Fifteen days has gone by since that piece of paper got signed. Roy beats on me pretty regular cause nobody stops him. I thought we got married for a mighty reason. I thought I was special to him. I musta made it all up, cause none of it’s true.

Sleep is gonna come. It always does, but so do rememberings. Sometimes they take me places I don’t wanna go. Sometimes they take me places I don’t wanna leave. I never know where I’m going when I climb in this featherbed.

At first light, I hear grandgirl Sadie in the hall outside my bedroom door, then she’s gone back to where she belongs. I don’t call out but let her and that baby inside her leave. I got to cause she’s the only one who can clean up her own mess.

Life’s too shitty. For a old woman, it’s more shit than I can shovel.

Proverbs 22:6 says, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’

It’s strange how some folks tell a tale. They go round and round cause the story is a little biddy thing that needs a lot of fluff to make it big enough to be told in the first place.

What I saw when I looked at Carly was hungry. Won’t a thing in this place that could fill her up. Like she was starved for different and won’t settle for usual.

She’s got lessons to learn, and life’s one bugger of a teacher.