Page 11 of Seven Days in June

My pocketknife’s all the way in the bedroom.

She wanted to hurt him before he hurt her. But then there was that old hesitation. Her mom needed this guy. He’d found them this shitty apartment. He’d given her mom a job. He was supporting them. She and her mom were a team.

Be nice. Be good.

“How old are you?” she asked, stalling even more.

“Fifty-eight.” He leaned a bit closer, unsteady on his feet. His after-hours club stench was pungent. “But I got stamina.”

Grinning, he slapped his clammy palm down on her forearm. And then the Lizette-wired part of her brain clicked off. She went completely still. Eyes narrowed. Senses sharpened.

“Wanna hear a joke?” she asked abruptly, with a sweet smile.

“A joke?” He was caught off guard. “Oh. Okay, I like jokes.”

“What did Satan say when he lost his hair?”

“I don’t know. What?”

She chuckled a bit to herself. “How bad do you wanna know?”

“Stop playing. Tell me!”

She glanced up at the rug atop his head. “There’ll be hell toupee.”

His mouth dropped open grotesquely. “W-what? Oh, you littlecunt.”

He lunged at her. Genevieve dodged to her left, eluding his grasp. Knocked off-balance, he toppled drunkenly and then crashed to the floor, a cumbersome, slow-moving vat of lard. Momentarily paralyzed with shock, she just stood there, breathing heavily—and then he grabbed her ankle and yanked her to the ground. She fell down hard. Her head exploded into a thousand shards of razor-sharp glass.

“Fuck! You!” she wailed, clutching her face. And then, purely out of pain reflex, she reared back and power-kicked him in the ribs.

While he roared, she scrambled out of the kitchen on her hands and knees and then sprinted into the bathroom. She slammed the door, locking it with badly shaking hands. Grasping her face with one hand, her head thundering, she grabbed a bottle of Percocet from the sink drawer, climbed into the tub, and snatched the shower curtain shut. And only then did she breathe.

Through the cheap hollow-core bathroom door, Genevieve heard the guy screaming Lizette’s name. And then there was the gossamer pitter-pat of Lizette’s feet as she ran down the hall to the kitchen, hollering bewildered nonsense.

From experience, Genevieve knew to wait this out in the bathroom. She popped two pills into her mouth and chewed them dry. (They were prescribed by her Cincinnati doctor—who, like the countless frustrated docs before him, solved her unsolvable problem with opioids.) As Lizette and her man starred in their own chitlin circuit revival in the kitchen, she curled up on her side, waiting for relief.

Lizette had stopped the hysterics. Now she was cooing. Then Genevieve heard footsteps heading toward the master bedroom—Lizette’s Tinker Bell toes barely touching the ground, his steps heavy, labored. Genevieve knew this was her mom’s way of protecting her: luring him away and locking the door. Of course, it never occurred to Lizette to kick him out. Break up with him. Call the police. Be single for a minute, for that matter. Get her own job. Finance her own life. Save the day herself instead of depending on horrible men to do it for her.

Are you just like your mom?

Genevieve curled up tighter on her side, trying to make herself smaller. She was exhausted. All she wanted was to escape this repetitive, redundant hell.

Her eyes shut. She had only a few more minutes to pull herself together. She had to get ready.

Today was her first day at her new school.

MONDAY

Chapter 4

Mantra

“YOU GOTTA LET ME TALK TO TY, PRINCIPAL SCOTT.”

The beleaguered woman leaned forward on her paper-strewn desk. “Mr. Hall, last time you ‘talked’ to Ty, I found him sitting in a fifth-floor window with his feet dangling down the side of the building.”

“His writing was flat. He needed a perspective change.”

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