I remember her hands the most. They were doll hands, smooth and false. Yellow-blue bruises painted her palms. Her hands were surgical and method and brutal. She taught me how to descale and fillet a fish on the dock behind her grandfather’s trailer. I was afraid of the knife and what it could do. I threw up twice the first time she showed me. Little scales freckled the backs of her hands and the bends of her fingers. I tried to walk away from it. I wanted my father to do it for me, someone who had killed things. But she gripped my wrists and pulled me back to the cooler lid where she performed for the both of us. Her hands cradled the back of mine, she moved them to the knife and worked my fingers around the blade. I never looked at what I was doing with the knife; she did it all from the backs of my hands. My eyes were hooked on the fish’s eye. 

 

The eye was serene. It told me I had no reason to feel sorry for it. It knew its purpose in the end was this, and there was nothing either of us could do. I thought about that eye after the two of us finished slicing out the meat and seared it over the campfire. I thought about that eye while we devoured the fish and licked the grease from our hands. It was our first and only meal of the day. 

 

Meals were like that when we stayed at her grandfather’s. We built shelters under the pines that cradled the lake and slept under swollen stars. We woke up to the sounds of Warblers and Woodpeckers. We ran along the shell sand beach until our feet were cut to hell. We howled back at the creatures that danced outside the light of campfire flickers. We never set foot in that trailer of his.  

 

Moss covered the tin roof and damp green plants hung from the mangled gutter. Three of the windows were cardboard and duct tape. I never saw the inside, but I smelled the inside from the screen door when we walked close. It smelled like the carpet was patchy and crusty in spots. It smelled like the kitchen linoleum was sticky to walk on. It smelled like beer and ketchup and sliced ham were the only things in the fridge. It smelled like he did; it smelled like he was. 

 

He had mechanic’s hands that felt like vice grips when they squeezed your shoulder. His stubble could scratch the paint off a school bus. But his eyes were the worst because they were alive. They were alive like fever dreams. I looked in his eyes once and saw rain lurking in the clouds before it fell and flooded the lake.  

 

My father saved us that night when the lake bloated with rain. He knew how she and I would’ve slept under a tarp before sleeping in that trailer. He drove us away to his apartment by the bay. My father’s apartment was red and cinnamon. Paintings of little men in silly hats doing extraordinary things littered the walls. His chunky rugs smelled like cherry tobacco and the smoke from old cigars.  

 

She picked the movie that night because my father said it was good practice to celebrate guests that way. She told him she only ever watched Spaghettis because they made her brave. She wanted to be Annie Oakley and shoot the cowards. My father put on a movie with a whistle track after every stare-down and a hero with a name that punched harder than bruised fists. We fell asleep on the big brown couch in a pile of arms and legs.