Hush
some things can't be said out loud
“You don’t know the half of it!”
Grandma flaps her hand at us and I roll my eyes as I glance at Gail. She’s scrolling on her phone, as always, and stops occasionally to tap a few keys.
“Your sister isn’t paying attention,” Grandma hisses, pointing at Gail with her finger on the palm of her opposite hand. She purses her lips and narrows her already squinty eyes at me, but before I can respond, Gail snaps her fingers between us.
She points to her left ear and shakes her head as she glares at Grandma. Gail can’t speak, but she can hear, and everyone knows it. Including Grandma.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” Grandma continues, as if she hasn’t insulted her oldest grandchild, and not for the first time. “He’s coming back next week. There’s a long, complicated story, of course, but it’s not fit for the hearing of young ladies.”
My sister snorts and Grandma ignores her, lifting her eyebrows. Gail used to talk circles around all of us grandkids, and I wonder now why Grandma never asked what shut her up.
Or who.
“He’s literally a sailor without a ship now, after that explosion. Can you imagine? They’ll have him back for duty after a bit, but he’s injured and will be in physical therapy for a while.”
Gail sets her phone on the kitchen table. I watch her fingers curl into the palm of her hand.
“It’s rude, you know, this not talking business. Kids these days, looking for attention any way they can get it.”
Grandma points at me as she stands up. It’s getting late, the moon in the dark sky like an eye staring in at us through the kitchen window behind her small body.
She’s been talking about her neighbor’s boy, who is now a man, a man nearly convicted of sexual assault several times since he was in junior high. A man pushed into the military by parents who realized he was out of their control.
And now, he’s coming home.
This flash fiction is a response to Scoot’s Flash Fiction prompt, Mute.
Honeymoon
It was the first time they fought on a cruise ship, and also the only time they were on a cruise ship.
I don’t drink coffee anymore but I adore matcha. You can buy me one or just click over and take a look at some random photos and snag a free black cat lined notebook page PDF to print or use with any PDF annotation app.
