The Desk

Warning: This story involves themes of domestic abuse that may be triggering or upsetting to readers.

Charlie stood motionless at the end of the short hallway, barely blinking. He didn’t know how long it had been, but his ears were still ringing and the smell was making his stomach turn. The air reeked of rotten eggs, and if he’d been able to move, he would have thrown up all over the faded linoleum underneath him. But movement wasn’t an option. He was too numb. Like most 12-year-olds, Charlie had never been in the room when a gun was fired before.

Mama jostled him as she rushed by and into the bathroom, pulling the door closed toward her. The bathroom was Mama’s hiding place of choice when hiding was needed. Unfortunately, after years of being kicked, slammed, hit with flying objects, and generally mistreated due to no fault of its own, that door now only shut by force. And given the circumstances, she didn’t have the time or wherewithal to use force. As a result, the door remained cracked open and with just a slight cock of his head, Charlie had a clear view of her face in the bathroom mirror.

Charlie watched as Mama opened her makeup bag and searched for a dark blush. The area around her left eye was swollen and seemed to be getting more purple by the minute. To hide the damage, Mama would need just the right hue, not too dark but sufficient to cover her wounds. He expected she would look upset or maybe scared or crying, but there wasn’t a hint of distress in her eyes. The only sign of vulnerability came when she first touched the pad to her left cheek.

At that initial contact, she scrunched her nose and recoiled, the fresh bruising too tender to ignore. Stopping for the quickest of seconds, Mama took a deep breath and pushed ahead with purpose. Grinding her teeth together, she forced herself to generously apply the dark blush until she looked like a new person.

When she was done, Mama let out a relieved sigh, pushed open the door, and stood in the bathroom doorway. She smiled at Charlie with the type of perfect sympathy only a mother is capable of. Charlie stared back, his eyes fixed on the makeup caked onto her left cheek. It was an admirable job-the cheek was puffy, but her artwork made it unlikely strangers would recognize the reason.

Leaning on the door jamb Mama spoke slowly, using soft tones that didn’t match the gravity of the situation.

“Son, it’s time to leave. You got time to pack one bag. One.”

Her calmness scared Charlie, although he didn’t know why, and he forced his head up and down. Mama winked at him and reached into corner of the hallway closet looking for her own suitcase. She quickly went from the closet into the bedroom, where Charlie could hear her opening and closing the dresser, pulling clothes off hangers, cramming items into the suitcase and zipping and re-zipping it to make sure everything fit.

It was only then that he glanced down and noticed the blood pooling next to the body in the hallway. It was thick, and bright red, and only inches from his right foot. Charlie gasped and jumped backward. More new territory. In addition to never being near a fired gun, Charlie had never seen a person, or anything else, for that matter, die.

Charlie needed a moment to gather himself, and that moment needed to happen as far as possible from the blood invading his personal space. He slinked across the living room and slid to the floor next to his mother’s writing desk. The desk was small, an old rolltop full of dints and dings that Mama found by the side of the road when Charlie was little. Barely wider than the width of its single drawer, the desk and its slatted tambour spent most of the time closed. Truth was the desk was mainly decorative—Mama really didn’t write. But for some reason she was very protective of it. It was made clear to Charlie, numerous times, that the desk and its contents were off limits. Direct admonitions like that were rare from Mama. So rare they were enough to keep Charlie from poking around.

In fact, before today, Charlie had only seen the inside of the desk one other time, three Christmases ago. It was during the town’s annual holiday festival, an event Charlie only knew through the stories of others. His family didn’t have money for festivals, or fairs, and really for fun of any kind. Charlie’s old man couldn’t hold a job, not that he cared to, and every penny Mama made was spent before she earned it. But that year, Christmas came early when one of Mama’s regulars at the diner tipped her $100 for the holiday.

