Problem Child
by Tess Canfield
Image 40 by Richard Hanus
Meg had been taught that Jesus answers every prayer, but she doesn’t believe it. She looks at the moonlit cross on the wall and knows tonight, she must exact revenge on her own.
This will ruin the entire vacation, which is too bad since historic snowmelt in California has brought the lakefront back to her grandparents’ yard. Her whole life, their dock rested in light brown sand and weeds, but now blue waves lap around its wooden posts and water flows in places even her parents have never seen, certainly not in Meg’s eight and a half years.
She slips out of the twin bed that once belonged to her uncle, careful not to wake Mason across the room. Despite the warm July weather, the night is cool. Her fingers search in the darkness for her red sweatshirt, finding it in the pile spewing from the open suitcase on the floor. She pulls it over her T-shirt and pajama shorts and smooths down her roughly cropped hair. As she enters the hall her pulse quickens but her barefoot steps are steady, passing her grandparents’ room, then the room where her parents are sleeping. Her father’s long snores vibrate through the cracked-open door.
When she reaches the top of the stairs, the pine wood floor groans. Her breath catches and her mind races for possible excuses: she can’t recall where the bathroom is; she’s cold and looking for a heavy blanket; she just wants a snack. The floor groans again. She flinches, bracing for her father to appear with sleep-eyes and a sharp reprimand, but the buzzing rhythm of his breath remains unchanged.
She exhales. The house stays asleep, for now.
#
Her family arrived the night before. After work, her parents loaded the car and the four of them took the three-hour drive from their condo in Culver City to her grandparents’ cabin at Big Bear Lake. Meg fought carsickness as the overpacked SUV lurched up the switchback roads. It was dark by the time they made it and a large bowl of chopped iceberg lettuce and sliced carrots sat in the middle of the table under a too-bright pendant light. The adults lingered over foiled baked potatoes and thick red steaks, while Mason and Meg were fed hotdogs—Mason ate two because he’s three years older and a head taller. When they were ordered to bed, Meg whined for dessert, but her mother said it was too much sugar too late, and the flush in her father’s face made clear that it was not the time to argue.
Mason fell asleep right away, but Meg lay awake, anxious and distracted by her parents and grandparents in the living room below. Their voices had gone from a normal volume to an indecipherable murmur. This meant the adults were talking about “the kids,” and since Mason never got in trouble, “the kids” meant her. She tossed in her uncle’s bed, until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She crawled out and sat at the top of the stairs, knees hugging to her chest, straining to listen.
“We just can’t afford it,” said her father. “Liberty Springs is half my salary. Per kid. We take them to church every week.”
“And Sunday school,” her mother chimed in.
“What about just sending Meg?” her grandfather asked.
“We should’ve sent your brother there,” said her grandmother. “He had issues at that age too, you know.”
“He still does, Ma,” her father replied.
“We could only do so much, Pete,” her grandfather said, sharply. “Be fair.”
“Meg finally started to make a few friends last spring,” said her mother. “Switching schools now might make things worse.”
Panic bubbled in Meg’s throat. She did not want to go to Liberty in the fall. There’s a girl in Sunday school who talks about it all the time: the stiff uniforms, the pages of memory work, how relentlessly the teachers yell during recess. Meg wouldn’t last two days there.
“Your brother needs to go to church,” her grandmother said, voice tinged with sadness. “He needs to open his heart to Jesus.”
“Chris creates his own problems,” said her father. “He’s an adult.”
“Then he should quit the dope and start acting like one,” her grandfather scoffed. “Maybe then he’d get a girlfriend to stick around.”
“We heard he got a promotion,” said her mother.
“That was two years ago,” said her grandfather. “After working that job for ten.”
Her mother said something too soft and low to hear. Meg leaned and pressed the side of her face into the railing spindles. Her fingers prodded the scabs on her shins, the embarrassing reminders of when she tripped up the concrete steps coming in from the back patio.
