By Kim Bund

You’ve always lived with it, just like the doctor said you would, until today’s lunch shift, when Mom and sister come in and sit on one side of a booth, Dad and boy on the other. You hand them menus and crayons and Dad slides the kiddie menu over to the boy. Little man first, he says. The boy pulls out a black crayon, pressing hard, and when it snaps in two you notice a greenish bruise at the side of his mouth. Dad sees you looking at it and eyes your name tag. 

Courtney, is it? He’ll have the chocolate milk.

You go to the kitchen, and the manager sees you rubbing your arm. What, he says. Nothing, you tell him. You fill the drinks, take them back to the table, ask what everyone wants to eat. The boy, rocking, rocking, rocking a spoon with his index finger is watching Mom, and when she says cheeseburger, he quickly says cheeseburger, too. Sister closes her hand over the boy’s finger, quiets the spoon, and asks for a cheeseburger without the cheese. 

Jesus, why didn’t you just say hamburger, Dad snorts, and the girl looks at Mom, who pinches her eyes closed. Steak sandwich for me, Courtney, he says. You begin gathering the menus and start to go to the kitchen then turn back, asking the boy if he saw the aquarium by the cash register. Would he want to go look at the fish? 

We saw the aquarium, Dad says, pulling the boy toward him. When’s the last time you folks cleaned that thing? 

You get to the kitchen and tell the manager about the bruise. He tells you it’s not your problem, but you pick up the phone, anyway, palms slick. You’ve known Margie in police dispatch a long time, and when she asks how old the boy is you guess four. Maybe five? She radios a couple of officers and says you’ve done the right thing. Tells you to stall.

You deliver their food, your armpits swampy. The boy takes a bite of his burger and while he’s chewing, fingers the bruise. Dad tears into his sandwich, sees you looking at the boy, and drops his sandwich on the plate. 

We’ll take the bill, Courtney, he says, his mouth full of chewed-up steak and bread. You remember the time your first-grade teacher Mrs. Lane asked about a bruise on your arm, and you told her you fell off the jungle gym. How Mama told you to be tough and when she finally took you to a doctor, finally believed you, an x-ray showed a hairline fracture. Not much we can do about it now, the doctor said. You’ll just have to live with it.

Dad gets antsy and asks why you’re just standing there so you offer apple pie on the house. Oh, yeah, Courtney? On the house? He stares at you, his pupils huge. You hurry to the kitchen and scoop pie on plates. As you walk back into the dining room two cops walk in, a guy and a lady. 

Dad’s face turns scarlet, and the lady cop looks at him then at you. You nod and your skin prickles. Christ. Dad starts grabbing everyone’s napkins, crumpling them up, and says they’re leaving. 

Daddy, what about the pie, says the boy. Dad tells him to shut the hell up and the plates in your hands start to crater. Lady cop walks up to their table and asks if everybody’s doing okay. What’s it look like to you, Dad says, and everything goes quiet except for the tap, tap, tap of the spoon. 

Lady cop says look, we don’t want any trouble here, and there’s a loud crack. You wonder for a second if somebody pulled a gun but no, you’ve dropped the plates. Tart apple slices through the fog of body odor hanging in the air and guy cop turns his head, mumbling into a radio on his shoulder.

Dad says let’s get out of this dump and pulls the boy out of the booth by his arm. Guy cop grabs Dad by the shoulders and the boy, eyes wide, covers his mouth with a small, trembling hand. The manager comes out with a broom, tells you to clean up your mess. 

You fucking just had to go and make it your problem, didn’t you, he says, shoving the broom into your hands. Jagged shards are everywhere–under booths, the cash register, by the front door-and you know you’ll never get them all. 

The boy starts crying and it courses through you, settling into the tender split in your bone, and as you pick through the broken bits of plate you remember how the doctor said your body healed itself as best it could, the tiny bones knitting themselves back together, how Mama said kids don’t need locks on bedroom doors (just stay away from Papa when he’s mad!), and now, instead of the spoon, it’s the whole diner, rocking, rocking, rocking, so you pick up a pointed shard and make a quick, neat slice in the thick scar tissue on the inside of your arm, watch the little red beads bubble up, and wonder how long you’ve been holding your breath.

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Kim Bundy’s stories have or will appear in The Hudson Review, Ghost Parachute, Flash Boulevard, BULL, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Louisville Review, Midway Journal, Every Day Fiction, Halfway Down the Stairs, and others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and long-listed for the Wigleaf Top 50. She currently serves as a reader for Fractured Lit.

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