insolent rudder: home on sunday morning by gwendolyn joyce mintz

GWENDOLYN JOYCE MINTZ is an assistant fiction editor at Small Spiral Notebook and an editor at Scrivener's Pen Literary Journal, Inc.
A fiction writer and poet, her work has appeared in various online and print journals as well as three anthologies. Mintz performs comedy and designs teddy bears for fun. She is a former college writing instructor, but now writes creatively full-time. Her biography will be included in the 24th edition "Who's Who Of American Women," based on creative works.

home on sunday morning

It is not guilt you see in your father's eyes when you enter the kitchen and he looks at you. No regret or whatever it is you're expecting to be there. Tiptoe in! — you don't want to disturb him — but he's close to sober. Showered, freshly shaved. The solemn look on his face as he thoughtfully raises the coffee cup to his lips and looks, once, at you standing in the doorway. Last night the door opening to your bedroom and you thought it was your mother, crawling in afterwards, as she always did, checking to see if you'd survived the blows to her head, the vicious words tearing at your hearts, but your doll house fell — someone stumbling in the darkness — the plastic family and their furniture spilling to the floor. Through the sliver of light from the hall, you could hear her whimpering in their room. And later you thought better than let your whimpering join chorus, remembering your mother's weekly chant: He was just drunk, he didn't mean it. And you tell yourself this. Now. For no reason. Because nothing happened. You can see that in your father's eyes. This is what you tell yourself.