How We Solve It

by J.D. Isip

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Sarah, when she was small enough to hold – when she would ask to be held – had an angelic temperament. Except on some mornings. Mornings when everyone was running late, the dog had pissed the kitchen floor, breakfast was cold and disappointing, and my niece could feel the seam of her sock anywhere but where it belonged, like a smile across her tiny toes. Not a child for holding her breath, instead she would send a screech like ice or lightning surging through each corner of the house, her helpless parents, my brother and his wife, fumbling at her feet or, when nothing seemed to work, joining the banshee chorus of late for school and late for work and late, I’m late, for a very important date! When she shot into a teenager, then, somehow, an adult, my brother became fond of calling her Katie Ka-Boom. But those long ago mornings, when my life had, somehow, fallen apart and they’d let me stay in the guest room for years, I became another set of arms, something useful. Sarah, red-faced and tear-smattered, would stumble into my room, one sock dragging and another in her hand, her parents’ patience spent. One day I’d tell her about her mom crying over a stack of bills. Or how her father once punched a hole in the living room wall. Or how her uncle, slowly placing her socks on just so, lived a life of explosions. “It’s okay,” I’d tell her, “Sometimes it’s hard for me to put my socks on, too.” And she’d giggle.