Ten-Eighty

As 14-year-old-Katria watches her father, Ivan, step-by-step sweep his spray of poison brew back to front over the lawn, she imagines the little creatures beneath the fall of his steel- toed boots curling up dead the minute he passes. She imagines his poison percolating through the soil and travelling underground to his patch of rhubarb stalks that he stewed in pots and forced Moms to eat in large quantities to make her lose weight. Then, Katria can hardly believe the voice she hears coming from her mother’s grave: “HE POISONED ME. GET EVEN.”