Bad Fruit

by Ella King

Do you know what men do, Lily? They MAS-TUR-BATE. Men do whatever they want, don’t you know that, Lily?

Together, we watch an episode of the perfect rescue mission where heroes know what to do and drowning people can be saved.

This is how it starts, secreting yourself away. This is how I end up like Mama.

I look at Julia then, the devastation behind her unflinching exterior a mirror of my own. She will sketch these images forever, mother and child, mother and child, trying to solve the dark clot of a question we dare not utter even to ourselves: If our mother loves us, why does she hurt us?

“There’s an old Jewish teaching about how rumor is like a feather pillow split open to the wind. You can never get back all the feathers.”