Anastasia Jill

Grits

Markie flew home after her father’s passing. Her brother informed her over the phone that he had a heart attack. She didn’t want to believe it, despite her father’s lifelong diet of fatty foods and arguing with his wife.

“Are you sure he’s dead?” Markie asked. “Sometimes people come back to life.” 

            “Jesus, Markie,” Monty said. “Come home. You’re not doing anything else.”

            It was true, for the most part. She spent school breaks at her dorm at Sarah Lawrence, eating crayfish-flavored chips and drinking flat Budweiser from the bottle. It was spring break now; the weather was perfectly chilly in Bronxville. Not so much in Florida.

            “It gets so hot this time of year,” she said. “I don’t want to be in the heat.”

Her brother cut her off. “Come home or don’t. Dad will still be dead either way.”

            Despite his attitude on the phone, Monty was at the airport when she got in. He didn't wave her down or say hello. She tried to hug him, but he went cadaver stiff.

“I missed you,” she said.

He hoisted her suitcase over his shoulder. “Don’t lie.”

            Their drive home didn’t go much better than her arrival, her brother playing an ancient Doors cassette as loud as the car could manage.

“How are you all doing?” Markie asked.

Monty shrugged. “Pam’s not taking it well.”

“Who cares about Pam? I asked about you.”

“Cut her some slack for once. Her husband did just die.”

“He was our father long before he was her husband.”

The inside of the car took the tone of dry ice. Markie reminded herself that this was the norm—at least, it was for this family. After their mother passed, Markie and her brother were left in the care of their father, who had only just married a woman twenty years his junior.

Pam caused one cataclysmic incident after the other.

            Her father wasn’t innocent, but Pam was rarely tame, throwing vases and sharp knives, anything within reach. Once, she even ripped the door off its hinges. Markie’s earliest memories involved being yelled at by Pam, having gifts from her father—dolls, picture books, pretty dresses—ripped away by the coltish wife. It was much the same for her brother. Their father always knew, but he was powerless to stop Pam’s reign of terror. The house, the whole family, bowed to her flip-flopping temper.

            Just before she left for college, Markie urged her father to get a divorce. “She’s obsessed with you, Pam is.”

            Her father took a drag of his King Edward cigar. “This is how everyone’s family is.”  

            Markie knew that wasn’t true. Even now, her father’s words carried little weight as the wisdom of the dead. Her brother, however, was sensitive.

She backed into the topic of her stepmother the most evasive way she knew how—with aversion and spite. “How is Mrs. Lovett doing these days? Has she made a meat pie out of his remains yet?”

            Monty inhaled deep through his nose. “About as well as one could expect. She’s barely slept, hasn’t bathed. She spent forever fussing over his suit and tie because it was after Labor Day and he only had a white jacket.”

            Markie scoffed. “That’s such a woman thing to care about.”

            “She is a woman.”

            “Dad wouldn’t have cared. He’s dead. It’s not like he’s going to spring out of the coffin and criticize the undertaker’s fashion choices.”

            Her brother tightened his lips and didn’t say another word until they pulled up to the house. Monty pushed back his long hair and muttered, “Pam had him cremated.”

            “What?” Her tone was forceful, stretching the ‘t’ over her teeth. “Why was he cremated? I thought he bought a plot in Greenwood to be with his parents.”

Monty said, “Pam wanted him close, I guess.”

“The cemetery’s just down the street.”

The slam of the door punctuated his non-answer. Markie waited, a dog trapped in the car until she could bring herself to go in the house.

It had been a couple years since she’d set foot in the place, with its beige walls and outdated floral couch. Every room—even the kitchen—smelled like the Cashmere Bouquet soap squares her stepmother stored in every closet. The decorations and nice smells were masks, a dehydrated wanderer tucking himself in a camel’s hump. The shiny flesh looked nice for guests, but everything underneath was pretty much dead, giving birth to dead people for her stepmother to devour like Sunday supper. 

Markie found Pam in the kitchen hunched over a ceramic bowl. The smell of sausage and tomato mixed with the lingering scent of soap.

“Hello,” Pam said, covering her mouth with the back of her palm. Her tongue mashed against her cheek like she was chewing gum. “Markie, hello. It’s nice to see you.” Each word was cut and calculated like the red meat on the counter. “Do me a favor. There’s some sourdough bread I left in my trunk. Do you mind going and getting it?”

“I do, actually. I’m tired. Get it yourself.”

“I wasn’t asking,” Pam said.

“Question marks can be deceiving.”

Pam came up behind and elbowed her in the back.

