Cooking Chalk and Craving Dish Soap Nayeli Chairez

With a dizzy dance I staggered to the kitchen. Hunger screeched in my belly, my vision focused and unfocused, and my brain felt ready to pop. I rummaged drawers and ransacked the pantry desperately searching for something clean to consume, like dish soap. All I saw was a loaf of bread, peanut butter jars, and goldfish packs. My last meal was the correct serving of oatmeal and berries, topped with pumpkin seeds and coconut flakes. I sprinkled the flakes while I snapped a picture of it. The picture looked magical. The stale oatmeal had been microwaved with water and tasted gray in my mouth. Defeated, I looked above the pantry to see a small painting of the Last Supper, one of many that hung around the kitchen. The Last Supper. I thought about the big feast and the plump apostles nestled in, and the tragedy afterwards when vile forces seeked to purge the good. When did I turn myself so upside down that I began to purge the good? I used to pray before eating. Mami taught me how to thank God for the rice and beans, or the enchiladas and menudo we ate. Some dishes were a mixture so thick I think it would suffocate me if I tried to eat it now. Now, no matter how hard I try I can’t seem to remember how those prayers ended or how exactly they started. The information has been swiped with something else, I reach for a prayer yet pull out a recipe for cooking chalk. At some point between lucidity and remembrance I dropped a pan, or was it a few cups? They hit the floor with loud clangs that further drained me until I could only drop to the warm floor of the kitchen. The loud clattering should have woken someone up, I thought. Maybe they thought I was having a midnight snack. Slippers shuffling in the hallway broke me out of my trance. “Ay, mija. Que paso?” My mother’s worried face plastered like chocolate icing. A braver face quickly replaced it as she guided me to a seat at the table where a bag from the panaderia rested on a bag of ranch doritos like a still-life waiting to be painted. The tabletop and chairs were decorated with turkeys and scarecrows, fake fall foliage was taped around the walls. Earlier was Thanksgiving, I remember. I tell her I don’t know what’s wrong, everything tastes like a picture. Mami patiently spoon feeds me potatoes and green bean casserole giving her thanks in silence.