Mom used to make me pick weevils out of the flour, except she didn't call them weevils, she called them worms. I stole pears from the tree behind school, too. Orcas pears, blushing and unwanted in early September—like me teetering into ninth grade. Sometimes the pears had worms. I'd help Mom scoop them out and core the fruit and bake it into crumble. Now, she never asked me to do this, but once I also drank the milk out of my grandmother's saucer. When I'd visit, she would pour us tea with shaking fingers, add milk, and then into hers sprinkle sugar that twinkled, unlike her eyes. Her cat Bernice took pills for the holes worms had drilled in her heart, which I found strange because Bernice was always ribboning through my ankles while it was my grandmother who never hugged or kissed me. But one time Gran fell asleep in her chair, and I crept over and pecked her cheek, and she smiled. She smelled like yeast and silver chains as blue as her curls. She was still asleep, so I lifted her cup off the saucer and the saucer off the table and lapped like a cat. (Disinterested, Bernice herself remained on the sofa.) The milk was tea-toned and gritty-sweet. I was wearing my best shirt, which was eventually too short and would look like it had been nibbled by worms. (Didn't everything? I checked myself and others for wormholes, and everyone, even Gran, resisted them, so I suspected mine, at least, hid inside like Bernice's.) Tea dripped onto my collar, staining it, and when she woke up, Gran told me to bleach it and my upper lip, too.

She wouldn't let me eat potato chips—that's what I remember most about her. She hated their crunch, though worm-free pears were just fine and she liked the soft give of my crumble. No, potato chips I had to eat at the bus stop across the street waiting for my mom while Gran and Bernice glared through the curtains to make sure I wasn't abducted by strangers. I have no proof, but I think she was jealous of me. I had all my teeth while Gran's were bars of soap sudsing the corners of her mouth and disappearing a little more each time I saw her. Disappearing like my face and my mother's name, disappearing like worms into the ground.


.

Kathyrn McMahon divides her time between Puget Sound and southwest England. She has work in or coming from Hobart, Cheap Pop, Pidgeonholes, Passages North and others.

Detail of photo on main page courtesy of Alessandra.

W i g l e a f               05-08-19                                [home]