Solomon's Daughter

Frances Burger was five when her mother, Mrs. Noreen Elaine Burger, died after a prolonged wasting sickness that Francis’ Father, Dwight Eisenhower Burger refused to say anything about. Dwight would only shake his head when the toddler in her odd sing song voice would ask about her mother. It was dam spooky when Francis spoke, the sweet baby face with perfect cupid lips talking like she was an adult. He’d press already thin lips pressing down in a thin hard white line. His charcoal eyes looking through Francis, her tiny body would tremor with the chill of her fathers gaze. The child knew she repulsed him, Francis could not remember her father touching her voluntarily and when he had… He looked ready to jump his own skin to escape the horror he felt at touching such an unnatural thing as his daughter was and he did not know or care if she new of his revulsion.
She did but cared for her fathers feelings as little as he cared for hers. Francis’ talents went far beyond her preternatural grasp of language and reason. She had gained awareness in the womb, a ready possessing a great deal of knowledge of the world she was entering. Francis could read the thoughts of others; she saw how Dwight felt about her. He loved her under all the fear of what she may be or would become.
“Go play Francis.” Her step mother Edith, who was very Fat, would hush and scoot the chubby red head into the kitchen. Nothing shut up Francis like a nice slice of pie or from scratch cake. Edith was an excellent cook and a divine baker who enjoyed her products as much as her family. She kept the house neat and the meals on time for Dwight, who was very particular about the house keeping. Francis hated her with every atom of her existence, the very site if Edith’s step mother sent the doll like child’s body into tremors of rage that made her hand quiver. Frances would look at the floor when she was warned off the forbidden Mother questions, wanting to claw the old cow’s eyes out and spit into the empty sockets. Francis was brilliant and psychotic at six years old.
Dwight saw the hate in his little girl’s eyes and it would occasionally cause him discomfort but thinking of Francis always made Dwight uncomfortable. A child that spoke at eight months was spooky enough had it not for the fact that the child spoke in full sentences with in a year to top that. It wasn’t right. He didn’t know any other kids like her, while most her peers had still been shitting in diapers his daughter had finished off her first dickens novel. It wasn’t right at all. He and Noreen had fought about the girl from day one. Dwight hadn’t wanted kids, they were messy and expensive he told Noreen in his soft firm manor but this time she would not budge.
“Dwight Burger if you expect me to stay with your miserable face for all eternity your going to have to give me a baby, possibly two or I’ll leave you with no one to cook you dinner or keep the house like you want it.” She had large azure blue eyes framed with midnight lashes that needed no help from mascara, which could pin you to the ground when she was mad. Dwight was a hard headed man but when Noreen made up her mind it was better to stay on her right side. He had found through error that his wife’s fury was something he could not stand up to. For a small woman she was terrifying.
Four months later Noreen was pregnant and she told him it was a girl even though he new she didn’t get one of those Ultra sound things or really even go to a doctor. He told her to go, though he didn’t want much to do with his wife’s pregnancy but though it was something she should do. He would be able to tolerate a child with defects. As long as the child was relatively normal he was fine but if Noreen’s Baby turned out to be touched in the head or handicapped in any way… Francis was a beautiful baby, even Dwight had been taken with her, which is until the abnormalities began showing up. Noreen was unfazed by it; she bought books, then text books, then a college student to keep the toddlers voracious mind occupied.
Noreen died and he was left to raise a freak he had never wanted in the first place. He had placed several ads on the internet looking for a wife to mother Francis but mostly to keep her away from him so he could be in peace. Except the Girl didn’t take to Edith, in fact the girl sunk her sharp little teeth (one of a few physical deformities) into Edith’s soft white arm when the poor woman reached to pat the child’s wild red hair. Worst of all the girl hissed at her new mother as a feral cat would. Dwight, mortified tried to pry the child’s jaw apart and was horrified when the girl’s head snapped up and he saw a rugged chunk of flesh missing from his new brides arm. Something warm and wet splattered his face, running slowly down his left cheek. Gingerly Dwight swiped what he realized to be the chunk of flesh in question from his blanched cheek.
“I hate her! I hate her! He caught the child as she launched her self at poor Edith, clawed hand ready to strike at her new mothers face. “She’s horrible father! She has black things in her head…Ugly squirming… bugs!” Dwight swung Francis’ thrashing body over his slight shoulder and took her to her up stairs room where he threw her on a pink Holly Hobby bed. Francis liked to wander the house at night and he and Noreen had put a lock on their daughter’s door. Dwight said it was for safety but he was really spooked by the child wandering the house while they slept. Now he locked the door, Francis screaming at him in hysteria. The next morning the first of many shrinks would be called, several quitting after being viciously gouged during one of Francis’ tantrums.
Dwight didn’t want to send his kid to the Head Quake but Edith had insisted on it and she was the one with scar left by his disturbed child. There would be more scars in the coming years, Edith was always her favorite target but others came along who earned Francis’ attention, though she would always claim that the victim had gotten what the deserved.
“Anita has dark thing turning in her head…” She said after biting a class mate in her kindergarten class during nap time. “You don’t see them? So many awful things Daddy. Awful things.” She would say in her sing song voice, nodding to things only she could hear.
Dwight always seemed to end up with strong willed women and Edith was that and more. Like Noreen, Edith wanted a child of her own and as before made an ultimatum to her husband.
“I’ve been good to the girl. I’ve never struck her in anger, though she can be… difficult.” Dwight looked up at his young wife, black eyes hard chips, “I’ve never complained Dwight, not once. You will give me what I want Dwight or I’ll leave you alone with her.”
Dwight sat stone still in his up right blue leather recliner he’d bought with his Christmas bonus last year. He was angry but he nodded in submission, he couldn’t be alone with the girl. It took two years for Edith to get pregnant with the help of expensive shots from an expensive doctor. Two years of mood swings, tears and miscarriages when finally it took. Calliope Burger came into the world quietly, the doctor remarking it was the prettiest baby he had delivered in thirty years. Calliope was in fact the most perfect looking child any one remembered seeing on the mat ward. With in one day she had opened her eyes and much to the nurse on duties surprise gave her first social smile. To be sure the nurse walked away and came back smiling at the new born several time. Every time the day old baby would smile toothlessly back at the older pink uniformed red head. The other nurses had put two pink ribbons in her unusually long platinum hair, large eyes like robin’s eggs twinkled back at the delighted nurse. These parents were extra blessed she thought walking towards one of the incubators towards the back. Baby boy. Mother was fifteen and stank of wine when her water broke. The baby wasn’t breathing when he slid out, a girl in delivery had told her, and he has the look you know?
She knew very well what fetal alcohol syndrome looked like and as she looked down at the pathetic form shaking with screams her eyes welled up.

