Taste Memory

The dog days of summer were fading, and with it came her 22nd birthday. Fat, noisy drops of rain punished the single window of her basement apartment. A single rotating fan was too clogged with thick gray dust to be of much use in the damp stifling unit, but she ran it anyway, hoping to trick her mind into thinking she was being cooled. Early in the morning she had risen to complete two errands on the town’s bus system which was free of charge to all students at the local university including her. She returned before 9 a.m. with two grocery bags and another three month dose of birth control injected into her buttocks. On her birthday, she had made sure she would not continue the cycle of dysfunction as she waded through the ocean of her own imperfect coping and healing. From the bags she pulled a package of boneless and skinless chicken breasts, boxes of prepared rice mixes, cans of soup, packs of ramen noodles, and a rare treat. 

Her sweet tooth had never developed properly. She could take sweets or, much more often, leave them. Today, though, was her birthday, and she felt as if the universe had sent her a most personal gift. She took her most pleasing find out of the bag and sat it on the counter, marvelling at her luck. The cake’s red coloring was deceptive. If done right, the cake’s thick white icing and burgundy hue hid a deliciously moist chocolate crumb. 

Now she was alone, no people, no buffer, no refuge from the aching soul.

Damn! 

Hot tears pricked her eyes and clogged her throat. She had promised herself not to cry. Once she got started she could not stop her body insisting on purging itself of all those years of tears it could not cry.

Eight steps across the combined living room/dining room/kitchenette and she returned to her position at the kitchenette counter with a small foldable picture frame. She set it up behind the slice of cake. The two sides were like heaven and hell, one the picture of someone she loved deeply and the other of two people who she would not shed a single tear for on their last day on Earth. She averted her eyes and focused on the heavenly face with a genuine smile on her lips. “I miss you.” She whispered, throat still clogged with tears. 

Then it hit her like a bus narrowly avoiding a mass casualty on a dark and bitterly cold icy Great Plains morning. She let the tears come then as she reached for a bottle next to the stove. Since she lived alone the dark haired young woman simply unscrewed the cap and poured its contents directly into her mouth, her throat initially closing completely then slowly opening to allow the burning spirits to pass. Instantly she felt calmer. 

“I told you I was okay the last time we talked.” She leaned against the counter again. “And now I am okay….just like you wanted. I’m sorry I lied then though. You didn’t need to worry about me. What could you do about anything? What could anyone do back then?” 

She took another swig from the bottle. Her tears were flowing freely now. The piece of cake represented one of her very few happy childhood memories. Of course in her memories the red velvet cake was literally red, like blood, because her mother didn’t much care for the chocolatey taste and left out the cocoa that both flavored the cake and turned it darker burgundy. Most people left the cake in its original red tinged chocolate version though, and she had no doubt she would not taste her fleeting childhood respite from the turmoil in this store made version.

“Want a bite, Grandmama?” She finally forked off a chunk and held it up to the picture. It was an archaic term she knew, but the one she had always used and would go to her grave using. What gave anyone the right to tell her how to address the only person that she had ever loved, and who loved her back, more importantly?

“That’s more than either one of you ever did!” She accused the hellish side of the frame venomously.

Her phone, which she had placed on the counter next to the cake slice, vibrated. Tempted to chuck it across the room but all too aware that doing so would put her well on the path to being as unhinged as her mother was, she picked up the phone and unlocked it like she had some sense and her sanity intact, mostly anyway. Officially her mother had PTSD from her days in the Army, but Grandmama had always said that the Army had nothing to do with her daughter’s problems and if the Army had known what she knew they’d have left the woman then a fresh eyed high school graduate in her hometown. To Grandmama’s credit, the Army thing had lasted less than a decade, but oh what a decade and the repercussions that continued to affect not only daughter but granddaughter also with no end in sight. 

An email, sent to her personal account, a rarity. She knew few people here since her time outside of class was spent in the campus’s medical library or at home hidden away in her dungeon apartment, didn’t talk to people from “before”,  and wondered who could possibly want to talk to her. “Moya doch…” She grumbled without thinking then regained her sense of time and location and added turning back to the loathed side of the picture frame, “Please don’t let it be that man!  I don’t want to talk to you!” 

She wouldn’t call him what he was, her Russian-speaking father, her supposed Papa. He had given her the beautiful gift of bilingualism, however her positive feelings of appreciation and regard ended there.  

“Don’t worry. I don’t want to hear from you either!” She assured the female half of the equation, loathing the large espresso colored hands that clutched a toddler version of her firmly on her lap, fingernails painted a shade somewhere between red, bronze, and orange. There was nothing loving or securing about those hands. How well the young woman knew that!

Her heart settled back into a normal rhythm, her murmur wouldn’t cause her an early death, just as she was on the cusp of fighting through another year of an existence she more often than not did not want. That would be too easy, and nothing in her life had ever been easy. It was just the local Applebees sending her an ecoupon for a free entree to acknowledge her birthday.

Thunder cracked overhead and in the distance she thought she heard the town’s alert sirens warning anyone dumb enough to be outside in the deluge to immediately seek shelter. She erected herself to her full 5’9” height and stretched her stiff limbs responding with a chorus of cracks. How long had she been half leaning, miserating and drowning in sad scenes that couldn’t be changed? 

“I really do miss you and I really am okay now.” She sighed looking into the kind but tired and weary brown eyes nestled deep in a remarkably unwrinkled septuagenarian face. “You waited as long as you could for me to be alright. Now I am.” 

The bite of cake was returned to the plastic container uneaten and the container was resealed to keep out pests. Another swig of liquor made it down her throat before she felt her stomach lurch, a sure sign she was very near to her limit and bordering on drunkenness. As troubled as she was internally, she knew her limits and the ways her body protested when she went beyond them, so the bottle was left on the counter with the cake when she headed to answer what she was sure had been a knock at the door. 

It wasn’t a knock. It was a slam. The turquoise envelope tucked in the door frame had been slid in carefully so as not to bend the contents, then the deliverer had beat a hasty retreat back up the stairs and out the back door of the apartment house slamming the screen door. With little care or concern, she tore open the pretty envelope.

“Damn!” She threw her head backward and slammed it against the wall, using one of the childhood coping mechanisms she was trying to quit. 

A snippet of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” erupted from the childishly decorated birthday card when it was opened. It contained two distinct currencies and two distinct scrawls, two mismatched halves trying to make one profoundly screwed up whole out of broken pieces of a life. 

Happy birthday, baby girl!

My lubyim tebya , Papa i Mama!

Forcing herself to breathe, she stooped and gathered the colored rouble bank notes along with the drab green but crisp Ben Franklins. She didn’t ask herself how either of her parents got her address and why they suddenly felt so generous. Those were questions she didn’t really want answers to and what did it matter anyway at this point? She was tired, tired of struggling and questioning everything and everyone, their motives and how she was going to get hurt this time.

Maybe there wasn’t a why, and for the first time in her 22 years of life that was okay. 

Laying the money on the kitchenette counter without bothering to count it, she retrieved the uneaten bite of cake with the same bare fingers and deposited it in her bone dry mouth forcing herself to chew and swallow.  The chocolate taste was intense and bitter. She rewarded herself with another swig from the bottle.

“I’m here, Grandmama. I made it. Nobody is ever going to hurt me again.” She whispered, testing the words.

Then, for the first time, in memory she shouted intentionally.

“I made it! I’m free!”