Woes of Sin and Strife

The heavy door swung open, ushering in a vacuum of cold air that settled in the bones like a bird landing on a perch. Radio chatter sifted through cinnamon-laced warmth and a freshly purchased fir tree stood proudly in the center of the festively-adorned living room. The hollow patter of little stockinged feet on the dark wood floor coincided with a muffled cry from several rooms away. Suddenly, the home became alive with fumbling footsteps and hurried words exchanged behind a closed door. The stockinged feet propelled themselves into the arms of the lanky figure leaning slightly on the still-open doorway.

“Justine, you made it!” exclaimed the child, emanating pure glee.

“Hey kiddo, go easy on my bad knee there. Did you miss me?”

As the child opened her mouth to answer, a high-pitched shriek cut across the room. Justine found herself embraced yet again, this time by a woman with a fashionable bob dyed platinum blonde in an attempt to stave off the approach of middle-age. 

“Hey Mom, surprise!” Justine unfurled her arms the best she could, weighed down on one side by an oversized duffle bag.

“Surprise? I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow! How did you…” A ripple of concern flitted across her mother’s face, sinking into a quick downward twitch of her rouged lips. Her eyes flicked sharply to look over Justine’s shoulder through the open doorway, scanning the ice-slicked streets. 

“I got a ride from a friend. I did not drive.”Justine’s response truncated the unfinished question and searching glance. She closed the door behind her, shrugging the backpack and bag from her shoulder and dropping them on the ground. Realizing the curtness of her answer and hoping to redirect the wide, puzzled stare from her sister, Justine turned towards the tree and bared her teeth in a slightly artificial grin.

“Looks like someone finally talked Mom into buying the big tree from First Baptist, huh Jacey? Show me what you’ve done so far.”

The question elicited a broad-mouthed grin from below, revealing two gummy gaps where adult teeth had not yet emerged. Jacey skipped towards the massive tree, chattering excitedly and digging through a box of baubles, plucking one out, and crossing her eyes at her reflection distorted on its surface. 

Justine took no note of her younger sister. The living room wall that once contained posed family portraits and a collection of bible passages splashed across rustic wooden decor now boasted newspaper clippings, childhood photographs, a high school diploma and college acceptance letter…all belonging to Justine. Her eyes fixed hungrily upon a clipping with a bolded headline stating, Riverside Freshman Youngest Ever to Win States in 800-Meter Event. Another declared, Local Athlete Turned Local Hero: How One Riverside Senior is Inspiring the Next Generation of Girls. Justine’s eyes drifted to the black and white photo beneath, over the grinning face laden with track medals and behind her, the enamored young faces of runners from Jacey’s class. The soft spot beneath her right knee twinged, sudden and painful. Pausing briefly on a smudge across the photo, Justine anxiously glanced across the other headlines and did not notice her mother sidle up behind her.

“What do you think of my little holiday redecorating project? We just missed you so much!”

Justine started violently, shaken from the muted pounding in her ears by the voice behind her shoulder. She became aware for the first time of the song that drawled on the radio, its tune falteringly slow.

 “...in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angels sing.” 

She turned her neck slowly to meet her mother’s eyes but Justine’s gaze remained distant and glassy, seeming to settle far down the hallway leading away from the living room. 

“Where’s Dad?”

Another wave passed over her mother’s face, another quick downward pull of the lips, and suddenly the careful placement of a practiced smile was interrupted, cut short by the soft clink of glass on a granite countertop. Gentle, but not inadvertent. All heads bent quickly to the sound, landing fixedly on the grizzled figure settling himself beside a dram of scotch. 

“Dad.” Justine exhaled the word softly.

At the mention of this title, his unsettlingly pale eyes flashed with alarming quickness to meet Justine’s. An electric chill started in the soft space between her collar bones and shot down her sternum, as though it were a lightning rod. The pause hung in the air like crystallized frost. Suddenly, each family member had the creeping sensation that the frigidity of the approaching dusk outside had somehow permeated the home. Heedless of the four figures frozen in place, the radio droned on irreverently.

“They bend on hovering wing, and ever o'er its Babel-sounds…”

The furtive tug of a little hand broke the stare, and Justine’s eyes shot down to meet Jacey’s, quietly pleading.

“Come help me hang the ornaments, please…” Jacey whispered. Worry muddled the typically spirited countenance splashed across the young face. At the mention of the tree, Justine’s mother clapped her hands together twice in quick succession.

“Ohhhh, yes! We could use an extra set of hands. And while we’re at it, you can fill us in on all your accomplishments from your first semester of college!” She sang the last word, guiding Justine by the shoulders to a partially open box of homemade ornaments. Though she did not meet them, Justine felt the pale eyes following her. At the mention of the new subject, she brightened considerably and straightened her shoulders while sitting cross legged beside her mother and sister.

“Well, should I start with my 4.0 GPA or the fact that you’re looking at the newest Drill Coach for the track team!” Justine winked winningly at Jacey and turned expectantly towards her mother. Her voice was raised slightly, but both her sister and mother did not seem to notice. The former animatedly shook two silver bell ornaments she found in the box, while the latter cooed with obvious delight. There was no movement from the other side of the room.

“Apparently, I’m the youngest coach that the university has ever had. They heard about my record and Coach Reed said that me being a year older than the other freshman actually lends to my experience. You know, I think coaching may be even better than actually running on the team because I really get to shape the next generation of runners. You know?”

Justine’s mother nodded excitedly, hanging onto every word, urging her on.

