By Avitus B. Carle
I like to carry my father’s hand with me. I find the added weight comforting, like he’s still here, instead of screwing someone who isn’t my mom or screwing my mom or, maybe, he’s off somewhere collecting screws in his left hand and jamming them into tires.
My dad’s the kind of guy who jams the nails he carries in his purple JanSport backpack into tires, truck tires being his favorite. I’m the kind of girl that brought a box of screws into show and tell and tried to show my classmates how many I could shove into my mouth without choking until my teacher told the principal who told my mom who was too sick to come get me so my dad came and took me to Taco Bell.
I wanted to talk about screws. He wanted to talk about my dying mom. I thought his thing was more important so I let him talk. I found out my mom was screwed because that’s how life works, kid, he said, and he made me promise to be good because things were about to get hard.
And things got hard. Not because of Taco Bell, though I can’t eat there anymore, but because he lied because, funny thing about my dying mom is that it’s not funny just like it’s not funny to plan to leave your husband and he finds out because a few too many unknown numbers keep calling the house or mom starts wearing makeup again or smiles or laughs again so he goes to Home Depot. He goes to Home Depot to buy nails, a hacksaw, and Mr. Clean toilet cleaner and when mom starts saying her cereal or water or coffee looks or smells or tastes funny, she’s the one who worries too much and he’s out with his nails poking holes into her lover’s tires.
And I’m left holding his hand.
I keep my dad’s hand in a FedEx box in case I ever need to ship it to him. He hasn’t asked for it though, not yet, not since mom caught on to the poison coursing through her body and she decided to call someone about it.
We, my dad and I, were at Taco Bell when the cops showed up. I wonder if she knew I was with him just like he knew this would be the last time I would see him, his choice and maybe mine too. Maybe that’s why he waited for the teenage Taco Bell employees to go into the back to “refill the sauce packets” or do whatever teenagers do in the back of Taco Bell when there are only two customers there. Why he pulled out the hacksaw he got from Home Depot from his purple JanSport backpack without saying a word. Why his eyes locked onto mine despite the blood and his tears and his winces of pain and I could smell the insides of my father – or maybe it was burning grease or the Black Bean Crunch Wrap Supreme. Why he spread Diablo sauce across his wrist, cauterizing the wound left by his severed hand. Hold on to this for me kid, he said with his purple backpack on his back and the bloodied hacksaw over his shoulder and walked out the back while the cops came through the front and called the teenagers from the back and placed their order and one asked for extra sour cream and another saw me, in the booth with my dad’s hand and a table covered in blood and asked if I was alone but, you know, stranger danger.
I threw up on the cop who asked if I was alone. I threw up on my mother and investigator and the cop who was actually looking for my father. I threw up on my father’s fingertips when they wanted to take his hand away from me and, if anyone asks for extra sour cream, I’ll throw up then too.
The weight of my father’s hand calms me down. I’ve seen videos of people trying to throw the ashes of their relatives into bodies of water only for their relatives to come back and leave them choking and disgusted like throwing anything into the wind ever worked. I think I got the better deal. Mom has remarried, twice since dad left, and has asked me to get rid of his hand twice but I figure dad should be at both of her weddings because she never invites anyone I know and dad always had a habit of ruining things so I guess that explains why her two marriages failed.
I think I failed my dad too. I mean, I know mom’s cheating shouldn’t equal death by poisoning but it’s not like he poisoned me. I’m trying to make things work with mom but, ever since she got better, that’s all she wants to talk about. How better she feels and how better life is and aren’t we better off without him and his screws and his purple JanSport backpack and his obsession with Taco Bell and don’t I feel better that everything in our lives is so much better without him? Don’t I feel better that he’s gone and I don’t. I don’t because he’s still here, his hand is still here, and I’m still waiting for him to come back and show him that I’ve taken care of things, that I’ve taken care of his hand and, maybe, he’ll tell me about all nails he’s collected and all the tires he’s punctured and I’ll forget what happened between him and mom. I’ll forget about Taco Bell. I’ll forget to give him back his hand until he asks and I will. He’ll screw on his hand like a broken toy, flex the fingers like they’re brand new because wouldn’t it be great if that’s how life worked.
Avitus B. Carle (she/her) lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her stories have been published in a variety of places including X-R-A-Y Litmag, SoFloPoJo, Necessary Fiction, The Commuter (Electric Lit.), and elsewhere. Her debut flash fiction collection, “These Worn Bodies,” will be published by Moon City Press in November 2024. She can be found online at avitusbcarle.com or online everywhere @avitusbcarle.
Taco Bell Quarterly 