Fight
My adoptive parents have a tremendous fight for which I am 100 percent responsible. While I sit in the living room and watch Ned Declassified on Nickelodeon, the fight rages upstairs.
What happened is this: my father, an English teacher at St. Bernard’s High School, has been on strike for the past five weeks. In order to keep from going nuts, he’s become a homemaker. He cleans, he does laundry, he makes the meals. It’s April, but he still grills outdoors. Tonight it’s ground turkey burgers, baked potatoes, and vegetable kabobs. Problem is, I told him days ago. I’m a vegetarian.
My mom, putting in ten hour days at her job as a children’s educational book editor in
“No,” my dad says. “You’ve made her peanut butter and jelly for the last three nights. She’ll eat what I cook.”
“Mrs. Penski says turkeys live their whole lives penned up,” I say. “I’m not taking on that kind of karma.”
“Sixth grade!” my father yells. “What the hell are they teaching these kids?!” My mother is moving toward the cupboard. “I said, no!” my dad warns.
“I just want to eat in peace,” my mom tells him.
“And I want the respect she’s supposed to show a parent!”
I look across at my father and point to the turkey burger on my plate. “This is nothing but antibiotics and pesticides held together with steroids.”
“Shut up!” he fires back.
“What is the matter with you?” my mother asks as she finds a jar of Skippy Super Chunk.
“I just don’t like being undermined!” he says.
“What are you talking about?” my mom asks.
“You have been demasculinizing me ever since I’ve been out of work!”
“That’s Super Chunk,” I remind my mother. “I like the smooth.”
My mother returns the Skippy Super Chunk and starts poking around for the Skippy Smooth.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” my father says as he springs to his feet. “What Mylee wants, Mylee gets. What I want doesn’t mean jack-shit!”
“Have you been drinking,” my mother asks him.
“No,” he says, “but I’m ready to start after being stuck in this house all day!” And with that he dramatically stomps from the dinette up the stairs.
I look over at my mother and shrug. “Looks like somebody needs to cut down on animal flesh,” I tell her.
“Here,” my mother says as she drops the peanut butter and a loaf of Wonder bread in front of me. “Make yourself a sandwich.”
At this point, I’m smart enough not to point out that I’m missing the jelly. Upstairs it’s World War 27. I take my sandwich into the living room, flop onto the couch, and switch on the TV. Now it’s only a matter of time. The fight, like a tornado, will build and then gradually die down. By tomorrow morning they will both be lacking sleep, but they will have reached a new appreciation for one another. There will be sly kissing, silly teasing, hand-holding. “We talked it out,” one or the other will explain to me, “so don’t get the impression we’re going anywhere.”
It’s just one of the services I provide. Without me, they’d just fall into that boring, dead-eyed zombie state all my friends’ parents are in. I make them fight because if they didn’t, they’d have no reason to make up. I think of it as homemade karma.
In a minute or two I’ll put my dish into the sink, take the Slim Jim from my backpack, and chomp into it. Because let’s face it. A growing girl needs her share of freeze-dried meat.
BIO: Tai Dong Huai's fiction has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, elimae, Pindeldyboz, Thieves Jargon, Wigleaf, Word Riot, BluePrint Review, The Rose & Thorn, rumble, Hobart, and other terrific places. In 2008, her story "Scent" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize