Edith’s knitting needles clattered to the floor as her head slumped Raggedy-Ann style toward her right shoulder, hands dangling over the arms of her chair, eyelids fluttering. After securing Edith’s tongue and teeth, LiddieAnn pulled the kettle from the fire and shouted toward the darkened hallway. “Yella! Mama’s spellin’! Get out here!”
“FUCKITALL!” came shattering back from the darkness, along with the sound of books and possibly other objects hitting walls and floor. “WHERE ARE THE NEEDLES?” Neon-blue light reflected along the darkened hallway as Daniella’s door opened. “How bad is it? Is she shiverin’ or just hangin’?” came her disembodied voice, with no effort to hide its undertone of disdain.
“Needles’re on the floor! Shiverin’s over - - she’s just hangin’ now!” called LiddieAnn, blowing the heat from a spoonful of the soup she’d been nurturing for the past hour. An aroma of duck fat and pepper floated upward on the steam coming from the pot.
“FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! Can’t you get her this one time? I’m tryin’ to study!”
“Yella, get your lazy ass out here right this minute and tend to Mama!” LiddieAnn yelled back, “It’s your turn! I already put the sponge in her mouth, you do the rest. I’m tryin’ to keep us fed, godsakes!”
“Yeah, yeah, thanks a lot!” Daniella emerged from the cerulean hallway, her clotted mass of frayed, chestnut brown hair sticking out in every direction. “What are you putting in front of us this time? Not more of that stew from hell you tried to poison me with last week, I hope.” Daniella wore nothing but black wool socks with the toes cut out and a long, seething red Pashtun scarf wrapped around her neck and body, forming an X across her torso and tied just above her buttocks to make it look like she had a red bunny tail. “How long?” she cursed through gritted teeth, reaching from behind with an expertise borne of long practice to slide her hands under Edith’s armpits. She hoisted her mother’s body to sit more fully upright in the chair.
LiddieAnn glanced at Daniella and rolled her eyes as she steadied the kettle with her barely digited stump and ladled the soup into two wooden bowls. “Jesus Christ, Yella,” she scoffed. “What are you “studyin’” this time? How to look like a deranged Amazon woman? Honestly! She just dropped the needles a couple seconds ago.”
Gently nudging Edith’s hair out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ears, Daniella took the seat cushion from another chair, placed it between Edith and the dining room table, then positioned her mother’s torso so it was leaning forward over the cushion. She made sure that Edith would be able to reach her faded pink plastic water cup, handle on the left and sippy spout on the right, when she woke up. “My body is the body of a goddess, no matter what I’m wearing or not wearing. And I’m experimenting with minimalism. But you wouldn’t understand anyway so just never mind.”
“At least you could cover up your yah-yah, all right? Don’t you dare put your bare ass down on that chair, Yella!”
“All RIGHT! Bitch! I don’t want any of your goddamn soup anyway. I’m not hungry. Mama’s asleep and I’ve got her set so she won’t fall over. She’ll want her knitting when she wakes up - - I put it at the other end of the table. Remember to have her tell you the right day and your name before you give her back the needles.”
“You’re unbelievable, Yella. As if you needed to tell me how to make sure she’s awake enough to get the needles. You refuse this soup now, it’ll be gone when you sneak back here to get it at 3 in the morning. I’ll give it to Snickers.”
“Don’t you dare give my dinner to that mongrel. I’ll eat it when I’m goddamn good and ready.”
“Nope.” LiddieAnn nudged open the screened door with her elbow, cradling Daniella’s bowl in her good hand as she headed outside toward the dog shed. The creak of aging hinges startled away the barn owl that had briefly rested on the shed’s crumbling roof. Turning to her sister as she stepped through the door, LiddieAnn gave Daniella a wicked smile. “Think of it as my contribution to your experiment with minimalism.”
About the Creator
JANINA M FULLER
I am a quilter and an actress, a pianist and a lifelong student of nature. I've lived among indigenous people and kissed Jacques Cousteau, flown planes and swum with penguins. The possibilities of life are limited only by our imaginations.
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