The Girl
I can't eat this. What do I do, I can’t eat this.
After these meals I can't ever get the smell out of my clothes, and it drives me crazy. The steam collects on my hair, too, from this mackerel fish. They eat it wrapped in lettuce leaves with a dab of hot pepper paste and the lettuce crunches in their teeth, but the slivers of green get caught in mine and I can’t eat this. They used to tell me that I could eat the bones of mackerel because mackerel bones are soft. They told me it would make my brain stronger. Right now I'm burying mackerel in my rice bowl. I don't feel stronger.
I wish he wouldn’t slurp his soup. God, I hate that sound. Tapping my chopsticks. They're pretty red wood with mother-of-pearl inlays, not silver. The silver ones are his. My chopsticks click like naked branches on glass, and I look outside through the fogged windows. It's gray. If I hold my breath it numbs the sound of the slurping, his teeth gnashing broth. My bowl has loose grains of sticky rice stuck on the upturned lip. If I keep sticking them up there like the trophies in the living room they won't notice I haven’t eaten.
A few more grains.
I want to leave now. They're not looking at me. I want to leave now.
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