Friday, April 7, 2023: Sandra Hunter's "Bridges"

 

I walk straight onto the upper deck of the only double-deck vertical lift bridge in the world:

dramatic, powerful, and impossible to ignore—the qualities I’d like for myself.

Spiky, beautiful,, tall towers with massive concrete weights hanging in the air. The steel girders

punctuated with holes create shapes in space and in the space around me. I fit to them, they fit

around me. I take photos every few steps, the constantly changing perspectives.

At 8:20am, the air is cool. It’s too early for much car traffic. A light rail train hoots as it passes a

bus with one passenger.

On the other side I find my way down to the lower deck. No arial river views of Broadway

Bridge or Morrison or Burnside but I find a girder arrangement that frames Union Station. All

across the lower deck, the pillars and walls pulse with the graffiti of yearning. Thick colors

hatched with slashes. 2am two-toe balance and passion.

What was the graffiti like fifty, seventy years ago? Who would die for love? Whose gang ruled?

What West Side story sobbed its aortic fissures over intercultural impassibility?

I climb the stairs to the upper deck and walk back with the breeze. That great iron structure, rust

tattooed, soaring towers, the arrested momentum of the permanently impermanent weights that

will roll down for

I am passing between the high steel towers, the densely packed girders and endless cables and

the brief colors of river and buildings trapped in the black framework, trapped between

landscape and portrait. What I see at each now morphs, disappears into memory.

I feel now disappearing over the event horizon of history. My mother’s past is somewhere in the

framework between landscape and portrait: Sri Lankan with a Portuguese grandmother and a

Dutch great grandfather.

History tosses off a sentence: The Portuguese “…were able to establish their power in many

areas of the Maritime Provinces of the island…”  and “…the Dutch managed to capture most of

the coastal areas in Sri Lanka…” (Wikipedia). Both Dutch and Portuguese enslaved the Sri

Lankans, who remained enslaved even after the British abolished slavery in 1844. When England

was seen as the world’s largest slave-trading power, over 250,000 Sri Lankans were listed as

slaves.

I stare between the iron girder openings onto calm water and fertile land. I am walking between

my cultures of the oppressed and the oppressor. I am the Dutch overseer with the whip in my

hand, I’m the Portuguese captain with the gun at my belt, I am circling those terrified women,

my grandmothers and great-grandmothers, holding their kids close. I am those grandmothers and

mothers, those children, helpless as they are seized by my sweating, metal-soiled hands.

My feet are hot on the steel walk-way, the sky is the color of steel, my body feels steel-heavy.

What if the bridge towers release their weights, and buckle and capsize into the Willamette,

taking me down under the weight of it, under the crushing of it, buckling and capsizing as I

storm villages and herd screaming women into a circle of screaming soldiers.

In Kew, a tranquil part of London, the British National Archives hold the Slave Registers of

Ceylon that list names. Those jostling matrilineal lines, snagging and coiling and interweaving.

Were the children of those partnerships from consensual relationships, marriage, or rape?

In the brown and white photograph, my mother, aged six, sits on a rug, the sisters, mother, aunts

ranged behind her on chairs, and behind them a motley assortment of men wearing badly fitting

suits. The women look serious. The men look uncomfortable, waiting for the photograph to be

taken so they can get back to their lives, to working in factories, on railroads, sitting under trees,

drinking with friends. After the flashbulb, the women get up, carefully change out of their white

dresses, slip into thin cotton dresses, tie on aprons, turn back to washtubs and scrubbing brushes,

washing lines and baskets of wet clothes, buckets of soapy water and wet rags, flour and oil and

coconut and jaggery and semolina and jackfruit and make meals out of nothing, and talk about

nothing and watch each other: the high-collared shirt, the bruising glimpsed beneath the long-

sleeved blouse, the stiffened movements. They talk about those things or they don’t. They scold

the kids that wander in asking for food. They deal out hugs and smacks across the head. This one

is doing well at school. This one’s head is like a brick wall. Nothing goes in. This one is so well-

behaved. This one is talking back. The talking-back child gets a rumble of disapproval, aunties

offering slipper intervention. The auntie with the talking-back child says she’s tried all that.

What-to-do? Twelve years only. He does as he pleases. Just like the father. The women murmur.

