My Cardboard Balcony

The Fight by Belinda Roddie "Go to your room," my mother told me, her eyes swollen and black and blue. "He'll be back home any minute, and I don't want him to hurt you, too." I scrambled my way to my bedroom and blocked the door with my chair, splinters scraping against splinters as I knelt there, remembering my pearl rosary, and how to recite my prayers. He didn't come home that night, or the next night, or the next. They found him dead on the side of the road, asphyxiated on the vomit left in his drunken throat. And I had no regrets.

"My eyesight's been blurrier lately," mumbled Shay, taking off her glassed and vigorously rubbing her brow in exasperation. "The optometrist doesn't know what to make of it. There's no retinal detachment, no cataracts, no glaucoma, nothing. My eyes are beautifully healthy. But my vision's worse." I reached across the table and squeezed Shay's extended hand. "If you need anything," I whispered to her, "tell me. Even if it's a white cane." Sneering, Shay stretched out a free finger and jabbed me in the chin. "Bitch."