Gather in, you squits, you whelps of my wayward boy. But not so close, I don’t want to smell you. Don’t finger the hem of my skirts while I grate the turnip. You know how to hold a broom, a hoe, a spoon. Keep stirred the pot on the fire and bring more kindling for the burn.
Hush now and stop your fidget. Still yourselves for my riddle. How can your father not be the son of your grandmother’s husband? You answer with silence? Must I explain? The grandfather you have never met was none the wiser, addled with mead as he was, his head wedged in weeds. To bear a child I chose a stranger who looked like him, grizzled and lean, hair like sticks of straw. He had large hands that roamed rough where I told them to go. In this he was more pleasing. From him I expected to birth daughters to help in the kitchen, but a son is what I got, and so I cuffed Jack’s ears. One week after your father’s birth, my husband, the lout, lost his miserable life to the drink. Shortly after, the stranger fled. I was left stuck with a spindly imitation of both, a boy who’d know nothing of father or barter.
Do not snicker. This son of mine robbed and killed to avoid the back of my hand. This wanderer you call your father, this numbskull, this Jack, is he here with us this minute? He is not. He traded the hen for a goose, the goose is cooked. Now your father is off chasing giants, and your mother goes gathering bogbean. I am what you have, so listen well and keep your fingers from your noses.
Wrestle this with your milk-fed brains, but keep scrubbing the floor. If a giant should steal our oxen and young children and broil them all for his own pleasure and greed, is it just to climb the stalk and vine that rise to his castle? Is it proper to run away with his fortune while he snores?
Why are you still mute? Shall I swap you a swat for some speech? Shall I take from your pockets or behead your rooster so you will learn to think? How useless you’ve already become! I can’t tell you apart from your father. There shall be no more porridge for you to eat, no cider to swallow. Go water the beans outside.
Go.