Seeing the chance to give Charlie a few hours of honest-to-goodness childhood, Mama left work after the lunch rush and surprised him with a trip to the festival. It was amazing; the kind of fun Charlie had only ever imagined in his dreams. They played carnival games and ate junk food. They marveled at the card tricks of a local magician and took silly pictures in a photo booth. It was the happiest either of them had seen the other. Charlie skipped toward home that evening, Mama trailing close behind him smiling.

But the mood darkened when they got closer to their street. In the midst of all the fun, Mama made an unusual mistake-she lost track of time. They stopped at the corner, before home was in view, and she kneeled in front of him.

“‘You know who’ is going to be home when we get there, and we can’t tell where we were today. We can’t say where we’ve been. You get that, right?”

Charlie rubbed the photo strip in his pocket and nodded. He understood. Not that he needed a reason, but wasting money on child’s games would almost certainly lead to Mama wearing the old man’s anger.

Mama opened the door and found the old man standing in the living room, upright but wobbly, slurring his words in an all-too-familiar fashion. He demanded to know where they’d been, less curiosity than accusation. Mama stepped in front of Charlie and nudged him into position behind her, and just in time. Having no real interest in her explanation, the old man took an unsteady step forward and whipped the back of his hand across Mama’s face.

The blunt sound of his rough knuckles against her soft cheek stunned Charlie, and he darted away.

Mama kept her eyes down in hopeful silence. After what felt like an hour, but in reality was maybe 10 seconds, Charlie’s old man shook his head and staggered into the bedroom.

Mama eventually lifted her head and spotted Charlie crouched in the corner next to the writing desk. He was staring down at the photo strip, tracing the pictures over and over with his right index finger. She gently grabbed the photo strip and pulled Charlie to his feet. After kissing his forehead, Mama opened the desk drawer and set the photos in the back.

The drawer was only open for a moment, but it was long enough to see why the desk was off limits. In the drawer was a pile of blank paper in disarray. And sticking out from underneath that paper was the butt end of a small pistol, its magazine engaged, its hammer cocked. Charlie never forgot the gun existed, but he hadn’t seen it again until today.

His trip down memory lane complete, Charlie scanned the rest of the room. All the other items it held were forgettable. The coffee table a younger version of Charlie used to hide under. An old reclining chair that hadn’t reclined since the Carter administration. An area rug peeled up at all four corners, and now beginning to absorb blood along the side next to the hall. Charlie wouldn’t miss any of it. Nothing about this house was worth mourning.

Using his left hand, Charlie pushed himself to his feet, and the sound of broken glass beneath him jolted him back into the present. The glass was the remains of a vase his old man had thrown at Mama 10 minutes earlier. Another casualty of the day’s events. Luckily, Mama dodged the vase, and Charlie saw it hit the wall just as he walked through the door from school. He didn’t know what caused today’s episode, but he knew what was next. The old man wasn’t walking away empty-handed. He had better aim with his fists, and it only took one swing to make his point.

The old man smirked, content with his handiwork, and turning his back on them both he started down the hallway.

He made it two steps before the bullet tore through the back of his head.

Standing there in the middle of broken glass, his old man’s lifeless body just out of frame, Charlie realized the feeling was back in his hands, and no longer sounded like he was underwater. Mama walked past Charlie toward the door, a suitcase in one hand and keys in the other. She called back over her shoulder “I’m going to start the truck; make sure you grab what you need.”

He watched through the front window as Mama tossed her suitcase into the bed of the old pick-up, and he thought about her instructions—“Grab what you need.” The truck’s ignition fired in the background as he looked at the drawer of the writing desk. Charlie reached his left hand into the back of the drawer and felt around for the old photo strip from the holiday festival. He found it intact, all 3 pictures safe and undamaged, and slid the strip into his left pocket.

There was only one thing left to do. Moving carefully, but with an unfamiliar sense of satisfaction, Charlie raised his right hand, slowly, and with his finger still on the reset trigger, placed the pistol back where he had found it, gently closing the drawer behind him.