There were alligators in her imagination, on the news, on baby onesies and birthday cards, going extinct and then not: overflowing from the swamps and woods, then in her brother’s ramblings, a 13-footer shellacked and preserved in a gas station. Alligators discovered in swimming pools or on elementary school playgrounds, and in the shape of the trees and the smell of the afternoons before the inevitable heavy storms. Everything grew dark and leafy and lush from the daily buckets of sweet rainwater and white sunlight, and the heat-wilted jasmine no longer crept but consumed the house.
Nothing seemed to happen. The days passed into each other without distinction. The marks on her brother’s stomach were pinkish-red now and fringed with yellow bruising. The first week became the first Sunday. There was a tentative plan to spend the afternoon at the beach, but it never amounted to anything. Nobody made any moves. It had gotten too late. At this hour, the ocean was the color of caramel.
“Hey, Mom?” Christopher called from his bedroom. “Mom? Mommmmmmm—”
“Yes, Christopher?”
“What are we having for dinner?”
“Dunno. What do you two want?” “Uh, Laotian,” Christopher yelled.
“Too expensive. Mead?”
“Let’s go to the movies,” Meadow said from where she sat at the living room entry. She slid onto her back and walked partway up the wall: “Let’s have popcorn.”
“I want Laotian.”
“Hospital bills to pay,” added their father.
“Are you blaming me?” said Christopher as he emerged from his room.
“No,” said their mother.
“Settle down,” said their dad.
“What I wanna know is why, when I was maybe dead, everyone was so nice to me. But now that I’m home it’s back to treating me like shit?” He stepped over his sister.
“Nobody is treating you like shit. Dad and I need to save some money.”
“I just want fried rice.”
“I’ll make you fried rice,” offered their mother.
“Gross. I don’t want your fried rice. I want Khua Basil too. Hot.”
Meadow narrowed her eyes up at him: “You were never going to die. No one ever thought you were going to die.”
Christopher was smacking gum and blowing minty air down at her face.
“You ever think how the best parts of your life are the ones that live in here? The ones you can never tell?” her brother flicked her, not softly, between her eyes.
“Fifteen dollars for rice. Rice!” their father said forty-four minutes later as he unpacked grease-spotted bags from the Laotian place on the beach. Six minutes after that, Christopher, a few bites into his basil beef and bell peppers, knocked his plate off the TV tray and onto the floor as he was reaching for the remote. He laughed at their dog as she wheezed and drooled from the spice but kept licking the plate, desperate for more.
Things had been too easy for too long. They had never been a family to talk, because they preferred to scream. They were a house of dark winter signs: gloomy and moody and quick to catch fire. Meadow knew it was coming. She saw it in the clench of her dad’s jaw and in the muted slams of appliance and cabinet doors. She heard it in her mother’s weighty sighs from the living room.
“No respect,” muttered their father as Christopher crouched in front of the fridge.
Meadow sat watching on a barstool. She braced herself. She thought of waves sloshing up on shore. She thought of sheets of sand carved by the surf. Of gulls and sea foam.
“Hmm?” Christopher whirled around and smiled. He was ready.
“You heard me.”
“You think I don’t have respect, Dad? Believe me, I have respect. You wouldn’t even believe the respect I have.” Christopher returned to the fridge.
“You’re on thin ice. You’re this close,” said their father. “This close!” He slammed his hand on the countertop. “I should kick your ass to the curb. I let you back in my house, and not a word of thanks! No sorry! You’re a thief! I don’t want thieves in my house!”
“I hate it here! Your house sucks! I wish I was still in the fucking alligator’s mouth!” Christopher shouted, his shadow strange cast across the sun-reddened wall.
In the living room, their mother turned up the television.