Fiction Fix Seventeen

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Fiction Fix
come in with her long, black braid and her
giant pillow bangs that poof over her entire
forehead. Mrs. Lorraine is in charge of the
kitchen on big meal days, but usually she sings
up in the choir next to Miss Esther. She and
Esther are mother and daughter, I’m pretty
sure. And by that I mean Esther is her vagina-baby.
Anyway, she starts dumping all
the communion bread out of the big round
golden plates into one big plastic bowl. She
eats a couple of them. I try to eat one of the
hairy ones from my pocket, but I don’t have
enough room to move my hands.
Usually Mrs. Lorraine talks in a big, loud,
time-for-dinner voice, but this time she whispers.
She says, Not here. And I wonder who
she’s talking to, but then I see him—Travis.
He walks up behind her and pinches her
butt through her yellow dress. And then he
moves his hands to her shoulders, and he
rubs them like Barbara rubs his shoulders
after he does the dishes. And Mrs. Lorraine
says, Ohhhh, ooooh. And I feel the sharp
lines of the oven rack slicing into my knees
and legs and hands like angry coat hangers.
And something scary in my stomach, not
hungry anymore, but something slippery like
very old lettuce from a hamburger someone
left on the bus.
And then Travis turns Mrs. Lorraine
around, and it’s hard to see because of the
brown, splotchy window. But I do see their
faces move together, and I hear a kiss noise
and a giggle.
I start to get nervous because ovens only
have so much air in them for breathing. And
then Mrs. Lorraine says, I’d better start cooking.
It’s almost time for the big feast.
And Travis says, No way. I want you to
stay here, so I can mwah mwah mwah you
some more.
No, she says, I need to preheat the oven to
one million degrees.
And to my window grease stain I say, No
no no no!
And I feel very afraid, and is the oven
getting hotter and hotter? Sometimes metal
things are so hot they feel cold, like the robot
jungle gym you climb in at the park near
Barbara and Travis’s house. What if this
whole time I thought the rack was cold when
really it is melting and burning my hands