“Did you finally get that book?” her grandmother asked. “For Meg?”
“We looked into it,” said her father, sounding tired. “But it just seemed a little, you know, outdated.”
“Her therapist has given us a lot of material already,” said her mother.
“Oh, kids don’t need therapy,” said her grandfather. “Nine times out of ten they just need a good spanking.”
“You know we don’t do that,” her father replied, softly. “We discipline our kids differently.”
Meg flushed. Differently. Is that what it was? She was never spanked, no, but her father was a quiet person until he wasn’t. Every time she made trouble at school, he’d turn purple-red, clearing the kitchen counter with his forearm, telling Meg she was an embarrassment to the whole family as Mason looked away and her mother watched in a thin-mouthed silence. He’d send her to her room, and she’d simmer with rage and shame, scribbling in notebooks so hard the paper would rip. Eventually he’d come in with a softer face and voice, apologizing for his temper. A good child would apologize too, and forgive his outburst. She’d say the right words, but they were sour; forgiveness always felt like a hot stone in her mouth.
“Well, a spanking’s nothing compared to what we got when we were kids,” her grandfather said. “You boys had it easy.”
At this, Meg slowly pushed herself up and peered over the railing to see her parents sunken into the navy blue couch. Her mother sipped a glass of golden wine and her father stared at the bubbles rising from his beer on the coffee table. Meg leaned farther and saw her grandparents in their respective plaid La-Z-Boys, swirling brown liquor with plastic sticks.
“You know what, I think I still have a copy somewhere.” Her grandmother set her glass on a knitted coaster and pushed herself from the chair.
“Ma, I don’t need it right now.”
“I’ll just take a look,” she said. “Pastor Dan gave it to us way back when we were having all those problems—well, you know.”
She made her way to the stairs and Meg shuffled back down the hall and into the bedroom. She closed the door and curled into bed. Her fingers reached for her shins again and every instinct told her to dig her nails under the hard crust of the scabs and rip them off, but then blood would get all over the sheets. Her mother would sigh and warn her about scars as her father would repeat for the millionth time that picking scabs is not an acceptable habit for young ladies. She turned her focus to the sounds beyond the door, but couldn’t hear if her grandmother found the book. She planned to look for it herself after the adults went to bed, but they talked for a long time. As her nerves settled, her legs and arms went heavy. Despite every effort, she drifted asleep.
#
Tonight, she will not sleep.
Descending the stairs, she keeps close to the wall. The living room carpet muffles her footsteps until reaching the kitchen doorway. Peering through, all is quiet. She exhales and makes her way to the back door, but a bowl of fruit rests on the blue tiled counter and her belly churns—she had refused to eat dinner and regrets it now.
Staring at the bowl, she considers an apple and is surprised by a desire for her father’s careful way of slicing them for her. Her two front teeth sink into her bottom lip. She never understands this feeling: hating and needing all at once. Like playing Hide and Seek, wanting and not wanting to be found. She takes a green one and wonders what would happen if she ate it, turned around, and went back to bed. Would it be possible for everyone to wake up tomorrow in quiet sunshine, in a world that was different and easy and good?
Then it flashes through her mind: Mason’s magnificent and horrible face, standing over her, laughing.
She knows that nothing will change. There’s too much empty space in the world, too much potential for things to go wrong. Wishing for a better life is as futile as wishing the sky was green. Something must be done. She doesn’t know what to do with her parents, or her grandparents, or her teachers, or the other kids at school. She doesn’t even know if tonight will erase her brother’s odious laughter from her memory. All she knows is that for the first time in her eight and a half years, Mason deserves to be punished. The conviction calms her as she returns the apple to the bowl and moves forward in the night.
#
That morning, Meg had found the book sitting at the table waiting for breakfast, while her mother tended to a large pan of scrambled eggs.
