Son Of A Bitch: The Woman Who Raised Wolves
By Olivia Salter
Word Count: 2,912
No one in Tallahatchie, Mississippi, dared say the word bitch out loud when referring to Ms. Geneva Bly—not out of respect, but fear. Not fear of her exactly, but of what she might’ve passed on.
Her son, Langston Bly, was a man carved from silence. Thirty-five, skin the color of wet earth, eyes dark and still as pond water. He walked with the quiet tension of someone trained not to spill anything—grief, truth, or love. Amani Bell married him at twenty-four, convinced that love could smooth down the jagged edges his mother left behind.
But Geneva was no ghost. She was a living presence—a thick, cigarette-scented shadow living in the trailer behind their house. She didn’t knock. She didn’t call. She just showed up. Geneva simply was.
From the very beginning, she made Amani feel like a trespasser in her own marriage.
“She too quiet,” Geneva would mutter after Sunday dinner, flicking her ash into a chipped saucer. “A quiet woman is a sneaky woman.”
Langston always replied, “She don’t speak unless she got something worth saying,” but his voice lacked weight, like he was reciting scripture from his mother’s gospel. Some part of him still sat cross-legged on Geneva’s linoleum floor, soaking in her venom like it was wisdom.
When Amani brought up starting a family, Langston hesitated. “Now’s not the right time,” he’d say. Every time she pressed, he pulled further away. Even their bed became a quiet warzone—miles between them, cold with what went unsaid.
Geneva didn’t help. She fed that growing silence like dry wood to fire.
“She just want a baby to trap you,” she whispered one night while Langston fixed her leaky sink. “Same thing her mama did to her daddy.”
Langston didn’t believe it—at least not fully—but Geneva had a way of curling her words around the doubts he never voiced aloud.
“If a woman too soft,” she said once, swirling boxed wine with peppermint schnapps, “she either hiding something or waiting for the right moment to leave.”
Amani endured it all for ten years. She picked Geneva up from clinics, cooked for her, tolerated the condescension. But every kindness she offered was twisted, mistrusted, mocked.
And Langston? He never stood up for her. Not really. He loved Amani, sure—but his silence always seemed to fall on his mother’s side of the line.
Then came the October night that broke everything.
It was a Thursday. The air hung damp and cold. Amani made oxtail stew—Geneva’s favorite. Langston came home tired, tie loosened, collar open. The table was quiet, the kind of quiet that begs not to be broken.
Geneva let herself in, reeking of boxed wine and bitterness.
“Oh, y’all didn’t wait for me?” she said, grinning as she slid into the empty chair like she’d been invited.
Langston tensed. Amani stood to fetch another bowl.
“You know,” Geneva slurred, waving her spoon, “Langston had a girl before you. Tamia. Lawd, that girl had curves for days. She’d’ve given me grandbabies by now.”
“Geneva,” Langston warned.
“I’m just sayin’. That girl loved you like a real woman would. Didn’t play all these mind games.”
Amani didn’t flinch. Not this time. She placed the bowl in front of Geneva, wiped her hands, and sat.
“I’m not Tamia,” Amani said calmly. “And this isn’t a game.”
Geneva chuckled. “Well, it sure ain’t a marriage.”
Silence fell heavy. Langston opened his mouth, but no words came.
“I’m done,” Amani said, rising. “Not just with this conversation. With all of it.”
Langston stood. “Amani—wait—”
“No,” she said, voice trembling. “I’ve waited long enough. Waited for you to see me. To hear me. But I was never just fighting for our marriage, was I? I was fighting her. Every damn day.”
Geneva smirked. “You didn’t fight hard enough, baby.”
Amani turned to Langston, eyes wet but sharp. “I loved you even when you didn’t know how to love back. I held space for your wounds. But you let her move into our bed, and now I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”
Langston’s fists clenched. “It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is,” Amani said. “You either cling to your wife or to your mother’s ghosts.”
Geneva slammed her spoon down. “Don’t you dare talk about me like I’m dead.”
“You been dead to love a long time, Geneva,” Amani said. “And you made sure your son inherited your cold, dead heart.”
Langston staggered like she’d hit him.
Amani didn’t slam the door. She closed it gently—like a final breath, like goodbye.
She left the house on a Tuesday. No yelling, no drama. Just folded her apron, laid it on the counter, and whispered, “I’m not fighting for a man who still lives in his mama’s mouth.”
Langston sat at the table for hours after. Geneva didn’t say much either. Just stood in the kitchen, muttering, her spoon scraping the pot like she was digging a grave.
That night, Geneva called out from the kitchen. “She still gone?”
Langston didn’t look up. “Yeah.”
“Told you,” she said, voice cracked with pride. “A real woman don’t leave her man. She running from herself.”
Langston didn’t answer. He just stared at the empty chair where Amani used to sit.
Geneva tried to laugh it off. Said things like “She’ll be back once the world eats her up.”
The scent of her lingered in the air like a ghost that refused to leave.
Then the memory came—sharp as a thorn.
