She fed so many children for so many years. Can I pour you some milk? Would you like some peach pie? Tch, no one ate them and now the bananas have blackened. Now it’s come down to two sons, home for the moment. And the one, 19, sleeps all day and parties all night; he mostly just wants fast food, even when he’s said what she could cook for him. And the other, 25, works construction, comes home covered with dust and sweat and sometimes too tired to eat, sits smoking on the porch for hours, staring off into the leaves, his Great Dane on the dog-smelling cushion beside him. The boys are healthy, yes, but they smoke too much and eat too little, their chests and ribs are bony. She’s laying down food that doesn’t get eaten, though her husband tries. Some nights it’s so hot the thought of food sickens, and all they want is fritos or beer or those ice cream sandwiches from Kroger, mint ice cream between chocolate cookies.

 

So the ceiling fan churns slowly. The windows her older son painted, like bits of Aegean Sea set in ripply heartpine, are full of summer—redbud, willow oak, star-shaped leaves of the maple they planted five years ago, spreading leaves of the gingko they planted twelve years ago. The trees flash scarlet with the liquid calls of cardinals. It’s August in that kitchen. Surrounded by silent men, her life is full of beauty and her life is full of love, yet she doesn’t know where she’s going.

 

Being the mother was a long rapture, a long abandonment. Abandonment of what? Of herself? Of silence? But how much love can flow through your hands, did flow through her hands, into the cakes, the pies, the sandwiches and stews. And thence into their bones, their bodies. It’s quiet now. Her husband reads, her sons are heading out for the night. She’s dying to ask her menfolk if they’d like some quesadillas.

 

 

 

 

© Ann Fisher-Wirth

 

 

 

“In That Kitchen” is published in Five Terraces and soon to appear in The Connecticut Review.

 

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