Normally she liked watching her cook, entranced by the way she swayed through the kitchen as if conducting an orchestra, smoke and steam blooming around her like music. Meg would study each movement, hoping that with enough observation, she too would grow into something natural, and most importantly, beautiful. But in her grandparents’ kitchen, the oven fan rattled, and the kitchen was so bright that the orange glare off the polished oak cabinets overwhelmed her mother’s fluid grace. The intense, humid odor of the eggs forced her to the chair by the window.
That’s when she saw it. A blue hardcover hidden under a folded newspaper. She cocked her head and read the spine, the letters bold and white: THE STRONG-WILLED CHILD. The smaller orange font read, Dr. James Dobson. She glanced at her mother, who was still focused on the stove. Then she lifted a few pages of the book and peered inside.
I honestly believe, though the assumption is difficult to prove, that the defiant youngster is in a “high risk” category for antisocial behavior later in life. He is more likely to challenge his teachers in school and question the values he has been taught and shake his fist in the faces of those who would lead him. I believe he is more inclined toward sexual promiscuity and drug abuse and academic difficulties.
Every inch of her prickled. She didn’t fully understand, but there were words she knew well: defiant, high risk, challenge, difficulties. She played back the conversation from the night before and remembered how her grandfather said the word: therapy. His voice growled with it. Was the doctor who wrote this book the same kind of doctor as Ms. Huang?
While she liked Ms. Huang well enough—the woman wore big, cool glasses and didn’t seem exasperated with Meg the way teachers often were—Meg was ashamed to be in therapy. A little scared, too, after overhearing her father tell the principal how it might make her worse. But ever since the day that Crystal called her hair “dirty blonde” and Meg cut it off and half of Crystal’s too, the school required weekly visits. Meg hoped therapy would end with the school year, but Ms. Huang wanted to keep meeting online. It was even more difficult trying to explain over the computer why certain things made her so mad; most days her skin felt hot like a sunburn, and she never knew when the blaze in her chest would flare into her brain. Although when Crystal had called her hair dirty, it was a lie. Meg washed her hair every day. Her mother said Crystal didn’t mean it that way, that it was just a way to describe a color, that Crystal probably just heard her mother say it at some point. But that wasn’t Meg’s fault. And now that her hair was short, the blonde was completely gone. Now it was dirty brown.
Meg looked away from the book and returned her gaze to her mother, buttering a row of thin white toast.
“Mom, what’s it called again?” She pressed a palm to the center of her chest. “The reason why your heart beats fast here and you have to catch your breath because we’re up in the air?”
“The altitude,” her mother replied. “There’s less oxygen here in the mountains, so your lungs and body have to work a little harder to get enough.” She set the knife on the counter and placed a piece of toast on each plate. “But there’s a lot less pollution here. It’s easier to breathe in the clean air. Right?”
#
Making way through the night, Meg’s veins strain for more of that thin, clean oxygen. What does it mean to be a strong-willed child? When she saw the book that morning, she wasn’t positive, but as she slides on the flip-flops she’d left at the back door, she’s certain it’s bad. That’s what Meg is after all. A bad girl. She pats down her three inches of hair. Bad and now, ugly. She feels lightheaded as she pushes the sliding door. The aluminum frame scrapes open just enough for her to suck in her stomach and slip out.
The moon is full, a single spotlight, lighting the yard. The patchy grass slopes to the water, but she stops at the dilapidated sandbox first. She grabs hold of the green bucket, but the sand has hardened like concrete. The scoop only bends as she pushes it in. Frustrated, she yanks the bucket’s handle and the old plastic cracks and splits.
“No!” she cries, then smacks her hand over her mouth.
Panic sets in. She needed that bucket. Her whole plan is ruined without it. Something deep inside starts to rupture and her eyes sting with the threat of tears. But she can’t cry now. Crying never helps anything—and help is what she needs.