Justine obliged. “But even after all the classes, all the track practices, I still felt like there was just something missing. I felt…” She paused and her confident beam faltered for a moment, eclipsed by something dark. Her eyes drifted absently to the scotch resting in her father’s hand, glassiness obscuring their depths. Then, straining slightly above the music, Justine recovered her practiced smile, slightly exaggerated now.

“It felt like something was missing, like I could be doing more. So I joined the Prison Outreach ministry at the church on campus.”

Her mother threw open her hands in delight and embraced her melodramatically. Justine felt the familiar pierce of the pale eyes on her back again, drilling into the vertebrae at the base of her neck. A memory threatened to creep into her mind, probing with its polar tendrils into the crevices that had remained shut for over a year. A memory of those eyes again silently transfixed, with the ability to shatter if only she met their gaze…

“I am just so proud of you. We’re all so proud of you. Aren’t we?” her mother sang, her voice dripping with honey. Jacey nodded absently, rooting through the ornaments to pull one out and hand it to her sister. Justine accepted it without looking, her mind elsewhere. She was jolted back by her mother’s face: startled and then apprehensive. Justine followed the gaze to her own hand, clasped around a ceramic beer pint ornament she purchased during their last family trip. Just beneath the animated foamy froth read the words, “Gutentag from Berlin!”

“We don’t need to hang that one, I think,” muttered her mother tersely as she reached quickly for the ornament, her brow creased with a mixture of concern and restrained annoyance. Justine snatched her own hand away reflexively, attempting to quell the hot flashes of rage and unease from her voice.

“Mom, it’s just an ornament,” Justine forced the words out through gritted teeth. She felt a quickness to the pulse in her temple, a dull ache in her knee, the whir of that memory forcing its way upward. 

“Actually, I don’t drink anymore. Not that I really ever did anyway. Just that I haven’t had a drink in so long. Not like the other kids I go to college with. They drink their money away without a thought, party every weekend, get into accidents…I haven’t had a drop since I’ve been there. I’m too busy with other things now.” The decided clink of a glass on the countertop was the only response. Justine felt the recollection swimming to the surface now, making decided strokes that spurred her forward, rapidly.

“Prison Outreach Ministry! That’s what I was talking about. Every Sunday, a group of us hops on a bus to the local prison. We get paired up with the same inmate and we share with them the Word, then just talk and connect.” The radio droned on unceasingly: 

“Two thousand years of wrong…” 

Justine filled the space feverishly.

“My inmate is named Ernest. Isn’t that a strange name? It sounds like an old-timey bank robber. Though that’s not what he’s in for. His story is pretty sad. He had a little baby girl and shared custody with the baby mama, I guess. Anyway, one day he gets fired from his job in construction, or something like that. Spends the entire day drinking his money away at a bar. Well, it gets late and Baby Mama’s calling, yelling at him because it’s his day to pick up the kid. He completely forgot!”

Justine’s hands are frantic now as they join the story, miming the events as they tumble from her mouth.

“He jumps in his truck, beelines it to Baby Mama’s house, picks up the kid without a hitch, and puts her in the car. Now, he doesn’t realize how drunk he is. Guess what? He forgot to buckle her in. Starts racing back to his house, thinking through how in the world he’s going to keep shared custody without even a job, doesn’t realize he’s hit 75 miles an hour, and hits a parked car on the side of the road. He came out with a pretty nasty split down his forehead but his baby didn’t make it.”

Here, Justine paused and clucked her tongue sadly, scanning the room for reactions. Her mother shifted her weight from side to side, uncomfortable. Her lips worked soundlessly to form a cheery response. Jacey’s eyes grew in disbelief, entranced by morbid curiosity.

“He killed his own baby?” Jacey gasped dramatically. Delighted that her listener had underscored the key point of her story, but not wanting to appear flippant, Justine nodded in exaggerated solemnity.

“His own little baby. And you know what the craziest part is? He got 10 years for the crime and he is trying to appeal it. That means to get the judge to give him a nicer sentence, Jace,” Justine added quickly, waving her hand matter-of-factly. Jacey nodded, knitting her brows in careful concentration. The silence from behind forced white-hot flashes of memory to dance behind Justine’s eyelids. She later wondered if the delirium from that pain forced out the words that came next, unraveling themselves before her.

“Some people just can’t accept the responsibility of what they’ve done, I guess.”

CRASH. 

The tinkling rain of glass fragments showered Justine, Jacey, and her mother before any of them could determine the source of the explosion. All eyes shot from the tabletop that once housed a small dram of scotch, to the newspaper clippings behind them that now dripped fragrantly with peaty saturation. Justine met her father’s eyes, shaking with equal parts rage and fear. Those eyes, piercing and clear, hardened around her own like tar on a struggling animal. When he spoke, his words were measured carefully; disgustingly placid, sickeningly slow.

“I think you forgot one for your wall.”

Justine did not look at the newspaper cutout he threw at her feet. She did not need to, she saw those words seared across her eyelids every time she closed them. 

Drunk Teen Responsible for the Death of 55-year Old Mother in Head-On Collision.



A photo below the tagline showed two cars, one bent almost cartoonishly around the collapsed bumper of the other. Deep grooves across the grassy median led directly to the first car, pointing against oncoming traffic. The darkness of the room enveloped its occupants and the only words heard from within were those of the profane song, mercilessly pressing on:

“When peace shall over all the earth, its ancient splendors fling, and the whole world give back the song, which now the angels sing.”