Grin and Bear It

Flash Fiction

Content Warning: Violence, isolation, a miscarriage.

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I spent a long time smelling everything—the rot of leaves, the musk of mammals. The tang of trash makes my mouth water. It’s impossible to be embarrassed anymore. 

When I was given away at my wedding, it was from one violent man to another. My momma had to put white powder over my arms that day because my skin had yellow patches, like cheese gone bad. I didn’t know a damn thing when I wed Ray, and it was too late by the time I did. 

He never let me drive his truck. He harvested North Georgia pines for a living, for the paper mills. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house, but I did. I’d walk for hours down the dirt road until I saw a tractor. The forest used to scare me.

We didn’t have enough food. When I got pregnant, I begged him to let me get a job. 

“You wake up early, you can drop me off at the diner. I’ll make you coffee and—“

“You don’t make shit now. Grow somethin. With seeds. In the dirt. You see all that space? All that land? Good Lord.” He’d shake his head, tap the cigarette pack deeper into his breast pocket. “I have to tell you how to do everything, don’t I?”

The preacher had said that men should protect women, guide them like they do children. Women cannot fend for themselves. But that’s all I ever did. I wondered who Ray thought he was protecting me from, who my father thought he was protecting me from. 

Other men? The Devil?

I’ve found our house. The peeling wood, the red trim. I’d painted that. Thought I’d have people over sometime. Thought I’d have friends. But it’s quiet out here. I think it always will be. 

Trash smells like sour beer and ash. The bushes smell like man piss. I could’ve made it here with my eyes closed, truth be told. It’s nighttime, so I pretty much did. 

We never had stairs. It’s a one story home. There’s just the attic. 

“What in the hell?” Ray forced his way past me. He’d found my dolls up there. My porcelain dolls from Nana. My boxes, hidden under other boxes. He shook my little locked one. The last dream I ever had, he shook it to death. 

He broke the box’s cheap lock with his fingers and found my momma’s jewelry. It was her momma’s jewelry and it just went back and back like that and my momma said the necklace was from Ireland and the earrings were from Hawaii. Gold clasp earrings with a dangling pearl. A cross necklace with small diamonds. A tiny, ruby ring—that must’ve been fake. 

Ray stuffed my dim shimmers in his dirty overalls. Always stuffing and hiding, like a giant chipmunk. He was more fearful than he was angry. But he thought me weak, so he let me have it, like a territorial squirrel. 

He didn’t like ‘secrets.’

I scratched at his pocket, I was weeping because Momma was dead and Dad was dead and my sisters had moved far away. And now I couldn’t sit in the attic, look at my precious shimmers and remember when. 

He would pawn my dolls too. Said he should’ve done that long ago. I cried out, dug my dull nails into his wrist and pleaded. He cursed me, slapped me. I held onto my stomach, round with our kicking child. Ray’s eyes were glassy and something like pleasure made his thin mouth and red cheeks shiver, like a boy who forces the vase over just to see if it’ll break. He wasn’t even drunk when he pushed me out of the attic. 

I bled. There was a great stillness inside me. I truly died that day, and I don’t remember much after it. Red and emptied out on the linoleum floor.

I have fresher memories, stronger ones. Scents. Tastes. Claws digging into tree bark and ripping it. It feels so good, to cut deep into the pine, to fling chunks free with my great claws. It makes me feel just enormous, invincible, and warm. 

Mostly, I eat acorns. I try to recall which of my old neighbors used their rifles and go to the homes of those who didn’t, but I truly couldn’t tell you. Sometimes I lie to myself about things. I can’t speak a word, so the letters are shrinking out of my head. I’ve never felt smarter, though. I’m real quiet when I tip over trash cans. Then I wait for the raccoons and it’s quite a time. I’m always hungry, but I’ve never been so full. 

I’ve been too scared to come back to my old house. Ray’s house. But recently, like the letters fading, like my memories, my emotions change. I only feel danger when there’s really danger, and Ray was a terrible shot, even when he was sober. I can’t forget that. 

Trash bin’s empty outside, so the smell of garbage is coming from within. There’s nothing but a locked screen door between me and my husband. I run my black nails through it gently, and it rips like a spider web. My tongue finds the latch, and I lick and nip it til it’s free. 

My paws disturb cans on the ground. Crunch and crush potato chips. His door is open and his snores are louder than a dying animal. 

The scent of him almost shoves me back. Sweat. Dirt. Pine. Grease from fried chicken still on his lips and chin, making them glisten in the moonlight. I stand over our bed and feel bigger than the whole night sky. 

There’s no pleasure in it. I bring myself to pity him, but mostly, it’s a task to get done. Soon, it’ll be winter. My first. 

I start with his neck, a hot gush. My bites are big and I try not to chew, swallowing his soft flesh like rotten squash. Only the tendons and bones I bring to the back of my long mouth. I snap them so I don’t choke. It goes down like bad medicine, metallic and bright. Medicine is good for you. 

I wash myself in the creek, roll around in the cool water trickling between my furred ears. I spy shimmers in the wet clay, catching starlight. I listen to the owls and the bugs and the lonely cars on the nearby highway I remember not to go near. Ray is between my molars, his t-shirt touching my gums, his taste in the roof of my mouth, his body and soul in my gullet. Soon it’ll all be digested and gone, and I won’t remember. I’ll relish in the snap of my jaw, the rippling of my back. Hidden in my den, I’ll sleep in my fat and fur until spring takes hold. 

At last, a man who provides and protects me from the cold.