ASTRID VALLET

cw — starvation and implied domestic violence

The Sin-Eater

---

I remember my father’s funeral fondly. Mama said I wasn’t allowed to smile outside of the kitchen, and she wasn’t smiling much herself, I don’t think. I remember distinctly, I remember her dark blue dress, and how smooth she’d gotten the wool, I remember her singing as she ironed it, the night before. Dark blue wasn’t black, but dark blue was close enough, she’d said, and wool wasn’t summery, but wool was what she had, she’d said, sorta just shrugged. I think she would’ve worn her wedding dress, she longed to, her satin, flowy wedding dress. My father, dead in the living room, lying in his closed casket, and Mama’s slippers whispering on the tiles of the kitchen floor, and the pot purring on the stove. And the clock. I couldn’t hear it ticking, but I was on my father’s seat, and I could see it. He always knew the time, the meals especially. I don’t know if he sat there to see the clock on the wall, or if the clock hung on that wall so he could see it from his seat. I couldn’t read a clock, I must’ve been too little. I could tell the time from other pairs of hands. My father lived by the clock, and they struck with precision.

Mama in her dark blue dress, with a red and white checkered rag flung over her shoulder, and a cigarette hanging from her lips. She’d dart in and out of the kitchen sometimes, to make sure the casket was still closed and all set, to make sure the fork and the knife lay parallel to each other, to nudge one or the other just a little bit to the left, or, no, to the right. And she’d check the clock, and dab at her armpits with paper towels. I remember, I know I was little because I couldn’t hold that many prunes at once in my hand. Mama said I wasn’t allowed to eat them, but she’d told me to remove the pits, and sucking on the pits was okay. Mama was trying not to touch her hair, because she’d put it in a bun, mindlessly, to get it off her face, away from the food, but I’d seen her walk past the mirror in the hallway and pause, and smile. She was busying her hands with this and that, salt simmering in cheap wine with a branch of rosemary, and the beef, the beef. I remember watching her watching that beef, fussing. My tongue had polished every single prune pit, cleaned each one off the slightest amount of flesh, and now I was running my nails in between my teeth, digging for a drop of juice. Mama’s baby hair curled on the nape of her neck and at her temples, and it reminded me of cotton candy. I’d seen it once, the texture, the unnatural, forbidden shade of pink. Surely it tasted sorta like our cough syrup. And in that moment, Mama was crouching to check the bread in the oven, and I’d closed my eyes, to recall the taste of the cough syrup. Mama used to keep it on the high shelf of the bathroom cabinet, where I couldn’t reach it, and she never let us run out. There was much smoking at home, and much coughing, and sometimes she’d give me a spoon, that was my candy. So I knew that kind of sweet, not the prunes, and the prunes were not for me.

I don’t think I knew exactly what beef was, much less the texture, the color, the taste of it, but I quite liked the word ragoût, and the phrase ragoût of beef and prunes. The loaf of bread was waiting, cooling on the counter, Mama was stirring, drawing slow eights in the pot and taking long drags from her cigarette. I didn’t like that she was smoking, but then I remembered that I wasn’t allowed to smile outside of the kitchen, so it’d be better to do all of my smiling now. Her hands weren’t jittery, I remember distinctly. She looked at the clock and so did I, just because. I wanted to ask when they’d get here, but she was looking at the ragoût, letting ash flutter down into the pot. I’d seen Mama do that, sometimes, on purpose. I’d seen her put out her cigarettes at the bottom of pots, even, because in a thick enough sauce, the butts could pass as small vegetables. My father never noticed, and that was Mama’s one little victory.

