Black Frosting

October again, but different. My boots crunched down the sidewalk where the bus dropped me off and exposed my face to the piercing frigid air. It filled my lungs like ice water, but I was already cold. Ever since June; the worst summer of my life. But school had started and the homework kept me busy enough until I finally went to bed and got to dream of times past when all of us would sit in the sand and laugh at the sun and daddy would help us build castles while mama took pictures. I slid the key into the lock but the door opened wide before I could turn it. Anna grabbed me in her arms, giggling and kissing my hair and rushing me in from the wind outside. I heard the familiar whir of the old washer as she dragged me toward the kitchen, tripping over the still-empty cardboard boxes. I tossed my backpack into the kitchen corner and ditched my jacket. “How was school?” she asked me, opening the fridge.

“Good. How come you’re not at work?”

“I got the day off. Which was incredibly convenient, ‘cause I have tons of stuff to do.” We were moving next week. Anna had fixed up the flower beds and cleared out the attic and put our home up for sale. She got her tuition refunded and was working full time, but we still couldn’t afford the house. Anna had talked with the lawyers, but I only half learned about equity loans and mortgages and life insurance — the grown-up words that made living through a tragedy more confusing. Our mother had stayed home to raise us and Anna and I agreed we would never trade that time for anything.

“So they just gave you the day off? Ooh, what’s that?” She put a mixing bowl down on the table and fished through the cabinet for a cookie sheet. 

The table creaked when I leaned on it, reaching for the bowl with my finger. “Hey! You can’t have it raw, silly goose! You gotta bake it first!” 

I washed my hands with apple-scented dish soap and we started rolling out the dough. 

“Well?” I inquired, setting down the rolling pin and searching her face with my eyes for any hints of what was going on. 

Her lips closed and she scrunched her eyebrows. And then an innocent “Well, what?” as she turned to a cabinet to grab two tall glasses – originally mustard containers from Europe before we upcycled them into drinking cups, and now cookie-cutters.

“Work.” She glanced at me as she inhaled to see that I was still watching her and then stared at the table, contemplating her response. She handed me a glass without looking up. 

“I called in. There’s too much to do, Tess. We leave in six days.” I broke eye contact and nodded slightly. It was her turn to watch my face as I stared intently at my glass, trying to decide which end of the dough to plunge it into. “But I got most of the upstairs done today! It’s not that organized, but it’s in boxes at least. And the hanging pictures and art. Everything off the walls. So I think it’s a good start.” 

I glanced back at the bare paint in the hallway. A cheap print of Drurer’s Painting Hands still hinged over dad’s antique desk on the far side of the living room, but everything else was gone. “Good job,” I mumbled as optimistically as I could manage.

We started dicing out little sticky circles and carefully placing them on the sheet. “So, anything exciting happen at school today?”

“Um, we had a sub in science so we watched a movie about predators and prey. There was this one part with a snake and a woodpecker,” my cookie ripped and I tried to smush it back together. “And the woodpecker saw the snake, so he went into his hole, and there were eggs in the hole, and that’s easy prey.” I looked over and saw Anna diligently twisting the glass, cookie after perfect round cookie. There were at least a dozen on the sheet and I was only on my third. “So I guess the woodpecker was trying to protect the eggs or something.” I chuckled at the seeming futility of the bird’s heartfelt efforts. “Then it showed the snake slithering up the tree,” I tried to match her speed, twisting the glass like she did. It toppled over.

“Snakes can slither up trees? Here,” She picked up my glass and showed me how to jiggle it so the dough doesn’t stick to the table. 

“Thanks. Yeah, you know how they’re scaly? Well their scales, like, grip to the bark and he slithered up. But I don’t know, I think he got tired or something and he tried to turn around, but I guess he gave up, so they showed the snake falling off the tree. It just fell to the ground. He was still alive, though.” 

We’d made as many circles as could fit on the sheet of dough, so we gathered the scraps into a pile to roll out again. “And then he went back in the water, and there was a crocodile waiting for him! And then I looked away, so I don’t know what happened, but I heard, like, ‘ews’ and ‘gross’, so I think he ate him. But it sounded really disgusting” 

We kneaded the dough. It oozed between our fingers like the guts of the snake mixed with mud, but we didn’t stop. It was sticky and cold and I could feel grains of sugar. Anna let me roll out the dough again and we cut out more cookies until there wasn’t enough left to roll and we ate whatever goop was left over. I eagerly licked my fingers as she opened the oven and I watched her blonde hair blow behind her shoulders as she squinted her eyes from the heat. And then, “What homework do you have?”

 I spent the next half hour taking notes from my social studies book about ancient China, and when the cookies had cooled and the smell of warm sugar filled my nostrils and brain, Anna said I couldn’t have one until I finished all my work. And when I complained, she told me that I would have to work hard and do well so I could get a scholarship to college and get a degree so I could get a good job and start a business, a small boutique that sells rose-scented handkerchiefs and pillowcases like mama used to embroider, and it’ll be called Sylvia’s, after our mother, “and then I’ll come and work for you,” she said. I stopped complaining. I started my math. Zoe makes $156 every two weeks working at a traveling carnival. How much does she make per hour if she works 12 hours a week? Anna plugged the numbers I asked into the calculator so I wouldn’t have to do long division. 

“156 divided by 2”

“78”

“Umm, ok that divided by 12”

“8092”

“Mm . . . ok. Wait, what?” Anna laughed at me, “Anna, you can’t do that! I almost wrote that down!”

“Well I have to make sure you’re paying attention, I can’t just do your homework for you! It’s 6.5” I pretended to be annoyed, but we both knew I thought it was funny. She turned off the calculator and got up. I scribbled down my answer. “Come on, let’s frost these things.”

She had special Halloween frosting with orange, pumpkin shaped sprinkles. I grabbed two butter knives and handed one to Anna. I told her about the tenor in my choir class who got expelled for writing a bomb threat on the bathroom stall, and how one of the bases got suspended but no one knows why yet, and so now there’s only three boys left, two bases and one tenor. When it was time to shake the sprinkles on, we stood on the chairs and held the shakers high, singing “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!” at the top of our lungs, letting most of the confetti gourds spill and bounce all over the floor, making jingle bell sounds, like they did when we were kids. The more they spilled, the harder we shook. And then I shook so hard the shaker flew from my grip, barely catching a cookie on the edge of the table and smearing black onto Anna’s wool sock. I heard the furnace moan from across the house. “Sorry, Anna.”

But she chuckled. “Hey, don’t worry about it, ok?” She gently peeled off her sock and headed toward the laundry room. “Anyone who has never made a mistake,”

“Has never tried anything new!” I finished with her. Daddy’s favorite Einstein quote. She paused to look down at her sock and wrinkle her eyebrows before leaving the room. I stared at the cookies and the sprinkles on the floor. I could hear her footsteps. Then they stopped. I got off my chair. It squeaked. She came back. 

“So is this dinner?” It was nearly six o’clock. Anna looked around at the sprinkles and the dishes before glancing at the boxes on the floor. 

“Yeah,” she exhaled softly. “Yeah, this is dinner.”

Then we talked about flowers and how the apartment would have and indoor pool and then we ate. I had frosting in my fingernails and on both cheeks and in my bangs that needed trimming and it made Anna laugh. “You have some in your teeth! It looks like your front tooth is missing!” She grimaced at me and I laughed harder and so did she until we couldn’t chew and we were pirates, laughing over treasure on some deserted island, only the two of us, gold teeth stained with black frosting.