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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Just Go Ahead and Write Something Groovy, It's Okay

Popular posts from this blog

The First Time Some Boy Groped My Girl

At three years old, Cheyenne loved McKlusky Beach Park, which was really just a place to park your car and walk down to the beach. Mornings, before we left for preschool, she'd beg to go there in the afternoon. More often than not I relented. On those days, before picking her up, I'd shove the swimsuits and folding chair and beach toys into the trunk. A purple plastic bucket and a matching plastic spade, but it never took long before she just rolled around in some sand, tossing clumps in the air or at birds. Those were the best days to be a mother, because the sun and salt air and breeze weren't just for her, as so many things a mother does are. One day something unfortunate happened. I sat where I always did, book in hand and leaned back in my beach chair—not far away, but not so close she constantly felt my eyes. Some collection by Welty, a story about a slow girl filling up her hope chest to marry a man she’d only met the night before. She asked a few old ladies to g...
Read more

Rites of Stillborn Romance

“Sure, we can shake uglies against the stall wall, but only if you take me home for a shower afterward,” she’ll say, and drag you inside the fourth floor library restroom for twenty minutes, then she’ll follow your car to your apartment. Three days will be spent mostly naked, snugged in bed or in the kitchen cooking. She’ll tell you, “You can’t cut cheese with a bread knife.” You’ll slide a bread knife from the wooden block, search the fridge for sharp cheddar. Three nights of dishes overflowing your shallow sink. Thursday’s pasta pot, lid closed to “soak,” will film over and belch fetid tomato breath if you jar the lid while probing for a cleanish utensil. Hardened beef fat will rim the cast iron skillet, remnants of late night burgers (your idea). Slimy yogurt spoons, serrated knife edges, all sizes of plates, a dingy baking pan for frozen pizzas—nearly every dish you own will jut in jagged juxtapositions, terrain fit to frighten even the most adventurous night vermin. Your scr...
Read more

On Your Mark, Get Set or One, Two, Three

It's midnight on July fourth. The only reason I'm parking my car at the all-night CVS across town is because my girlfriend keeps complaining about her back, a bruise and scrape caused by a drunken slip on the pool deck at a party earlier. She laughed it off then. She cursed me out when I left our apartment. She wants Advil. Name brand. Not generic. I am buying the generic. She will not bitch. I won't let her see the bottle. I'll cup two pills in one hand, glass of water in the other, give her both, she'll slurp 'em down, go to sleep none the wiser, and that'll be that. Unless she looks close at the pills. Then I'm fucked. * There's a lumpy white woman talking into her flip phone, face worn as a crusty towel. “Where are you?... Me? The same place I was fifteen minutes ago. Standing out front of CVS... Come on, I got cold food... Because you said you'd be right back when you dropped me off. You're the one that asked for the damn R...
Read more