Julia's Chocolates. Cathy Lamb

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СКАЧАТЬ bread. Bread that can almost bring you to orgasm, it’s so good. I told her to call it Orgasmic Bread, but she didn’t think that would work. She does the readings on the side. I have never met anyone as frugal as Caroline. Oh, she’s generous with a capital G, but if you gave her a piece of sackcloth, she would whip out her sewing machine and make the most beautiful curtains out of it you’ve ever seen.”

      I started to chuckle, and Aunt Lydia narrowed her eyes, but I could see a smile tugging at those full lips of hers. Sixty-three years old and her mouth was one that many a starlet had paid thousands and thousands of dollars to achieve.

      “You don’t believe she’s a real psychic, do you?” Aunt Lydia put her hands on her hips, as if ready to draw her guns.

      I didn’t roll my eyes and prided myself on that. I was back to staring at the reds swirling hotly in the pan.

      “I’m telling you, Julia, that woman has been right on the button so many times—for all of us. And she doesn’t charge for her services on Psychic Night. We try to pay her, but she won’t take a dime, so all of us, just to keep her going, drop off eggs and cookies and dinners.” Lydia shook her head back and forth like a bowling ball gone crazy. “She’s a proud one, though. Proud as a stallion who can flip all the cowboys off his back.

      “And it’s her upside-down pineapple pound cake and her carrot bread with cream cheese frosting that brings in the most money every year at the church’s auction. Every year. Sweetest woman you ever did want to meet, that’s dear Caroline. Doesn’t open up and tell us much about herself, but she is as straight and honest as my cornstalks.”

      “I’ll look forward to meeting her.” Unexpectedly, my eyes filled with tears. “Thanks for letting me come, Aunt Lydia.”

      “You’re welcome. You’ll love Psychic Night.” She had misinterpreted what I said. She walked over and gave me a big hug, smelling like vanilla and lavender and chocolate, and I buried my face in her shoulder. “Don’t cry, love! You’ve escaped a life’s prison sentence with King Prick. Prison! You might as well have worn a shirt that said ‘Inmate’ on the back. ‘Inmate of King Prick’! Aren’t you happy you’re not an inmate?”

      “I am,” I cried. “I am.” I ached. My face hurt. I’m fat. No one would marry me. Robert had wanted to, but as I couldn’t see letting my face become his punching bag for forty years, I’d bolted. Finally. And I didn’t regret it, did I? I wanted a husband, but not that much. Right?

      I pulled away from Lydia, sniffling. She went back to her brownies, extolling the virtues of feminine freedom from men, how they and they alone were responsible for the turmoil of our hormones. Then she made up a song about men with little penises.

      My stomach gnawed again at my insides as if anxiety were eating it alive, and my heart suddenly started to palpitate, seemingly bent on cruising me right into a coronary.

      I coughed, coughed again, knowing what was coming. The Dread Disease was back. I instantly felt as if I couldn’t drag enough air into my deflated lungs. My hands froze into little clenched blocks of ice while at the same time my body trembled as if a giant hand were shaking it.

      I closed my eyes in defeat, knowing I could easier stop a speeding train with my ample buttocks than stop this. Death was after my sorry hide, I knew it. I had some horrible, currently unnamed disease that would torture me for months, probably devour my insides until they collapsed into their own wormholes, and then I’d die. That was why my heart often raced as if I’d been running a marathon and why I would feel cold, then burning hot, and my hands shook like leaves on speed and I couldn’t breathe.

      I listened to Aunt Lydia’s penis song half-heartedly, trying to hide the fact that, at least to me, the air had been siphoned from the room, every last molecule of it. I rode the “wave of fear,” as I’d dubbed it, the best I could. The air was already gone, and then a familiar feeling of overwhelming panic flooded my body. This happened because my body knew it was dying, I surmised.

      I clenched my teeth together and tried to breathe through my nose as dizziness struck. I was going crazy. Losing my mind. Hello, sanitarium!

      And then, after what seemed like hours, my heartbeat started to slow, the air whooshed back into the room, and my body stopped trembling. It was replaced by a familiar bone-racking exhaustion, but it was better than suffocating—much better.

      I have so come to appreciate air these last months. Air, glorious air.

      I pushed my frizzy curls off my damp forehead with a shaky hand, desperate to get my mind away from my imminent death and on to another subject. I inhaled, ragged and low. “What are we doing at Breast Power Psychic Night, then?” I choked out, amazed that Aunt Lydia hadn’t noticed that I was temporarily dying, though I prided myself on my ability to hide this peculiar aspect of my life from others.

      “Why, we’re going to be talking about our breasts. What else did you think we were going to do?” She blinked at me, her huge eyes round and curious as she used both hands to crack six eggs at once with great force against the rim of a pan. “Breasts have a lot to say, Julia! You simply have to listen to them.”

      I looked at my breasts, still heaving. They had nothing to say, I surmised. They were simply happy they weren’t attached to a corpse.

      Breast Power Psychic Night had begun in Aunt Lydia’s living room. The lights were turned down low, windows opened to let in the freshness of a spring evening in the mountains. The furniture might be old, but it was plush and worn and plentiful. A red couch and two purple loveseats were covered with pillows Aunt Lydia had embroidered and two quilts she had sewn. Stacks of books competed for space with herbs growing in huge trays, a forest of plants, and an abundance of vanilla-scented candles.

      A huge wreath decorated with dried roses, purple and sage-colored ribbons, raffia, pinecones, and tiny birdhouses hung on the fireplace hearth. As much as my Aunt Lydia likes her guns and her chickens, she loves a good craft project. Martha Stewart would love her.

      “We’re here to find the power within our breasts,” Aunt Lydia semi-shouted, cupping her boobs, her tie-dyed T-shirt bunching up under her hands. “Men have objectified us long enough, judged us by the size of our breasts. Our worth summed up with a look at our top half.”

      The darkened room flickered with candlelight, alighting on each of the women’s faces as Lydia led the group. I laced my fingers together, almost surprised I wasn’t having another coronary.

      Here I was, sitting on an overstuffed pillow, in the dark, on the floor, about to flip off my shirt in front of three women I didn’t know, and I felt perfectly calm. As if I disrobed and swung my boobs around and about all the time in front of people.

      “It’s so nice to meet you,” Katie Margold said quietly over the candlelight when Aunt Lydia made a quick trip to the bathroom to expel “the earth’s yellow poisons” from her bladder.

      Katie’s brown eyes were soft, like chocolate, but they looked tired, defeated. They skirted about as if she were waiting for me to quickly move on and talk to someone else more interesting. But then she examined my cheek and my eye, both still a lovely shade of purple with puke-green thrown in. Her lips pursed, though not in judgment.

      “It’s nice to meet you, too,” I said. “I love your hair. It’s so bouncy. It reminds me of mermaid hair.”

      Oh, I am strange, I thought instantly, my shoulders slumping. I was searching for something to say, and there it was.

      Tall, СКАЧАТЬ