Hilary Harper

 
The Trouble with Angels

Angels do not require food or sleep. Have no ego, worries, or regrets. Confident and wise, like fairy godmothers, angels are beautiful and nurturing. Idealized mothers, yet virginal, serene. Angels never have much to say, only whisper in your ear on rare occasion, as I was told in Catholic school in the 1960s, and believed. I scooched over to make room at my desk for the angel assigned to me. My Guardian Angel. Just like the one in the picture of two little children crossing a rickety bridge on a stormy night, and one of the planks up ahead is missing. The boy and girl cling to each other in fear, but you know they are safe because hovering above them, in a glowing, flowing gown, with her wings spread wide, is an angel who will protect them. Such a comforting image for children. Ifthey are good children. But if they don’t do their homework, slouch at their desk, scowl, and give the wrong answers to arithmetic problems, their guardian angel might get fed up and fly away. Making them vulnerable to harm. Especially on rickety bridges. Stormy nights. Or gloomy afternoons in the claustrophobic room where they are being held against their will.

Spoiled

There is nothing to do at the beauty shop in the basement of my cousin’ house. I hold my nose against the ammonia scent of permanent-wave solution while waiting for my mom to pick me up. I sit in the chair under the dryer, look at old hairdo magazines, and listen. Dorothy switches from English to Polish when she doesn’t want me to know what she’s saying, but I know when she talks about me, the customers glance my way and go tsk-tsk.

Sometimes she washes my hair in her horrible sink with the too hot hose. Smacks my head if I don’t sit still when she combs out the knots. What’s a matter with you? What are you gonna do when you bleed? Let it run down your leg? Big girl like you. Look at your fingernails. Filthy!

“I hate her, I hate her,” I complain to my mom, and she begs me to be a good girl. We stop at the store and she buys me a candy bar. She buys popsicles, potato chips, Ding Dongs, jelly doughnuts, Spaghetti O’s, and Nestle’s Quik. She lets me watch TV as late as I want. Then rubs my back a long, long time, while singing me to sleep.
 

Hilary Harper has appeared in Connecticut River Review, Dime Show Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Five Minutes, Minerva Rising, and elsewhere. Born in the middle of the Baby Boom, she lives half-way between Detroit and Chicago.

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