“Fine,” Markie said, leaving before Pam could give a fake ‘thank you.’

The burnt green Volvo her father and stepmother shared was still parked in the garage. Room was scarce, and Markie shoved aside boxes and bags to make it through. The trunk was equally cluttered with her father’s work boots, his old lunchbox, a hat from his trip to San Francisco long ago. Even strands of his hair were peppered around the trunk’s lining. Pam wouldn’t clean these few reminders of her husband. Markie gagged as she grabbed the bag full of bread.

Back inside, Monty stood over the stovetop, watching the water boil before adding salt. Pam was bent over the sink, washing her hands.

Markie took the red stool opposite them and said, “So, you had him cremated?”

Stiffness pooled from Pam’s spine to her sudsy fingers. “Yes, it was easiest. It wouldn’t feel right, putting such a great man into the ground to be eaten by maggots.”

Markie folded her own fingers, church and steeple. “That’s morbid.”

Pam rose from the sink, running her hands down her pants. “I don’t care what you think. He was my husband. I did what I felt to be best.” Her voice cracked at the mention of ‘husband,’ and she brushed her tears away with blackened fingertips, probably from ink or food coloring.

Markie couldn't watch her brother comfort the grieving widow. She shifted her eyes to stare at a portrait of her and her brother in the living room. A darkness veiled the image, but she knew it well—her and Monty, ages six and nine, respectively. In matching curls, him in a suit, her in a dress. They stood in black and white, their eyes and smiles grainy and distorted behind glass. They weren’t happy in that picture, but Pam made them take it at the local JC Penny. There was a matching portrait set of Pam and their father, hung in their bedroom.

“Are we going to bury the ashes?” Markie asked.

Pam said, “Of course not.”

“What about the funeral?”

Pam said, “There won’t be one.”

“Why not?”

Neither her brother nor stepmother had an answer for that. This wasn’t right, she reasoned. This certainly was not normal.  Pressure built up in her head, a bee trying to burst from its hive.

“Where are the ashes?” she asked.

Pam paused, then said, “In the bag in our bedroom.”

Markie wanted to look at it. She rose and started towards the room. Pam followed her to the end of the hall.

“What is it?” Markie asked.

The woman started to cry before saying, “Your father wanted to spend more time with you. Be close like you used to be. When you were younger, remember that?”

Markie rolled her eyes. “My leaving had nothing to do with him. He knew how I felt about this place.” She cast a glance back. “About you.”

“Whatever I did when you were a kid isn’t relevant. I wasn’t that much grown up myself.” Pam took a protective step towards the bedroom. “He thought you didn’t love him anymore.”

Before shutting the door in her stepmother’s face, Markie said, “If he was hurt, the only person you have to blame is yourself.”

The first thing she noticed was the portrait of her father, his prominent nose and dark skin a contrast to Pam’s stubborn Irish roots. Her father, the once-proud Pequot man, now sat within a giant brass box inside a pine-colored tote bag. The box was engraved with the words ‘On July 28, 2002, Carter Lesley Sassacus was raised on eagles’ wings, borne on the breath of dawn, made to shine like the sun, and held in the palm of His hand.’ An American flag was folded into a triangle, stuffed into an adjacent plastic bag.

Markie lifted the box. It was lighter than she imagined, like it had been dumped, but when opened, she saw the plastic bag bearing the dark untouched. The remains of her father were all consuming. She felt like a scared young girl, looking at her father in such a way.

She closed the top and returned it to the bag just as her brother entered without knocking. He didn’t ask what was wrong, or even fully come in the room. “Dinner’s almost ready,” he said. “Get out here and help set the table.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” she muttered, but he heard her anyway.

“I’m the man of the house now, if you want to be technical,” he said, not condescending, but wounded. Like a raccoon stuck in a trap, his words came out tangled. “Come on, let’s go eat and try to act like a normal family.”

“We aren’t normal. I don’t care what Dad said. None of this is normal.”

“It’ll be a lot worse if we don’t hurry and get out there.”

As she stood, the perspective on the ash box shifted; Markie was bigger, and her father became the smaller. “Pam is such a bitch. I can’t believe we’re not going to have a funeral,” she said. “This isn’t right.”

“None of it is.”

 “I don’t care what Pam says. He would never have wanted to be cremated.”

“Dad is gone, okay?” Monty exploded. “It’s just the three of us. I know you don’t like Pam, but she’s acting weird, even for her. The least we can do is have a nice dinner, for once.”

She waited a few moments before following him into the kitchen. Pam was tense again, snapping at Monty for leaving a hot burner.

“Sorry,” he said.

