No apologies

I walk into the bathroom to an assault on my sense of smell. I don’t need to see it to know but sure enough, the turd is there, floating in the water. I hate the smell of other people’s shit. It’s all bad, sure, but I know the nuances of mine: somehow sharp, cutting. This has a nauseating dullness to it. 

“Mabel!” I call to my youngest. “Dear, you forgot to flush the toilet. Can you please come here and do it?”

“It wasn’t me.” I hear her high-pitched voice behind me before I even have a chance to turn. Was she following me around again? She does that, but I hadn’t noticed this time.

I paint disbelief on my face as I turn to her with a raised eyebrow. She’s seven. She’s short and skinny for her age, with hands forever multicolored and dirty and a mop of unkempt black hair that frames a lovely, dark face. I call it the goblin phase of childhood. I remember mine vividly and cannot wait for hers to pass.

I flush it. 

“Alright, let’s go.” I close the door behind me and motion her to the living room. I breathe deep to clean my lungs and sit her down beside me.

“Honey, you know we don’t punish honest mistakes,” I begin. “Lies, on the other hand…”

“I didn’t do it,” she doubles down.

“Then who did? Ghosts?” I ask.

A shrug is all I get for an answer. 

“Of course! A ghost went into your bathroom, pooped in there, and didn’t flush.”

She would normally laugh at the idea, but my attempt at humor now falls flat.

“Maybe it was Mona,” she stares at me with dark almond eyes.

“Mona is at school. You know that.”

“Maybe—”

“And mom is at work, and I for sure did not go and leave poop in your toilet, “ I cut her off.

She takes a shaky breath. 

“Maybe you did!”

“Don’t be cheeky with me.”

Why is this so difficult? I’m great with people; I do this for a living. I broker compromises and build consensus, and if all else fails, I maneuver my opponents into corners of logic and make them agree with me. At no point do I lose control of my emotions. Yet here I am in the face of this immovable stump, and its unwillingness to agree with the obvious makes my insides boil.

“I’m tired of this,” I say. “You’re grounded. You can spend the rest of the day in your room and you can pretend I’m not here.”

Tears are rolling down her cheeks now and she stands there petrified, with hands balled up into little fists.

“No!”

“That’s not your decision,” I say condescendingly and turn my back. I need distance. A plant needs watering. I never water the plants.

“You go to YOUR room!” she screams at my back.

The anger hits my chest like a punch, taking all my breath with it. Most adults have gotten so used to stepping away, to getting distance from people or moments we dislike, we take it for granted that there’s always space. But she won’t let me have it.

“You WILL go,” I raise a menacing finger. An angry-dad-finger, like a spear pointing at her little brave heart. In my mind, I conjure images of violence against this tiny, inflexible object. Slapping it, pulling its hair, stifling it, beating it down into submission until all I hear is yesses and thankyous. 

“You always punish me!” she throws.

“Because you always do stupid shit!” I am not one to back down easily.

“And it’s always my fault! And never Mona’s! And you never punish her, and you always punish only me because YOU LOVE HER MORE!”

And there it is. The fear. The thing I could not see before. The reason the child could not share with me until the emotion broke through her every pore, bringing with it tears, spittle, and snot. I was never a violent person. I’m somewhat of a coward. I’ve only been in a few fistfights as a teen and lost them all. Yet I just daydreamed about punching a little girl.

I kneel to reach her eye level.

“I don’t love her more. I love you both. In equal measure, though differently.”

These aren’t my words, but I don’t possess any better ones. She sobs through them and won’t take my look. Whatever strength she had to offer for this fight, it looks to be spent now.

“I don’t believe you…” she sobs.

“And I can’t make you believe my words. What I can do is try to show you. Did you know that she thinks I love YOU more?”

“That’s not true.”

“No, it’s not. But she likes to say that when it is her getting the punishments. I think maybe she believes she’ll hurt me back.”

“But you don’t punish her more.”

“She’s older. You’ll be older, and you’ll make fewer mistakes. Hopefully, tell fewer lies too.”

She goes silent for a moment and her ragged breath falls back into a steady rhythm.

“I want to be older now.”

“Then let’s talk about this like adults, ok? You want to be an adult? Just admit that you did it, and there will be no punishment.”

Why am I insisting on this? Is it because I want her to learn, like I say? Or because I just want a win. At least a small one, some sort of closure to this. Some break into this wall of stubbornness. Who am I bargaining with, her or myself?

She shifts uneasily but says nothing. At this point, I’ll gladly take non-committal shrugs.

“Come on, let’s get your face washed and then we can both have a snack.”

She waddles back to her bathroom to clean herself up, and I’m left behind with an uncomfortable knot in my stomach and a pair of shaky hands. 

“Can we have ice cream?” she yells across rooms.

“Yes we can,” I say.

“It won’t happen again,” I hear the squeaky voice, this time right behind me.

I smile.

“Does that mean it was you?”

She smiles back, the sweetest gaptoothed smile.

“No.”