Given and Kept

“This is how you set a table for breakfast. Pay attention.”

Mother. I’m leaving town for good with Alan in three hours and now she decides to teach me things I apparently couldn’t have learned twelve years ago when I threw tea-less backyard tea parties for the neighborhood girls, or two years ago when I still took classes and gave a fuck about learning, or three months ago when she found out I loved Alan enough to follow him across the country without a ring on my finger.

“Smooth the tablecloth, all the edges. No man likes a lumpy table for breakfast. Bad luck to start his day.”

Her hands. So dry and worn I wonder why blood even bothers pumping its way through that fat vein on top. How does blood feel after traveling so far only to find desolation? I guess blood turns back and forgets so quickly that it just makes the return trip again and again. 

“Always best to have some juice, set it in the center of the table in a glass pitcher, that way he’s never confused what kind of juice. Men don’t like surprises in the morning. You can get away with plastic in a pinch, so long as it’s clear.”

That glass pitcher, belonged to my grandma. Gave it to Mom before her death, knowing cancer was winning that fourth fight. So often during my childhood, on those dry-heat Austin days, Granny stood some umbrellas on the back porch for shade, a cool spot to squeeze flea market lemons for fresh lemonade. “That’s right,” she’d say. “Squeeze ‘em good just like that.” Hand-painted strawberries run up and down the left side, and only now I realize the berries have faded to pink while the leaves still shine green. 


** This piece was inspired by a line from the Jamaica Kincaid story "Girl," which is also super short (and very good). I've found an online copy of it here. If you're a writer, definitely check it out for the formal and stylistic choices, the echoes that become important in such short space.

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