Small Town Gastronomy Michael Danielle Patton
Fathers eat their children. Mothers do too, but less often. They are more likely to cook you.
They’ll salt, and season, and broil, and bake, but mothers hardly ever eat. They just prepare you—for your father’s stale-tobacco teeth. I knew a family down in Wickiup, Oklahoma—back when I still called that place home. I did not know the children; their feasts happened before my time. But I’ve heard the talk: at Grandma’s Thursday Bunco and on the last Sunday of every month, over Prayer Breakfast. It might be hard for you to imagine—parents feasting on their own flesh and blood—but their stories are as real to me as the gnashing of their father’s teeth. *** Sophie was the oldest. It makes sense that she’d be the first. It happened young, too. She was nine, and she was tall for her age, and she always wore her hair in high ponytails. She loved The Land Before Time and the color yellow. That day, she was wearing her favorite unicorn hoodie and yellow pants. But the kids at recess didn’t notice her unicorn hoodie or the way she wore her hair or the fact that she was tall for her age; they just saw the bright red bloom on her lap. She became overwhelmed and thought of Dorothy, asleep in the field of red and yellow poppies. “But that’s impossible—she’s just nine years old!” her teacher cried, before calling her parents. Her mother was at work still but her father was on his lunch break. On the car ride to the drug store, she felt how disgusted he was with her. She knew this was her fault. He wouldn’t walk down the aisle with her. Sophie was alone, in front of little pink and green and yellow boxes adorned with words she had never heard before: Feminine Hygiene, Ultra-Absorbent, Menstrual Pad. She picked the one that was yellow. Her father sent her to her room to wait for her mother, and when her mother came home, she began to prepare Sophie. They say when she cut her open that a sugar bowl— white, and painted with blue flowers—was where her heart should have been. As Sophie slow-roasted, her mother took the sugar bowl and emptied it and made a sweet barbecue glaze. And when her father bit into her, he cried, “You’re not my little girl anymore.” *** Billie was next, though she prefers Bill. She was fifteen when it happened. Bill wore masculinity as well as she wore her worn-out leather boots. She preferred Levi’s, and always wore two sports bras to hide the swell of her chest. She was bull-headed and stubborn. And on Sundays, Bill would argue with her mother and cry—hateful, ugly tears—when her
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