She recalls what her grandmother said about her uncle, how he has problems because he never opens his heart to Jesus. Meg has always struggled with the same thing, but she’d seen a photo of a human heart, and how could such a raw and alien thing open like a door? She’d tried to talk to Jesus, but she only ever felt like she was speaking to empty space. And each time an adult told her about him—what he was or wasn’t like, what he did or didn’t want, who he did or didn’t approve of—that alien heart inside her chest felt more like a brick wall. It terrified her. No one ever said a word to her about her uncle, but by the way they had talked last night, she knew she didn’t want problems like his.
“Dear Jesus,” she whispers, folding her hands and looking to the moon. “I really need your help right now. Please, can you help me?”
She’s supposed to say Amen but without Jesus’s response, the prayer doesn’t feel complete. She drops her hands and her eyes land on the shed. Could Jesus be in there? She walks over and opens the door, stepping into the dark cave of space. It smells like her father’s musky tackle box that he keeps in the closet under the stairs. Her eyes adjust and things form from the darkness—soiled life vests, wooden oars, a lawn mower, firewood—and her heart skips. A silver bucket. She peers inside and finds a pointed trowel, sharp and strong.
Her spine zips up in triumph as she grabs the bucket and leaves the shed wide open. She makes a break toward the lake. But reaching the shore, her feet skid to a halt and her throat cinches like a knot. She hadn’t considered this.
Stupid is a bad word, but that’s exactly how she feels. Of course, she’ll have to go into the water again. The whole plan hinges on it. It’s just that she hadn’t anticipated this feeling. The pressure underneath her sternum.
The fear.
#
Earlier that day, she didn’t hesitate. After breakfast, she put on her swimming suit and her mother slathered sweet-reeking sunscreen all over her body, so thick it never absorbed. She ran to the water, limbs streaked with white, and didn’t stop until it reached her waist.
The lake was cold, calm. The constant simmer in her center fizzed and cooled as if she’d filled up with soda and ice. She kept her arms above the water at first as her skin turned to gooseflesh, but her arm hair stayed pressed down, matted with the sunscreen. After a minute, her body adjusted to the temperature. She dipped in, bent her knees, and pushed off the stony bottom. Submerged for a few moments and came up for air.
“Not too far out, Meg,” her mother called from the yard.
“I know,” she sang back.
Something moved in the corner of her eye, where the tall grasses sprouted from the shallows. A turtle, or a frog? As she made way toward the ripples, the rocky sand softened and turned into silt, then to mud sucking at her feet. She screeched and laughed at the sensation and stood still as her feet sank deeper, the muck wrapping around her ankles, compressing them like very tight socks. She bent and scooped with both hands to examine the sludge—a chunky dark brown substance laced with green slime. It oozed down her wrists and arms over the streaks of sunscreen, revealing a tiny pink shell. Delight surged through her. She crouched back into the water and pulled up more, spreading it over the tops of her legs. It reminded her of the green paste her mother used on her face from time to time. She called it “her mask” and one time she even let Meg try it. They had so much fun that night. When Mason scowled and said they looked like lizard puke, her mother just laughed so Meg laughed too. That night, life seemed easy. Feeling that way again, she took another scoop of the lake mud and smeared it over her left shoulder. In the bright light, it jelled and almost shimmered on her skin.
She did this for some time, smoothing the muck over her arms and legs, examining the algae and shells, until something splashed her from behind.
“What’re you doing?” Mason asked. The breeze ran through his sandy blonde hair, and with the light dazzling off the water, a halo wrapped around his head.
How Meg hated him.
“Nothing,” she said, looking at the mud.
“Wanna play Guns?”
That’s what he called playing with the Super Soakers, but she didn’t feel like being chased around the yard that morning. All Mason ever did was run her down and pummel her with a pelting stream of water. Eventually she’d panic and kick his ankles. He’d scream in fake pain, and she’d get in trouble for defending herself.
“Not really,” she answered.
“You’re so lame,” he whined. He looked at the mud running down her arms and wrinkled his nose. “And gross.”