She jabbed her knife close to his back, the sharp edge slicing through his shirt. “Just get the damn thing on there, all right? I’m tired and I don’t feel good.”

He didn’t unclench until the knife was on the counter. Markie offered to help, but Monty said, “It’s all right, I got it.”

She expected her brother to put spaghetti into the pot, but instead, he produced a box of cornmeal. He tossed in salt, cheese, and butter, then slid some biscuits into the oven.

“Grits for dinner?” she said.

“Your father’s favorite lately.” Pam’s eyes narrowed. “Got a problem with that?”

Markie shook her head no, setting the table in silence. Forks on the left, knives on the right. Paper napkins folded under the plate, coasters for their water and diet soda. Soon after, the food was flung onto serving platters.

“All right,” Pam said. “Come and get the food while it’s hot.”

The tomato sauce was a rich bloodline into the thick, mealy paste of the grits. The tomatoes gave flavor to the earthy, almost moldy food.

Markie tried to serve Pam, who slapped her stepdaughter’s hand hard. “I’ll get my own.”

“Whatever you want,” Markie said.

Pam disappeared for a moment while Markie served for her and her brother. Neither of them liked grits, so the pair sat and picked at the biscuits, soggy and red. Pam joined them, her helping of grits sitting under a mealy, gray shadow.

“Well,” Pam said, eating too jovially for a widow, “dig in, Monty.”

“I’m not hungry.”

She slammed a fist on the table. “I said eat!” She unhinged her own jaw like a gator. “Your father would have loved this,” she said, filling her mouth with food, with sauce. “His plate piled high with grits, his biscuits dripping with gravy. Said it was a staple, soul food. No wonder the man had a heart attack.” Her manic words stopped when she bit down and her food made a crunch. She pulled it from her mouth, a fracture of skull shiny with spit.

Pam stared at the chip, the stepchildren gaping in shock. Markie took note of the food’s color, the tinted ends of Pam’s fingertips, darker than before.

Pam ducked her head, slipping the shard under her tongue and crying again.

Markie pushed back her chair, the contents of her stomach falling from her mouth onto the floor. “Oh my God. Oh my God!” She faced her stepmother, still gagging at the sight. “My God, Pam, what is the matter with you?”

Pam stood up, her husband’s remains on her teeth, yelling as if she were in the right. “Marceline Daphne Sassacus, don’t speak to me like that!”

Markie said, “Are you kidding? You’re eating my father’s ashes! What is the matter with you?”

Pam let tears fall. Monty sat with his head down.

Markie addressed him. “You still think this is normal?”

When he didn’t reply, she knocked over her glass, threw her plate, tried and failed to flip the table. “I can’t do this,” she said, jumping up from her seat, slipping and sliding across the linoleum that was now damp with her phlegm. She didn’t stop until she was outside, on the ground.

She heaved into the grass some more until it bore her vomit pelt, the earthy greenness hiding under regurgitated mush. Markie stayed on all fours on the front lawn, panting into the ground, trying to rid herself of the dinner, the sight of wife consuming husband.

When her stomach was empty, Markie stood upright and faced the door. The portrait was visible from the outside, the sunlight drawing her focus to the left corner of the photo. The shadow of her father sat there, an inside-out soul directing his children refracted through cheap camera lenses. It was an accident, her father being in the picture. It was a freak accident, him dying the way he did. It could even be an accident, him leaving the rez when he did, coming to Florida. But it was not an accident he stayed with Pam—the woman was obsessive, deranged.

Even in death, he couldn't have left if he tried.

Markie went back inside. The family was nowhere to be found until she heard the wallowing sobs coming from the bedroom. Her stepmother was on the ground, Monty trying to console her.

The box of ashes sat like grits, spilled before Pam’s head, bent at the spine.

She wasn’t crying, Markie realized. She was licking the ashes off the ground.

Markie joined her brother on the floor, a hand looping behind Pam’s bony back. Pam sobbed and she licked the carpet. The siblings did nothing to stop her.

“I need him,” Pam howled. “I’m going to die without him.”

“That’s not true,” Monty said. Then it was his turn to cry.

Markie was composed, but she bent her body to embrace her stepmother. The woman clutched the children, all her husband left behind. Markie was stuck, a fragment of sand cemented by butter to the abnormal family unit.

She wanted to move but could not. Her stepmother was not letting go.

Anastasia Jill (she/they) is a queer writer living in Central Florida. She has been nominated for Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize, and several other honors. Her work has been featured or is upcoming with Poets.org, Sundog Lit, Pithead Chapel, Contemporary Verse 2, OxMag, Broken Pencil, and more.