“The Emergency” by Karen Moulding
--page 3

         I tightened the backpack straps on my shoulders, and held on to them so I could run. Cold air stung my lungs when I started to pant. I tripped into a tall snow bank at Fifth and Helen, carving my own ditch in the crusty drift. I hoisted myself out, and, without brushing off, ran again.
         I ran up our stairs and went right into the bedroom with my backpack still on.
         Eugene was on the bed, back against the headboard, writing something in the margin of a German book propped in his hand.
         I faltered. “Hi?”
         “You’re home early.” There was a glint of hurt in his eye. “For a change.” He looked back down at the book.
         “Are we getting Courtney soon? I think we should ask Philip if we can do it before Friday, like, um, right now.”
         The corners of his mouth lifted, and then he was smiling, almost diabolically, full out. “That’s my business and you said you don’t want to help. You want to stay out of it.”
         I was still panting from the run. I took a breath. “I called her today, just to...”
         “You what?! Listen to me! You...”
         “Just to say hi. And she said this man from church spanked her.”
         A jolt shook his frame. The book fell to the mattress.
         I almost stopped myself, but then I just couldn’t resist what I said next. “You do know they have that paddle there? That board with 'spare the rod, spoil the child,' printed on the wood.” Courtney had told us this about Marion’s church. True, Courtney hadn’t told me the man had used this board on her. But I told myself I wasn’t exactly lying. I was just reminding Eugene of the church atmosphere.
         “They have the paddle, yes. But you did not actually say that he used it on my daughter. Did he?”
         “Probably not, but...”
         “You were lying?” His face was red now and he stood.
         I’d never been afraid he would hit me before. I stepped back.
         “Um, sorry. I only meant... I guess no, no paddle as far as I know. But he spanked her.”
         He sat down on the bed.
         “Marion spanked her too.”
         “God, you can be so holier-than-thou. Spanking is not against the law. Philip told you that. It’s legal in schools all over the South. You are so sure your ideas, your ideas of how other people...” He stopped, shook his head.
         “But another man! A strange man, spanking your own daughter.”
         That did it. He deflated before my eyes, shoulders dropping, mouth falling open, like a blow up doll leaking out its air. He began to rock, an inch forward, then back, forward, then back, forward, then...
         “Eugene?”
         “I’m not capable. I can’t even protect my own daughter.”
         “Of course you can. You’ve done great! We can just...” Now I didn’t know what I was saying, what I had imagined he could do, what I had imagined this would make him feel.
         “I can’t.” He closed his eyes and kept rocking, muttering to himself as if to keep away a bad vision, the vision planted by me.

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