The doorbell rang and she jolted awake, and flicked the cigarette butt into the pot, and I never figured out if she meant to do that. I can’t remember if I smiled about it, either. With Mama out of the kitchen to answer the door, I could hear the clock for a brief moment, and the pot purring. Mama’s slippers came back whispering, and she drew a chair, and the sin-eater shuffled in, hovering in the doorway. Sunken cheeks and thin lips that still managed to smile a bit, and sunken eyes that avoided other eyes and the food. They held their frayed pork pie hat by the brim, not quite to their chest, but lower, in front of their stomach, and Mama had to insist for them to sit. I can’t remember, I can’t remember what I was thinking. Mama rubbed her hands on the rag, sighing through her nose, and served them a glass of water and a piece of lemon shortbread, in a chipped saucer. Oh, I remember she’d been raging about the lemons. And about the beef, and the prunes, but especially about the lemons. She’d shaken her head at the grocery list, she’d shaken her head at the grocery bags on the kitchen table, at the receipt, at the money we had left. I remember her mumbling into the cigarette, crying a bit, such good food, such good food. She’d smiled a bit, and coughed, and said she didn’t even like lemon shortbread, that it was tart, but that she knew how to make it, so that would have to be it, and I remember liking the word tart, and hoping to put a taste to the word.

I watched the lemon shortbread slowly disappear into the sin-eater’s mouth, and they had teeth just like ours, I think, I’m not sure, because they never opened their mouth too wide. I watched their jaw move, but barely, as they chewed. One thing that Mama had accepted to explain was that they needed an appetite opener, and I didn’t like that phrase, that idea. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t make sense looking at them, who looked like me, to think that they needed their appetite opened, that their appetite wasn’t a gaping hole that growled in their belly, like it did for me. 

Mama was at the door, welcoming family in. I watched the sin-eater’s throat shift as they took long gulps of water, that thing I now know is called an Adam’s apple, I was watching that little thing bob up and down when I remembered my father, dead in the living room. Mama wouldn’t tell me where eaten sins go.

Mama appeared in the doorway, and she looked at the clock, and so did I, just because. The sin-eater had placed their hat on the table, I remember, and was looking at the empty chipped saucer. I wonder if they saw the cigarette burns on the waxed tablecloth. A pale pink tongue darting out to collect stray crumbs, barely visible teeth, chewing at the skin of their lips, distorting the shape of the mouth. My father, dead in the living room, Mama, fussing over the ragoût, three of us, hungry in the kitchen. Mama had her back to us, and I slid out of my father’s chair. I remember distinctly, I wanted to ask them what sins taste like. I took their hand to show them to the living room, and I remember the cigarette burns on the back of mine.

I was tucked between two relatives whose names I might as well have never learned, I imagined the couch swallowing me in-between its cushions. Polished little shoes, feet kicking slightly. Would I taste tart? I looked at the sin-eater, seated behind my father’s closed casket. Mama pulled the red and white checkered rag off her shoulder and laid it before them as a tablecloth. I could almost hear her think, that’ll do. The plate made a sound I didn’t like when she placed it down. The whole room was salivating. Ragoût of beef and prunes, wine and rosemary salt, bread. Such good food, such good food. Mama stood beside an occupied armchair, leaning nonchalantly on it. A lit cigarette held between two fingers as the sin-eater tore the bread apart. Eat the host. I stared at Mama’s slippers to tune out the masticating. Such good food, wasted on purging my father’s soul. I wonder if they saw the cigarette burns on the rag.

Cleaned plate soaking in the sink. I looked at my hands, then at the clock, neither telling the time. Dead father now buried, family in the living room, smoking and tearing through the leftovers. I remember thinking that that food should be left to rot. I remember thinking about the cigarette butt, too. What if the sin-eater had choked on it, died mid-digestion? I could hear somebody retching outside.

I think I wanted to sit in my father’s chair, and listen to the clock and the absence of purring pot. But I saw the forgotten pork pie hat and what remained of the loaf of bread, forgotten on the kitchen table, too, ignored because of the ragoût, and my belly growled. That food should be left to rot. My belly growled, and people were eating, and I still didn’t know what prunes tasted like, what tart tasted like. I distinctly remember wanting to put the hat on, and thinking that it’d be bad luck.

The shelf wasn’t that high, and I was that hungry. I went back to the kitchen, I hovered in the doorway, holding the bottle of cough syrup, and the sin-eater looked at me, hat and bread in hand. We ignored the smell of vomit. Bread dipped in sweet cough syrup. Mama said we were allowed to smile in the kitchen.

< Prev       Next >
Back to ISSUE 12