The father should do something but they all know the father is drunk or off with some town-

woman in Kandy. Someone tells a naughty joke. The women scream with laughter. For now, the

talking-back child is forgotten by everyone except his mother.

Among them are the pale-skinned ones and the ones whose skin is dark as coffee-no-milk, and

ones between, copper, umber, cinnamon. Among the children, the pale-skinned ones have a

slight air of superiority. They sit on chairs, not the floor. They wear nice clothes. Their parents

don’t beat them. The other kids notice but they don’t say anything. If they are spoiled, it’s okay.

If they have extra or special treatment, it’s okay. The kids are already used to the rule of shade.

Light, dark, light, dark. My mother was fair-skinned. Her mother was dark and her grandmother

was light. My mother thought her fair skin would protect her in England. I am dark.

On the other side of the bridge, I lean against the wall and look back at the rearing truss frame,

blindblack against the smooth river. Some great-great-great-grandmother is calling me. “Who

will speak for us? Those men came from the sea, across water as grey and leached of color as

their faces. They took our flesh and ironed it into shapes they could wear. They took away our

ability to name ourselves and each other. We stood next to our destroyed houses, near-dead and

motionless with hunger, cold, terror, grief. Who will call us back? Who can return anything that

we recognize? What is the voice of hunger, cold, terror and grief? What can bring us back from being

ironed flesh?

I take a left turn and cross onto the path towards the bus stop. Green, dented beer can, orange

plastic bag split open, burger wrapper, blue straw, two nested coffee cups. A broken shopping

cart on its side, shards of red plastic poking up to the curdling sky. It’s already 80 degrees. I look

back and the far side of the bridge is hidden. The bridge only exists as I remember it. The heavy

weights and stark outline are brushed by warming milky light. The bridge is and isn’t passage.

The bridge does and doesn’t allow return. If you are standing below your concept of bridge is as

incomplete as that of Toyota travelers at 40 mph who barely register it as a point of crossing.

(Tamara Fernando. “The Forgotten History of Slavery in Sri Lanka.” The Sunday Observer. 5

Sept 2021. https://www.sundayobserver.lk/2021/09/05/forgotten-history-slavery-sri-lanka)

© 2023 Sandra Hunter

Bio: Sandra Hunter’s stories have won the 2018 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition,

2017 Leapfrog Press Fiction Award, 2016 Gold Line Press Chapbook Prize, and three Pushcart

nominations. She is a 2018 Hawthornden Fellow and the 2017 Charlotte Sheedy Fellow at the

MacDowell Colony. Books: story collection Trip Wires, chapbook Small Changes,

Losing Touch. She is a life coach and owns WILD WOMEN LEADERS OF COLOR that

supports women facing workplace racism and gender bias. www.wildwomenleadersofcolor.com

Sunday, April 3, 2022: Sandra Hunter's Excerpt from "The Breaking Skin of Photographs"

 

Sandra Hunter’s stories have won the 2018 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, 2017 Leapfrog Press Fiction Award, 2016 Gold Line Press Chapbook Prize, and three Pushcart nominations. She is a 2018 Hawthornden Fellow and the 2017 Charlotte Sheedy Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. Books: story collection Trip Wires, chapbook Small Change, Losing Touch, a novel. She is a fiction editor with Nimrod International Journal and is a writing coach.

Website: https://www.sandra-hunter.com/

Excerpt from THE BREAKING SKIN OF PHOTOGRAPHS

My Baby

1946 India

C brings blush pink roses.  The baby will be a girl. Alice doesn’t know where that certainty comes from. She wants the roses next to her.  She brings them from the bedroom into the kitchen, from the kitchen to the living room.  She presses one baby finger-pink bud in her bible. This child is God’s gift, a blessing. 

Despite the nausea, she does not miss a single church service. The church members are kind. 

—God will give you a healthy baby. Baby boy. 

—You don’t know it’s a boy. Ignore her, Alice. 

—Boys are God’s blessing. 

—Ah? And girls are God’s curse? 

—I remember when I had my Nahum. Forty hours in labor. 

—Should have named him Jonah, then. Out of the belly of the whale. 

—How dare you.

—Alice, take mangoes. And pepper water. 

—Here is a little lime pickle. 

—I made kithul pudding.

C laughs at her struggling into the apartment with the bags of gifts. —You should take a rucksack.

He likes to press his ear against her stomach. One evening, the baby kicks against his head. —Not even born and already giving me trouble.

It is a time of calm, pleasures opening like new bread: daisy patterned material for curtains, a crib, a yellow baby’s blanket. Not blue, not pink.

The examination shows the baby’s heartbeat is normal. The problem is with Alice whose pelvis is too small for a natural birth. It will have to be a Caesarean. They’ll open the abdomen from the pubic bone to the navel. She is afraid: the anesthesia, the cutting. Will she wake during the surgery? Will they hurt the baby? C tries to soothe her, —These are skilled doctors. They know what they’re doing.

But do they? There are stories. Women who die during the operation, who can no longer have children after the operation. Women who have terrible nightmares of babies that cannot be comforted. She is too embarrassed to tell C. He would laugh. She believes God will take care of her. Why can’t she believe it completely?

C is by her bed when she wakes. —We have a beautiful baby girl. 

They immediately decide on the name Lili, after his sister. He gives Alice tiny sips of water. Jello, when she can manage it. 

—Alice, the baby needs some extra care. The baby has a hole in her spine. They are going to wait a while until they feel it’s safe to operate. We can visit her every day.

The breath rushes out of her. It is her fault. Something she ate, something she did. C reassures her. No one knows why these things happen. And the doctors are confident they can operate successfully.

Alice doesn’t believe it. How can a baby survive a spinal operation? She weeps in the hospital, on the way home, in their apartment. There is nothing she can do for this baby. The new curtains and crib and songs and soft blankets she has had ready for months are useless. C tells her not to cry because it will put too much strain on the stitches. 

Empty, she sits in the apartment, the brown petals fallen around the dead roses, waiting for the time when she and C can visit baby Lilian in the special unit. They cannot hold her. They can only touch the plastic bubble that is Maud’s world. Do their finger touches leave an impression? Does Lili feel them through the plastic? Alice brings the small golden brown teddy bear and holds it up. Can Lili see it? Can she see her mother? 

Alice is sick to see the tubes coming in and out of her baby, the mass of bandaging encasing the back and chest. She sings songs that her daughter can’t hear. Is the baby in pain? Is she suffering? Alice would gladly open her mouth and swallow all of it.

It takes a lot of prayer and courage to return to work. She is afraid to admit that Lilian is ill. Her colleagues will look at her accusingly—what did you do? Did you drink alcohol? Did you smoke cigarettes? She is strictly teetotal and has never smoked, but not everyone knows her. Some will suggest that eating beef causes problems. Others will say it’s pumpkin or okra or tomatoes or ginger. 

But no one asks after the baby. She moves slowly because of the stitches, but her typing and shorthand speeds are unaffected. She works at the office, cooks food, sleeps an hour at a time, wakes and feels the heart-pain beating at the back of her ribs. Tries to stay quiet so she doesn’t disturb C. Sometimes, she goes to the kitchen and weeps with the kitchen towel over her face. C comes in, makes her a cup of tea. Sits with her until she can return to bed for another brief interval.

Time peels off miserly minutes, then rushes away leaving scorch marks. The weakness and dizziness come almost every day. C feeds her dhal and rice, although sometimes she cannot eat at all. When they visit Lili they tell each other lies: look how she is waving her hands, look at how she stretches the left leg. She opened her eyes at me. She smiled!

Week nine comes, and the operation. Eight hours or three hours or no time at all. They sit and stand and walk around the waiting room. C brings tea and rolls. Alice drinks the tea.

Finally, the doctor comes, serious, hands clasped in front of him. I’m sorry. We tried everything.

Alice doesn’t cry. C asks to see Lili. They let Alice hold her, swaddled as if she were a newborn. —Hello, my darling. So beautiful. 

C strokes the baby’s cheek. —Soft.

—Like a flower petal.

He touches the top of the baby’s head. Alice knows C wants to hold her, too, but she can’t let go until the nurse takes her away. —We thought you might like it done as soon as possible. 

The nurse walks away with Alice’s baby. My baby has gone.

She turns to C, —What has to be done as soon as possible? 

The memory of the small weight in her arms. The closed perfect eyelids. 

—They want to—carry out the funeral. 

How does the word “funeral” belong in the same sentence as “baby”?

She follows the hospital orderly. These are not her feet walking. These are not her eyes seeing the harsh white corridors. Somehow, she is not in her body when they finally enter a room with blue-white lights and a high ceiling. On a metal table is a small casket. Alice, suspended outside the shell of her body watches herself breathing through her mouth, backing away. 

C says, —It’s better we do this now. 

—It’s too soon. We haven’t even held her properly yet.

—I know, Alice. But she will always be ours.

His arm around her all that’s holding her up.

The Shell of Alice follows the two nurses and C who carries the two foot white casket along corridors and corridors. 

They push open the door into a small chapel. Alice cannot listen to what the chaplain says, cannot pray. God is not here. Jesus may love all the little children but not this one with spina bifida.

The chaplain stops talking and it is over, whatever it is. She moves to the front, bends, and kisses the casket, thanks the nurses, and walks out, unaware if C is behind her. —Alice—Alice, wait. 

For what? There is nothing left to wait for.

C says they will see baby Lili in heaven. Alice knows she should believe it. But still, stubbornly, the longing crackles along her arm bones for the weight of the small body. The space beneath her chin is empty of the scented baby head. She is hungry to look into the baby’s eyes. Even if it was for a little while, for two weeks, four weeks. A few months. Just until the baby could sit up, have her first taste of semolina. Say Mama. 

What will she write in the letter home? If she could see Mummy she wouldn’t have to say anything. Mummy would comfort Alice, make tea, bring jaggery and cream… And it’s like a giant hand has slapped the back of her head: her mother suffered this loss five times. Three infants, a toddler, and one who made it to six before diphtheria struck. How had Mummy carried on, baby after baby? 

C says the best thing is not to think about it. They should focus on their life together. In time they’ll try again. Like throwing a ball at the fairground coconut. Oh, you almost got it, try again. Is this what her father said to Mummy—Don’t worry, we’ll have another one? 

Mummy has never spoken about those who left like they came to the wrong house, breathed the wrong air. Without her mother and sister there is nowhere for Alice to spill the raging grief. C counsels calm, restraint, —We don’t want to disturb the neighbors.  

—I don’t care about the neighbors.

C, usually patient and kind, turns away. Leaves her in the kitchen, handfuls of her cotton dress fisted against her thighs, face pummeled with tears. He sleeps on the sofa bcause her crying is keeping him awake. She cries until her pillow is soaked. Turns it over and soaks the other side. He makes breakfast that she doesn’t eat. He presents freesias. The smell catches in her throat and she heaves over the sink. C sighs. She waits until he’s gone to work and throws them out.

 When the stitches are removed she will lose the last connection. Her body refuses the loss. She listens to her scarred belly, waiting for Lili to press a foot, a hand.

C reports what the doctor said: If she had lived she would have been in a wheelchair her whole life. 

C takes her to see a specialist and is startled to find that Dr. Gopal is a woman. Is she a real doctor? Alice watches C read the certificates on the wall. —I see you graduated from Madras Medical College. Very good school. One of the oldest.

Dr. Gopal tells C to leave her office, —I’d like to talk to your wife.

—You can talk to us together. 

—I understand your concern. But would you wait outside for a few minutes? 

And C is shooed out as though he is a troublesome dog. He strives to seem casual, —I’ll leave you for now. 

Alice pulls her smile inside her lips. C nods at Alice and leaves.

Dr. Gopal asks Alice to describe how she has been feeling. Tremors? Weakness? Nausea? She is hesitant, but the doctor is encouraging. The words are slow, then as though her throat cracks open, Alice tells all of it: the sleeplessness, the weeping, the guilt. The small coffin. There are no interruptions, no corrections, no impatient sighs. 

The doctor hands her a tissue, —Crying is exhausting, no? What you need is complete rest. 

Doctor Gopal writes a note to Alice’s office supervisor advising a week’s sick leave. —My secretary will send this today. 

She gives Alice a small, white carton. --Now. Take walks during the day. Nothing too strenuous but you must get some air. No heavy housework. You can cook, but nothing elaborate. And these will help you sleep. Take one before you go to bed. 

