Fiction Fix Seventeen

I’m on a diet, Barbara keeps telling me, which means
no fatty foods like hot dogs and chocolate and Snickers
and way too much ketchup on my mashed potatoes.
Some foods are okay sometimes, like bread, which can
be a fruit or a vegetable—no one really knows for sure. Diets
also mean you have to play outside for thirty minutes every
single day, and it’s okay in this neighborhood because it has
big, green yards and not too many cars or rapists.
But today is Sunday, which means Special Breakfast, and I
am allowed to have one piece of bacon. When I lived with my
vagina-mamma, I liked it really drippy and soggy, but Barbara
cooks it crispy because of bacteria. So I like it her way now.
Barbara is the kind of lady who sits up really straight all
the time and carries around a big purse with tiny Kleenex
packets inside. She has hair so short in the back it’s like you’re
petting a puppy. And Travis’s hair is just as short, but I have
not petted it. He’s not that kind of dad.
One food I’m still not allowed to eat on Sunday is communion
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