Little Shrimp

Content warning: domestic violence, child abuse, and rape 

An infant, I startle, flinch, and boom

When she touches me. Burning pistol,

Little shrimp.

She says years later,

“It only takes one bad shrimp

To make you sick!” I the shrimp,

Though, and so many of her words

Make me sick.

She swells and pukes and purples

While pregnant with my bruiser brother.

I stay small and hate them both.

I hate her, the way her mind had clicked

In place as a little girl and stayed there.

Never maturing into wisdom.

She will live on in all she teaches me.

“I didn’t know you were a difficult baby,

Not normal, until I had your brother.”

He not normal, I sniff him out, I know

His sickness

Early, when his broad feet flutter, kick

Inside her. After his birth, I hover over

His crib, plot to pillow snuff out his life.

He grows to six foot two, kills three strangers.

I stay small—little shrimp. I hide under

Surfaces, keep quiet. Police and journalists

Wading and waiting. I make them

Sick. Me, silent. Not defending my brother.

Not admitting how I knew all along, I knew

Where I touched with my shrimp sense—

Antennae

Long and feeling, grasping through taste and

Scent. Swimmerets, my long appendages for

Swimming and breathing, these two activities

Interchangeable, integral to my being.

Swimming and breathing, I make my mother

Sick, though she birthed me through water,

Opened my screaming, unready lungs to air.

She refuses to admit, premature, too early.

I make her sick, me swimming and breathing

Free while my brother, bricked away in prison,

Refuses her visits. He blames her and my father.

Once upon a time, my father calls me little shrimp.

He tries to crush me, his eyes bulging as large,

As grotesque, as his thick temple vein.

Stop it! Stop it!” My mother whines

Toddler-voiced, standing back

Safe as he slams me over and over

Against a wall. She smiles, gleams,

Her mouth twisted. “Stop it! Stop it!”

My father goes away on business trips.

Acrid cologne stench hovers and strikes

Relentless. As brutal as his brutal hand.

My brother would kick in my door,

Spit on it, tear out my hair. I no angel.

I wait until he sleeps, creep to his bed.

Punch my brother hard. He cries.

I never cry when my father punches me,

When my brother grabs my throat.

I never cry when my mother insists

No one hurts me. Maybe I cry,

Maybe I cry an ocean to swim in, to

Continue to breathe, when my mother

Insists nice boys, her best friend’s son,

Don’t do things like that. Don’t rape

A little shrimp of a girl. A girl shouldn’t

Expect a romantic evening to end

Any other way. Little, but old enough

To know better, she says. I drank the wine.

I dressed the way I did. I didn’t fight.

Of course he thought I wanted it.

Of course, boys will be boys.

Only few years before, my breasts

Not yet in bud, my translucent skin

Disgusting her—“I can see everything.”

I see everything. Her silences

Visible. My father sticks his tongue down

Her throat, his eyes opened, looking

At me and my brother, making sure we see.

She says nothing, giggles, wipes her apron.

I feel everything. The wrong of her words,

Unsure why. She likes to watch soap operas,

The occasional mini-series with me, on a small

T.V. near the kitchen sink. Right near where

My father had suctioned his lips on hers.

On screen in Technicolor waves—antennae

Never quite well-adjusted—a man kisses

A woman in bed, runs his hand up her shiny leg.

“Look how he touches her leg! He loves her!”

My mother gasps, transfixed, soap bubbles

Rising from the sink, refusing to fall or pop.

One time, a movie. Last Summer. Girls in bikinis

With breasts I hope to someday have.

Boys in board shorts. Boys who make me

Queasy. The chubby girl, the awkward

One, whose mother died. The vulnerable

Girl who wants so desperately to fit in.

Rhoda. Younger than those three other teens.

The two boys and one girl hold Rhoda down.

They hold her down in bright sun and sand dunes.

They hold her down, and a boy rips off her bikini

Bottom and rapes her. My mother says, “They

Shouldn’t do that. They could get her pregnant.”

She says it flat, in her little girl voice. Silent

About the wrong of rape. Silent about Rhoda,

Her pain. Her silence. Rhoda, little shrimp

With short hair like mine. Awkward and vulnerable

Like me. Young, without a mother to protect her.

I can see through the translucence of her being.

So can my mother, who eyes Rhoda and refuses

To look at me. I hate my brother, my father, and yes,

My mother. I hate those boys and girl who hurt Rhoda.

My mother shakes a wet knife. Water flings like spit.

“See, she doesn’t say anything. Makes me sick.”

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, except for the film Last Summer. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.