I split.
Im six years old. Rusty M_______ is in his “high chair.” I’ve never seen a piece of furniture like this. It is designed I suppose, to allow babies to sit at diningroom tables, or kitchen tables and be at the right hight for making eye contact with the other diners. Maybe its for giving babies and small children some idea that they will be welcome to speak at meals once they aquire language.

He’s too big for this thing. He’s elevated like a prince on a wooden throne. He’s also angry and ugly as usual. But he is prince- the M______’s own. He won’t be hit. He won’t be instructed about the hopelessness of redeeming himself in God’s eyes. He won’t be sentanced by his parents ( who speak directly for God) to eternity in hell. It is not, aparently, too late for him.

So in his anger he looks for a rightious place to direct ungodly rage. He holds up his glass of milk and looks at me. At my head. One of the condemned anyway, I am at the table to scrape spaghettios as quickly as possible into my mouth, open to receive and positioned at the edge of the plate, my bottom teeth clattering against the rim.

Rusty’s glass of milk rains down on my head dripping down my bangs. Its pink from the blood I’m suddenly bleeding from above my right eye. The brow is open and there is a new reign opening in my mind too, announced by the pink wetness.

We will have to go to the emergency room Mrs. M______ will have to call my mother to meet us there. Everyone get in the station wagon now . . . every one except me. . . I will finish these spaghettios because above all- I’m hungry.