He was nine years old, crouched under the trailer, arms wrapped around his knees. His puppy, Max, had gotten loose and was hit by a car. Langston cried so hard he couldn’t breathe. Geneva stood on the porch, cigarette dangling from her lips, watching.
She didn’t kneel beside him. She didn’t say sorry.
“That’s what happens when you love something too much,” she said, flicking ash. “World don’t care how soft your heart is. The minute it sees a crack, it climbs in and tears it open.”
“But he was just a dog…” Langston whimpered.
“He was yours,” she said. “And anything that belongs to you is just one step away from being taken.”
She finally crouched—just enough to lift his chin with her cold fingers.
“You cry now,” she said. “But you don’t let no woman, no job, no friend ever see you cry again. That’s how you survive, baby. You love just enough to keep ‘em close. Never so much they can gut you.”
She kissed his forehead and walked away like her lesson was scripture.
Langston had never forgotten that.
Maybe he’d built his whole life on it.
Weeks passed. Then months. The seasons turned without fuss—leaves browned, rain slicked the rusted steps, and the sun seemed to rise and fall with less conviction over the house.
The divorce papers came in a thick manila envelope, creased at the corners, smudged with the fingerprints of strangers who handled what used to be love like paperwork. Langston didn’t open it. He just placed it on his nightstand, beside the ashtray and the photograph of a fishing trip he'd taken with Amani—back when they still smiled without effort. The envelope gathered dust. Just like everything else.
The house got quieter. Not peaceful—hollow. A sort of silence that made even the walls ache. Geneva, once sharp-tongued and full of contempt, began shrinking inward. Her arms, once crossed in defiance, now hung limp by her sides. Her cheeks grew hollow, and her voice, once full of vinegar and bite, softened into something ghostly.
One rainy morning, while Langston nursed lukewarm coffee and stared at the pale blue of the kitchen linoleum like it held secrets, Geneva spoke from the couch, wrapped in a tattered blanket she used to complain was “too scratchy for company.”
“Whatever happened to Amani?” she asked, as if her voice had forgotten how to be cruel. “She was a nice one.”
Langston didn’t respond. He blew on his coffee, though it didn’t need it. The silence between them was louder than anything she could say.
Geneva turned toward him, searching his face. “You remember how she used to fold the laundry without even being asked? And bring in groceries, even the heavy ones?”
“You ran her off,” Langston said quietly, not out of spite, but as if stating a natural law—like gravity, or fire being hot.
Geneva’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked wounded, not angry. “I would never do that,” she said, almost to herself. “I was like a mother to that girl.”
Langston finally looked at her. His eyes were tired. “Exactly.”
She flinched, as if his words had weight. Heavy ones. The kind that stayed lodged in the chest long after they were spoken.
“I cooked for her. I gave her a roof. Clothes. When her own people threw her out, I—” Geneva stopped herself. She was trembling, just slightly. “You think that wasn’t love?”
“It was control,” Langston said, his voice almost tender. “You loved her the way a spider loves a fly. All wrapped up and paralyzed, thinking it’s safe.”
Geneva stood up, pacing now. “You think I was supposed to let her disrespect me? In my house?”
“She didn’t disrespect you, and this was her house.” Langston said, sipping his coffee. “She just stopped saying yes all the time.”
Geneva’s jaw clenched. She looked out the window, watching a neighbor rake leaves into a dying pile. “That girl needed structure. Someone to show her the right path.”
“She needed kindness,” Langston said. “Gentleness. She needed to be believed when she said she was tired. You called her ungrateful.”
Silence again, thick and mean.
Geneva sat back down, suddenly older than her years. “I thought I was helping her,” she said. “I really did.”
Langston didn’t reply right away. He watched her face as it crumpled, just a little, under the weight of memory.
“You tried to shape her,” he finally said. “But Amani wasn’t clay. She was already whole when she got here. You just didn’t like her shape.”
Geneva turned her face away, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. “She never even said goodbye.”
“She didn’t think you’d hear it,” he said. “You only heard yourself.”
Geneva let out a long, slow breath, like someone trying to push back tears and failing. “Do you think she’s okay?”
Langston didn’t answer. But the way he stared into his coffee, like it held some kind of truth, said enough.
That shut her up for a long while. She looked down at her hands, frail things now. As if time had gnawed at them while she wasn’t paying attention. Somewhere in the distance, a train wailed through the gray morning. It sounded like mourning.
A year later, Geneva was gone. Langston found her slumped in her recliner, TV buzzing static, peppermint schnapps bottle on the floor. Her voice, once sharp and loud, had faded weeks before.
He buried her in the local cemetery, the same town she never left and never let go of.
Now, Langston lives alone. He tends the garden Amani planted. He walks softly, says little, like a man haunted by a song he can’t unhear.
Every Sunday, he visits Geneva’s grave.
Sometimes he brings flowers.
Sometimes, just silence.
One afternoon, a teenager passing the cemetery saw Langston there, sitting by the headstone, lips moving, tears in his eyes.
They say he was whispering something over and over:
“Why couldn’t you let me love her?”
