Elizabeth took a pen from her computer desk drawer along with a pink index card and jotted down "jkl;" in smooth black ink and smiled. The thick paper of the index card drew the liquid in, and Elizabeth could see as it dried. Somehow, watching the ink dry reminded her of brownie mix on her mother's ear.
Her mind, vulnerable for a moment, caught up in her own fears, tossed her into a memory she'd long forgotten or selected not to remember. Something she'd pushed aside.
Elizabeth's mother stood in the kitchen near the stove, her face made up heavily with thick ivory base and powder, lashes so overcoated with mascara they had no curl and just jutted out like stiff twigs from a wet tree branch. A low hum from egg beaters as her mother mixed some brownie batter pulsed into Elizabeth's ears and heart as her mother looked at her with apprehension. "What?" said her mother in greeting, above the grinding of the metal electric spin into the metal bowl.
Elizabeth had just come home from school, walking the same route she had every day. Walking with the same eyes taking in the world around her. It was her perception and curiousity that caused her to notice her father's car. It was his presidential election sticker, VOTE FOR CHANGE, on the bumper. Her father never voted. It was his driver's side window, half way down, which meant he'd been smoking on his drive to this house he was parked at. He'd quit smoking a year ago. It was the smell of his cologne that she could smell in the air faintly as she walked past his car and towards the stranger's house. It was the front door that had a rectangular window, where she could see past the thin veil of a white, sheer curtain. It was her father on the couch, sitting down, a woman's head with long, black hair kneeling in front of him. It was her father's hands on that woman's shoulders. It was the end. It was the middle. It was the beginning.
Her mother asked again, "What?"
But Elizabeth couldn't figure out what to say, if to say it, how to draw herself out, or how to draw herself into this picture. Of their life. Their life, that somehow never included her, and now, perhaps, she realized, never included themselves, either. Perhaps it was their distance that created her own from them. It's confusing to feel a part of two people who don't even feel a part of each other.
Her mother seemed to be reading her thoughts through her face. "I just saw Dad," Elizabeth said, and then she tried to explain but only said "and," as her mother lifted the beaters and began to yell at her, shaking the beaters at Elizabeth, to stop her from continuing to speak, the brownie batter spun off the egg beaters and covered her mother's face in scratches of dark, thick brownie mud. Her mother ripped the cord from the electrical socket and threw the electric-beater into the sink, then the full bowl of brownie mix into the sink, and pushed Elizabeth aside to go clean herself up. "Shut up," was all her mother said as she stormed by.
Later that night, at dinner, Elizabeth was sitting to the right of her mother and noticed the dried brown glob on her mother's ear lobe. The brownie mix splatter that hadn't been washed away was in the shape of a sperm. Elizabeth felt dirty as she glanced over at her father, who never seemed to look back at her.
Posted by nft at February 15, 2005 06:10 AM