Dwight was taken with his lovely daughter immediately; sure there was no risk of abnormalities in such a beautiful gift. To his relief Calliope developed in a perfectly normal way and after the first year he was able to relax. It was decided before Calliope was born that Francis would have to be sent away for the protection of her knew sister. Francis was sent to a specialized school that dealt with disturbed children, who took her immediately up on seeing Edith’s numerous gauges and scars from Francis’ out bursts.
The Craven institute had an excellent advanced studies program for the gifted as well as high security and strict discipline regime for those children who still to act out.
The night before she left Francis wrote a letter in her clean block printing and put it into a wrinkled white envelope. She stuck it on the underside of her tiny sibling’s dresser drawer and left the baby sleeping undisturbed in her pale yellow crib.
“I’ll be back pretty baby.” She whispered walking out into the dark hallway with out so much as a whisper from the plush carpet under her tiny feet. The next morning a cheap yellow taxi came for Dwight’s eldest daughter but no woke to see her go. It was better that way.

***
“ Coli! Coli come sit here.” Yelled Missy Amsten from across the quad caf. It was after three so she didn’t have to fight against the throngs of first year students, a relief from most days when her lunch block was at twelve thirty between movement studies and theatre history with Don Cuggler, charming head of the theatre arts program at Wells College. An aging draft dodger with a seriously hot body and piercing blue eyes that took the mind of the drudgery of Greek theatre. Coli hated it and she was one of very few people who thought the handsome professor was a slimy prick. They started off on the wrong foot when Cugglar had insisted on calling her Coliope and not Coli as she preferred. When she corrected him on it he had stopped stunned, no one had challenged him in some time. Deballed by Venus in the presence of worshipers would not be tolerated. The grades on her first papers showed that Dan Cugglar wasn’t above petty grudges, not to mention his relentless quest to show her for an idiot in his class. But of course the late register, Rochelle, had made him for get that when she joined them in the second week.
The female heavy class hated her immediately, while Don Cugglar fell smitten for the dark haired beauty and as he often had over the years, he thanked god for his job.