coffee cup song

How dare you!” my momma says, her voice high and screeching like a lonely fiddle. “How dare you!” She throws one two three four five coffee cups at me. Percussion smash. Tinkle of white shards on the blue linoleum. We’ll be drinking coffee out of styrofoam for a while, I think. That’s all we have, coffee cup-wise, except for the sixth one, the last thing my daddy drank out of the morning he left, and it’s sitting in the china cabinet in the front room.

She doesn’t aim to hit me, although the fifth cup comes close. It explodes on the floor and a chip dings off my guitar’s gloss. She’s never thrown anything at me before. I watch the way you might watch a television program showing animals doing something you’ve never seen them do.

“How dare you!” my mother says again,. She sinks down in her chair and puts her head in her hands. Her words are muffled as they make their way past the blue sleeves of her workshirt, the one with “Candy” embroidered in red loops on the front pocket. “How dare you put me in that song?”