Papa makes peppers and onions. He lets them get brown and slimy before he puts me in. The oil boils me up before I can feel it—not that I can feel it—I can’t feel where I begin and where the peppers and onions end.
Papa pulls a wet sniff in through his nostrils like jumbo jet engines with black hairs bushing out. I smell so good, Papa says, I smell so good there in the pan. Papa breaks me up with the wooden paddle. He uses it to swat the fat flies away from my good smell. I leak my juices into the peppers and onions, and everything in the pan is wet.
When they took me away, did the wet creep down Papa’s nostrils like jumbo jet engines, and get caught in the black hairs that bush out? Did the wet roll down his spidery red-veined cheeks?
After they took Brother last week, I heard Papa in the house, tearing in two. It did not rain that night. Just a cold damp. I laid in the barn with the straw warming underneath me.
I could have guessed that Papa spilled a pan of boiling oil onto the bushy black hair of his toes again, but I knew. I was all alone out in the pen. No more Brother to help me warm up the damp straw.
Papa douses the peppers, onions, and I in white table salt from a shaker shaped like a green John Deere tractor. The fat flies scurry around on the cabinets, wet with steam, above the stovetop. I am boiling away. Can Papa see me in the steam? Can he feel me when he breathes in my good smell?
The rain came three days after they took Brother. Papa was wet when he fell into the barn door. He did not see me at first. I watched him from the dark corner of the pen, but I could smell him all the way back there. His breath smelled like Brother.
Was he thinking about how hungry he would be with Brother still in his belly? Did he already know that I would be next? Had he already made the call?
It was not long before Papa saw me hiding. He drifted over, hands gripping the metal fencing, wet rolling down his face. I tried not to breathe too deeply but I could feel the whites of my eyes bulging out. I could not hold my breaths in.
Papa put his bulging hand like a meat mallet on my ribs next to where my heart was thumping. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Papa said, the wet coming faster. I’m sorry, Papa whispered. I’m so sorry. Every S was a hiss. No other letters made it through.
I could not ask where Brother had gone. I took deep breaths and waited for Papa to tell me. Every time he spoke, it was a hiss, and more wet would come out. Papa kept trying and trying, and kneading his meat mallet hands in my sides, until he finally pushed himself away into the fence. He made his falling way out of the barn. I stayed there in the dark while the rain scraped against the walls.
There is not much of me left. It is time for me to leave Papa’s pan. He scrapes the sides with the wooden paddle, and ushers the peppers, onions, and I onto a curved plate. Spidery cracks like the ones in Papa’s red cheeks run through the center. He moves us around to cover them up, then brings the plate with him to the couch and sets us on his lap.
Papa sighs like he is going to tear in two and stares down at the plate. I know he can feel me now. He can see me in the peppers and onions. Still he grips his fork and shoves it into the pile. Wet comes out of his bushy jet engine nostrils. The wet comes closer and closer as I move towards Papa’s mouth.
Papa’s lips peel back and I can see that his tongue is yellow. The betweens of his teeth are browned like he has been eating mud. There is so much pink and red and brown and yellow in Papa’s mouth; his mouth is a painting. Papa’s eyelids sink closed and he takes another breath as he slides the fork between his teeth.
The peppers and onions settle with me on Papa’s wide yellow tongue. He seals his lips closed, and it becomes dark. Dark like the cold damp of a rainless night. Dark like the barn without Brother. Dark like the back corner of the pen.
Papa gnashes his muddied teeth together, and moves me around with his wide yellow tongue. He mixes the peppers, onions, and I with his spit. Then he swallows us down.
Madison Ellingsworth likes walking in Portland, Maine. She has recently been published in Fractured Lit, Apple Valley Review, and Gargoyle Magazine, among others. Links to Madison’s published works can be found at madisonellingsworth.com.