words_for_what_has_not_grown

Down on the banks of the creek below her backyard, she is allowed to get lost. Mama said so. "Go, get lost." So she did. She finds a flat boat on the bank that probably washed down from one of the new people next door. Mama thinks they're ruining the neighborhood but the little girl likes them because they pass by on the boat quiet and let her watch.

She pushes at one bank then the other with a rusted oar. In the middle the nettles can't reach her and make her skin sing horrible songs.

When the river flattens at the dam, there is nowhere else to go. She tries to make music on her way home. The words she makes never fit.

The first thing Mama does is scream. Mama screams at the little girl with weeping skin. The girl starts to cry, too. That's when Mama leaves to her bedroom. A drawer drags open. In it the two things she needs: to hurt and to forget. Mama bumps into the jamb on the way back, and stops in the middle of the room and sways next to where the girl is still crying.

"Why are you doing this to me?" Mama says. She looks down at the girl, and then with one slow blink shifts her eyes out the window. They stand there like that, Mama lost in the sun that stamps out everything and the little girl crying in unchanged song. Mama was beginning to forget. "Stop it, enough."

And she does. The little girl stops crying and she looks up at Mama. "How old am I?"

Mama looks over from the window, looks down into the girl's wet face, and shakes her head. She looks back out the window and then looks at the girl. "Four."

"Okay." The girl's eyes do not move. "Then when else am I going to cry?"