Things Even González Can't Fix. Christy Chilimigras

covered in gravel), to wave them off as they leave for the airport. As though recreating a precious and nauseatingly happy scene from a romantic comedy, they turn their heads back at us, waving at their children and their new children as they peel off. Before they’ve turned the corner, I decide I’ve had quite enough of this waving business, and lower my arm. Step Sister 1 grabs my arm, hoists it into the air and insists I wave until their car is completely out of sight.

      Life for Protector & Soul and me is uneventful. Not as though nothing is happening; we’re just used to what is happening. We’re used to going to school where I have one friend and my sister has two. My friend is a girl named Alexia, a squishy and uninhibited Cypriot with whom I bond through tears on the first day of Grade 1. My sister’s two friends are me and Alexia. I am used to stealing the Slim Slabs from Alexia’s lunchbox and giving her half my sandwich in exchange. Not because I want the Slim Slab – no one ever actually wants the Slim Slab – but because I am sad she’s been given the Slim Slab in her lunchbox in the first place. ‘It’s because I have all this puppy fat,’ she tells me as she grabs at her fleshy, dimpled side with her index finger and thumb, just as her mom has taught her to do. ‘Also, I’m pre-diabetic,’ she says, hungrily chewing on her sandwich ration.

      I am used to being told I’m going to fail. I am used to Protector & Soul pushing people down the concrete grandstand with all the force she can muster as she defends my honour. I am used to picking fights and using my big, pushing, warrior sister as a threat. We are used to going home and straight to our bedroom. We are used to our new life, just as Old Lass is used to hers. She continues to bring Second Husband beers, to roll joints, to light joints, to now rid the garden and house of any evidence of the smoked joints. We are used to the way Second Husband shouts at our mother, at the dogs and at us.

      One day we’re in the kitchen and he kicks a dog belonging to one of his friends who is away on a vacation and I scream. I scream at him to stop, I scream at Old Lass to give a fuck that her husband has just kicked a creature that is now in pain, tail between its legs, black-and-white torso crumpled in on itself lying on the threshold of the kitchen door that leads to the back garden. I decide people who kick black-and-white dogs, people who kick any dogs, are the worst people of all.