Respect
Flash Fiction Story
By Michael Neal Morris
Her father, gulping his whisky, insisted the three puppies remain outside because “there is nothing cute about stepping in shit.” No one in the neighbourhood saw the mother of the tiny dogs and most presumed she was dead. Some saw the little girl frequently on the porch feeding the pups, first with an eyedropper, then a baby bottle she’d found in her brother’s old room. People passing by in the alley might have seen the child before and just after school chatting with them about the highs and lows of each day of second grade, cooing at them as they cried, and petting their sleeping heads when they had eaten.
Every afternoon after feeding them, she carefully picked up any messes and carried them to the trash. She filled an old saucer with water and did all her chores before bringing out library books to read to the puppies as they scampered around the enclosed porch.
On the last day of school, she ran home ready to show them her certificate for perfect attendance and inform the animals she now had “days and days” to be with them.
Upon opening the back door, she entered a familiar and uncomfortable silence. There was none of the usual yipping and playful gathering of soft creatures at her feet. Each dog she saw was stiff at one corner of the porch, their legs thrust out as if pushing away a brilliant light.
She saw an oily film at the top of the water dish beside which she saw the bottle of antifreeze her father usually kept in the trunk of his car. Gathering the pups, she sat in her small chair and cried until her mother called her into supper.
“Whyn’t you do your chores?” her father asked, ignoring that she was pushing her dinner around the plate in front of her.
She said nothing but looked through the water glass in front of her to the cartoonish face of the man talking. His lips were one second a knowing smile, the next a fiery frown.
“You not gonna answer me, little girl?” He underscored the word “little.”
“Please,” the girl’s mother started. “Let her alone. Can’t you see she’s hurtin’?”
The man slammed his hand on the table, sloshing the undrunk water in the girl’s glass. She looked directly at him, defiant.
“What I see,” the man said rising from his chair, “is a disobedient, wilful child.” He moved toward her as the mother grabbed for him. The girl didn’t move. “What I see” -- he slapped the girl’s ear -- “is a LITTLE girl thinking” -- he slapped the other ear as her mother begged him to stop -- “she can disrespect the man of the house” -- he brought a fist to her still unmoving face -- “a child thinking she ain’t gotta do any work” -- he landed a blow to her face, knocking her out of the chair and unconscious -- “disrespect me?” -- he kicked at her until the mother tried pulling him away, earning the woman several of her own blows until he tired and left the house.
When the girl woke a few minutes later, she was on the couch, her head supported by a pillow as her weeping mother gently held a cold washcloth against the stricken places on her purpling face. One eye would not open, but the girl would not let herself cry until her mother said, “He gone. I won’t let him back.”
When all the tears that could come had left her, she saw the same dried feeling in her mother’s eyes. “He’ll be back. He always comes back.”
“Not this --” her mother started to say. After a moment, the woman sighed. “Well, alright.”
The girl waited under the covers for her mother to fall asleep. Then took a flashlight from one kitchen drawer and the biggest spoon she could find from another. She went to the backyard and dug a hole behind her father’s tool shed deep enough to put a wagon. Then she carried everything from the portion of the pantry allotted to her father’s liquor and placed it quietly into the hole. Over the booze, she placed the blanket the puppies had slept on at night. Then, one by one, she settled the little dogs.
With her small hands, she pushed the dirt back into place, patting it down gently. “Now he gotta go through y’all to get to it,” she said. Then she went inside, washed her hands, and got back in bed to wait.
Michael Neal Morris has published several stories, poems, and essays in print and online. His most recent books are Based on Imaginary Events (Faerie Treehouse Press), Haiku, Etc., and The Way of Weakness. He lives with his family just outside the Dallas area and teaches Composition and Creative Writing at Dallas College’s Eastfield campus.
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