Hate You Not

It’s so dark—the whole house dark, the wild yard dark and endless. The trees are whispering shadows.

I find a ladder in her shed and fix a bent spot on her gutter that I spotted while her brother walked me around the house, pointing out pecan trees. After that, I step into the kids’ bedroom and dart my eyes over their bodies, two small bumps under the blankets.

My throat feels tight and the house is too small. I slip into the kitchen, quietly peel open the lid to the cornbread, and fill a Ziploc bag with the golden squares of manna. At first I empty the container, but then I think better of it and put one square back.

I could change my pants, but I don’t. Not until I’m at the end of her dirt road. In the dim light of an orange sky, I take my pants off, then my boxer-briefs, and roll them up and stuff them in the bottom of my suitcase. I move the driver’s seat away from the wheel and pull on clean clothes.

Then I point the Porsche back toward Atlanta, and I fly.Chapter 18JuneApril - Two Months Later

My favorite Albany country music station is all about some Taylor Swift. I don’t really get it, because she isn’t “country” anymore. But I don’t hate her songs or anything. They’re pretty catchy. There’s this one that Margot loves that comes on all the time, and it has a line that says “play stupid games you win stupid prizes.”

Every time I hear it, I think of him. Stupid game, and I got the stupid prize of his ass running off with most of my remaining cornbread, never even saying bye to me. Because he’s him, and he’s the devil.

He’s talked to Margot and Oliver once since he left, and that was one time when Oliver called by accident when he was watching YouTube on my iPhone. I was in the shower, but the kids talked to him and were off before I stepped onto the bath mat.

“What did he say? Did he say tell me hey?”

Both kids just blinked at me.

“He asked about school,” Oliver said, and I had to struggle not to roll my eyes.

Oh I just bet he did.

One way he has been communicating, I suppose, is by sending checks made out to me. I get them on the first of every month, right when SNAP benefits start over. I guess maybe he knows that, and he’d like me to stop claiming federal food benefits, but I’m not going to. I don’t want to owe him anything. And anyway, when my new venture gets more steady on its legs, I’m going to make too much to qualify—even with three mouths to feed now.

I smile to myself as I peer into the newly built pen right behind the house. It’s a school morning, a Tuesday, which means these babies are all mine.

I open the gate and smile down at my darling Nubian doelings: Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, P. Diddy, and Ellen. Leah’s cousin Marco bought them from a milk goat breeder in Missouri, but turns out, Marco is really bad allergic to them. He had named them P. Diddy and the three bitches, illustrating just how terrifyingly unintelligent poor Marco is. Only girl goats make milk, but P. Diddy gets so excited when you call her by her insane name that so far, I can’t bear to re-name her. We may have another Hot Rocket situation on our hands.

The kids and I named the “bitches” after our favorite women, to make up for Marco’s shoddy treatment. And what that really means is, Margot did. And she’s still campaigning to re-christen P. Diddy as Taylor Swift.

“P. Diddy…” I try it just to make myself laugh, and she rushes over to me and rubs her head against my thigh.

“That’s right, sweetheart. What a good, good goatie you are.”

I shift some hay off my back, where I had it wrapped up against me with an old paint sheet, and watch my four girls prance around. The puppies yip somewhere behind me, and I glance over my shoulder, but they’re just playing by the back porch. My big dogs are warming to them, so this week I’ll try another front lawn playdate with all four.

I love on the goats a bit, and then walk through another gate into another pen.

“And here are my sweet piggies!” I stretch my arms out, and Peppa and George run to me like the adorable oinkers they are.

I guess my family wants me to run a zoo, because my dad gave Margot and Oliver these cuties after he got home from a trip down to Mexico, about two weeks after Burke came and left. Dad’s got a little bungalow in Tulum that he and Mom bought when she first got sick. He flew straight there from Sutton’s funeral and was kind of off the grid until he showed up one day at the house with the pigs.