Excerpt from Blood Turnip

KATIE: The fucker owes me $260. Got new tires put on his truck, fancy rims and shit, but child support? Hell, that can wait!

NORA: I don’t know what you expected, Katie-girl.

KATIE: I expected the fucker to give me what he owes me. I got bills to pay. I got to put food on the table. The kids have been eating hot dogs and macaroni and cheese for the past week.

NORA: Bev can whip you up a can of fruit cocktail.

KATIE: And then he tells me that work has been slow and he’s going to be laid off and he might have to stay with his brother in Tucson. This is the same brother that was going to open that tackle shop. A tackle shop in Tucson. They’re in the middle of the friggin’ desert and that poor stupid son-of-a-bitch wants to try and sell bait!

BEVERLY: My office needs a part-time receptionist.

KATIE: Meaning?

BEVERLY: Just if you need some extra cash.

KATIE: I got two kids.

BEVERLY: They’re in school now.

KATIE: You’re only eight weeks. Just wait until that kid is eight-years-old. It takes a lot to run a household. It’s no picnic.

BEVERLY: I didn’t say –

KATIE: In fact, did I tell you what my eldest did last week?

NORA: He killed the cat.

KATIE: No.

NORA: I don’t like that cat.

KATIE: He shoved a pea up his nose. He said he was trying to plant a garden.  Joshua thinks he’s planting a garden in his brain. An actual garden in his brain. When I was his age I was trying to unscramble the porn channel on the television. I wasn’t looking for Jack and the beanstalk in my friggin’ cerebellum!

BEVERLY: You’d prefer he look at porn?

NORA: Joshua thinks outside the box. He’s an artist like his Uncle Nate.

KATIE: You can tell me over and over again about how special and precious he is but I still have to hide the razors. And why do I have to hide the razors? I’ll tell you why and it’s not because he’s suicidal. Oh no, that would be too easy. With a suicidal kid, you just dope them up and send them off to summer camp. But not my child. He uses razors to shave the dog and then gathers up its mangy ass fur and knits with it. He knits with it.

BEVERLY: He knits?

NORA: I taught him.

KATIE: You know what I got for Valentine’s Day? A scarf that smelled like ass and Kibbles and Bits. Rick is out sewing the last of his weak-ass oats and I’m spending my Saturday night with a pair of tweezers, a flashlight and my boy’s nostril. This wasn’t the job I signed up for.

NORA: That’s the trouble with you, Katie-girl. You think motherhood is a job.

KATIE: C’mon, mom.

NORA: It’s not a job. A job is where you punch a clock and get a paycheck and call in sick if you’re hung-over. There’s no calling in sick with motherhood.

KATIE: How come Rick gets to call in sick?

NORA: Because that’s fatherhood for you. You ever wonder why fathering a child means a man gives 30 seconds of his attention but mothering a child means a woman pours milk and wipes butts and kisses faces for eighteen years? It’s the nature of the beast.

BEVERLY: It’s politics.

NORA: It’s not politics. It’s who we are at the core. We mother children. And if we don’t have children, we mother a man. And if we don’t have a man, we get a cat and mother it. No offense, Katie-girl.

KATIE: Well, he’s got the kids for the next three days. I told him this woman was off-duty. $260 dollars, the fucker. The fucker.

NORA: Don’t be expecting it anytime soon, Katie-girl. It’s like getting water from a rock.

KATIE: I need a good man.

BEVERLY: Rick isn’t a bad man.

KATIE: Rick sucks.

BEVERLY: Then why did you marry him?

KATIE: You got lucky. You’ve only ever known John.

NORA: Your brother is no saint.

KATIE: I’m not looking for a friggin’ saint. I’m looking for a man as strong as me.

NORA: That’s a murder-suicide waiting to happen.