Riverwater

“When you were a little girl, she took you to the river.
She held your hand and helped you wade into the water.
She told you you could trust her, that you were safe with her.
So don’t worry little child because now everything will be better.
She sat you in the river, you were so small it reached your shoulders.
She smoothed your hair and splashed your face and told you to be good.
She held her hands over your ears so you wouldn’t hear what we said to her.
She yelled and screamed and threatened us, then picked you up and stood.

So we told her she was no good mother
to you. That all she was being was another
liar. That her woven stories would collapse and smother
all of us. She didn’t care.

You cried for him that night like you did every night he wasn’t home.
She tried to soothe you at first, then her already-thinning patience snapped.
We heard what she said; to keep you safe we had to shut you in your bedroom.
You were your father’s little girl, everybody was already sure of that.
The next morning when we weren’t looking she took you back out to the river,
and she placed you back down in the water. We didn’t know.
We found you, though. She was kneeling in the water, your hand wrapped around her finger.
So we picked you up while she screamed at us and we took you back home.

We told her she would need to leave
if she was a risk to your safety. She
threatened to sue us. It wasn’t the first time we’d
had to deal with that from her.

She sat you down in the kitchen.
Then she poured you a glass of water. It was water from the river.
She told you to drink it. You were a good girl, so you drank it.
She told you your father had died and you drank more riverwater.
She told you she would take you faraway and you drank more riverwater.
She told you she was your mother and you drank more riverwater.
She told you that you were safe with her and you drank more riverwater.

Everyone knew the water tasted funny. It tasted like sand and grit.
But you knew you were a good girl so even then you still drank it.
Mama said it was the right thing and why would Mama lie?
So Mama refilled your glass and watched you drink it with a smile.
She smiled whenever you drank it so you drank more riverwater.

We all should have spat the water out; oh, the joys of hindsight.
But all you knew with a mouth full of sand was that Mama was always right.
Even when the rest of us ran to the sink
and spat out mouthfuls of riverwater grit
you drank more riverwater, because why would Mama lie?

They say the house was flooded, water damage to every floor.
Don’t look at me like that, I won’t tell you anymore.
You know the rest. She was found dead.
Poisoned by the same riverwater, they said.
Your father didn’t cry at her funeral, neither did we.
And you just stared at her coffin while they lowered it into the ground
while you cried riverwater and spat the last of the grit from your mouth.”

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