Darling Pink

by JACQUELINE COPE

Uncle Jimmy promised to hide the colorful, plastic Easter eggs that he’d stuffed with dollar bills and candy kisses after dinner, but now before I’ve eaten half my lamb chop, he and Mom start yelling. Grandma tries to interrupt, tells Mom not to get in the middle, but there’s no stopping them. Then Dad picks up his wine glass and flings all that red in Uncle Jimmy’s face and calls him a goddamn thief. Like this: “You dumbass. You goddam thief—” Splash. The liquid sprays Uncle Jimmy’s puffy cheeks, his lips, and the silver hairs in his beard. Wine dots speckle the soft, folded petals of the Easter lilies I carried in from the car, which Grandma took in their foiled pot and put on her cabinet. Now Grandma yells over and over, “What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with you?” It’s as if she’s asking this of each one of us at her dining room table. Why did Uncle Jimmy thief the money from her bank account? Why is my dad always going crazy? Why can’t my mom mind her own business for once? It’s like they’re all play-acting, even Aunt Eleanor, who tells everyone to shush, then runs to the kitchen for a dish rag to cover the bleeding stains on the pressed white tablecloth.

I’m holding onto hope that Uncle Jimmy will laugh and the afternoon can go on like we planned, but when he comes back to the table, he’s not laughing. His eyes are hard like slate stones. He looks like he wants to kill something…but, no, that’s just how he is.

Mom’s told me a story before, about how when they were kids my age, Uncle Jimmy chased her around the kitchen with a butcher knife. Grandma says Mom exaggerates. But that story sounds so exciting. Sometimes in the bathroom at home I play a game called “Knife.” I stand in front of the mirror holding my hairbrush by the bristles and angle the pink, plastic handle at my throat, aiming for that soft dip between the ridges that pull tight when I tilt my head back. You can feel your heartbeat there. I whisper, “Don’t tempt me. I can, you know.”

I touch my finger to that smooth cleft in my throat now.

I remember the little Easter basket Uncle Jimmy gave me this morning when we got to Grandma’s house. I nudge my mom’s leg to let her know I’m getting up, but she’s just crying and flicks her hand at the wrist, says, “Fine, fine.” The small basket is on the coffee table in the living room. It’s a green plastic crate, the kind that holds fresh ripe strawberries from the grocery store. Shredded, plastic grass covers the bottom. The chocolate eggs inside are wrapped in colored foil— pastel purples, yellows, and pinks. The pressure in my ears from the commotion in the dining room eases. After a while the eggs look like dear, little hatchlings. What’s the matter with you, Purple? What’s the matter with you, Yellow? I pick up Darling Pink from her crinkly nest, peel back her shiny, delicate swaddling, and gnash her between my teeth.

–

Jacqueline Cope is a physician and writer. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her fiction has been published in Eclectica Magazine, Five on the Fifth, and Across the Margin. She lives in Los Angeles, California with her family.

© Jacqueline Cope