Angie

Angie is feeling "crabby," which really means, “like a spiny monster with two rows of serrated teeth is going to jump out of my throat and bite your face off and then turn on me and swallow me whole”.  Why?  Stepmother, or rather, stepbitch, Kate.

Angie:  I feel crabby.  A little crabby.  Kate would like that.  She would say, “Now honey, that’s what you ought to say instead of, for instance, ‘I feel like shit.’” 

I do understand what she means about not cursing, because I don’t want my mouth washed out with soap, which I know her mother ("who was a saint, bless her soul") used to do to Kate when she was a kid cause she told me – and I know she’ll do it to me if I push her. What I don’t really get is, what’s wrong with saying, “I feel like a spiny monster with two rows of serrated teeth is going to jump out of my throat and bite your face off and then turn on me and swallow me whole”.

     Because that’s how I feel, and I know Kate says it’s wrong to “harbor ill will,” and if she finds out she will beat my naked behind with my father’s belt or worse, her rhinestoned one -- until I don’t have any will left in me.  I get that.  But what I don’t get is how I’m supposed to feel when I was just chillin by the pool listening to some music, and she came up behind me, grabed my iPod and threw it into the pool.  She was laughing when I gave up on it, leaving it where it had floated down to the bottom.  She shook her head and laughed almost until she cried when I crawled out of the pool coughing and sputtering, shrunken and almost drowned from diving in after my music, the earbuds still hanging off my head.  Kate said “See, I told your father I could teach you to swim.”

    

     What you may be wondering now is not why I feel crabby, but how I didn’t push dark-bronze, highlighted Kate into the pool.  Well, let’s rewind and see what actually happened.  First I pretended my eyes were burning red from the chlorine, and I let her dab them with a towel.  I was shivering, and naturally she assumed that was because it is still fucking May and the water is not warm enough to swim – or drown – in yet.  She did not see the half-moons my nails dug into the center of my fists.  Kate did not see anything until I’d used all the brawn I’ve developed from four years of.  Used it to lift her, growl, “Eat shit and die bitch!” and dump her in the deep end.  Maybe I could’ve fished her out sooner, but see, Kate, I still can’t swim.

     Of course she washed my mouth out with soap.  Duh, a given.

     Whipped me with the belt, called my father, sent me to my room, the works.  I don’t care about that, and it’s not what’s making me crabby.  A little crabby.

     I’m crabby because it’s what my mom used to say whenever she got her period. I’m a little crabby because I just found the first red dot in my underwear, and I don’t know what to do.  My back thuds with a dull ache and I’m afraid to go to the downstairs and ask Kate for something, you know—

     I know Kate’s right, there is a monster inside me, and I know it’s also capable of turning on me, but can it swallow me whole?  I wish.