I go through the house, making sure of padlocks on the cupboards and the freezer, checking everything. I did some damage while I was out. Scratched up the orange rug, broke Mommy’s Russian dolls into tiny shards. When I check my closet I find that some of my shoes are wet. Did it rain? Did I go through a river or something? Or a lake, my mind whispers. I shut that down real quick. I go to take a drink but apparently I broke the bourbon, too. Never mind. I get a fresh bottle and a pickle.

As I’m eating I drop the pickle. When I bend down to pick it up I see a gleam of white. There’s something under the refrigerator. I know what it is. It shouldn’t be down here.

Up in the attic there’s the sound of weeping. It’s the green boys. They’ve been quiet lately but now they’re kicking up a storm. “Shut up!” I yell. “Shut up! I’m not scared of you!” But I am. I have nightmares that one day I will wake up in the attic, surrounded by the green boys and their long fingers and that I will slowly disappear, fading into the green. I hook the white flip-flop out from under the refrigerator and throw it in the trash. It’s got bad memories all over it like fungus.

I don’t put the knife back in the high cupboard. Instead I bury it in the back yard under cover of dark. Isn’t that a wonderful expression? It makes the night sound like a warm blanket, littered with stars. I find a good place beneath a stand of blue elder.

I am still quite upset so I eat another pickle in front of the TV and slowly I calm down. I can’t stop now. Those women weren’t the right friends for me, I guess, but I’m not a quitter.

OLIVIA

Ted is gone again. Honestly, he is such a gadabout, these days.

The noise is very bad. Eeeeeeeeeeee. My head is a cavern of sound. I am in desperate need of guidance. I knock the Bible off the table with a paw. It falls open with a thump on the boards. I wait, eyes closed. When the crash comes it is so loud my ears want to burst. The house seems to tremble at its very foundations. There are great cracking sounds, as if the world or sky is breaking. It builds and builds to a scream and I think, Is this the end of everything? Horrible! Scary!

When at last it starts to die away I feel so relieved. I swear, I feel like a salt shaker that’s just been used too hard. I have to sit for a moment to let my tummy settle.

I lean in. The verse that meets my eye is: