James Hannaham - Delicious Foods

The father ashed in the tray, said, Don’t give me that first-time bullshit. You done some damn unholy shit already. You think I don’t know? You think I’m stupid something?

The kid turnt his shoulders and leant into the father space, tryna keep his words private. Ugh, he growled. She’s really out of it. What was that crazy stuff she said about the Holocaust?

Darlene shoved the Jackson twins deep in her bag to hide them shits from robbers, under a change purse she found on a barroom floor, a scratched pair of sunglasses, and a bunch of open lipsticks — she ain’t know, but one of em had got extended and be smearing her possessions with all kind of red smudges. I knew ’cause my ass was in the damn purse, a couple tiny rocks in a glass vial that she thought she had lost.

Two months ago, on Easter Sunday, some guy who called hisself a coon-ass car salesman paid her to watch him fuck a watermelon. No lie. Set that melon on his card table, knifed hisself a round hole in it, and made her egg him on while he sliding his dick in and out that little globe.

He says to her, It turn me on to got somebody watching. I like the shame.

She couldn’t think what to say. Screw that round thing! Mmh! Juice it, boy!

The fruit start weeping pink water out the hole. His hairy butt went umph and he came inside that melon.

When he pulled out, he grinned and said, Hope it don’t get knocked up, ’cause I don’t want no green chirren!

Even remembering that shit, we couldn’t stop laughing. Don’t want no green chirren! Like they gon be little watermelons with legs. I tell you, though, Mr. Melonfucker had him some green money. Darlene spent most of it on me in a day.

Somebody as inside herself as Darlene right then, without no natural talent for hooking, could watch some melonfuckers on the regular, though. Not bad, not like some of them other johns. Melons had it all over cigarette burns, getting stabbed, leather belts across the back, and a curtain rod up the ass, all of which she had either had or come close to having. For a while, Darlene had this gentle, fresh attitude that made motherfuckers want to kick her in the tits, like a girl in one them Z movies.

Out in the street, she always thinking ’bout Somebody Might Kill Me. She got so obsessed with dying that she ain’t take no kinda precautions ’gainst it. To Darlene, copping ain’t never meant risking her life—’cause not copping felt like dying anyhow, and she ain’t lost that game yet. And if she did lose — well, hell, she wouldn’t know. Her idea of heaven was that the two of us could kick it together 27-9, like we would say — that’s twenty-seven hours a day, nine days a week — without nobody judging our relationship. Without none of the issues you get from having a body. Y’all think a body be who you is, but it ain’t nothing but a motherfucking sack of meat.

Darlene start inching away, thinking ’bout making a run for it — to where, she ain’t had no idea — and the father shout at her to stay put, but she ain’t heard him right.

Another thought that we had sewed together in her mind right then like a thrift-store quilt spilled out her mouth without her realizing. Who does a watermelon…laugh at…when you kill it?

Dad, I can’t do this. I can’t do this!

Then get my motherfucking money back.

What? You’re kidding. Dad?

A ambulance screamed by, honking a high note, then a low note, and that took they attention. They waited like criminals for the sound to die down, for normal cars to whiz over the asphalt again, so they could get calm enough to ignore the background noise, and Darlene took a couple tiny steps away from them two before some regular noises crept back in. The kid moved his eyes to his father head, then to Darlene face, and swiveled again.

First he asked politely. He go, Ma’am? and opened the car door.

The word ma’am itself made her back up faster, like a curse reminding her who she shoulda been, so she turnt and start to book behind the dusty front entrance to the BBQ, thinking the Jackson twins was hers now and she ain’t had to do nothing to the kid. A plastic cowboy on a red bucking bronco be dangling off the roof. Broken furniture sitting behind that greasy windowpane, and a For Lease sign be hanging by one corner inside the damn window.

The father shoved the son ’gainst the door and went, Sammatawitchu, nigger! Git that money back!

Ow, my elbow!

Darlene ran, but it was a fence back there and she couldn’t jump that shit. The fence too high and she too high and a razor wire be swizzling round the top of the fence. She heard the car door slam and feet slap the asphalt behind her and the next thing she know, the sonofabitch had her wrists behind her back. He got some kinda sharp, athletic thing zapping through his fingers like a depth charge. Youth buzzing in his veins, all gruff and rowdy and shit. She bucked around and thrust her legs back, tryna find his nuts with her heel, but she kept kicking her bag on accident. She ain’t had his kind of strength.

Some vagrant brother be lying by the dumpster without no shoes on, showing off his rough-ass swollen feet. One of em had a open sore that’s all meaty, attracting flies. Darlene yelling murder and rape, but the bum just lift his head and ain’t react no further. The young man hand had came down over her mouth and it tasted soapy — cleaner than some of Darlene recent meals. So she licking the webs between his fingers to get him to let go her face, but he just clamped onto her jaw more tighter.

The bum lift his head and put it down again. A bottle of Old Crow be his pillow and his pacifier. The kid let go her mouth and figured out how to cram his hand into the bag and rifle through without letting her go. Once he had got the money, the bag fell off her arm and he pushed her forward. She twisted her ankle and fell on her face ’gainst the curb by the dumpster and she could feel her nose and lip and face had swole up already. A police car slowed down fifty yards away on the main road. One cop checked the scene from the passenger side, but they ain’t stop, probably because the father said everything cool. Darlene spat out two teeth and felt a third so loose it come out when she touched it with her tongue. She rolled that puppy round in her mouth.

I guess that made Darlene go more nuts. She not vain, but she had to keep her looks to get business. I made sure she knew at least that. She picked up them teeth, stuck em in her skirt pocket, and tore after the kid — leapt on his back right as his hand touched the door handle and tried to throttle the motherfucker, using his shirt collar to get control. Man, she wanted that forty dollars something bad. But some powerful surprise demon leapt up out the kid too, and he threw her off and slammed her in the cheek. Darlene head snapped back, then she stumbled and doubled over. Dull, heavy pain spread out from her nose into her skull. She couldn’t turn her neck without no more pain and she tasted iron and salt, touched her lip and held out her hand to see some cherry-red fingertips, and all her love lines and heart lines and fate lines be wet with blood. The car wheels was skipping around in the gravel, then the car turnt onto the road and got smaller in the distance till you couldn’t see it no more. The dust be mixing with the gritty metal taste in her mouth and she spat the blood and the grit on the dirt. Her gums was throbbing real bad.

Forty dollars…Shit, Darlene, I said. We coulda been done for at least one motherfucking day. Much as I loved Darlene, I couldn’t hide my disappointment. I could get sorta angry sometimes. I ain’t proud of it. But she had that thing where she crumbled under pressure. So I threw a fit. I lost it, I was hollering and cussing and accusing her of being unfaithful to me. Then I guess I made it clear that I wouldn’t let her go home until she could get some money so we could go braindancing together 27-9.