I’m a Rotten Peach, Mom

By Cara Roets

I’m washing my plate in the sink when I hear Dad come up behind me and I can feel it too; he’s too tall and too warm and too everything. When he grabs my shoulder too tight like he does sometimes I imagine grabbing a wooden handle sticking out of the knife-box next to the sink and thrusting the sharp end into Dad’s stomach to stop his fist, because my left eye is already a gross, swollen, red and yellow blob like an overripe peach, and I swear if he hits it again it’ll finally just smush and the juice will seep into my head and I’ll be half blind. I can’t go half blind; I wouldn’t be able to play baseball anymore.

I imagine looking down as I pull the blade back out, and I can picture it drawing a river of red to drip heavy splatters onto the nice stone tile by the dishwasher. I figure there’d also be a little bit on the front of my green polo shirt. I guess I’d just have to wear a jacket.

The one I’d grab is the bread knife––the one for tough loaves of sourdough. The ridges on the sharp side of the blade would slip out of him one by one, bouncing over the edge of the ripped skin and the sticky fabric of his Sunday church-shirt and annoying apple-red jacket, like it’s ice-skating bumpy and smooth right out of him. I think about what a nice change it would be if his blood was on the floor instead of mine; that Dad’s body could be on the floor instead of mine.

Mom would still be at the stove with her back turned. She wouldn’t even see. I imagine her making eggs again and I hate eggs and she knows that I hate eggs just like she knows that I hate going to church but she makes me go anyway, just like she keeps making eggs.

I think I’d burn my right palm on the stovetop tripping over my dad’s arm on the ground. My fingers would feel boiled and I can already see the skin cracking and peeling but I wouldn’t move, because I want more than anything to grow my skin thicker. I want to shed it like a snake and start over again, even though actually physically burning my skin off definitely isn’t how that metaphor is supposed to work.

“Mom,” I would say, leaning over her shoulder because she’s shorter than me and even more shorter than Dad than I am. “You’re not supposed to put ketchup on eggs.” I’d be mumbling again and I know she hates it when I mumble, but that doesn’t matter because she pours red onto the eggs that are still popping and fizzing in the skillet, so she wouldn’t be able to crack my ribs for mumbling anymore. “It’s gross,” I would say as an afterthought.

I’d end up grabbing the back of Mom’s skull and pushing her face down onto the stovetop in front of her, right between the skillet and my hand, until she turns red just like the eggs.

I kind of regret thinking the thing about ketchup and eggs, but I mean, I also regret telling my dad about the boy in my second grade class who I thought I was in love with, because that was the first time he hit me hard enough to leave a mark. The thing with killing people, I realize, is that you must not really know you killed them until after they’re dead. I imagine the moment I step out of the door after everything would be the moment I’d realize I had killed somebody, but then again I don’t notice that I’m on the ground with my face in the snow after running outside and away from Dad until a few moments after the initial impact, so maybe I’m just a little slow.

Cara Roets is a writer of many genres and a photographer of many lenses. She loves to experiment, and takes every opportunity to discover and animate unique subject matter.