Hands

Souza was a child when she last saw him. Her step-father. Young. Virile. Manipulating hands. Now he is middle-aged. Haggard and worn, punished by the world. For armed robbery in his late twenties, drug abuse, self-inflicted wounds, instigated tavern fights, women with restraining orders. He had gripped metal bars, stepped over urine on concrete, read the bible and claimed salvation.
But Souza believed he had not been punished enough.
"Admit what you did to me as a girl, as your daughter," she demanded.
He stood there dumbfounded, a blankness to his eyes like paper without ink.
"I don't understand," he mumbled. Stuck his hands in his pockets and looked to the ground. Dry, arid earth at his feet. Wind whipping up dust on his shoes.
"You can't even look at me, can you."
He dug his boot into the dirt, shrugged his broad shoulders, looked again, for a moment, a boy of twenty-one. A new father. One she trusted and adored. Gripped her tiny fingers into his shirt sleeve as if he could fly away at any time, disappear as fast as bath water down the drain.
When he touched her, he loved her. When he struck her with the oak switch, she deserved to be punished.
"Look at me, you coward!"
He did not look up. Did not see the dark thunder clouds enveloping the blue overhead, rushing toward them swift as a river's current.
He did not see Souza's alcohol dependency, her years of trauma therapy, panic attacks that kept her from opening front doors, scars on her wrists, the men she let use her body like a Raggety-Ann doll.
He saw only the burying of his boots, the dust turning to carmeled mud as the rain sheeted down, drenching them.
Souza lifted her face to the sky, opened her mouth and swallowed the rain.
"I should go," he said, turning his boots, his shoulders, his covered hands away from her.
"Wait!" Souza yelled, swallowing what water was left in her throat.
He faced her, then. Eye to eye. Adult to adult. Victim to victimizer.
"What is it you want from me," he said cruelly. Clenched, tense fists out of pockets, spine straight as an iron rod.
She stepped back a foot. Fear resurfacing. The tow-headed girl in the bath with her barbie dolls, holding her breath underwater so the sound of boots mounting the stairs, the slow creaking of the bathroom door, the sharp, ridged sound of a zipper being yanked down could not be heard.
Souza stepped back once more, puddled muddy rain reaching her ankles. She dipped her head to the ground and whispered.
"Everything."