Free Don't Kiss Me: Stories by Lindsay Hunter Page B

tray into my belly till it hurts and past till it hurts, till the pain feels normal and that spider’s a goner.
    It ain’t the man’s fault, the spider, I got to keep reminding myself it ain’t people’s fault.
    A lady in scrubs rings me up. Tonight it’s pancakes, a waffle, curls of bacon, a dish of macaroni and Velveeta, a good-size fluff of scrambled eggs, a wrapped sandwich for later, a salad I ain’t going to eat. A wedge of cake, red with white frosting. The lady’s flesh is the color of honey, flecked with tiny dark freckles. I wonder is something wrong with her, that honey color and everything, then I realize I like it, I like that color, I like this lady in her shirt of colored cats. I say, You like pussycats, huh? But the lady says, No, like I just asked her did she like eating babies, holds out her hand for the money.
    Another thing about me is, I got a real hard time showing my true emotions. So inside me there is a roaring, I am the roaring, it shreds the lady before me, it hangs her by her cat shirt, her tongue pink as a lozenge, but outside me I thank the lady, ask her could she just keep the change.
    I sit way in the back of the lunching room. There’s only a few other people here, a crying lady crumpled over her tea, two thugs in white uniforms, holding them plastic spork things in their skinny fists, a man watching a little girl fingering dimples into her mashed potatoes.
    Momma and I at Wekiva Springs. Me eating a Dole Whip, licking it off my forearm, my elbow, mistaking salt for sugar. The man Momma was with slapping the cone from my hand, That’s enough, Fatty, he said, Momma laughing, Momma telling me to go off by myself for a while. The water lapping quietly, the light in the trees. Momma sprinkling Ajax over my ice cream. That’s so you won’t have a taste for it no more. Momma serving dirt from the yard over milk. You eat that, you can have dessert. I ate it.
    I’d still eat it. But I don’t want no one watching me.
    From the back of the room I can see out the windows, the sun finally gone, a jagged pink-orange stripe all that’s left of the day, like someone melted a taffy and made a nasty smear. My mouth is watering, I want to jam all that food in my mouth at once, even my napkin, even my straw and cup and utensils and packet of salt, I want to go over and eat the mashed potatoes off the girl’s plate, suck the bits off her fingers, try not to bite down.
    I wonder does anyone else ever feel this way. Does anyone else ever feel like the wrapper to the taffy.
    When I’m done I use the pads of my fingers to get the crumbs, I don’t want to leave nothing behind. Graso , one of the thugs says, sniggers into his hand.
    Blood in my heart, blood in my head. It’s a comfort sometimes to think about all the waves of blood lapping just under the surface, all around me.
    The thugs get up, still laughing. Down one hallway, I laugh along, down another, I

 
     
    SPLITS
     
    Momma says you can’t get pregnant if you do the splits and hold your breath for one whole minute after the boy makes his deposit, she watches TV like that, toes pointed, chest tight, sometimes her cheeks puff out like a blowfish I guess, I never seen a blowfish.
    Momma’s got friends, David, Joey, Lar, the man with the ears, the man with the briefcase, Jed, the man with the teeth. Sometimes they stay for dinner.
    Most nights I push my bike up the hill so I can ride it back down. All us kids used to do it in the neighborhood but I’m the only one still does. I’m not sure what the other kids do now.
    I don’t like riding down the hill. Toward the end I go so fast that I’m sure I’ll crash. But it’s what I do in the evenings.
    At school a boy pushes his finger into the flesh at my belly and says, You have a fat stomach. We are in science class, he has made a scientific discovery, another boy tries with his finger but I kick him in his checkbook.
    I am suspended, I walk home. There is a car in front of our house so I