Your mother is a grizzly bear
At the school gate, your mother lifts her narrow snout and scents trouble.
Together you walk past the glossy moms flicking the sky with their shellacked nails, air kissing their daughters. As you pass there’s a collective intake of breath, low mutterings.
Don’t do it, don’t do it, you chant under your breath. She does it anyway. Your mother passes in a flat-footed huff, baring her yellowed teeth at them. The circle tightens as they close ranks.
You count steps to the school entrance, remembering Melissa Banks in your kitchen yesterday. Her shrill voice, screaming and clapping as your mother razed open punnets of blueberries and clawed them into her mouth, guzzled packets of salmon, plastic and all. It’s always a frenzy this time of year, gorging on calories to see her through the winter. Not that Melissa cared. You weren’t even friends anymore, not since sixth grade, but she still came every Monday night.
Don’t post it, don’t post it, you begged Melissa as she filmed your mother gulping down whole chickens. She posted it.
“Come and get it!” she sang in her nauseating voice. You rushed her and for one glorious moment her iPhone was in your grip, but one punch to the stomach ended that. You dropped to the floor, winded.
The low bass of your mother’s growl made you turn. She rippled past, shoulders and fur bunching as her head swung left and right, top canines pointing like daggers. You looked at Melissa, still red-faced and stupid-eyed from taunting you, and thought, good. Remembered her elbow jabs in dodgeball, the way her whispers and giggles left you exposed.
You closed your eyes when Mother reared, six feet tall, saliva dripping from her open jaws. Her roar. Melissa’s screams. The clack of a phone hitting the tiles.
Then Melissa, not a scratch on her, sinking to the floor next to you. Her pale face and trembling hand, picking up her phone, screen splintered like it had stopped a bullet.
Your mother’s eyes on Melissa as she called Mrs. Banks. Time to collect Melissa and no, she wouldn’t be staying for dinner. In fact, no more dinners on Mondays.
Today, on the steps to the school, you square your shoulders and give your mother a cheery wave. Watch her amble out of the gates, haunches swaying.
You pass through the doors, head high, remembering the gentle wash of her tongue, nestling into the reassuring bulk of her during hibernation, her snores a steady beat to your days and nights.
Cole Beauchamp (she/her) is a copywriter by day and fiction writer by night. She was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and has stories in/soon to appear in Janus Literary, Ellipsis Zine, Sundial, Free Flash Fiction, Lost Balloon and Damnation Lit. She lives in London with her girlfriend, has two children and an exuberant Maltipoo. You can find her on Twitter at @nomad_sw18 and on Mastodon at @nomad_sw18@zirk.us