“Why couldn’t you let me love her?”
“Why couldn’t you let me love her?”
And if the wind’s blowing just right, some swear they still hear Geneva’s laugh—low, bitter, and fading.
A Year Later
"You made me just like you."
Langston's voice cracked as the words left his mouth, soft and bitter like spoiled honey. He didn’t know if he was talking to the dirt or the sky. The gravestone didn’t answer. Neither did the wind. Still, he came every Sunday. Still, he talked.
The townsfolk whispered, like townsfolk always do.
“That boy's lost his mind.”
“He was always Geneva’s child. Cold-blooded, like her.”
But some—like Miss Odessa from the corner store—shook their heads slower.
“Some men don’t realize what they had ‘til they’re left with the echo.”
Langston didn’t argue with echoes anymore. They lived in his walls, his pillows, his shirts still carrying the faint scent of the lavender oil Amani used to rub into her collarbones. Sometimes, he’d open her old dresser drawer just to feel the air shift, like memory had a smell.
But grief doesn’t plant roots. Regret does.
And regret was blooming like weeds.
Atlanta
Amani was not the same woman who walked away. She had cut her hair off first. Not a breakup cut—no soft curls framing her cheek. She shaved it to the skin. Watched each strand fall like years. Watched the mirror offer her someone new.
She moved into a tiny apartment near East Point. Worked mornings at a wellness center and taught yoga at night. Her students loved her voice—low, steady, commanding. Like someone who’d been quiet for too long and finally knew the power of their own breath.
There was a man who asked about her every week. Devin. He had eyes that smiled before his mouth did, and calloused hands that offered more help than compliments. He never asked what broke her. Just let her be unbroken.
Still, sometimes, when the sun hit the right way, she’d feel it: a tug in her chest like a loose thread. Not for Langston. Not for love lost. But for the version of herself she’d buried to survive it.
Back in Tallahatchie
Langston started therapy two towns over. He didn’t want anyone local seeing him walk into a place with soft couches and hard truths. The therapist’s name was Dr. Rayne—a Black woman in her forties who didn’t flinch when he talked about Geneva.
“She ruled everything,” he said once. “Even my thoughts.”
“She taught you how to love through control,” Dr. Rayne said. “And now you think love and control are the same thing.”
Langston stared at the carpet. “Amani was the only soft thing I had.”
“Then why did you choose sharpness?”
He didn’t answer that day.
But weeks passed, and his shoulders uncurled. His voice got lower. Less defensive. More haunted.
“She used to hum when she cooked,” he said. “Didn’t matter if the day was good or bad. She’d hum like she was praying.”
“And how did you respond?” Dr. Rayne asked.
Langston pressed a fist to his chest. “I muted her.”
Spring
The trees bloomed too early. The air carried that thick Mississippi warmth—the kind that made your skin slick before noon. Langston stood at the edge of the garden, hands dirty, boots caked. He dug out the last of the withered roots. The rose bushes were gone. In their place, he planted sage and basil, Amani’s favorite.
That afternoon, he picked up a pen.
The letter took him three hours to write.
Amani,
You don’t owe me anything, especially not your peace.
But I needed to tell you that I see it now. The silence you wore like armor. The way you made yourself smaller in every room with her, just so I wouldn’t have to choose.
I chose wrong.
You deserved a man who clung to you, not to the ghost of his mother’s wounds. I let her raise me into a wolf—snarling at tenderness, biting the hand that soothed me.
You tried to love the beast and still got devoured.
There’s no version of this letter that fixes what I broke. I don’t expect forgiveness. I only hope you know: you were never too much. You were the entire garden in bloom, and I—God help me—I watered weeds.
I’m learning now.
I hope joy finds you, in a quiet room, on a soft day.
-Langston
He didn’t send it. He folded it, slid it between pages of her favorite poetry book—the one she left behind. It sat on the shelf, unread, glowing with words he never said when it counted.
Two Years Later
The wellness center was packed on Saturdays. Amani’s classes filled up fast, especially her sunrise session on the roof.
She stood in Warrior II, facing the skyline. A light breeze kissed her cheek. She closed her eyes, steadying her breath.
And then—she felt it.
That tug.
She opened her eyes slowly. Looked out over the city. Saw nothing but light and steel.
Still, her breath caught.
After class, she found Devin waiting by her mat, holding a smoothie and a smile.
“You good?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Just… ghost breeze.”
He handed her the drink. “Maybe it’s just your past waving goodbye.”
She laughed. “Maybe.”
They walked toward the elevator. Amani paused at the door. Turned one last time toward the sky.
And whispered, “Thank you for the lesson.”
Mississippi
The garden flourished—herbs, lavender, even a few tomato vines.
Langston cooked now.
For himself.
Sometimes for the neighbor’s kid who helped him fix the fence.
On Sundays, he still walked to the grave. But he didn’t argue anymore. He read aloud—usually from that poetry book. Sometimes from his own journal.
And when he went home, he’d light sage from the garden.
Not to erase her memory.
But to honor what grew in the ashes of it.