The doctor shakes Alice’s hand and holds it for a moment, —It is a terrible thing to lose a child.

And smiles, —Rest, Alice. You will get better. 

In the street, everything is too-loud and too-much and Alice catches C’s arm. He slows his pace. —So, what did the good doctor have to say?

Alice realizes that if she tells him how the doctor listened without interruption, C will snort and say women are too emotional to be doctors. She hands him the small box.

He doesn’t try to pronounce the long medical word. Shakes the box, —I’m not sure you should be taking these. Did she discuss any side effects?

The bus comes and they find a seat near the front. —Thank you for taking me, C. I would never have thought of finding a specialist.

C clears his throat, —Well, I’m glad you were able to see someone.

He passes the box back and, with relief, she slips it into her bag. She nudges her shoulder behind his so they can sit a bit closer.

He settles against her, —We should get off one stop early so we can have a cup of tea at Kwality. Would you like that?

—Lovely idea, C.

They talk about the terrible Pune traffic. It wasn’t like this when they were going to Spicer. They might be an old couple tutting about the world. 

                                               

What has changed: Alice now believes in the unnatural order of things. This business of going on. She cannot accept that anything will be ordinary for her again. Sometimes a pattern of soap bubbles, of wrinkles in a shirt, the way an eggplant lies curved on the counter. And Alice can see that small face, the round cheek. And has to pause, look down, move the bubbles, the shirt, the eggplant, change the pattern. She glides through her days staying busy until the patterns tug at her, need rearranging. 

C brings home the cardboard box of ashes. She watches him place it on the mantlepiece and waits until she is alone. Carefully unseals the lid, removes two teaspoons of fine grey powder, wraps it in layers of tissue and reseals the box. Later that week, she stops at the market and finds a tiny silver-gilt box lined with red satin. The lid fits snugly and, importantly, it has a lock. She tests and re-tests the lock until the stall owner threatens to increase the price. At home, she carefully transfers the tissue contents. We will go to the Arabian Sea. And you will say, Mama, you have brought me home.

She meets C after work, and they take the bus to the mausoleum on the outskirts of Pune, the cardboard box wrapped in a plastic bag. She watches him place the box in the small opening and shut the door, smoothing his hand over the glass. Lili is not in that place. It is as though Alice has released her baby from anything to do with Pune or hospitals or offices or noisy streets or the smell of chicken tikka or the taste of pistachio ice-cream and coconut.

What does Lili see, up there in the bald, blue sky? Perhaps she is already with the heavenly host, or in God’s arms. But no, Lili wouldn’t be one to lie around quietly. Inside the womb, she was always moving, sticking a little foot or hand out. She’d be flying about with the cherubs and getting into mischief. Alice smiles at the idea. Is Lilian looking down on her? She looks up, I’m here, my darling. And stops. 

Surely that’s blasphemy. Seventh-Day Adventists believe that after you die you sleep in the ground until Jesus comes. And then Jesus raises everyone up and they all go to heaven. Except for the ones who don’t, of course. Will she be among them, for her blasphemy? Surely God isn’t so cruel. She glances up again, Let’s keep this our secret. Maybe God didn’t hear. He’ll be busy with all the rioting over Independence. It’s just until she can take Lili to the sea. The more she thinks of her baby up there, looking down at her, the better she feels. A small, sweet smiling face. It isn’t something she can tell C about. He’d say she was being foolish: She’s gone, Alice, as though she never heard the doctor’s words, never held the still-warm body, had not stood in the chapel. It’s the first real secret she has kept from C. She feels a warmth spreading over her shoulders as if someone has placed a shawl around her. Her daughter is there, whenever she looks at the sky. Tonight we’ll look for the best star. Not the brightest. Just a small one that we can find every night.

Women's History Month: Sandra Hunter's "Kitchen Nerves"

It is early evening, that time when I turn to my stove and wonder

whether one more microwave meal will really kill everyone. And

then decide maybe it will.