She looked at her shoulder, her hands, and hot shame ran through her. She sank beneath the water’s surface. It had all felt so calming, so strange and luxurious. But now she saw what he saw. A gooey paste of sunscreen and muck covering her whole body.
It was filth. This time, she was dirty for real.
She swam into the lake, kicking her feet and legs free from all the silt, splashing her hands back and forth, as if trying to make bubbles in a bath. But as she rinsed herself, flecks of dark slime stayed pressed into her skin. No matter how quickly or how much she splashed, the flecks would not come off. She lifted her forearm to examine them, when it dawned on her.
It wasn’t mud.
She was covered, neck to toe, in small, shiny worms.
No, not worms.
Leeches.
Everything turned white, and she screamed. She thrashed in the water while Mason stood on shore.
“Help,” she gasped.
She kicked her way to land and crawled, kneeling in the stony sand, hair clinging to her forehead. She was sobbing, choking on sour water and shock, clawing at her skin. Blood. From what, the leeches? The rocks digging into her knees? Her own insides exploding through her pores?
She looked up to Mason.
“They’re killing me!” she cried.
She reached for him and he grabbed one of her wrists, bringing her forearm close to his face. He squinted, flicked a leech off her skin with a fingernail, and laughed.
She tried to tell him it wasn’t funny, but her lungs collapsed with every failed gulp for air. She was shutting down, going numb. Body and thoughts scattering into the sand.
And he stood over her, laughing.
#
Hours later, she is still not okay. And nothing will ever be okay about her brother’s careless laughter or the small, shiny leeches scrounging in her skin.
Meg looks over the lake, a black wet hole aside from the slight glimmer of moonlight. Who knows what lurks beneath the surface now, weaving between the seaweed, hiding within the muck? Maybe only the small, baby leeches come out in the day, and at night, the father leech swims around. Big like a fish, or a whale. Stalking, prowling, waiting for a satisfying prey. Meg can see it now: a huge, mouthless hole, sucking her inside, draining her of all her thinning oxygen and blood. Eating her doorless, alien heart.
A cold wind rushes up from the water, wrapping around her bare neck. She shivers and turns back toward the cabin, dropping the silver bucket and trowel in the grass. What is she doing out here, in the cold dark night? Why is she trying? She’s not a girl with hope or faith. Not in her family, not in Jesus, and certainly never in herself. She’s the girl who gets laughed at and yelled at, who gets sent to the office, who adults whisper about as they swirl drinks and rock slowly in chairs. A bad girl with a strong will and problems. That’s all.
Her knees buckle and she sits on the picnic table bench. The tears flow freely now, saltwater stinging her windblown cheeks. She doesn’t try to wipe them away. Her blurry gaze falls on the old, hardened sandbox where the cracked plastic bucket stays stuck. It’s the first time she looks at a broken toy and feels grief—not because she cannot play, but because she sees a cracked and useless thing, and feels exactly the same.
#
After the bath, her mother put new bandaids on her shins; in her terror, Meg had clawed off the scabs, thinking they were leeches too. She went down to the kitchen where her grandmother handed her a paper plate with a salami sandwich and a long pickle spear.
“You’ll feel better after lunch,” she said. “I promise.”
Meg ate at the picnic table by herself until Mason emerged from the sliding door with a life vest. He sat across the table, giving her a look somewhere between pity and disgust.
“Why do you have to blow everything out of proportion?” he asked.
“I don’t,” Meg answered, mouth full of food.
Mason called back to the house, “Is Meg coming on the boat, too?”
Her mother appeared in the doorway and quietly said, “Not right now, honey. Meg has a Zoom meeting soon.” She gave Meg an apologetic look before disappearing back into the kitchen.
Of course her mother had called the therapist. She always did after Meg had “an episode.” But why was it wrong for a girl to scream and cry while something fed on her flesh?
