Today's Reading
ACT I
CHAPTER 1
BRAINS
My favorite part has always been the blood.
I can't look away as it washes down the drain and I'm left only with flesh. If I had cracked the cow's skull myself (what a dream!) and procured the brain fresh, this extensive rinsing wouldn't be necessary. The blood wouldn't have had time to nestle itself deep in the crevices of the folds. But I don't have fresh cow brain money. Hell, I barely have rent money. So instead, I picked up a prepackaged platter of beef brain at Gobernador Supermarket yesterday. I can't confirm it, but I suspect this nervous tissue belonged to the smartest cow on the cattle farm. Those gyri and sulci are very impressive.
It's funny—in that unfunny way we like to say things are funny but nobody laughs—how we try to separate ourselves from our prey. Vegans make this point all the time. Pigs become pork, chickens transform to poultry, cows to beef. It's in our DNA. Take something "disgusting" like raw meat, stuffed with pulpy worms and bacteria, and mutate it into something delectable. Something to be savored. Wanted.
I wonder what we would call humans.
'Anyway.'
Peeling away the membrane is much easier with bare fingers. I tear at the slippery sheath, speckled with beads of red, and try not to lick up the bits that have burrowed themselves under my nails. It's hard. But I can imagine Mummy sighing in my ear, wobbling on the ledge of giving up on me, so I stop myself. She doesn't believe it but I am always trying to be more human. It's not my fault it rarely works.
Morning is my favorite part of the day. Mummy is close enough for me to keep an eye on her. She snores softly in her sleep, temporarily free from the pain that stalks her when she's in the waking world. I am left alone with only my thoughts and a simmering pot of saffron, olive oil, and garlic. And my dreams. Heaven.
I've chopped the brain into quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and tossed them around in a bit of salted, freshly squeezed lemon juice before incorporating the meat into my fragrant pot when the alarm jolts me back to the real world.
'Beeeeep'. 'Beep. Beep. Beep.'
My mother is awake, and I hate that it makes me sad. She shuffles over to the couch in our tiny apartment and slowly sinks into one of its busted cushions.
"Bonjou bebe mwen an."
She tries to keep the discomfort out of her voice but I hear it anyway. "Good morning, Mummy," I say as I walk over and drop a light kiss on the top of her head. Her shoulders tense almost imperceptibly. I wonder if I'm gaslighting myself, if the shift in her posture could be in reaction to a sudden draft in our stuffy home, but I know better. Even after all this time, these seventeen years of my existence, my mother fears me.
I pretend not to notice. She does the same.
"How are you this morning?" I ask politely, adding the smile Mummy has taught me to display when I am making small talk. I'm still working on determining the appropriate width I should spread my lips in each situation. But in general, I know that the happier the news, the wider the lips, and as a result, the higher the cheekbones. I've given up on making the smile "reach my eyes," though. What does that even 'mean'?
She groans.
"The same. Worse." My smile drops.
"I'm very sorry," I say. I mean it too.
'Brielle doesn't display much emotion'.
My first-grade teacher Mrs. Hawkins—and all my teachers since— incorrectly assumed that my muted demeanor means I don't experience emotions. The truth is that I feel what I feel. Happiness when I'm cooking. Sadness when I look at Mummy. Rage about many, many things. But I don't feel obligated to share it all with the world. "E byen." She shrugs. 'That's life, isn't it?'
I go back to finishing up breakfast. In silence. Too much noise exacerbates my mother's pain. Which makes the incessant—
'Beeeeep'. 'Beep. Beep. Beep.'
—all the more frustrating. Mummy has tried it all.
Codeine. Hydrocodone. Morphine.
Oxycodone. Hydromorphone. Fentanyl.
...
