As I Die Lying by Scott Nicholson

Bakken’s
voice was a pitch-perfect imitation of her screeching daughter's.
"Anne, he's gone crazy, that boy has."
    "Tell us about Father and the bedsprings," I
heard my voice say.
    "What's this foolishness, Richard? I've never
heard the like in all my days," Mother said.
    "Did Father's babymaker hurt you?" my
imaginary friend said, using my mouth. The words were nails,
hammered into the coffin of the night.
    "That's the kind of crazy
things he was saying to me , Mommy," Sally said, finding fresh
tears and straining to squeeze them into rivers. "All this stuff
about babymakers and how I had to love him or he would hurt me. But
he said if he loved me, then he'd have to hurt me with his
babymaker, whatever that is."
    Mother's hand struck my cheek, sparking a red
burst of fire and pain. But the pain was brief, flickering and
dying in an instant. My friend and I knew how to douse the flames
of pain. This Bone House would never burn.
    "Did it hurt you? Or did
you like Father's
babymaker?" we said.
    Mrs. Bakken's eyes searched the trees,
sneaking into the night sky, seeking escape. Mother let go of my
shirt collar, her face blank beneath her curly mass of brown
hair.
    "You must have liked it, the way the two
of you made the bedsprings squeak over and over and over, Mrs.
Bakken,” we said. "Just like people who love each other. Just
like married people."
    "What's he talking about, Rita?" Mother asked
Mrs. Bakken.
    Mrs. Bakken's shiny China face cracked as she
joined Sally in tears.
    "Richard, what are you talking about?" Mother
asked my body when she realized Mrs. Bakken was not going to
answer.
    "You'll have to ask Sally. She's the one who
got the dollar's worth of candy," we said. "She's the one who knows
all about love."
    Sally and her mother huddled together, crying
in the night, as two dozen prying eyes watched from the windows and
a dozen tongues started wagging.
    I went to bed that night without supper, my
body tucking itself in, my mouth offering no prayers to Jesus. I
was safely under the blankets when my little friend let me have my
flesh back, then I was swimming toward the dark waters of sleep.
Just as I dozed off, as bright colors flashed and tried to form
dreams, I heard Mother and Father in the living room.
    They were speaking to each other without
yelling. I couldn't hear the words, but I could tell by the tone of
their voices that they were saying important, weighty things.
Grown-up things.
    Then I was asleep and I was in the land where
no garage men laughed and no boots danced and no babymakers turned
into monsters.
    I awoke early the next day and dressed
quietly. The walls were still standing, and no sound came from my
parents' bedroom. The night had not been broken by blows or
bedsprings.
    I went outside, onto the porch that we shared
with the Bakkens, and down the cracked wooden steps that slanted to
the driveway. There, on the porch, was Angel Baby. Sally's one true
love.
    I picked it up by the yellow yarn of its hair
and looked into its glass eyes. Its eyes that never cried. Its eyes
that had seen everything. I didn't like the secrets in them.
    I carried the doll into the kitchen and laid
it on the chipped kitchen table, its arms and legs twisted under
its cloth belly. I eased open the kitchen drawer and pulled out a
rusty butcher knife.
    I plunged the blunt knife into Angel Baby's
belly and the tip of the blade thunked into the table. The fabric
ripped and white chunks of foam rubber spilled out onto the floor.
I sawed the knife back and forth, throwing a frenzied snow into the
air. I chopped at the brittle plastic limbs, those selfish arms
that demanded hugs and those chubby legs that bled air. I hammered
the blade down on those pouting lips and I hacked off the cute
button nose and I popped the glass eyes from their round sockets
and I claimed a scalp of yellow yarn.
    I carried the pieces outside and left them at
the Bakkens’s door.
    To this day, I’m still not sure whether I was
mad at Sally because