Mason heaved a sigh as he plopped the life vest on the table. He looked annoyed, or bored. She didn’t understand why he seemed to care if she was on the boat or not. Why was he acting put out when she was the one who had to stay back? She stopped chewing, and squinted at him, trying to figure it out. As if he could feel her scrutiny, his eyes met hers, and his face clouded. He leaned over her plate, the way he always leaned in when he was about to say something awful.
“So, why do you go to therapy?” he sneered. “Is it because you’re mentally ill, or because you’re just ugly?”
Meg spat out her food and tried to smash her sandwich into his nose, but he was ready. In one swift motion he grabbed the life vest and smacked it across her face.
She ran into the cabin screaming in a confused fury, but her father sprang up, banging his chair against the wall.
“That’s enough, Meg!” He slammed both palms on the table. “Enough of your screaming today—good God!”
She stood in the kitchen, blinking through her tears, hoping anyone would help her. But her mother stared blankly, and her grandparents turned away, as if they couldn’t possibly get involved.
This is how it worked. This is how it would always work. She would always be the one left standing there, confused and alone.
But as she dwelled in the helpless moment, something else happened. The very dust on her skin began to breathe. A pure and perfect lucidity came upon her, and suddenly, there were no confused knots in her belly and brain. A light began to glow in her chest. She pressed her fingertips into her palms, and the pain felt like strength.
This time, Meg knew she had been misused. This time, she was not wrong.
#
In the moonlight, her rage returns.
She flies from the picnic table, arms and legs working once more. At the water, she grabs the bucket and trowel, and kicks her flip-flops into the sand. Doesn’t bother taking off her sweatshirt. The cold shocks but doesn’t stun. Nearing the tall grass, the bed softens and sucks in her feet. She plunges the bucket into the mud, brings it to the surface, pours out the top layer of water and uses the trowel to fill the bucket as much as she can. She returns to shore and storms past her flip-flops, the shed, the sandbox, the picnic table.
She’s back inside. Muck and lake water drip everywhere, but she only cares about the noise, not the mess. Not even as the bandaids slide down her shins, or as her filthy feet glide from tile to carpet. It’s slow going up the stairs, but beneath her soiled skin, her lungs fill with infinite oxygen, fueling her like a forest fire. She reaches the hallway and her body throbs like her heart, finally secured in her wide-open chest. She lurches past her grandparents’ bedroom and thinks of the book. The one about strong-willed children, like her and her uncle who need Jesus. She passes her parents’ room and remembers her unfinished prayer.
We’re almost there. Please Jesus, just a little bit more.
She takes a breath and elbows the door open. A nightlight leads the way and at last, she stands at her brother’s bed. She observes his slumber.
But she does not hesitate.
Mason startles awake in confusion and the moment lasts longer than any other before: eyes blinking, mouth opening, limbs flailing as the sheets whip around his body like storm waves. He’s covered in muck and leeches, looking like a deranged sea creature, unrecognizable in the tempest of slime. His starfished hands stretch out for something to reach back and save him, but Meg steps away.
He grasps at the air as a smile spreads across her face, like a river flowing into an unbounded sea. Everything is as it should be. There are no more questions now, no more shame or hate or fear. She is simply who she is: a strong-willed problem child, covered in mud, beautiful and clean.
She doesn’t hear her brother scream. She looks at the moonlit cross on the wall and whispers, “Thank you. Amen.”
Richard Hanus four kids but now just three. Zen and Love.
Tess Canfield is an emerging writer with fiction and essays featured in the Santa Monica Review, WePresent, Charge Magazine, and elsewhere. She has a fellowship in creative writing at Chapman University, and has attended the Community of Writers Workshop and Richard Bausch’s Creative Writing Workshop. A graduate of Emerson College, she co-manages a literary non-profit called 50 Free Books, which distributes free books from independent bookstores every month. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a very good dog. www.tesscanfieldwrites.com IG: @tesscanfieldwrites