“There they were, both of them! On the floor on all fours! Like animals! She was wearing an apron, and her dress was up over her big fat ass and Harry was busy smacking it with the sole of his shoe! Can you imagine? The sole of the shoe I gave him two years ago for his birthday!”

The image of a butcher striking a strip of meat with a metal block utensil came to my mind. Was Harry tenderizing the woman’s ass? I fell back into the dead man’s float.

“Oh my Guard! My Guard!”

“That’s not it. I stood there watching. They didn’t even see me. The more I looked at the woman, the more I said to myself, ‘Come on, Ursula, you know the lady,’ but I couldn’t quite place her out of context. I thought at first it was one of the boys’ teachers, then it dawned on me. You remember Betty, the baker from Winn Dixie? I’ll never buy bread from her again!”

I looked around for Cecilia; she was squatting on the sand bar, poking sea pencils into the wet sand.

“Tsu, tsu, Ursula, calm down, it not worth you healt’. Please.”

“I didn’t know what the hell I should do! Scream or cry or run. The next thing I knew, I took off my shoe and gave it to Harry! The more I hit him, the more he squeezed her ass and yelled in pain, and the more she thought he was liking it! I was about to shove it up her you know what, but he wrenched it out of my hand. Defending her, when he should have been thinking about me, about my feelings!”

“When you have chil’ren, you don’ do such tings! You put de chil’ren first!”

“Harry says I was spying on him. I don’t trust him. I ended up having to apologize. I said, quote, ‘I am very sorry to have disturbed you and your piece of ass,’ unquote. Haven’t seen him since. He says if I really loved him, I would understand he needs it. Don’t know what he’s trying to prove. That he’s still got enough juice to go around? She can have it! I’m not going to share any more!”

“Drãmos! Nè, nè! Juokãvo!! Baislùs, baislùs, bjaurlùs!” When my mother depleted her stock of American interjections, she spoke Lithuanian to God in the sky, with her arms as well as her words. Actually, she spoke less than she hollered, bellowed in Lithuanian; when she addressed God, she figured her words had a longer way to go.

CHAPTER 12

I set the bowl of shrimp down on the table. Ursula’s expression underwent that subtle change when a guest turns into a victim. She recognized what we were about to eat as our former bait. I shall add that the heads of the shrimp were still on; and not just the heads; the legs, eyes, fantails. I suspected the country my mother came from didn’t bother with daintiness.