 Image by Michal Balog on Unsplash The burner won’t light. She presses the knob, waits for the faint click-click-click, but nothing catches. Just the stale scent of gas. She clicks it off, clicks it back. Nothing. The pot is already filled. Tap water. Slightly cloudy. Half a box of store-brand pasta waits beside it like a promise she can’t quite keep. In the other room, her son arranges plastic soldiers into battle lines. They’re hand-me-downs from a neighbor, chipped and faded. She can hear him narrating the fight in whispers. She clicks the burner again. Nothing. The past week plays on a loop behind her eyes. The pale pink notice folded into the mailbox. The manager’s voice, all polite dread, saying “just one more week.” The food bank closed for inventory. The freezer humming its empty hum. The bruises on her paycheck—hours cut again. She presses the knob harder, as if force will conjure flame. She tries the back burner. A hiss. A faint spark. Then nothing. Her stomach growls and it embarrasses her. She hasn’t eaten since yesterday’s coffee. She keeps thinking about her mother’s kitchen, the one with the yellow walls and the burnt linoleum. Her mother would stand over the stove in her robe, boiling water for rice, chain-smoking, humming along to the radio. When they had food, they cooked. When they didn’t, they made noise so the hunger had company. She never wanted this for him. She opens the window. Gas worries her more than hunger. The night air slips in, heavy and wet with Alabama heat. A mosquito hums by her ear. The window screen has a tear in it. She meant to fix it last summer. From the living room: “Mom? Is dinner ready?” “Almost,” she says, too fast. She crouches beside the cabinet and rifles through it. A dusty jar of peanut butter. A box of crackers, mostly crumbs. A can of peaches with no label and a dent in its side. She turns the can in her hand like it might give her a better answer if she holds it long enough. In the drawer, she finds matches. Her hands shake as she strikes one. The flame jumps, bright and sudden. She leans in and turns the knob again. A whoosh. The burner lights. She exhales. She sets the pot on the flame and watches the water begin to shift. A few lazy bubbles rise to the surface, then vanish. Not a boil yet. Just motion. She leans against the counter, her arms wrapped around herself, as if holding her ribs will keep everything else in place. The flame flickers blue and steady beneath the pot. It’s something. It’s enough. The boy appears in the doorway holding a green soldier with a missing leg. “Can I have some crackers?” “Pasta’s almost ready.” “I’m really hungry.” “I know, baby.” She crouches to meet his eyes. “Can you wait ten minutes?” He thinks about it. Then nods. She watches him walk back to his battlefield, one sock falling down. His shoulder blades sharp under his shirt. He doesn’t know about the envelope on the table. The one that says “Final Notice.” He doesn’t know she skipped lunch so he could have seconds. He only knows the flame is on now. That the water will boil. That dinner is coming. She stirs the pot with the same wooden spoon her mother once used. The handle is worn smooth from years of circling broth, scraping sauce, coaxing something from nothing. She stirs like it matters. Like it always did. The water boils, loud and rolling. She tips in the pasta.
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Imager by Clark Tai on Unsplash
I.
I practice late at night with the door locked in a darkened house. I make sure the tub is filling while my parents are doing their own wind down routine—cold cream and Dove bar soap and Letterman booming from the old TV on their old dresser, the cacophonous roar of audience laughter slipping over the sound of running water
I sit and wait on the edge of the porcelain tub, my knees bumped together like two heads pressed in thought, and I count how many hairs are springing up on my legs, thinking about whether running around half naked with pimpled, pockmarked, hairy skin would be the best thing for my psyche
Once in the tub, I sit on my knees and see the same legs are now distorted in the sloshing miniature waves like I’ve been a wound cut open and my flesh is the blood dispersing in water—no lines or boundaries to hold me in, only the melting molecules of an idea.
I dip my face in and count my breaths and every few Mississippis, I pull it out to the side just long enough for one sharp inhale before going back under. I time it and I time it and I time it until wet hair falls in my eyes and fills my nostrils and clamors its way inside the corners of my mouth like a tentacled haunting from the drain, and I convince myself that I am ready.
II.
At the swim team tryouts, I never make it off the bleachers. I watch the other girls dive in and pulse and propel their way through the lanes. Their arms cut and glide through the teal water like fins, mouths open like gawking trout to suck in oxygen before they submerge again. That’s where I went wrong, I think. I used my nose. This nose that stalls and spurts in the blooming seasons and wakes me in fits of sneezes. How could I rely on it for essential support while in the water?
The girls time themselves perfectly, one after the other, like a dotted line of mythic water beasts, slick flesh with pearled droplets rolling off bony shoulders and long legs, not a hair or peach fuzz in sight. When the coach calls my name, I pretend it is not me and when she turns around, clipboard in hand, I pull the towel closer around my shoulders and get up to slink away unnoticed.
III.
I never tell my parents I tried out for the swim team and when they find out my best friend makes the cut, they hug her and say things like well done, Katie and that’s impressive. My mom turns to me, spatula in hand, asking why I never tried out and wondering out loud if this is the start of our conjoined, braided, co-dependent friendship splintering—if we would at long last be finding our own hobbies.
I feel a crack inside my chest when Katie laughs but doesn’t respond with something like no way and the crack grows into a gorge when my dad adds it will be healthy for you girls, you know?
That night, I once more have my ear pressed to the door like a conch shell to catch the waves of a live audience roar drifting through. I tiptoe into the bathroom and lock the door behind me. I sit on the edge of the tub, knees clinked together like buoys in lazy waters, and I wait for the tub to shapeshift into a great lake or ocean. I climb in carefully and sit on my knees, laying parallel over the surface like a diving board waiting to spring. I catch a breath and hold it tight, a bubble of compressed wishes I push deeper towards my belly and plant like a seed. And when my face melts into the water, I count the Mississippis again before lifting my head up off to the side, this time opening my mouth, exhaling, inhaling again, and going right back under.
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