Michelle Reale is an academic librarian working in a university library in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her fiction has been published in Verbsap, elimae,  Dogzplot, Laura Hird, Word Riot, Dogmatika, Robot Melon, The Battered Suitcase Ken*Again, Pequin, Apt, Gloom Cupboard,  Blood Orange Review, JMWW, Underground Voices, Monkeybicycle, Up the Staircase,  and  others.

Woman's Work (May 20, 2009. Issue 5.)

After the clothes had baked in the sun, she’d take down the wash line and tie the kids to the kitchen chairs. Because they were obedient they eyed her with a desperate love. It had taken a while, but they learned that it was done for their own good. In their bright, Popsicle colored shorts and t-shirts, they would submit. Their stick-like arms fell slack by their sides, their small feet swung back and forth as she wrapped the rope round and round. The skin on their arms puckered a bit from the tension on the rope, but after a while, would numb. She kissed them on each pale, bluish eyelid, then stood back, admiring these children she made. Their cheeks were ruddy from exertion; their bangs lay in sweaty spikes on their protruding baby doll foreheads. The kitchen floor glowed, the sleepy house was serene, and the mother detected no discernible blood pressure of her own. The children did not make a sound and would eventually fall asleep, the micro beads of sweat evaporating in the cold, dim air-conditioned house. Before her husband came home from work, she would untie them, massage the rope indents from their smooth, white arms. Then they would keep her company while she worked hard to take the flavor out of the dinner she would cook, careful not to indulge and overwhelm the senses.

When her husband arrived home in the early evening, the sun was still sickeningly hot in the summer heat. He eyed his children with wary suspicion.  Tight smiles broke out on their small faces. They were hunched down behind their mother, sucking on their fingers. His wife stood over the stove like it was her kingdom, pots bubbling and boiling, her hair curled in soft ringlets around her face, like an old fashioned postcard. She looked over her shoulder at the quiet kids and winked. He opened his mouth to voice an opinion, lifted his hand in the air, perhaps to register complaint, but she had him against the wall in swift motion. She breathed her sweet breath over his eyelids, and stuffed a gleaming red apple into his mouth, wedging it carefully under his jaws, where his own teeth would hold it in place until she told him otherwise. Juice ran out of his mouth, down the either side of his chin, on to the shirt and tie he had yet a chance to remove. His wife caressed his rib cage, told him how much she loved him. He locked eyes with his children, who returned the look with a glazed sweetness. They admired the gentle submission of their father.  Mother only wanted what was good for all of them. 

Before dinner was served, she lifted and squeezed her husband’s nose and pressed down on his chin, releasing the apple with a pop. She sliced it four ways, a wedge for each of them, lecturing them with the old adage of ‘an apple a day.’  After dinner, the dishes were washed and put away, she set out to relax a bit. She lay back in the lounge chair in the living room, wiggled her toes and sighed with contentment and fell promptly asleep.

 The room buzzed and rocked.

 Her husband took the children into his arms, laid a finger on the lips of one and then the other when they tried to call out.

They left without their shoes, or anything else. When the mother woke she readied the rope. She shined the apples in the bowl. She turned up the air-conditioning. 

She sat and waited for the family she promised to love and protect.