You're On Fire Pt 21

You start to go up the stairs but your father stops you. I need my tool bag, he says, stretching and making his joints pop. It’s down by the sump, go get it.

But the basement’s flooded, you say.

You heard me. Your father bends down to take a look at one of the broken outlets.

You go to the door tucked into the kitchen corner, opening it and looking down the stairs into the dark and hearing the sump chewing and sucking on the water. You think about telling your mother, but she’s still limping from the last time you went to her for help. There is a heavy flashlight sitting on the top stair, the wide kind they have four of in each engine, and you turn it on, following the white cone of light down into the water that begins at the seventh step, gritting your teeth, sinking until the water is up to your waist. Your father’s black tool bag, his doctor bag he calls it, is sitting on a simple shelf bolted to the wall; you slosh towards it, pushing the floating broom and laundry soap bottles and waterlogged old empty boxes out of your way, grabbing it and turning to flee – but then the kitchen door slams shut like a gunshot and you yelp and drop both the bag and the flashlight, which sinks and goes out. You shout for your father, splashing blindly with your arms outstretched, hands flailing in the dark; you hear a creak and a thump and a splash as something enters the water, something groaning and coming closer. You stagger backward, bumping into debris, and when you hear it growl in the dark you are undone, shrieking for your father and rushing at what you hope are the stairs, slipping and falling and thinking that you are going to drown just like Cavard –

A flashlight turns on in mid-air, light up your father’s face. BOO, he says.

And when you yell and try to escape he grabs you, his hand balled in your shirt front.

What kind of shit was that today? he demands, shaking you. Fucking embarrassing.

I’m sorry, you say.

Who’s in charge? he says. You or that fucking kid? Who makes you do anything?

Nobody, you say, hardly able to make the words. I’m in charge, me, me, me.

He releases you and gets his tools, draining the water out of the bag.

Nobody is better than you, he says. Ever.

He sloshes back to the stairs, taking the light with him. You hurry to follow.