“Harley Davidson, get the fuck in here and explain this! Right now!”
Harley put down the book she’d been reading and ventured down the hall to her bedroom where her mother stood in the doorway waiting for her. Harley’s mom wasn’t your typical mom: she was rocking cutoff jean shorts and a tight t-shirt with no bra. A cigarette dangled between two fingers -- well, actually one and a half, or one and a nub. Harley’s father had cut Jewel’s finger off years ago, at the governor’s direction…but that was another story. Her name was Julia but she started going by ‘Jewel’ after she hooked up with her biker husband, Roderick -- Harley’s dad.
“What is this shit?” Jewel jabbed a finger toward her little girl’s room. Harley poked her head into the room and looked around. She didn’t see anything amiss. In fact, it was perfectly clean. Tidy. There was no clutter anywhere because everything was in its proper place, just the way Harley liked it. She smiled at the orderly room that was a source of such pride to her. As far as Harley was concerned, her room had to be under control because nothing else in her life was.
“Oh, hell, leave the child alone,” Roderick groused as he sauntered around the corner to join them. As he peered over Jewel’s shoulder, Harley beamed up at the most beautiful man in her world. He was tall and leanly muscled. Long brown hair flowed halfway down his back. He wore jeans and a form-fitting black t-shirt with a weathered leather jacket. He winked and smiled down at his little girl before tilting his beer back and downing what little was left.
Her mother huffed and shook her head, even more frustrated now that the argument had become two against one. She shouldn’t have been surprised, though; it was how things usually went. “It ain’t normal.” She ventured over to Harley’s princess makeup table, and with a sly glance back toward the door she deliberately moved a bottle of sparkly pink nail polish. Harley shrieked, and Jewel dropped the tiny bottle like it had burnt her hand. “See?” Jewel spread her arms wide as she glared at her husband.
“Kid probably needs order somewhere in her life, she sure don’t get it with us. A clean room ain’t anything to get worked up about, woman. You should be happy she does well in school and don’t get in trouble.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. No kid growing up around a bunch of bikers should be this damn clean! They shouldn’t do good in school either—”
“’Well’,” Harley said, looking up at her mother with her big, innocent blue eyes.
“Well, what?!?” Her mother closed her eyes for a long moment on an exasperated sigh, her hands on her hips.
“It’s ‘they shouldn’t do well in school’. ‘Good’ is grammatically incorrect.” There was no sign of rebellion or sarcasm in the child’s matter-of-fact demeanor as she looked up at her mother sincerely.
Roderick roared with laughter, rubbing his hand over Harley’s head and tousling her hair, which earned him another devoted grin from his little princess. “See? The kid’s normal. She knows how to be a smartass and backtalk her mama – and be grammatically correct while she does it.” Though he was deliberately appearing to misread his daughter’s intentions, he couldn’t help but yank Jewel’s chain. It was too much of a temptation for him to pass up.
Harley frowned and shook her head. “But I wasn’t backtalking, Daddy. I was just trying to help Mama.”
Jewel’s eyes narrowed irritably. “--as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted,” she said slowly.
“Sorry, Mama.” Harley reached over to hug her mother’s leg which caused the woman’s hard heart to melt just a little.
“You’re a biker kid. You should be fighting or cussing.” Now it was Jewel’s face that held an element of sincerity as she tried to make the child see things her way—her twisted, warped, dysfunctional way.
“But I don’t like fighting, Mama. I do like the fighting lessons Daddy gives me, though.” Her smile lit up the room as she nodded. The girl was the light of their lives and the only good thing in their chaotic world. It seemed mayhem always had a way of rearing its ugly head, and drama followed them like a shunned woman who just wouldn’t let go.
“Probably better the kid ain’t fightin’. She’d hurt somebody.” He looked down at Harley, squaring his jaw sternly. “Anybody fucks with you or tries to touch you, you beat their ass, baby.”
“I will, Daddy.” There was that look of easy innocence again.
Roderick glanced up at Jewel. “See? She’s got some sour to go with her sweet, just like her mama.” He strolled over toward his wife, waggling his brows at her mischievously and smacking her ass as he passed by. He chuckled smugly, knowing that he had the advantage at this point in the conversation.
Outrage rolled through Harley’s mother when Roderick laughed. As he turned to leave the room, he didn’t see the bottle of nail polish until it clocked him on the side of his head. She must have picked up two. Who’d have known? He stopped in his tracks and rubbed his head. His chin dipped as he tracked the bottle’s progress as it rolled across the floor. Slowly, he lifted his eyes to convey a silent message of displeasure to his wife.
Harley dove onto her bed as Jewel took off running with Roderick chasing after her and bellowing about all the ways he could kill her. Harley waited to shut the door until they were gone. As she straightened up the mess her mother had made, she couldn’t help but wonder why she couldn’t have been born into a normal family. Maybe she was adopted. After all, she was nothing like these people. She was just glad that bottle of nail polish hadn’t broken. What a mess that would have made.
Oh, well. She’d stay here until she was a big girl and then she would pursue her dream of being a nurse and get as far away from this place and these people as she could. She would live a normal, respectable life. But she’d stay in touch with her daddy, of course.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love her parents; she just worried about them and what would happen if they got in trouble for selling pot or fighting or whatever else they did when they partied with their biker friends. She’d heard the horror stories about foster care. She went to school with some of the bikers’ kids. One little boy, Zander, had been taken away from his parents when they got caught cooking meth. He was never the same even after they got him back. He was mad all the time and barely talked to anyone—except her. Maybe it was because she did better healing people, not hurting them.