three fifty seven

In the car’s back seat and perfectly motionless from the waist down, ache¹ before she became ache¹ gingerly lifted the hem of her red plaid shirt and vomited into the folds, believing this discretion might somehow assuage her mother’s accusations of inebriation.

Mother (rolling down the front widow): Maybe this’ll teach you about drinking

pulling up at the crossing and turning in her seat to see her daughter look up and guilty, cheeks flushed and puffed with pending nausea.

Mother (sternly): Look at yourself. You’re a mess

and then at the prompt of more vomit, she reached over to unwind the passenger window also.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: It was the cabbage, the cabbage. It was the

Mother: What’s that?

ache¹ before she became ache¹: It was the cabbage.

The car was full of stink, and ache¹ before she became ache¹ was glad of it, relieved here to have a foil for the smell she herself feared most, namely that wet rust reek of blood welled in the crotch of her jeans, and terrified of its connecting to her mother’s full sense of the night’s transgression. She worried not at all on the possibility of being injured, pregnant even, concerned now only with the liability of a divulgent scarlet curd clotted thickly into the seat’s pale grey fabric with her eventual removal.