The Sacrifides

The grandfather clock ticked and tocked, like the great big heartbeat of the house itself. It struck 9, but no silly robin popped out and chirped at the hour.

“Do you ever miss Noosance, Grandma Mavis?” I asked.

She waved her hands dismissively with a “bah” and then sucked at her teeth. “Three coppers at market, all for a carving and some cogs—and like I told the fool who bought it, I was the one who ought to have been paying him.” She spat a ruddy wad into the pot by her feet.

“Are you hungry, Gracie?” Mama asked me, squeezing my hands. “Papa will be home soon.”

I shrugged at the silly question. Hungry wasn’t a feeling any more than being awake was a feeling; maybe being full was, but I didn’t feel that.

“Well, I have a surprise for you,” Mama said, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. From her apron pocket, she removed a plump cherry, its red as deep as a ladybug’s.

“Picked that from the trash bins?” Grandma Mavis asked.

“Oh, phooey; don’t spoil the moment,” Mama said, setting the cherry on the worn wooden tabletop.

Mama stood to get the the kitchen knife: its handle was wrapped in cloth, and the blade was nicked by chicken bones from stew night. Even though the grown-ups always yelled at me for taking it, its metal side was my favorite: outside of the wash basin or a smooth lake, it was the only place I could see my face—and you couldn’t go lifting lakes up and hold them close enough to count the freckles. Too close to the wash basin, and I’d get water in my nose.

The knife squashed the cherry almost as much as it cut. But still, after a few seconds of trying, Mama had split the thing into three pieces. She gave the biggest to me.

“Almost forgot what these tasted like,” Grandma Mavis said, savoring her bite.

I closed my eyes as I chewed; it reminded me of the house by the brook—the one that was warm and had three whole rooms. We’d kept a garden there, and whenever we sent Papa on a cart for market days, there was sometimes extra fruit for snacking and leeks for stew.

Papa’s footsteps thumped on the porch walkway, as though my memories had summoned him. Mama rose to her feet to greet him. I looked away as they kissed.

“Oh, Grace—are you bleeding?” Papa bent down to wipe at my lip with his thumb.

“On my walk home from work, I found a cherry that the pickers all missed,” Mama said. “We were worried they had you working another overnight shift at the factory, since 9 came and went. So we split it—just to tie us over.”

Papa nodded, lips drawn back. His cheeks always dimpled when he frowned.

“She looks so thin,” he said, which made no sense: Grandma Mavis was thinner.

“Where were you?” Mama asked, eyeing the bundle Papa carried.

The paper bag crinkled as Papa set it on the table.

“The factory started a new program—volunteers for the silo are given a voucher with a bakery written on it. You show up, and voila: they give you a free meal from their day’s leftovers. I see that look—I know what you’re thinking: the silo is dangerous work. But you’re the one who bathes Gracie, who can count her ribs—we need this. And this new voucher program is the best thing since… since…” Papa trailed off, issuing a tight smile. “The best thing since…. well, you know.”

I nodded sagely. It was a phrase with no sensible end: our world had few good things in it, let alone best things.

“Well, what did you get?” Mama asked, watching with eager eyes as he reached in.

“It’s maybe not the best for our situation,” Papa said sheepishly. “But it’s a start.”

His gnarled hands were the same color as the bread he set on the table. Its crust was as dry as Grandma Mavis’s skin, and the flour it was coated with was like the dust on the rafters overhead.

Bread… how I hated bread.

“You’re right, that’s not the best,” Mama said, her frown now matching Papa’s. All of the grown-ups turned towards me. “I guess we’ll give it to Gracie—she needs it the most.”

Grandma Mavis sighed, nodding her head in unhappy agreement.

I stared at the loaf of bread—it was bigger than my head. A lump formed in my throat. “I—what if we gave it to grandma instead?”

All the grown-ups shook their heads. “It has to be you, Gracie,” Mama said, setting a hand on mine.

“But bread is just so much. And it always makes my throat dry and stomach ache.”

Mama’s smile was patient, but firm. “We’ll make you a sandwich. It goes down easier that way.”

Sandwiches were no better.

Mama busied herself by the cupboards, finding some of our dried meats tucked away in jars of salt. She then placed the jerky on top of the whole loaf, completing the sandwich.

“There we go—one sandwich, just for you.”

I swallowed, looking at the thing with trepidation. Grandma Mavis hocked a rust-colored wad into her jar. That did no favors for my appetite.

“One sandwich,” I repeated, lifting it with two hands. I eyed the crusty, salty meat now covered with the bread’s flour sitting atop the plump loaf. There was no point in delaying the unpleasantness.

“Wait,” Mama said, reaching out and stopping the sandwich inches from my mouth. Her eyes worked back and forth, flitting from the loaf in my hands to the knife on the table, and back again, like a hummingbird at the feeder. Her fingers traced over the red stain where the cherry had been cut—one thing, one fruit, but somehow shared by three. There was a whole loaf, too big for me to eat and enjoy. A one thing. There was a knife on the table.

With the way her lips scrunched up, it was like she was trying to put together the pieces of some puzzle. I had a puzzle once, when I was a young girl—before I was ten like I was now. The puzzle was cut from wooden pieces that made the shape of a star when put together. But overnight, when the rain drips in through the roof, the pieces soak it up and warp until they no longer fit together.

Mama’s puzzle pieces didn’t fit together, either. After a few seconds of thinking, she shook her head and gestured back at the sandwich. The idea never came together; I could, and would have to, eat the sandwich.

Sometimes, I heard people say that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. It always seemed like a queer idea, given how little we generally have. If you ever had too much of a thing, you just spaced it out until you had the right amount out of that thing for even more time.

But bread was always the exception to the rule. The first mouthful was fine. A bit dry, a bit salty from the meat, but it wouldn’t kill me. The second bite was tougher: the flour was grit in my mouth, and my stomach started to knot up like it was angry at what would come next. The third, the fourth, the fifth, the tenth bite, the twentieth—soon the roof of my mouth was raw from the crust, but still I pushed forward.

Papa’s thumb again pressed to my face; this time, he wiped at the tears that traced down my cheeks. But even though my eyes were leaky, I wouldn’t weep; I wouldn’t complain. Papa worked the silos so that we could be full, and he never cried. Mama worked double-shifts on the weekends, and she never cried. Grandma Mavis skipped meals every few days, and her eyes were as dry as cobwebs. Everyone in my family did what they called a “Sacrifides” for the good of the family.

And so, that was the day I found my way of pitching in, my Sacrifides: I was the one who ate unbroken loaves.

“These vouchers,” Papa repeated, watching with a watery smile as I swallowed mouthful after mouthful. “Like I said, they’re the best thing since… since… the best thing since…”

Mama took his hand as he trailed off. In a world with so few good things in it, we still knew what he meant.