{"id":174,"date":"2018-06-23T22:51:08","date_gmt":"2018-06-23T22:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=174"},"modified":"2018-06-24T00:37:15","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T00:37:15","slug":"two-by-catherine-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/06\/23\/two-by-catherine-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Two by Catherine Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"
Language lover, art enthusiast, and tea aficionado, Catherine Jones is a college professor and writer of novels, poetry, and non-fiction. You can follow her writing adventures on Twitter @catjanejones.<\/em><\/h6>\n

<\/h1>\n

Slam<\/h1>\n

Father used to slam things. Beers, doors, people, if they happened to get in the way. I\u2019d hide in the bathroom, sitting on the cold tile floor with my head in between my knees. All the doors in the house were smashed off their hinges. Locks exploded into useless metal pins.<\/p>\n

Slam<\/em>. And again for good measure.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry. I curse at the top of my lungs. I climb out and slam the door to the car as hard as I can. I stalk up the stairs to the muffled sounds of my son\u2019s cries and slam the front door. I move to the bedroom and slam that door too, even though there is no one inside the house to hear me. I open the door and slam it again and again, so hard that the door pushes out past its frame, the wood warped over the doorframe. I beat the door with the palm of my open hand and then with my fist. I grab the knob and find I can\u2019t open the door. I\u2019m stuck inside.<\/p>\n

Slam<\/em>.\u00a0 I have a lot of things to say to my husband.\u00a0 About him not listening to me, making me angry, and forcing me to get to the point where I scare our son. He could see I was losing control and he did nothing to deescalate the situation.\u00a0 And now my baby\u2019s crying.<\/p>\n

When he finally pushes the door back into its frame correctly so I can get out I don\u2019t say any of those things; instead, my eyes fill with tears and I whisper I\u2019m sorry I got so angry<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t want our son to tell his wife stories like the ones you\u2019ve told me about your father,\u201d he says, holding me limply, looking away as he says it.<\/p>\n

Slam<\/em>. Right between the eyes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Woman<\/h1>\n

When she was eleven she felt something slide out of her like diaphanous jelly. When she checked her underwear, it was spotted pink. You\u2019re a woman now<\/em>, her mother said with a touch of sadness, handing her a thick white pad the shape of the lake in their backyard, folded up in a cotton candy colored wrapper. You can have a baby. <\/em>And the girl-woman wept because she didn\u2019t fully understand what that meant.<\/p>\n

When she was thirty-nine she felt the world slip out of her like muddled paint colors. When she checked her underwear, it was rusty red. You\u2019re not a woman now<\/em>, the voice in her head said with a touch of horror, handing her a future that looked like a blank piece of paper. You can\u2019t have a baby<\/em>. And the woman wept because she fully understood what that meant.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Language lover, art enthusiast, and tea aficionado, Catherine Jones is a college professor and writer of novels, poetry, and non-fiction. You can follow her writing adventures on Twitter @catjanejones. Slam Father used to slam things. Beers, doors, people, if they happened to get in the way. I\u2019d hide in the bathroom, sitting on the cold … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-2O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}