Excerpt: Bless This House

My fingers feel numb. Taking a deep breath, I open my eyes. For some reason the world is a blur in a black world. There are blinking lights of blue, green and orange but they are faint as if they had been on for a while and were on their last leg. It feels as if my head is stuffed full of cotton and there’s a crick in my neck. Blinking a few times, I’m able to make out the indistinguishable swooshing of the windshield wipers. Fat snowflakes are being swept to the side instead of being melted upon contact with the windshield. There’s a small layer of frost on the glass. Why isn’t my heater on?

Reaching to start the car, my hand grazes the deflated airbag dangling from the steering wheel. It takes me a while as I sit there staring at the bag as I try to figure out what happened, why it’s deployed in the first place. Mustering my strength, I reach up and flick on the dome light washing the interior in pale yellow light.

Blood splatters decorate the airbag while more crusted to my jeans and my coat. My window is cracked and the roof of the car looks to be smashed in a little. What happened? Looking through the film of frost, I notice the tree and the accordion the front of my car has become. A swath of the tree is missing as if my car landed from the sky.

The pit of my stomach freezes as I dread to think of Matilda. Turning my head causes a wave of nausea. I suspect I blacked out again when I wake up slouched over my seat into the passenger’s side, still buckled in tight with my seatbelt. My arms flail as I try to get a vantage point to rest my body. At the moment, the rest of me doesn’t want to work.

My face is pressed against the side of the passenger seat and looking down I see pink shoes. Tears well up in my eyes and choke me until I see that the little feet are kicking. Saying a small prayer, I look up at my daughter buckled into her car seat.

Matilda’s head is bent over a picture book, the kind that makes noise when buttons are pressed on the side. Waves of brown hair hide her face from me.

“Matilda?” I croak, my voice is rough and scratchy as if I’d been screaming. I wait for a response, after a few seconds more I repeat, “Matilda?”

“Yes mommy?”

A smile cracks my face, as I hear her voice, which sounds fine. In my head I believe that if she sounds fine she must be fine.

“Baby look at me.” I ask my daughter as my body begins to shiver in the freezing cold of the car.

“Why mommy?” She responds idly as she presses another button on the side of the book. The sound is muddled and I can’t tell what it’s supposed to be; whatever it is scares me.

“Because, I just want to look at you. Will you look at me?” I try to remain calm but inside I’m screaming with impatience. I need to know. I need to know if my baby is okay. Already, tears trickle down my face warming up the parts they cascade down.

“But mommy….” Matilda begins to whine.

“Matilda! Just do it!” I yell and instantly regret it. What if she’s hurt and she doesn’t want me to know. What if, what if, what if?

My little girl sighs as she lifts up her head. Jerking away, I try to find my voice to scream but I can’t. My mouth is open as if I am but there’s nothing coming out. Misted blue eyes glare at me in anger, obscuring the deep brown of her natural eye color. Blood covers almost her entire face and I can see white shards of bone as well as a few teeth through a tear in her right cheek.

Setting the book aside, Matilda looks at me as if she’s assessing me. “Now mother, what is it you wanted?”

This isn’t my little girl. This isn’t my baby. I keep telling myself as I try to get my fingers to unlock the seatbelt. I can’t feel my fingers though, I can’t feel them.

Slipping down from her car seat, Matilda reaches out with broken fingers. “Here mommy let me help you.”

Finding my voice, I scream.