Guy Cramer
The Radiator
(after Meg Pokrass)
My brother, sister, and I are standing at the window in order of height, our thick little bodies like the levels of a snow man, watching the invasion of white flurries covering car hoods, the streets and sidewalks. It feels as cold in here as it does out there. Mom and Dad are in the back fighting, again. They’ve been at it since the holidays. For a while we thought they were good. Santa had been coming by all year, leaving presents for Mom at the front door, and for Dad at the back door. There was magic in the way their warmth clothed each other. We figured it has to do with the radiator. Dad’s fussing at it, “I’m tired of your coldness.” While Mom defends it, “If you’re never here, how can we fix it? You promised to be home more.” Dust covers the floors. Mom says that cleaning this soon into the New Year brings bad luck. Dad refuses to bring anything new home, he says it’s also bad luck. My sister asks if the radiator is dead, how are we going to make it? Outside, Cardinals swoop down over our white lawn, reminding me of the blood drops from my knee when I fell off my scooter toward the end of summer. I called out to Mom and Dad from the streets. They seemed to have the radiator working back then, as I heard the steady tapping from the inside, Mom cheering Dad on, “That’s it, a little more.”
The F Word
Shawn and I are hanging from the monkey bars, the shirts of our powder blue uniforms part at the waist where our bellies hang out. We say things like “no you wear a size extra extra extra large.” “No you wear a size extra extra extra extra large.” Anything to avoid calling each other the F word. There’s not a day we can remember when we weren’t. We’re used to hearing it day in day out from flat stomached kids and adults alike. They wield shame like a knife to whittle us down to the perfect size. They think they’re doing us a favor in these lessons of humiliation. The evidence of our service lies in the white paint on Shawn’s locker even bleach couldn’t rub out: “Lard Ass”. The four tiny marks on my arm now faint on the skin’s surface from a babysitter who said she could deflate me. We’re both soldiers in the same trench, lighting each other’s cigarette, knowing we’re drawing attention to ourselves from those who linger in the shadows, thinking what they’re aiming at is no longer human, but a mass blotting the light of their crosshairs.
Potluck
My elders bend over blue and white checkered card tables covered in assorted Jell-O molds, soupy garlic scented beans, and bowls of mustard potato salads with pimento eyes gazing upward. Looking at Bill Tenement, you wouldn’t know his steady hands once strangled a man in the forests of France when ammunition ran out, the way peas tumble one after another on his plate like graceful grenades as he wipes mayo on the mound of nearby napkins. The Coleman’s grandson stands on his tip toes reaching for the legs of pepper flaked fried chicken, too even in size to have come from different birds. Someone checks the greasy parchment for the logo of a nearby fast food chain. The tables are butted up end to end, going from the kitchen into the library where shelves of leather bound editions sit, gold lettered spines gleaming across the light of the crockpot. Rump roast juices steam the glass lid, dripping onto the burgundy carpet after each removal. Shirley D’Angelo whispers to the person in line ahead of her, pointing out her pink marshmallow mandarin orange and cherry salad, saying the recipe’s as old as her. The Hoskins, all ten of them, stand holding paper plates with dirty hands over their chests, as if the Pledge of Allegiance is being said. Mrs. Hoskins passes out plastic forks and knives to each of her kids. “We didn’t have time to bring anything,” she says, her long dress swallows her skeletal frame in flowers. Hope looks at her spinster sibling, Glenda, pulling back a loose gray strand from her beehive hair, adjusting her tortoise shell glasses.
“There’s enough food here for the Marriage Feast Of The Lamb.”
Glenda shakes her head, “t’won’t last long with all these children here.”
“They’ll outnumber us in glory, sister.”
Hope cuts off a soft cube of butter, spreading it over the slice of her sourdough littered with holes, the loaf having risen in haste this morning, her hands feeling their age from every stretch and pull.
Guy Cramer is a writer from east Texas whose stories have appeared in Paragraph Planet, Short Beasts, Vestal Review, Flash Frontier, and Major 7th Mag. He is on Instagram @guy.cramer
