Lisa Shea

Our father comes in wearing his gorilla mask and hands, swinging his arms and beating his chest. My sister puts her hands over her plate. Our father pushes her hands away, grabs at her food and pokes sauerkraut through the mouth hole in his mask. He moves around the table, swiping food from the paper plates and guzzling from the cups. Near my mother he bangs his head on the knickknack shelf and one of the snow globes falls and breaks on the floor. It’s the one with the satellite inside.

When our father comes near me, I slide down under the table, but he pulls me back up by his hairy rubber hands. I don’t say anything. He likes being the gorilla. After dinner, when he takes off the mask and hands, his face will be flushed and there will be tears in his eyes.

Two policemen come into our backyard and I wake my sister up. They ask us who lives here and we say we do. They ask us who else lives here and we say our mother and father but they aren’t home right now. Then the police ask us if we heard any gunshots in the last two or three hours and we say no. They say someone in the neighborhood reported hearing gunshots coming from our backyard and my sister says it was boys setting off fireworks. The policemen look around our yard. They ask us if our mother or father own any firearms and we look at them like what are those. One of the policemen sees the can of beer on the grass and says You girls are a little young to be drinking beer and my sister says the boys with the firecrackers left it here.

Frankie Blackmore is hiding in the bushes. He thinks I am inside counting to one hundred, but I’m outside waiting for him on the front steps. As he comes around the side of the house, the tops of the branches part and sway. I move onto the porch so he can’t see me unless he looks straight up. He keeps cutting through the bushes. First I see the top of his head, which is flat because of his summer crew cut. Then I see his hands moving down. He puts one hand behind him and leans against the bricks. Then he moves the other hand down inside his pants. I watch his face. His eyes are half closed and his mouth is a little bit open. He keeps holding himself, moving his hand around and around. He shuts his eyes. With both hands he squeezes, faster and faster until he is rising up on his toes, his head tipped back against the bricks. Then his hands stop and he lets out a cry like he is being hurt.