Page 27 of Best Woman

“OW!”

I’m seven years old, in the back seat of our dad’s Honda in a Publix parking lot. Aiden is five, and he’s just bitten me. Dad has been inside for the past twenty minutes buying the ingredients for tuna salad. Dad makes it with celery and raw onions, which I hate.

Aiden’s teeth are sharper than they have any right to be, nearly piercing my skin through the sleeve of my blue cotton summer camp sweatshirt. I roll up the sleeve and see the shape of his little bite imprinted on my skin.

We’ve been fighting over who gets to choose the radio station.

Dad left the car on with the basketball game he and Aiden had been avidly listening to still playing, and as soon as he was gone I switched it to a station playing Stevie Nicks, a song I recognized from hazy Saturday mornings when my mother would light candles and clean the small house that seemed so much bigger now that dad had moved out.

My arm throbs and I start to cry. Aiden looks at me with his huge green eyes and starts to cry as well.

“I’m sorry,” he shouts. “I didn’t mean to but you were being so mean .

” I sob harder because I was being mean, but I hate being stuck with Dad and Aiden.

They like all the same things, or rather Aiden likes everything Dad likes on principle, and I never feel as alone as I do when I’m with them.

“Here,” Aiden says, thrusting his arm in my face. “Get me back so we’re even.” I don’t know how to tell him that it doesn’t work that way, that hurting him won’t make me hurt any less. But, with fat tears still rolling down my face, I open my jaw wide to take a bite.

By the time Dad gets back to the car, we’re happily singing along to Whitney Houston.