 I am not a good cook; I have none of that fine, artistic manner I so

admire in the TV chefs who sprinkle kosher salt and toss in shrimp

and ginger without having to check the recipe. My recipes are in nice,

plastic sheets so they sponge clean. I am a bit of a renegade in my own way:

I always double the required garlic and add an extra sprig or two of basil,

mint, lavender.

 I am trying not to think of anything in particular when I open the oven door

and think of you. You are far away and I don’t suppose your immediate
thoughts are about what you’ll be cooking for dinner. I suppose there must
be someone else responsible for food. Will you have any variation in diet
or will it be the equivalent of a hunk of bread and a bowl of water? Will they
let you drink from a bowl? I can’t imagine you drinking from a bowl.
You never even drank your cereal milk from the bowl, even though I
showed you how. Of course, that was a long time ago, at least fourteen years.

 Now you’re nineteen; that’s a two-syllable word I’m not afraid of. I always

thought it would be a single syllable that would crush me, like someone
dropping a brick on my head. Shot. Bombed. Dead. But now the terror has
exploded my nightmares with two syllables: captured.

  And that means they wanted you alive. Your dad said I was talking crazy
about why couldn’t they have just shot you.

 I set the oven to broil. Now, where did I put the bell peppers? Here they are
in the lower drawer of the fridge. One red, one yellow. Festive colors; the kind
you see in photographs of Indian women in saris, or Mexican women hanging
rugs, or African women in arid villages where red and yellow jeeps drive past
on their way to the tourist resorts.

 You’re in Africa; North Africa, you might say, although they don’t call it that.
You were always so quick with languages: German, Russian, French. None of
those will help you there. I wonder if you can speak any of the language.
I wonder if you are permitted to speak at all.

 Tonight, we’re having Chicken Provençale. It’s an old recipe and I haven’t
sponged the plastic sheet clean because the stains are from the last time
I cooked it. That’s when you helped me cut up the tomatoes. It was in
the summer and we had far too many for the recipe, so we started by
eating a couple and then we had a tomato fight. You lobbed one at
my head and said it was great hair conditioner. I got you on the back
of your neck and it slid right down inside your shirt. We were still
cleaning up when your Dad came home. He just shook his head.
I hope you haven’t spoiled the dinner.

 I’ll cut the chicken up first. It’s what they call chicken breast fillets. This
means the original chicken parts have been shaved into half-inch slabs.
I carve them into what I think the recipe means by ‘morsels.’ Small, pink,
skinned fingers of flesh. They look so bare. I push them into a heap on
one side of the chopping board.

  I open the oven and place the peppers on the rack. After they’ve roasted,
I’ll put them in a paper bag until I can shuck their skins.

  Now for the tomatoes; they are also to lose their skins. I put a pan
of water on to boil. There isn’t anything left to do but I need something
to keep me occupied while I wait. I’ll make a salad; a bag of chopped
romaine, sliced green apple, some broken pecans, lime and honey
dressing. It sounds green and exotic.

 I wonder if they pick limes or pecans from the trees, wherever you
are. Even if you don’t get any, I’m sure you can probably see them.
From wherever you are. I like to imagine you’re in some place with
palm trees above to remind you of home. That’s about all that will
remind you of home.

 Perhaps you can look up and see the stars between the palm fronds.
Perhaps you can roast fresh cashew nuts over the fire, and think of us.
You have to allow me some creative thinking here, since I don’t know
what’s actually going on over there. But I do know the stars are white
and milky and too many to count.

 Like when we used to go to Owens River Gorge. You and your
climbing, Dad and his fishing, me trailing behind one or the other
of you with caution trapped behind my teeth. Not too far, not too deep,
not too high. Don’t trust the rope, the reel, the belayer, the net.

 But at night―remember? Oh at night, it didn’t matter, all of the worrying,
the anticipation of something going wrong―all that was gone as we three sat
back in our chairs and just looked up. I had no idea what the constellations
were. There I was enthusiastically pointing out the Big Bear and Orion,
and you and Dad laughing hysterically because I was pointing in the
wrong direction.

 I didn’t care, though. I dragged out that enormous box of Maltesers
I got from the duty free store on our way back through Heathrow
over Christmas.

 And you said,

 --You’re the best, mom.

 Dad said,

 --Can’t tell a star from a stop sign, but she’s all right.

