One of the Lies I Tell My Children (#3)

If they ask if we can get a dog, I will tell them to prove to me they can take care of one, but I will neglect to tell them how. I will watch for displays of maturity (doing the dishes without having to be asked, putting their dirty clothes in the laundry room instead of leaving them on the floor), but my children will beguile me, disappearing into the woods for long hours, then coming home with little cuts on their arms, as if someone—or something—grabbed them, scratched them. I will cry, “What happened? Who did this to you?” my voice frantic with worry, but my children will not be bothered. They will say, “You’ll see,” with these sly, knowing smiles, as if planning a surprise for my birthday. And that is when I will start to follow them: across the street, through the skatepark, over the ridge that separates our neighborhood from the quarry and the lake that refilled it. Every time I look at that dark, silty water, I wonder what grows there, what slimy, boneless creature has slithered up from the depths to poison the loblolly pines the construction firm planted to make up for the destruction wrought with the quarry. Only after I follow my children into the woods will I realize I was looking in the wrong place. When peering down into the waters, I should have been looking up, toward the trees. I will see it there: the creature—a clawed, winged thing my children try to tame. It will hiss at me, its dark pink maw glinting with teeth, but it will tolerate them, their cooing, their small, reaching hands. They’re still so young, my children. So young and so proud.