FFP#22 – Mmm, Baby
On second glance, the pistachio nut wasn’t a nut at all but what appeared to be a tiny petrified fetus. A little green, a little dusty, a little baby curled up into a hard heart. She showed her husband but all he said was, “You going to eat that?”
“Am I the only person who sees people in food?” she asked.
Her husband laughed. “Don’t you watch the news? Every few months someone is selling a piece of toast with the Virgin Mary or Jesus on it. And some fool always buys it. Goddam toast!”
“Well, if I had a piece of toast with Jesus on it, I’d never sell it.”
“You wouldn’t. You just keep everything until it rots.”
She thought about the orange Tupperware container hidden under her bed. It contained an oblong potato chip that looked like Jay Leno, a partially smashed powdered donut that reminded her of Santa Claus, a corn tortilla with burn marks that resembled her father’s round eyes and full mustache, and a piece of bacon that had sizzled into the curves of a pin-up girl. At one point, she had a much larger collection but while babysitting her sister’s kids, the youngest — a three-year old who seemed to disappear every five minutes — had found the container and eaten most of it. She gave the child a spoonful of Pepto-Bismol. He threw up soon after and seemed, for the most part, just fine.
She didn’t know if she’d place the pistachio with the others since it seemed more real, more human, to her. And she didn’t like to think of Jay Leno’s salty chin rubbing grease on the baby. She cradled the nut in the palm of her hand.
“Let me see it again,” her husband said.
“Why?”
“I want to see if it really looks like a baby,” he said. “I want to see what you see.”
She held out her hand, the nut rocking back and forth.
“I see it.” Her husband grinned, and before she could say anything he plucked the pistachio from her palm and popped it into his mouth.
“Mmm, baby,” he said.
“Murderer!” she shouted and ran to the bedroom, locking the door behind her. Within a few seconds, she heard her husband’s muffled apologies. He tapped on the door.
“Honey,” he said. “Honey, I was kidding. I’m sorry! I didn’t realize – “
“You never realize anything,” she said. “You pig.” She crawled to the bed and grabbed her Tupperware container. She knew that seeing and counting the food pieces would make her feel better. Of course, her husband hadn’t really killed anybody, but it hurt her to know that he thought of her collection as a joke. She pulled off the lid and checked each remnant of food.
When she was a little girl, her mother had given her a misshapen, dried lima bean with miniscule marks carved into it. “Look,” her mother said. “It looks just like you.” And it did: the straight mouth and long nose, the small eyes too close together. “We find ourselves in the strangest places,” her mother said. “It’s one of God’s mysteries. It’s how we know we’re meant to be. It’s how we know we’re loved.”
She wondered who that baby had been, who that pistachio might have represented. She hated her husband for his inability to see or care. His inability to know love. He was still knocking on the door, pleading with her to come out and forgive him. She let him keep on knocking as she climbed out the bedroom window with the food she loved and a newfound determination to find herself in the strangest of places.
Tags: flash fiction project
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June 7, 2010 8:29 pm
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