 And you hugged me and said,

 --Don’t pay attention to him. You’re more than all right.

 I made sure you weren’t too close to the fire, and I hugged you
back. You were so tall, even then. Well, I don’t suppose I’m much of
a judge, being five foot one. But I had to reach up to hug you properly.
You were sixteen.

  I can smell the peppers burning. Cooking. I take a look inside the
oven. The skin is blistering and popping. It’s going black. They’re only
peppers. You’re supposed to cook them like this. They taste great cooked
like this. I try to shut out the thought that it must take a long time to
broil a human, and shut the oven door. The water for the tomatoes
is boiling and I turn off the heat and ease the tomatoes in. The skin
separates. I can’t look at them. I put the lid on the pan.

 I sprinkle salt and pepper over the chicken. I can’t bring myself to
rub it all in. It’s not the slimey feel of the raw chicken, it’s the rubbing
the salt and pepper into the flesh. I put a towel over the chicken.

 I turn the peppers, using the tongs. I should have used a tray. The juice
is dripping onto the floor of the oven. It’ll burn into a charred scar and
I’ll never be able to scrub it out.

 Those oven cleaners are meant to be very efficient, but they just burn
everything away. Burning out the burns.

 I try reading the paper while the peppers finish cooking. I keep reading
the same paragraph over and over. I’m too nervous to let the peppers be,
so I check them before they’re ready to be turned. I see their skins pop
and bubble. I watch the stalks blacken. How long they take to broil,
and they’re so small.

 I read about the weather on the back of the paper. I look at the yellow
dots that mean the air is unhealthy for sensitive people. There’s one orange
dot on Riverside and that means the air is unhealthy for everyone.

 What’s the air like where you are? I hope you’re breathing okay. I hope you
have fresh air. It’s meant to be very healthy around plants and I know you’ve
got some of those. I’ve seen them on TV.

 The peppers are done and I drop their poor, depleted shapes into the paper
bag. They’re not bright and firm anymore. It seems half of their insides are
sizzling at the bottom of the oven.

  I take the tomatoes out and put them on the chopping board. The skins peel
off easily and the flesh underneath is soft and spongy. I cut the tomatoes
up and remove the seeds. There’s hardly anything left.

  Now to cook the chicken. They call it sautéing, but it just means frying. I heat
the skillet and pour in a little oil. It skids about on the bottom of the pan. What
would it be like to place my hand there? How long could I hold it?

  I tip the chopping board and the chicken hisses and spits as it hits the oil. I
stir it quickly and add two pinches of saffron. The chicken turns white then
yellow as the saffron threads melt.

 I open the paper bag and pull out the charred peppers. I run them under
the cold water and peel off the blackened skins. The stalks, seeds and
membranes come away easily. They look nothing like peppers anymore.
I add them and the tomatoes to the chicken.  Now it looks like food.
I can feel myself unclenching.

 I can imagine you coming through the front door,

 --What’s cooking, mom? Smells good.

 And I’d tell you to get a bowl and I’d heap it high and cut you two slabs of
bread so you could soak up the sauce. And we’d sit opposite each other, eating
like crazy until it was all gone.
And I’d say,

 --What am I going to feed your father?

 And you’d say,

 --We’ll just get pizza.

 And we’re laughing and going back into the kitchen, and tearing off bits
of bread to scoop up the last bit of sauce from the pan. And we don’t burn
our fingers.

 And you’re so real, and firm and bright, it just isn’t possible that you’ve
melted away into something I might not recognize.

© 2019 Sandra Hunter

First published in Raving Dove 2006,  and as part of the collection Trip Wires 2018

Bio: Sandra Hunter’s fiction won the 2018 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, 2017 Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest, 2016 Gold Line Press 
Chapbook Prize, October 2014 Africa Book Club Award, and three Pushcart 
Prize nominations. Her story, “Finger Popping” won second place in the 
2017 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. She is a 2018 
Hawthornden Castle Fellow and the 2017 Charlotte Sheedy Fellow 
at the MacDowell Colony. Books: Losing Touch, a novel  (2014), f
iction chapbook, Small Change  (2016), fiction collection Trip Wires 
(2018). She is working on a trilogy  of novels set in Johannesburg, 
Los Angeles, and Berlin.